A Challenge to Richard Dawkins and the Atheists

[seeds]

...If you had to reincarnate a million times into human form in order to reach a level of being where it is no longer necessary for you to reincarnate anymore; and if your million incarnations only took place once every one thousand years, it would be the equivalent of only one grain of sand (one billion years). And no matter what form you have acquired in that time, eternity still looms before you in a vision of endlessness that defies comprehension.

So the question is - what is your status at that juncture, and what would your “purpose” be from that moment on?

The universe does not exist in an eternal state of providing the reality we are now afforded, so at this juncture i believe your post to to be rather ill conceived.

atto, did you miss the part where I called it a “thought experiment” in which I suggested that we see how well our visions of the afterlife can hold up when projected into eternity?

The point being that if they do not offer any kind of logical purpose for an entity in possession of eternal life, then perhaps they need some re-thinking.
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[seeds]

I firmly believe that life continues on for us after death.

...and what would warrant this belief since creating humans is a mass production event.

That question makes no sense to me.

Simple! A momentary ripple...

A ripple?

Come on now Dubious, you can’t clarify something that makes no sense with something else that makes no sense.

...followed by an incubation of approximately nine months and another consciousness is born...

Oh wait, maybe you meant this kind of ripple...



...given to a prom date. Then that does make some sense.

...which by merit of being human is destined to be reborn according to your view.

Not “re-born,” but simply a completion of the birthing process of which our present state is only “half-way” there, so to speak.

But as confirmed by history, God or nature couldn't care less about all your pretty ones. They're a dime a dozen, totally expendable and replaceable. If life weren't so cheap we wouldn't need all the myth and religion to enhance it.

Life only seems “cheap” from our present perspective because we have not been made fully aware of just how valuable it truly is.

(Continued in next post)
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[seeds]

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(Continued from prior post)

The fact that humans are generally unaware of just how strange the universe truly is, is testament to my earlier assertion of how humans are operating at a restricted level of consciousness which makes them somnambulistically oblivious of the bizarre features of our current situation.

"Bizarre features of our current situation" do not on any level endorse a life after death scenario.

The comment was made in response to the incredulousness implicit in your question of where (as in what unimaginable context) will we all “congregate” after death if, presumably, we are no longer in possession of physical bodies and a physical planet to stand on.

And that suggested to me that because the world feels so natural to you that, in turn, you have no visceral awareness of just how strange and “nonphysical” the universe truly is – a strangeness that I tried to point out from yet a different perspective in an alternate thread:

...physicists themselves have implied that matter is composed of a concentrated “light-like” substance consisting almost entirely of empty space, wherein its apparent “solidity and separateness” is created by the push and pull of electromagnetic forces.

In other words, our minds seem to be surrounded and encapsulated within amorphous fields of (illusion-creating) energy and information that, according to physicist Nick Herbert’s take on Heisenberg, are “...no more substantial than a promise...”

(From Herbert’s book, Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics)

And what that seems to imply is that we are presently conducting our affairs in the context of what appears to be a vast illusion – an illusion that is similar to what we encounter within our minds when we are engrossed in a vivid dream.

Therefore, the point I was attempting to convey is that “if” our lives do indeed continue on after death, then whatever strange and unimaginable context we will find ourselves in, it cannot be much stranger than our present context...

...a context in which we appear to exist as minds that are immersed within fields of coded information that produce the “illusion” of three-dimensional phenomena suspended in a spatial dimension – just like when we dream.

(Continued in next post)
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[seeds]

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(Continued from prior post)

The point is, Dubious (and assuming that “eternal life” is a possibility), that what we will be able to do with the mental fabric of our very own being (i.e., our minds sans “physical” body) is exactly what the Creator of this universe has done with the mental fabric of his own being.

...yes but in our case to experience all this in whatever state you still requires blood flowing to the brain. Without that there is absolutely nothing, time condensed to zero, in the most literal sense. As the saying goes, "mind is what the brain does".

Clearly, Dubious, you are an extremely intelligent person who has a great deal of confidence in a materialistic explanation for our existence.

However, it has always been a mystery to me why anyone would want to “happily” create, and then sincerely “hope to win” carefully worded philosophical arguments that establish their own eternal oblivion as being an irrefutable fact of reality.

I think for most people when they get really old and tired, don't wish for a second tier of existence which lasts forever. More likely they prefer to surrender to the oblivion they came from.

Yes, and if the second tier of existence bore the slightest resemblance to this first tier of existence, then they would be completely justified in thinking that way.

However, you know good and well that that is not what I have been proposing.

(Take a peek at a series of extremely fanciful illustrations I created to help visualize the ideas above. Scroll down when you land on the first one, here: http://theultimateseeds.com/murmurings.htm).

I looked at them and they're quite impressive!

Thank you Dubious, your kind comment is much appreciated, and I hope that you will always receive my replies in the friendly spirit in which they are intended.
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[Dontaskme]

Therefore, the point I was attempting to convey is that “if” our lives do indeed continue on after death, then whatever strange and unimaginable context we will find ourselves in, it cannot be much stranger than our present context...
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I know you are ignoring me at the moment seeds, but please try to see beyond the individual opinions of others and speak directly to the ideas posited. I'm not out to trick anyone, or doubt their beliefs or put those beliefs down, I just want to know how those beliefs are formed and what they actually mean. Just be honest and open without feeling like you have something to defend.

So in response to the above opinion, you are creating the idea that our lives may continue after death, so I'm curious to know, what is it that you think is going to die, whose life is going to die?

[seeds]

Therefore, the point I was attempting to convey is that “if” our lives do indeed continue on after death, then whatever strange and unimaginable context we will find ourselves in, it cannot be much stranger than our present context...

...in response to the above opinion, you are creating the idea that our lives may continue after death, so I'm curious to know, what is it that you think is going to die, whose life is going to die?

From my “Panentheistic/Idealistic” perspective in which I view the entire universe as being contained within the unthinkably advanced mind of a higher consciousness, absolutely everything is alive – from beach sand and mountain boulders, to the keyboard you are typing on, right on out to the fusion cores of suns.

In the same way that your very own thoughts and dreams (mental holograms) are literally alive because they are saturated with your own personal life essence and would not exist if you did not exist...

...likewise, the multifarious features of the universe are literally alive because they are saturated with God’s life essence and would not exist if God did not exist (see this fanciful drawing I created to help visualize that, here - http://www.theultimateseeds.com/Images/Untitled-1.jpg).

As difficult as it is to comprehend from our present vantage point, everything that we call “objective” reality seems to be composed of an extremely advanced version of the same fundamental substance that composes our dreams (if you wish, I can cite the implications of quantum theory to support that claim).

Indeed, I suggest that the absolute “ALL-THAT-IS” (beyond which there is only nothingness) is comprised of a Spinozan-like “oneness substance” that consists of an amalgam of the essence of life and that of the essence through-which life expresses itself.

In other words, the only thing that exists is mind and mindstuff - both working together in tandem to produce reality.

Now, the point to which I am leading is that because literally everything is alive, then nothing can “die” in the ultimate sense of that word.

However, from our present and limited perspective as unwitting (semi-conscious) participants within this “dream-like” illusion that we call a universe (God’s mind), to us, because the body dies (which, if you understood the above, not even it is really dead), it is thus assumed that the consciousness that animated that body, died along with it.

Nothing (IMO) could be further from the truth.

Because what I have been asserting over and over again is that the “ultimate form” of the individualization of personal consciousness (mind/soul) that has been “birthed-out” of that body - along with the transcendent context to which it has been born into - is so wonderful that it must be kept hidden from us so that, again, we are not compelled to seek it out prematurely.

(Take a peek at this illustration, here - http://www.theultimateseeds.com/Images/ ... e%2066.jpg)

Therefore, it’s not so much that I am ignoring you DAM, it’s just that I completely disagree with your nihilistic vision of reality (at least in terms of you not being able to offer any kind of long term “purpose” for the individual human consciousness).

And it would appear that neither of us will ever be able to change the other’s opinion on that point.
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[Dontaskme]

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Thanks for your honest and open response. I've read over your response quite a few times just so I could properly get a handle on what you are showing me... and somehow I honestly and truly do get the general gist of what you are saying. However, what I'm struggling to comprehend is your idea that the ''personal human personality'' ie: the memory, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, values, of that particular ''individual human conscious experience'' somehow survives although the vehicle for that personal expressive experience aka the ''body mind mechanism'' is recycled or returned to the ocean of your ''oneness substance'' concept.

Is this what you are implying? because this is what I'm reading from the way you have worded this. I find it really interesting what you are saying don't get me wrong, and you have obviously spent a great deal of time and effort thinking this through. But I have a hard time accepting the personality survives the individual... since from my perspective, absolutely nothing can be known in the immediacy of this spontaneous moment now, and that anything that is known is only possible because there is a processing mechanism available, aka the brain recording and storing what's happening. So here we have a problem, if that processor has dissolved back into it's original basic composite elements from where it was sourced ...then how would the surviving personality aka thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values, etc know they have survived the death of it's body mind mechanism that is obviously needed in order to express those experiences in the first place?

What is going to know it's survived if indeed the ''body mind mechanism'' has to be in place before any experience / expression is possibly known?
I hope you can try to understand what I have said here, and that you are able to see this from that point of view.

There's just something I'm unable to wrap my mind around in the idea of a personality surviving the death of the body, there's something that's just not quite adding up with your overall idea, theory.

I apologise if I've misinterpreted what you are showing me, and if I have I would appreciate a clearing up of that by a further explanation of what you meant. Thanks.

[Reflex]

Good post, Seeds.

Would you agree that the material universe is comprised of qualitative variations of the One Life?

[seeds]

Thanks for your honest and open response. I've read over your response quite a few times just so I could properly get a handle on what you are showing me... and somehow I honestly and truly do get the general gist of what you are saying. However, what I'm struggling to comprehend is your idea that the ''personal human personality'' ie: the memory, thoughts, ideas, beliefs, values, of that particular ''individual human conscious experience'' somehow survives although the vehicle for that personal expressive experience aka the ''body mind mechanism'' is recycled or returned to the ocean of your ''oneness substance'' concept.

Is this what you are implying? because this is what I'm reading from the way you have worded this.

No, that is not what I am implying.

You seem to be conflating the human body with the human mind as if they were the same thing.

At the moment of death, the human body remains within the context of the universe (as was implied in my reference to cemeteries being “The Gardens of Afterbirth”) while the human mind is literally born-out of that context.

Furthermore, that which is “born-out” of the body and out of the universe does not return to the oneness substance for recycling – it is the oneness substance, partitioning itself into a new and sovereign “bubble” of self-awareness with a “personal” identity that is capable of creating “reality” out of its own living essence.

I don’t think you fully realize just how wild my theory is, because what I am suggesting is that the birth of a new human mind represents the birth of a new living universe – something that will take billions of years to come into full-fruition (hence the purpose of having eternal life).

In an interesting parallel, the central theme of my theory is encapsulated in something that astrophysicists John Gribbin and Martin Rees stated from a materialistic perspective in their book COSMIC COINCIDENCES - Dark Matter, Mankind, and Anthropic Cosmology...

“Quantum cosmology allows the possibility of creating not just one universe but an infinite number of universes out of nothing at all. The universes may be inter-connected in some complex way, as new universes are born within, but then pinch off from, the vacuum of old universes, producing a complex multidimensional foam. Our universe may simply be a region of space-time that has pinched off from another bubble.”

(Bolding/underlining mine)

Can a similarity between a cosmological theory and a metaphysical theory get any better than that?

Now if you just imagine that at its most fundamental level, the “complex multidimensional foam” mentioned in the quote above is comprised of the living “oneness substance” mentioned earlier, then you will understand where I’m coming from.

(Continued in next post)
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[seeds]

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(Continued from prior post)

I find it really interesting what you are saying don't get me wrong, and you have obviously spent a great deal of time and effort thinking this through. But I have a hard time accepting the personality survives the individual...

...There's just something I'm unable to wrap my mind around in the idea of a personality surviving the death of the body...

...how would the surviving personality aka thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values, etc know they have survived the death of it's body mind mechanism that is obviously needed in order to express those experiences in the first place?

Try not to assign too much importance to the collection of memories we have accrued that have basically given form to our temporary earthly egos.

For example, the mind of a one month old infant who is born into “true reality” after exiting its body for whatever reason, has no memories or ego to speak of.

However, what it does have is a unique (one of a kind) central consciousness that represents the core of its “personal” identity and self-awareness (its “I AM-ness”), and that is what survives the death of the body.

Furthermore, it is not “obvious” that the “body mind mechanism” is necessary to express the experiences you mentioned.

That is just an assumption based on the fact that from our present vantage point we cannot visualize how it could be accomplished through some other means.

The direction from which I am coming is that because many of us already believe that God has no “corporeal” form (at least not in the way we understand corporeality to be), yet he can still experience the contents of his own mind (again, the universe), then likewise, we too will be able to experience the contents of our minds in the exact same way* as God.

*First and foremost, you mustn’t think that our mental holography is going to continue to appear to us in the same way that it appears to us right now.

In whatever form the infinitely malleable fabric of God’s own mind appears to him that, in turn, allows him to shape it into the structures of the universe, likewise, our own holography will appear to us in that same way.

In other words, think of our mental holography as appearing to us in extremely “hi definition” - way beyond what we experience when dreaming.

The bottom line is that whatever the circumstances are that support God’s existence in that “incorporeal” context, they will also be the same circumstances that will support our existence - as minds sans physical bodies.

After all, according to the theory, our “physical” bodies are nothing more than a highly ordered manifestation of God's own personal mindstuff that has been specifically configured to awaken our minds (his progeny) into existence.

(Continued in next post)
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[seeds]

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(Continued from prior post)

I hope you can try to understand what I have said here, and that you are able to see this from that point of view.

There's just something I'm unable to wrap my mind around in the idea of a personality surviving the death of the body, there's something that's just not quite adding up with your overall idea, theory.

DAM, I completely understand why you would doubt my wild assertions.

And keeping in mind that we are all engaging in speculation, I would never pretend that I couldn’t be wrong.

However, I believe that one of the reasons why it is so hard to wrap one’s mind around what I am suggesting is inherent in the theory itself - a theory that implies that we each momentarily exist in a “fetus-to-parent” relationship with God.

And just as it was when we were suspended within the darkness of our mother’s womb where our limited level of consciousness and highly restricted situation would not allow us to understand the conditions that existed on the other side of her abdominal wall (trees, cars, air, oceans, our mother’s outer appearance, just to name a few),...

...likewise, we are in a similar situation right now with respect to God and the conditions that await us after being born out of his universe.

And the ultimate point is that once we are born into that higher (outer) context of reality, we will then be in a position - both ontically and mentally – to finally understand the mysteries that, at this present moment, are literally beyond our reach.

(Again, if you haven’t already, take a peek at the series of fanciful drawings I offered to Dubious to help visualize the above, here - http://theultimateseeds.com/murmurings.htm)

By the way, for all those who are offended by my use of the word “God,” just think of this Entity as simply being the fully-developed “adult” version of that which you yourself are the fetus of (i.e., “you” – billions of years from now).

(See the illustration I created to kind of summarize the theory, here - http://theultimateseeds.com/summary.htm)
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[seeds]

Good post, Seeds.

Thank you, Reflex.

Would you agree that the material universe is comprised of qualitative variations of the One Life?

I am not quite sure of what you are asking.

Would you please clarify the question for me?
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[Dubious]

Life only seems “cheap” from our present perspective because we have not been made fully aware of just how valuable it truly is.

The universe being thoroughly impersonal, what would make life valuable external to the values WE ascribe to it?

In other words, our minds seem to be surrounded and encapsulated within amorphous fields of (illusion-creating) energy and information that, according to physicist Nick Herbert’s take on Heisenberg, are “...no more substantial than a promise...”

(From Herbert’s book, Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics)
And what that seems to imply is that we are presently conducting our affairs in the context of what appears to be a vast illusion – an illusion that is similar to what we encounter within our minds when we are engrossed in a vivid dream.

Therefore, the point I was attempting to convey is that “if” our lives do indeed continue on after death, then whatever strange and unimaginable context we will find ourselves in, it cannot be much stranger than our present context...

The phrase “amorphous fields of (illusion-creating) energy” is deeply suspect to my mind. If energy is real why would whatever it creates be classified as illusion? This makes no sense to me. Conversely, if deemed to be an illusion what would preempt anything we create or imagine from likewise being one; an illusion creating its own illusions even into conceptualizing an after-life?

However, it has always been a mystery to me why anyone would want to “happily” create, and then sincerely “hope to win” carefully worded philosophical arguments that establish their own eternal oblivion as being an irrefutable fact of reality.

If I merely “hope to win” an argument, there must be a dismal lack of sincerity in anything I write if there were no other objective than to trounce an opponent as if in a medieval joust. Such is not the case. It’s not in my interest attempting to deprive anyone of a hope, the lack of which I have absolutely no problem accepting by virtue of never having noticed any deprivation prior to existing. When time ceases to be an ingredient there is neither loss or gain, no sense of duration whether the universe exists for fifty trillion years or a nano second. Whatever the difference time will always equal ZERO for all that never existed or ceased to exist.

The universe is not made to indulge our preconceptions of an afterlife or any of the more aesthetic idealism's we ascribe to it. These to me are symptoms of a consciousness in momentum trying to outstrip its inevitable demise. A good metaphor would be a star going supernova before it reaches its “iron age” of inevitability.

...but these are all simply my perceptions with no attempted “finalization” applied to them.

I hope that you will always receive my replies in the friendly spirit in which they are intended.

Likewise, but I think you would agree there really is no reason to continue. Our ideas on the subject are so opposite they would only loop into the same thoughts expressed in different words. All my so-called “questions” therefore should be regarded as rhetorical. All-in-all, it was a nice chat!

[Dontaskme]

(See the illustration I created to kind of summarize the theory, here - http://theultimateseeds.com/summary.htm)
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Thanks seeds for your honest reply and for your patience.

I have to be brutally honest with you and say that I have absolutely no comprehension of your theory whatsoever - Especially when you say things like we are Gods offspring and that we grow from the offspring to become like the big God.. I can't even begin to visualise or even imagine what it is you are trying to show, let alone make any sense of this. If it works for you then that's great, it's your dream afterall. But it's not my experience from this mind here. So I think we'll have to leave it at that. I've gone with the Advaita Vedanta theory of reality, which is the only written literature describing the theory of existence that makes sense to this one here.