Question For Athiests

I don’t “see” reincarnation either but it doesn’t mean either way that it is or isn’t.
I would be quite happy to enjoy coming into another life. I know that it is a gamble but would we be wiser than we are now?
Would we, in actuality, retain something of who we are to give us the impetus to further our individual human evolution? Just think of all the books we can read that we never read before - unless we forgot and read them again…more enjoyment to be had and more understanding.

i find comfort in the fact that I shall never have to spend eternity with a bunch of religious nutcases.

Being an atheist does not necessarily mean that there IS NO God even though perhaps not the God by most standards. Being an agnostic, I cannot know for sure either way.
But if you were smart, you might want to prepare yourself just in case and learn how to spend time with those religious nut cases comfortably. We cannot know whether our likes or dislikes or fears influence our consciousness after death (if it does survive that is). Perhaps death is like our dreams which are influenced by and come from the material within our lives.

We die so very many times in this lifetime in having to detach from people and things - in having to let go of so much beauty, joy, happiness and awesomeness in our lives that one would think that we would get the general idea of what death is like and concentrate only on living the best way we can and be grateful in the momeny. Death is our best teacher then on how to live. Why fear something which is more or less so totally out of our contol.

Death tells us to do what John Keats said: “I will clamber through the clouds and exist.” (Existing meaning truly living)

No being smart is knowing that death is an end, and living your life accordingly - and not waste your life playing Pascal’s Wager.

You make my point so eloquently.

I prefer the thoughts of Albert Camus “For who would dare to assert that eternal happiness can compensate for a single moment’s human suffering.”
Religious people, it is said, are scared of death. But more likely they are scared of life. When you know that death is final it is the greatest liberations and makes life all the more interesting, and your living of it fearless.

Sculptor

As for the first paragraph I was more or less teasing there. I think that the word “karma” came to me. But there may be some truth within that
Well, our immediate death is an end but who can really know if it is the end to end all ends? How can we possibly know this as fact?
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. - Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio
Do you think that all agnostics stand on Pascal’s Wager? Personally, I do not believe something or disbelieve it because it may be true or not. I’m skeptical.

But might it not depend on what that single moment’s human suffering was for or about? As for eternal happiness, what is that?! Have philosophers even defined what happiness is as of yet?

Can we really make such a blanket statement? I think that it would depend on the “individual” him/her-self.
Some religious people are afraid of death/to die so they are good - they want that so-called eternal life with God. Some I would say love their God purely for the sake of loving of God and neighbor.
I can agree with you though. So many are afraid of living. Perhaps they feel that they do not deserve a good life. Perhaps they need to learn, to let go and to soar.

We cannot know that death is final but we can know that we will someday die so we “clamber through the clouds and exist”.
What is that song something like “If that’s all there is…” da de de de de :evilfun:
It may have more to do with our own minds and brain chemistry. The cup is either full, half full or empty or perhaps not even there for them.

It’s called evidence.
We cannot know for a fact that there is not a teapot orbiting Pluto. But since there is not a shred of evidence to support such a claim then I’m not going to spend any effort building a spaceship. I’ll just pop down the road and buy one downtown if I want one.

Opinion in a fiction with a ghost. Not exacly reliable is it?

No only a foll plays Pascal’s wager, because if there is a god, who is to know which one to follow in any case. Just live your life as authetically as possible with no care for an uncertain future state.
If god does not like that then ytou have to ask why he created me that way.
The best way to play the wager is not to play it at all.

Not really.

“we” are not making it. I am making it and am prepared to defend it.

Soar?? Seriously I do not see the need to duck for all the soaring religious people. In fact all the religious people seem to be carrying a ball and chain.

Er nope never heard that one.

Whatever the level of the cup, a cup is for drinking, so drink and be merry for tomorow we die.

Sculptor

What evidence? I thought that one could not prove a negative. Can you point me to the evidence of there not being consciousness after death? Have the philosophers, neuro-scientists, et cetera proven that?

lol You’re funny. I may be wrong here but something tells me that I may think more like you than you think.

Yes, I understand that opinion is not fact; just one’s own way of looking at something.
Why did you use the word “ghost” here though?

.

Well, how many gods can there be? If there be one, how can it be other than just the creator god? I think the problem is with the word "God/god in the first place.

We are human beings. Do you really think that that is such an easy thing for many?
But I may be wrong here. Perhaps it might be if we work hard at it, focus on it, just live in the moment…perhaps almost like a “sculptor” would. Mold and shape and chip away what is not necessary - only keep what creates the most authentic form one is going for. Your username, sculptor, literal or figurative?

Questioning is really important. Agnostic or not, I still question God though I realize I may be talking to myself.

I’m not a gambler, well not when it comes to religious gambles.

What does “not really” refer to - the last sentence?

Do you see the “individual” or do you really believe that all religious people are alike - think and feel the same way? Show me where you can prove it?

That made me laugh. I can see you trying to swat them on their way up. I was not so much speaking of religious people here soaring but really about laying down one’s shackles, whatever they are, and soaring…just feeling free and unencumbered. :angelic-blueglow:

Could you also just gaze at it and ponder it or meditate on it depending on how much is in that cup?

A corpse and rotting flesh is not negative evidence.
Nor is the loss of the mind associated with injuries to the brain, Alzheimers and many other diseases which demonstrate the indelible association between the peronality/self/mind/conssiousness and the working of a healthy brain.

:wink:

DId you not quote Hamlet?
Have you ever seen the play? Maybe you did not know the derivation?

How many gods?
My guess is ZERO.
But there are plenty of contenders, and for each one, an almost infinite set of behaviours you are suppose to follow to get your reward.

I’m not a priest so have no say in what others do.

Mostly figurative, though I delve into the dark art of abstration sometimes. Most work from clay.
Apparently this activity is completely anathema to the Muslim God for which I am likely to be damnned.
The Christian version not so much.

THere is hope for you yet

I do not think they are on their way up, but have no interest in swapping them. They are free to waste their lives. Trouble is that they can get in may way, and try to impose their fake morality on others. We are lucky enough to live in a time and plae where they are mostly having to take a back seat. But we have to keep defeinding the freedoms that have taken thousands of years to achive in the face of religious bigotry which is always just around the corner.

Often.

A MIND IS LIKE A PARACHUTE : IT DOES NOT WORK UNLESS IT IS OPEN??

Really??
Not sure the analogy is very good since you have to throw yourself out of a plane before its anything more than a useless burden.

The brain itself is also made up of consciousness. It cannot be made up of something that is not consciousness as, well, that wouldn’t make sense. Thus the brain cannot logically create consciousness: it is a consciousness-composed analog.

This statement does not work.
Since it is obvious that the brain is literally composed of neural matter: meat. The statment that it cannot be composed of something NOT consciousness is false.
The brain and consciousness are not the same thing. In the same way a car and its journey are not the same thing. or a pair of legs and running are not the same thing.
Consciousness/mind/thinking/personality are what the brain DOES. Conditions for this activity include agood supply of nutrients especially water, glucose and oxygen and many other essential things supplied by the blood.
When supplies of these things are limited the result is a loss of fucntion which is the same as loss of self, memory, and bodily control etc.

Sorry for the late reply.

It is obvious the brain is literally composed of consciousness or subjective experience. “Neural matter” is just the subjective experience of the neurosurgeon or anyone in contact with “neural matter” formed into the shape of “neural matter”.

The concept of the godless or atheistic view of death holds that upon cessation of function of the brain, consciousness ceases to exist. According to this concept then, there are two brains: the brain or “neural matter” perceived by a person, composed of that person’s subjective experience, and a brain or neural matter that is not the person’s experience of the brain or neural matter, that continues to exist should the person observing a brain fall unconscious or die while observing the brain.

One must not confuse noumenal brains (the brain that is not a product of the function of a brain) with a phenomenal brain (the perceived or observed brain that is a product of a brain). We can only observe and have (for those who have observed actual brains) only observed phenomenal brains: the noumenal brain is a fictional entity that may or may not exist.

Noumenal brains cannot rationally have anything to do with consciousness as, well, noumenal brains may not exist and even if, ares composed of something that is not consciousness. Something that is not consciousness cannot logically or rationally produce consciousness from itself as it has no consciousness within itself to produce. Consciousness, therefore, would have to be conjured magically from non-existence: a noumenal brain, in order to produce consciousness must cause something that does not exist to come into existence (the opposite condition of what happens when brains cease to function, for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

In the same way the paper pages of a book is literally composed of a story.

No, its not “just” subjective experience as in the same way a book is not “just” a story.
Like the configuration of the words and their order give rise to the story; the unique structuration of the neural matter are what “store” the experience/memory/ character etc of the person.

Yes

NO absolutley NOT

According to the physicalism, there is one brain whose healthy functioning gives rise to the atributes of the person.
You seem to be expressing the god position which insists on two brains; one material and the other incorporeal (soul) which departs the material brain upon death and ascends to heaven. This is a silly theory since it is perfectly obvious the that unique structuration of the brain is what encodes the memory and personality (ad infinitem) of the person; without which there is no person to ascend.

You seem to be loosing it here

This is not making any sense.

Forgive me, but you may be missing the point here. To explain my statement: ‘the brain is literally composed of consciousness or subjective experience’, I think it is necessary to provide some context using the atheist’s myth of how we got the brain and consciousness in the first place:

  1. Consciousness, unambiguously defined by Consciousness Studies Professor David J. Chalmers as experience which I even further diambiguated by saying consciousness is and can only be a person and that which the person experiences, does not exist unless there is a brain that “gives rise to it” (Chalmers): i.e. the brain creates and maintains the existence of consciousness.

  2. Unless there are brain-like mechanisms composed of non-biological matter that are capable of producing consciousness (these are theoretical entities that unless someone has secretly created them exist only in fiction), consciousness only exists and has only existed when and if it is produced by the biological brain.

  3. Consciousness is believed to cease to exist (go the way of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and to the atheist—God) if the brain ceases to function in a way in which it is impossible for the brain to create consciousness.

  4. If consciousness only exists when and if it is generated by a biological brain, then before there were biological brains there was no such thing as consciousness.

  5. In the place of consciousness, there is what Berkeley calls ‘unperceived substance’ or something that is not/is other than subjective experience as before there were no brains there was no subjective experience, thus throughout infinity prior to the existence of life and brains things were materially composed only of something that is not/is other than subjective experience.

  6. Using your statement:

If brains are made up of atoms, which are things composed of something that is not consciousness (as consciousness can only exist if it is created by brains), brains and consciousness cannot be the same thing as brains are made up of something that pre-dates or is composed of something other than what only brains create.


The above moves to this:

But we’re not talking about brains independent of a person’s experience of a brain are we? I was referring to the experience of a brain, which is created according to the atheist myth by a brain in the external world, that survives the loss of experience of a brain. Think about that for a second: the experience of a brain is fleeting–the person visually observing a brain, even handling it, does not always perceive the brain or a brain. And the person visually perceiving a brain and handling it according to the atheist myth that consciousness is created by the brain is only doing so because the external, noumenal brain not composed of subjective experience is somehow magically creating subjective experience of a brain and the subject observing and/or handling it.

Thus the brain that is being viewed and handled, as it is a creation of one’s brain, is indeed “just” subjective experience in the form of a brain. It is not one and the same thing as the brain creating the experience of seeing another person’s brain and handling it.


So we at least have this. But why does it lead to the following response?

Why ‘absolutely NOT’? You SAID the brain and consciousness are not the same thing. You KNOW that according to the atheist myth the brain is made up of atoms, which existed before brains. You KNOW that before brains there was no consciousness, thus atoms are made up of something that is not consciousness, and if atoms accidentally created brains, then there are brains that are not made up of consciousness i.e subjective experience.

But given you are conscious and your consciousness is produced by your brain, then your brain must be something other than your consciousness, which can cease to exist at death. But when you or a neuroscientist observes the brain of another person, one is not looking at a brain not composed of something that is not/is other than subjective experience, but a brain created by one’s brain: a brain composed of one’s subjective experience, produced by one’s noumenal brain, that is in essence subjective experience shaped into the form of the subjective illusion of another person’s noumenal brain.

There are, in the atheist myth regarding brains and consciousness two brain, never one: the brain composed of subjective experience that is observed or felt, etc. that is created by a brain not composed of subjective experience…and a brain not composed of subjective experience that structurally if not functionally survives the sudden non-existence of consciousness.

Nope. Wer’e not talking about incorporeal souls or religious beliefs here. I am religious but am interested for the time being only in the atheist myth, particularly atheist myth of the relation between brain and consciousness. Consciousness is and has only been a person and that which the person experiences. Cut and dry, that’s the only way consciousness manifests and has only manifested, and is the only logical definition of consciousness. According to the atheist myth of the brain’s magical ability to cause things that do not exist to come into existence, a person and that which the person experiences are magically conjured into existence after not existing at all by the brain. So we have a situation where every single instance of consciousness, the person which is a “constant” of consciousness (until death) and the experience of the person which are the “variables” in every case must be magically conjured from non-existence by one’s brain, which of course cannot be one and the same thing as the consciousness it magically conjures from non-existence…because one’s brain does not continually conjure itself into existence.

Why?

Because one’s brain exists in the external world outside one’s consciousness (which winks out of existence if one’s brain ceases to function and as such cannot be one and the same thing as the brain that brings it into existence).

Part of the consciousness the brain magically conjures into existence from previous non-existence, if the brain magically creates one’s consciousness as a neuroscientist, is the neuorscientist’s visual and tactile perception or experience of another person’s brain.

This brain, given it is a creation of the neuroscientist’s brain, is a phenomenal brain. It is, of course not one and the same thing as the neuroscientist’s brain which is creating this whole scene of experiencing oneself in a lab experiencing oneself holding and observing a brain. That is a noumenal brain, a brain formed by atoms which existed before consciousness that are made up of something other than subjective experience.

Thus there are two brains even in atheist explanation of the nature of existence: the noumenal brain and its creation: the phenomenal brain, which winks out of existence if one suddenly dies while observing the phenomenal brain, or even if one walks out of the lab to grab a bag of chips: the subjective experience of which one is composed “morphs” from the shape of the examination room with the brain on the table into the experience of the snack room, all magically created by the noumenal brain.

Not to mention that the brain, lest we forget, is just a baseball-shaped clump of cells squeezed into a bony skull. Neurons in a skull look nothing like the experience of a lab with a brain on a table, despite the fact that the experience of being in a lab staring at a brain on a table is supposedly “created” by neurons trapped within a skull (somehow the experience of being a neuroscientist staring at a brain on a table “springs forth from” or “comes out of” cells that the entire time are and remain within the limited space of a skull).


Which brings us to:

Not really. Look at your atheist history. Before brains there was no consciousness, and if there was no consciousness what then? The only answer is that something other than consciousness existed. Brains are creations and are composed of this “other”. Brains composed of the stuff that existed before brains, and thus existed before consciousness, are noumenal brains.

nou•me•non
/ˈno͞oməˌnän/
noun

plural noun: noumena

(in Kantian philosophy) a thing as it is in itself, as distinct from a thing as it is knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes.

Any brain observed or experienced by a person, by contrast, is a phenomenal brain. The phenomenal brain according to the atheist myth the brain creates consciousness is a creation of the phenomenal brain.

A good example I like to use is the holographic image of Princess Leia projected from the R2D2 robot in Star Wars: A New Hope (1977). A phenomenal brain, which only exists as an experience of a person observing another person’s brain, is the Princess Leia hologram. A noumenal brain, which remains after the consciousness of the person the brain created ceases to exist at death, is the R2D2 robot.

Then there is my statement:

Which, given that while alive we cannot observe our own brains but only those of deceased or operated-upon others, and even given one could observe one’s own brain in a mirror during a medical procedure in which it is open to full view but not corresponding with one’s unconsciousness, the fact remains that everything that is experienced is phenomenal, not noumenal, and that according to atheist belief experience is something that must be constantly magically conjured from non-existence by the noumenal [brain].

Of course it does, as it is the logical consequence of atheist belief regarding the brain and consciousness, particularly if one believes consciousness ceases to exist at death in light of the 1st law of thermodynamics, which holds sway of everything that does not, due to the law, cease to exist or can go out of existence…like noumenal brains.

PG

THe brain cannot be “just” experience. it is blood and grey matter.
You might want to be more clear about your use of the world “literally”
DEF:in a literal manner or sense; exactly.
eg “the driver took it literally when asked to go straight over the roundabout”

Utilizing the belief the brain creates consciousness as a logic-tool (as I deny there are noumenal brains or that brains create consciousness), if one believes every instance of consciousness must be created by one or more neurons somewhere in the brain, everything in the universe can be separated into:

  1. Everything created by the brain
  2. Everything not created by the brain

If there is no consciousness that can exist without the brain or without being created by the brain (the supernatural or Panpsychism), we only experience and can only experience that which the brain creates. As a result of being only able to have consciousness and experiences if they originate from a brain—we cannot experience anything the brain does not create.

Again, we can use the Princess Leia/R2D2 metaphor.

The R2D2 robot is a metaphor for the brain: the Princess Leia hologram that emits from the R2D2 robot pleading to Obie Wan for help is a metaphor for consciousness. Any experience of the brain of every neuroscientist (or criminal) that has ever existed is only the experience of a “Princess Leia hologram” created by the “R2D2 robot” of that person’s brain: that is, the only brains that have ever demonstrated their existence appear only as things appearing within the consciousness of a person, and given every experience of every person is only and must be a “Princess Leia hologram” that can only exist if it is produced by the “R2D2” of one’s brain, every brain that has ever been seen or handled, tested, experimented upon (and every result of those experiments) is and can only be a “Princess Leia hologram”. It is not nor has ever been a ‘real’ brain that is not a “Princess Leia hologram” created by neurons in a skull (speaking as if I believed the brain creates consciousness).

Ergo, the “blood and grey matter” you mentioned, the “blood and grey matter” that one empirically knows to exist…is and has only ever been a “Princess Leia hologram” produced by the “R2D2” of one’s brain. No one has ever seen a brain that is not a “Princess Leia hologram” emitted from the “R2D2” of any brain. Everything you or I experience is just a “Princess Leia hologram” and a part of that “hologram”: trees, mountains, magazines, flowers, the bodies of other people that meaningfully interact with our consciousness—if one believes every instance of consciousness is created by the brain and that there is no consciousness that is not created or produced from the brain----these are all just “Princess Leia holograms” produced by the “R2D2” of the brain.

Thus, as we have never experienced anything that is not a “Princess Leia hologram”, we have no real knowledge of the existence of anything that is not a “Princess Leia hologram” produced by an “R2D2”. We only have imagination of the concept of things that are not a “Princess Leia hologram”, and many people go so far as to believe that these “non-Princess Leia holograms” have independent, objective existence. But given we are only a “Princess Leia hologram” (the concept of something that is not a “Princess Leia hologram” and belief in its independent existence itself a part of the “hologram”), we have no empirical means of establishing the existence of anything outside any “Princess Leia hologram”.

Thus, the only brains we experience are only made out of one’s subjective experience. That’s it. We can’t experience anything that is not and not part of the “Princess Leia hologram”. If one believes the brain creates subjective experience, the only brains we or anyone has or can ever experience are made out of subjective experience emanating from star-shaped cells within a skull (for those believing the brain creates consciousness).

Long story short, we have never experienced, nor can we experience, brains that are not subjective experience composed “holograms” produced by one’s brain, i.e. brains that are the “actual Princess Leia” that exists outside and did not come from within “R2D2” and as such are not one and the same thing as brains that are “holographic Princess Leia’s” that emit, like movies from a projector, from neurons in a skull.

Thus there are, indeed two brains if one believes in noumenal brains: a brain that is a “Princess Leia hologram” produced from the “R2D2” of the brain, and an “actual Leia” that certainly did not and could not “come from” or “come out of” a 3-lb mass of meat trapped within a skull.

According to atheist belief in the nature of death, when “R2D2” can no longer produce the “Princess Leia hologram”, the “hologram” ceases to exist, leaving behind other R2D2’s that continue to produce their own “Princess Leia holograms” and everything else in infinity that is not an “R2D2” (brain) nor a “Princess Leia hologram” (any consciousness produced by any brain).

But…given that we are only “Princess Leia holograms” and everything we experience, including brains, are and can only be part of the “Princess Leia hologram”…we cannot experience any noumenal brain—a brain that is not a “Princess Leia hologram” created by an “R2D2” but an “actual Leia” that is an entity composed of something other than/that is not subjective experience not created by any “R2D2”. As existence only appears and demonstrates itself in the form of “Princess Leia holograms” without “R2D2s” responsible for their existence (the sum of Panpsychism), noumenal brains or "actual Princess Leia"s may not exist.

At any rate, regardless of whether or not one believes brains emit subjective experience or one is Panpsychist, it does not follow that subjective experience is created by something other than itself, thus there is no logic in the belief that subjective experience is created by or pulled from something that has no subjective experience in itself to produce, save by the irrational magic of creation ex nihilo.

PG

This contradicotry and confused

What do you mean by “noumenal brain”, and in what way are you denying its existence?
And don’t just quote someone else, use your own words.

Every word I used in the above posts are my own. When I quote someone, I use blue font. And even if I quoted someone, the points stand. Wouldn’t I have to understand what the person is saying and how relevant it is to the conversation in order to meaningfully use the quote?

The noumenal brain is the brain as it “exists” (for those that believe it exists) in the external world that structurally (if not functionally) survives one’s death as it’s existence is unaffected by the cessation of existence of one’s consciousness (for those who believe in the atheist view of death). Every brain that has ever been experienced by a person is and has only ever been a phenomenal brain, composed of the subjective experience (in the form of vision and taction) of the person perceiving the brain. One can only experience a phenomenal brain when one observes and handles an actual brain in medical or criminal context. As we can only see the “Princess Leia hologram” that emits from the “R2D2” of the brain (for those believing the brain creates consciousness), the noumenal brain may not exist, and cannot logically have anything to do with the existence of the phenomenal brain as the noumenal brain is conceptually composed of something other than consciousness or subjective experience.

PG

So you are saying that actual brain (as it exists) does not exist?
You then folow that with gibberish

No, our experience is always phenomenal, “Phenomenal experience” is a tautology. We NEVER actually experience our brains since it does not offer nervous information about its own existence. Brains can only ever be noumenal. The only clue that we have a brain is a head ache.

PS movie stills from Starwars wont help your (ahem!) argument