Creating Our Own Reality~Revisited

The other day a friend and I were speaking about reality and religion. Granted that I had been reading some excerpts from the Kybalion, I was focusing on how it says that man creates his own Universe. I began to think deeper, and I came up with this theory. I would like to know your views. So whenever man was created, or evolved to the point to where he could think. He doesn’t have any biases, or likes and dislikes. He has sort of a clean slate. I presume this would be the first philosopher, he asks himself, Why am I here, whats my purpose? Who am I? In asking himself these questions, he then came to the rationalization that if he is here, then there must be something, somewhere who placed him here. So man has now created God, or whatever they might have called him. So now that man has a creator, he must have a purpose. So man creates religion, a set of guidelines or rules to follow that mans creator has created him for. This is the basis behind why some religions have an end or an apocolypse. If everyone who the creator has created doesnt follow his intended plan or purpose for them, then he will come back, destroy all those who arent following, take those who are following with him, and then start all over again. So basically what happens is, man has created his creator. In doing so, religion comes about, and man begins to shape his ways according to his particular religion. When you begin to follow the guidelines of your religion, one soon has children, and they teach them these same guidelines. These children dont realize that this is simply a creation of their fathers minds. So coming from their frame of reference, their foundation for life is the religion they have been taught. They blindly believe in it. Then it comes to a point to where of course they believe their religion is right, and everyone else is wrong. So we have wars to push religion on each other, and tell people what way they should follow. Basically it all stems back to that question of why am I here. This question has created the world we live in today. Through this we have created the ideas behind ethics and morals, everything. Man has created it all. Now I am coming from my perspective and my mind, but I believe for this to have some truth to it. If you can look past all your subjective thinking, and truly think back to the beginning, it makes since. But there is more. This is sort of the controversial part I am sure people will have something to say about.

There is always talk about life after death. Most if not all religions have some type of place that we go after we die. With that said, and considering the notion that we create our own reality through our own belief systems, the question of who is right has to come about. Christians believe that there is a heaven and a hell, and one must do good or believe in Christ to reach heaven. Buddist believe that there is a place called nirvana. Well who is right? Considering if we do indeed have a soul, which I believe we do, because we have created it to be that way, do we not create or own life after death? Instead of saying that everyone is wrong, which cant be true, why not say everyone is right. Whatever you believe to be your life after death will be real, because that is your reality. Now I could be completely wrong, and that when we die, that might just be it, you have lived your life, its a natual process for it to end. But at the same time, I cant help but entertain the fact that if we control all these things in our environment while alive, why not when we are dead? I will go even further to say that when we die maybe we will have ultimate control, in which we will live in sort of a dream world. Or, going back to my first assumption, whatever we believed in this world that deals with our after life, we take with us to the after life. And those beliefs become our reality in the after life. So if I believe in Christianity and I followed my beliefs the way I should have, then I will go to the heaven that has been created through the mind of all those who believe in it. Or I could go to hell through that same way of thinking. You know how some people say, I know I am going to hell. Shit like that. Then comes the question of, what about those who have no beliefs, or those who dont believe in anything. I personally believe that each person has some type of thought as to what might happen when we die. Many people dont believe in God, or are agnostic and question the possibility of him existing, but often they believe that they have a spirit. So they have some aspect as to what might happen, it could be that they roam the earth for eternity. But for those who really dont have a view, or are unsure, then their after life will be a result of that thinking. I will go further to say that those people might end up living again. That kind of goes back to reincarnation and not reaching the level that could have or should have been reached. But I really believe everyone has some type of thought or belief as to what will happen when they die. But anyway I think I have expressed myself in the fashion I wished to do so. So, any thoughts?

Whilst I believe you are right to say that man has created his creator, one should not take the nature of this ‘creator’ on face value.
To say that we have created something, is not to say that we have created what we think we have created.
One might believe all they want that they have literally created a deity, but this does not bring into being an omnipotent righteous being. It brings into being the Concept of such a being. This being can be said to exist insofar as it is a creature contained within our thought and our actions. The paedophile may tell a child of enourmas powers that he has to punish a child if they do not comply, but the belief of the child does not bring these powers into being, though they may still be acted on as if they exist.

I agree with you about the origins of religion. There must have been a point at which when people discussed the nature of ‘why am I here’ there only answer could be ‘I haven’t got a bloody clue’.
When you don’t have a bloody clue, this is the correct, truthful answer.

Original sin was when someone realised that in telling people falsehoods about these things, and within this structure of falsehoods demonising doubt and logical enquiry, they could set up a means within the human system of understandings that falsehoods could be proliferated without fear of reprisals. And for their benefit.
A frustrated parent will tell their child an awful lot of bullshit just to get them to do what they want.
This is the alienation of power, where one’s total lack of concern for those one has power over leads to an abuse of their mind, by closing off the paths to truth. It is much more convenient to have them comply for the wrong reasons. After all, if they knew the right reasons, they probably wouldn’t comply.

noneedforaname wrote:

Does not this being, that is contained in our thoughts, become real to us? Humans have the ability to fool themselves, or play into the reality that they wish. Think deeper. If you believe that we do not exist, or nothing exist, then I can see where you are coming from. But if not, I will take your example and attempt to explain what I am trying to say a little better. When you were a child, did people not tell you things, in which once they told you these things, they were true. Possibly not true to anyone else, but in ‘your’ mind, these things were true. Even to the point to where you might have thought there was a monster under your bed. Now having more knowledge, you can say no there was never a monster under my bed, but as a child, that monster was real. Concepts become reality. The concept of God is real, not wherein we can see it, or that it is tangible. But “some” people truly believe, with all their heart and soul, that God is real. How can one say that they are wrong? Noone can say they truly know the truth, but whatever it is that you truly believe in, is your own truth. My theory plays on this fact and explains that there is no one truth. Everything is relative.

I agree. The motive here being power of control. If one wishes to control someone else, in the manner you have provided; that one has realized that people believe certain things they are told, these beliefs yeild to the closing off of other ideals, and in turn shapes the way that person acts. The “one” has successfully controlled anothers reality.

I never said it does not exist, simply that it does not exist in the nature that is claimed.
We can believe all we want in the monsters under the bed, and be truly in fear of them, and be doomed not to go under our bed.

The day that we crawl under our bed, regardless of our fear of what has been described to us, and find nothing ravaging us, is the day that we have thrown of the shackles of this belief.

A concept that is not backed up by experience is a nothing.
Part of the trick they play on us is to tell us that because the monster is so very fearful, in the checking of whether it is there we will lose everything, or near enough everything to matter.

There is no content to a concept without experience, it is simply a boundary that has been imposed. People must walk through the world free of fear. Revelling in the comfort of the boundaries of the playpen created for us by others (and seemingly in your suggestion, modified to taste by the self) leaves us children all our lives.

Also, I do not believe that people naturally believe what they are told. We naturally believe what we have experienced. When what we are told and what we experience are combined in the form of dogma and moralistic rhetoric (what we are told) backed up by the stick and carrot (the experiences that lend weight to it) we come to believe what we are told.
For this end the earliest established principle in a child’s life is the absolute authority of the parent in knowledge. Religion has commonly been used to back this up, with warnings of damnation to the sceptical and doubtful mind. a powerful psychological tool, that should be feared, and for that fear rooted out. The less you are capable of thinking on your own, the less you are capable or using your own experience instead of other’s, the more under their power you are.

noneedforaname wrote:

I agree with some of the contents of your post. However, when you said that “There is no content to a concept without experience”, I would have to disagree. The point I am trying to get at in this thread, is that our conceptions, create our experience. The example I used with the child and monster doesn’t display this concept well. Lets just go to the root. Think back to the beginning of the thread and the concepts I threw at you. In the beginning, where man began to think philosophically, he created all those things that I previously mentioned. Okay, with that in mind, what happened next. Experience was simply experience then, there was no “boundaries of the playpen created for us by others”. What was experienced was what I presume to be as pure nature(what we experience physically and biologically still today). Now lets fast foward to today, where the playpen has been created. Where did this playpen come from? If it arrived through experience alone, then nothing would change. No new ideas would have been formed, to form anything new in the world. An idea, or conception, is what led to the creation of the very building you are experiencing this online conversation in. The medium through which we are speaking, it was not here in the beginning, it was conceptualized, then created. We create our own reality. When we believe in something we create it, whether it stays in our minds, or if we make it tangible, it is still real. If not, then nothing is real except all that existed before we could even experience what did exist. Humans learn through conditioning. Whether it is through a paring of stimuli, repetitive exposure to a specific stimulus, or some type of reinforcement. We do naturally believe what we experience. Oh yes, but beyond that, we do naturally believe what we are told. Really analyze what I am about to say. From birth, you do not have these conceptions in your brain. They are told to you by whomever is raising you. Would you not agree? More so, when someone tells you something different from what you have already been told, you automatically compare it to that which was told to you first. Whether or not you accept it is based on the circumstances. The child has complete and utter trust in that authoritative figure. So whatever they say, they will believe; when the child experiences something to the contrary, then and only then will it be realized that what they once thought was real, is not. Before this realization was made, the concept was accepted by the childs mind, and therefore it was real to them. So I do believe that we naturally believe what we are told when we do not have any thing else to compare it to. We have to go off of something. We build ourselves through what we are told, and experience. Not experience alone my friend.

From birth people experience everything around them. They look at their parents and others, see what they do, and attempt to copy that. This, of course, doesn’t just apply to physical actions. Beliefs, morals, etc are passed down to the children. If a child has only been exposed to a certain religion, then the child would only be aware of that 1 religion. In their mind, there would only be one religion. The child is learning through experience, but isn’t able to gather enough experience to make a legitimate/well-informed decision (whether it be conscious or unconscious). Its not necessarily that people are blindly believing what they’re told, so much as they lack experience (or are afraid of) figuring it out for themselves.

back to what you were originally saying:
Suppose that the lack of conditioning and integrated thought processes would allow people to truly see things for how they really are.

Energy cannot be destroyed. This is a well known.

I find that in religion a lot of things seem to be right on the money with words switched around. Suppose religion/god was created by man as you said, but somewhere along the line, someone figured out (of course no idea how, its not the point) what things are really about. They realize that if they just start telling people, not only will they seem arrogant, but they will be considered crazy for questioning others’ deep rooted beliefs. They organize what they know, and what they are trying to share with people, into a code of ethics from which to base a religion on. Based on what people have to come to believe religion is and/or should be, they create interesting and entertaining stories, relating to their original beliefs but applying them to a religious world.

Or perhaps someone realized that using religion, one can make an entire population do pretty much what they want. Maybe adopting or exploiting what I said in the last paragraph and using it to fuel their desire for power and control. Their ‘need’ for power and control is obviously from a lack of understanding of themselves as a person and of the human race on a whole. Which would lead us to where we are today. A predictable controllable mass of consumers who have the inability to think for themselves, and what’s worse cannot even establish a direct origin for their beliefs. They just believe what they believe and could care less about a different perspective.

this energy that cannot be destroyed is very similar to what religions refer to as a soul. You die and only your soul lives on. Your physical body dies, and only your energy remains.

my son just woke up, so i’ll be back later, sorry if i left things kinda sloppy

IntegraGS-R

I can see exactly what you are saying. If we did not learn and experience this conditioning, which then shapes and molds our behaviors, then what reality would we experience? I suppose that it would be the true reality. Right now it is relative and based on perspective or a frame of reference, each persons reality is their own. But I think now the question might be as to what does our ability to create the world we live in, relative to each person, have to do with us succeeding as a species. That way I could wrap this up as having an evolutionary function.

Our conceptions may create experience, but the point I am making by “There is no content to a concept without experience” is that unless those concepts themselves are rooted in experience, and placed into a coherent set, then they should hold no water with us.
Some of our experience is the information intimated to us, but unless the information intimated to us (which is itself based on someone else’s experience) can be verified by our own experience, then it is a nothing. We are capable with our experience of animals to create the concept of a chimera. The chimera is a connective concept created from divisions of other concepts. We cannot create concepts from nothingness, if they are an invention, they have to be a chimera, ultimately based in some way in our experience.

The playpen is a set of chimera concepts, created in order to lead us to false beliefs that cause us to act in a way that is beneficial to the inventor and propogator of those concepts. If people communicated purely with truth, then they would truthfully admit their ignorance in matters, and no playpen would ever have come into being. As it is, they saw benefits in leading us to those beliefs. As a child we are dependant on our parents, and so utilising the experiential benefits that they give us, they can lead us to the belief that holding and expressing concordant beliefs leads us to experiential benefits (e.g. food, freedom of movement, and other such things) and holding and expressing disagreement leads us to experiential detriments (e.g. pain, punishment, confinement).
Ideas and conceptions move on, because experience itself moves on. Experience is not inert. What is more, as I have mentioned, we have the ability to break down and reattach our experiences to form great complexes that can never be experienced (but can still be acted on), such as chimera, unicorns, god, the afterlife, or christianity.

a complex is real if it is based on experiences which we have experienced that actual ability to break them down. We cannot simply cut up several animals (yet) and make a chimera, so the concept is of a nothing. We have been able to create this internet forum precisely because it is founded in real and actual experience of those things which we can divide and connect, the concept cannot just leap from nothingness.

There is nothing to suggest that we naturally believe what we are told, because all parenting known of consists of a conditioning through experience to believe what we are told.

I would be surprised if you are actually suggesting that you have believed even as a young child the accounts given you by authoritative figures. As soon as one given hypothesis is called into doubt we gain the concept that authoritative figues should be doubted. There is also still nothing to suggest that there is any reason for a child believing what they are told other than the direct reinforcements given to this kind of obedient slavish behaviour. What is more, if given one account of the way things are, if we can come to an alternative account that is equally plausible, we have no reason to take the one we have been given.

If we really became built through what we are told then we would be, well, in the state of the majority of modern humans. That of a dog with slightly higher conceptual abilities, and the capability to train other dogs.

You also earlier made the assertion that these things we construct, when not based on verifiable experiences in some sense literally come into being. That if we believe in an afterlife, this is the one we will get.
This is proposterous, even if we acted within our lives as if the boogeyman was in the closet, that doesn’t mean he will really eat us if we go in there. We find out whether he is when we get there, and to make crass assertions about the nature of the boogeyman just distracts us from the ultimate goal, the proof or disproof of his existence and nature.
Equally, though we might believe that there might be an afterlife, to talk of it’s nature, and to suggest that it’s nature will come into being just for the fact of this talk, is absurd.
We will not know until we get there. Until we can actually verify the afterlife, talk of it is purposeless, and is a distraction from those things we seek in life.

Right now (at least in the US), its tearing the species apart. However I dont believe the problem is our ability to create our own reality, but some people’s inability to be aware that they’re creating the reality in the first place. When someone goes apeshit becuase their car got a tiny scratch or something is a perfect example of this. They get so wrapped up in their alternate reality that they forget (or perhaps never knew) how things are. I’m kinda a car guy, i like working on my car and driving it and used to worry bout things like this. I have since realized that it doesn’t matter in the least (along with countless other things). The other day someone backed into my car, and after I saw that there was no damage that would hinder the operation of my car, I told them not to worry about it, shit happens . Anyway, people’s obsession with perfection is one thing that really drags us down (as a population or species). Everyone knows no one is perfect, yet people strive for perfection in everything they do. Now i’m not saying have goals or aspirations is wrong, I’m talking more about the people that, for example, when in school, COULD NOT handle getting below a 95 on a test (out of 100).

This is similar in nature to people who believe themselves to always be right, and when their views are questioned, instead of being interested in learning a new point of view, they emote in a very negative way.

The United States in the fattest country in the world (i happen to live in the fattest state in the US). Everyday you see people that are unhappy with being overweight yet they dont do anything about it, they continue to eat fast food and just sit on the couch and watch the latest reality tv show (reality tv shows are the epitomy of our demise as a species). Now this wouldn’t bother me so much if they didn’t act like they aren’t overweight. For example, I have a fairly big nose, I know this, and I know that everyone that sees me knows this. Sometimes folks will make jokes (all in good fun, usually) but it doesn’t bother me. If you were to make a joke about someone being overweight they would freak out and your comment would be ‘politically incorrect’. I would imagine this stems from earlier times when much much much less people were overweight, and if you saw someone severly overweight (obese) it was usually genetic or something they had little or no control over. But that is simply not the case today, although many people like to make this claim. Just becuase your mother and father were overweight doesn’t mean its in your genes. Maybe, just maybe it means that your parents had poor exercise and eating habits (going back to what we were saying about children basically doing what their parents do). People use excuses like this to maintain their ‘alternate reality’.

offtopic: i’m curious where you are from… in my experience most people (at least in the us) tend to either be completely unaware that their reality is at least partly an alternate reality (and many times with argue/fight for their alternate reality and they never really know why) or attempt to completely avoid the ‘alternate reality’ by making their own ‘alternate reality’… truly open-minded people are rare now adays it seems. on a large scale this is the only thing that can help the human race. people opening their minds to any and all posiblities for every situation and every belief and comparing them equally.

Noneedforaname wrote:

You are correct about the chimera concept. I actually thought about it later that night after writing my previous post. Noone has their own thoughts. It is a connective web. When we think of something, it is taken from the ideas and thoughts that we already have in our head. Whether it be a combination of ideas, or just expounding off of an idea. Thank you for clearing that up. I understand what you are saying about the content that should not affect us, and should be a “nothing”, but just as you said, this is the way it “should” be. Unfortunately it is not. Most people play into the ideals set by a particular society. Its just human nature to assimilate. These ideals may not necessarily reflect experience. As a matter of fact, I have mentioned the self-fulfilling prophecy numerous times on this site. Let me set up a scenario for you. I do not wish for you to evaluate this hypothetical situation by how you particularly would respond to it, but rather how an average minded person might react. There has been research, and believe it or not, this occurs everyday. A good friend of yours has the honors of introducing an acquaintance he has. Before you meet him, he tells you that this man is obnoxious and rude. No experience yet. Then you get to meet this man. The majority of people, when told that someone is obnoxious and rude, is going to be looking for those qualities in that person. So the man could be generous, nice, and not obnoxious or rude at all, yet you will still find those qualities in him, because that is what you expected to find. More so, you will approach this man with those ideals in mind, and speak to him as if these ideals are true. This most often elicits a response in the man, that will correlate with how you already view him. This is how we think. We run off of stereotypes. It facilitates with our decision making, so we dont have to take so much time to evaluate things ourselves. This is where gender differences come from. Whether you realize it or not, your view of a woman has been shaped by ideals and biases of those around you. Your view is also shaped by experience with woman, whom act in the way that corresponds to the place that their society has given them. If you are told all the time, that someone is better than you at something else, and everyone is telling you this same thing, especially at a young age; which contains the most crucial years of your life as far as mental development goes, your ability to overcome that impression is first hindered in your mind. Unless you see many exceptions to what you already know, these ideals will stay in place. If you understand stereotyping and biases then you will get what I am saying.

Noneedforaname wrote:

What exactly are you trying to say here? The way I am interpreting it is that the majority of humans become built through what they are told? I think you might have mistyped or either I am misinterpreting because it comes off as contradictory.

Noneedforaname wrote:

You are right to disagree, for that is your opinion. I see where you are coming from, but you have allowed me to rethink my position. You are right, believing in something probably wont create it in the afterlife, but how we attribute our experiences to the knowledge we already know should be taken into consideration. This will help to make the other concepts I have writtin about more lucid. For instance, say that they’re is a happy afterlife. You wouldnt necessarily know what it is called. So when you get there, if you were Christian, then you would be in heaven. If you were buddist, you would be in nirvana. Same place, different interpretation. We all intepret things and attribute things differently. Place two people in the same situation, they will react different. They will explain what happened with different feelings and emotions, because they dont really understand what happens objectively, only by the knowledge that already exist within them. But I can definitely see the logic of your opposition, and the fact is that we dont know. Also I dont waste my time thinking about death all day, talk of it is not purposeless to me, I enjoy thinking and entertaining different ideas, you may not.

IntegraGS-R wrote:

I agree with what you are saying. Also people arent aware that they are being controlled. At least not in the way I see it. I personally believe that there is no “I”, or individual. I mean sure we all have our own likes and dislikes, interest, ect. But where do these stem from? Just as we have been talkin about earlier, noone truly thinks for themself. It is our experience, which is evaluated by our previous knowledge, which makes us into who we are. Our previous knowledge, is always and in every case, knowledge from someone else. Our society was created in an awful way. We are the rebels. Our society as a whole, has kept that attitude. The US basically does what the fuck they want. Whether it be overt, or covert. When the majority of the people around you are negative, you will more than likely pick up many of their thoughts, and these thoughts turn into actions. You will speak like them, and be like them.

Anyway I am from Nashville, TN. In the earlier part of my life I lived in the projects. When I turned 13 my parents, yes both of them, moved us out to a small town outside of Nashville. My ability to strive for objectiveness I believe stems from the two completely different mini-societies I have lived in and experienced. I see many sides, and understand that people are different, and raised different. People really have no control over who they are. That is why I feel it to be of the upmost importance to recognize this, and then strive to be something better, strive for things that matter.

yes, and that’s the problem… its the hardest part to get people to understand… about all you really can do is try and show them examples of it, and hope they put some thought into whatever it may be on their own.

while i believe i see what you’re saying, and i agree with you, i disagree that previous knowledge is always from someone else… if that were the case than we wouldn’t learn anything new unless we just kinda found it. i also agree when you said no one truly thinks for themself… the only way to truly think for yourself would be to have complete control of the subconscious. if you were in complete control of your subconscious it would become conscious and well you can’t just get rid of subconscious thought what we must strive for is awareness and comprehension of subconscious thought

I entirely agree with everything you say there. Except, that if you have sufficient experiences of stereotypes not being true, you are lead to a meta-stereotype, which is to say a stereotyped belief about stereotypes.
People DO commonly accept what others tell them, and are lead into the beliefs by exactly the process you explain. We fit this concepts into our web, and then keep on going.
However, some of our beliefs are about what beliefs should or should not be accepted into this web. Meta-beliefs, if you will.
Most people have few or no Meta-beliefs, and leave judgement up to other people. However, if we have strong and detailed meta-beliefs, then they act as a gatekeeper for the mind, they may not be succesful all of the time, but in the very act of recognising their existence, our capabilities and our thoughts are inherently changed.
By simply knowing that there is a process by which we evaluate the thoughts expounded to us by others, we come to the process of evaluating those beliefs that we use to evaluate beliefs. A christian might commonly simply accept beliefs given by a priest, but disregard those given by a satanist. This is because their meta-beliefs, their gatekeeper as such, is one which admits idea on the basis of who they come from, and how they fit into christianity, not on the basis of how verifiable the belief is in itself.
If we have a meta-belief that only the individually verifiable is acceptable, then our gatekeeper will do us a great deal of service.
However, forming a new personal religion means that our gatekeeper, though possibly better than older religious ones, will still be flawed in ways that a rational gatekeeper is not.
Rationality, scepticism and philosophy may not be perfect, but they are certainly a step in the right direction.

I do not see it as contradictory at all. The majority of humans are ‘asleep’ they do not evaluate their own gatekeeper against the basis of their experience. They simply get given a gatekeeper by some religion or other, whether it be a christian, hindu, zoroastrian, buddhist or communist one.

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Whilst a christian or buddhist will come to the happy afterlife thinking “ah heavan/nirvana”, this is because of flawed beliefs that have been allowed into their mind. They would not flourish in the afterlife in the same manner as someone who comes to it with a sceptical enquiring mind.
I have often thought about death and the afterlife, and i do enjoy knowing the many different interpretations. They hold aesthetic value to me, they are intricate and pretty patterns. I have quite the interest in theology. I would say pretty much all of the religion’s afterlives are, however, self-contradictory, and so my favorite ones (both that i’ve read and constructed myself) are those which fit in best with themselves and my prior understandings. I would not assert that any of these is more plausible than one of the others (except for the self-contradictory ones), and i reserve judgement until my death, and will not act on the basis of any of these possible interpretations. One of these interpretations is that there is absolutely nothing, but i have also had fun (oh how sad i am) constructing an intricate conjecture on the basis of string theory, neural networks, something resembling buddhism and an external universe that created our ‘universe’ for the purpose of complex calculations.

Noneedforaname wrote:

You are so right. “Some of our beliefs are about what beliefs should or should not be accepted into this web”. These meta-belifs that you describe can do us some good, if just as you said, you are able to recognize the process of how we evaluate our beliefs. Our ability to recognize that we should evaluate our original beliefs to compare new beliefs alludes to the notion that we might just be better off believing what the hell we wish. I mean true, being completely rational in evaluating a belief seems better, but if this occurs, one will never come to a belief. I suppose it depends on how you wish to live your life. A life wherein one only evaluates beliefs all day, and never comes to a sound belief, because there is none; or a life in which you realize that all these beliefs are a creation of the human, and therefore choose the one or create one that will fit you best, and correlates with your growth as a human being. Some people believe(here goes that word again) that we need some type of belief system to ensure survival. There has actually been studies conducted that allude that our brain has an innate property that responds to prayer, and spiritual stimuli. They say this is a result of evolution, assisting in survival. I personally dont know, but knowing that most of all that is around me has been created by those before me, I would much rather follow my own ideals.

Noneedforaname wrote:

The reason I felt this statement to be contradictory is because when you say the word “if”, you are introducing the possiblity that the following words could go either way: that we become built through what we are told. Then you go further to say that the majority of modern humans are in this particular state. Its like your answering your own predicament. Though it may not be true for everyone, the majority has it.

Noneedforaname wrote:

That is sort of the basis for my theory. I mean if one person believes in heaven, then they will experience “their” heaven, and not reap all the benefits of one who entertains all the ideas of an afterlife, or is skeptical, in which one would be able to explore the different heights of an after-life experience. Of coure, only theory and wishful thinking, but I believe you understand what I am trying to get at with it.

Noneedforaname said:

Could you explain this theory in more detail?