rickfreeman:
let me start by asking this question, u can answer or add yours, but let's respect each other please

does the fact that you don't understand a concept mean that its wrong?

johnydon22:
Nope not at all, concepts can only be disproved by scrutiny of the tenets of such concepts.

But when the one propounding the concept itself does not even understand it in the first place then the concept is not far from being wronger than wrong

rickfreeman:
this is exactly my problem with most theists and religions. . . they force their followers to blindly follow concepts they don't even understand. . . I am a theist myself, and I've been reading the grail message, which I am yet to filly grasp. so for the time being I refer to myself as an agnostic theist: I believe there is a God but I can't prove it. . . . So what's your take on gnostic atheists, and how do you think they arrive at their conclusions? Most gnostic atheists I've met have been able to disprove concepts of God held by other people, but haven't been able to prove that God doesn't exist. Even Steven Hawking and his theory of the multiverse: It requires the same leap of faith that most religions do to believe in it, though he came about his hypothesis by logical reasoning.

Teempakguy:
wow.

perhaps the reason why you can't prove God exists is because you're doing it the wrong way?

rickfreeman:
this is exactly my problem with most theists and religions. . . they force their followers to blindly follow concepts they don't even understand. . .

I am a theist myself, and I've been reading the grail message, which I am yet to filly grasp. so for the time being I refer to myself as an agnostic theist: I believe there is a God but I can't prove it. . . .

So what's your take on gnostic atheists, and how do you think they arrive at their conclusions?

Most gnostic atheists I've met have been able to disprove concepts of God held by other people, but haven't been able to prove that God doesn't exist.

Even Steven Hawking and his theory of the multiverse: It requires the same leap of faith that most religions do to believe in it, though he came about his hypothesis by logical reasoning.

johnydon22:
An assertion based on faith was never meant to be understood or expected to make sense in the first place.

It is an injection of stoic emotional conviction over a premise asserted against reason and so must be protected against reason..

I'd call this a noble position, because it recognizes that "belief" is just that "belief".. You recognize that your belief does not make the concept true but rather just your beliefs which you recognize chances of being either wrong or right but do not push it as a universal truth.

Gnostic atheism is as stoic as gnostic theism.. One asserts it knows for sure God exists, the other asserts it knows for sure God doesn't exist. . . These two are rather emotional position other than results of enquiry or curiosity.

I'd rather advice people not to make absolute statements of entertain stoic convictions FOR or AGAINST any unproven premise...

[b]
It is impossible to disprove an unproven concept..

An atheist trying to do that is just swimming in his or her own delusion.. God or Gods are unproven concepts and as such asking one to disprove the actuality of such claims is tantamount to asking one to disprove NOTHING.

On premises held on to by something as FAITH, i see no where such things can be ascertained to be or not to be in actuality even if it's just a figment of the claimants imagination.

Example -- I can tell you right now that i have a one diamond cut human sized television in my room now..

There is no way you can ever hope to disprove that i don't neither can you prove that i have..

The onus is on me as the claimant to provide proof of my diamond television not the person who doubts it or my lack of proof of what i claim i have is enough for anybody to dismiss my claim as mere wishful thinking.

Same goes to theists, the onus is on the person who claims there is a God not the person who doubts it or lack of proof can be used as basis for negation [/b]


One huge gap between scientific postulations and Faith is that no scientific hypothesis is believed to be true until proven to be..

Like the Stephen Hawking's multiverse, nobody is in any way arguing that it is true and so should be believed, No everybody in the science community recognizes it to be a plausible and possible hypothesis but it doesn't gain weight until proven..

Perhaps through a wormhole if one is observed to be existential.

Scientific assertions are open to doubt, scrutiny, questions and do not assert to have reached absolute truth at any point... So the Multiverse hypothesis remains a hypothesis until proven otherwise and no scientist would ever tell you they believe and feel it must be true therefore it is true.. No!!

Unlike Faith that insists that it's assertions even though unsupported by tangible evidence maintains to be absolute universal truths which is to me an absurd and arrogant position.

rickfreeman:
blind faith never got anyone anywhere. . . it can easily be shaken when someone with a more convincing religion comes in

True conviction only occurs by personal experience and that is why I dont believe in any form of organised religion.

people can come together to share ideas, but don't turn it to religion.

what about you? what position do you take on this? do you believe in the concept of the soul and body? or do you think man is this body and physical death on earth is his end?

johnydon22:
This can take time and mostly aggressive at the first sight of a negating ideology.

Only if a mind is receptive can it be able to discard things believed by Faith but it's never easy the most i have seen


Personal experiences that can be demonstrated for substantiation. . You see when it comes to a known fact nobody needs Faith to believe it.

Nobody here requires faith to know there is a sun up there, we are sure of it only unsure concepts require faith for basis which to me is quite punny.

When a personal experience is legit and can be demonstrated it is excused from the confines of faith but when personal experience claim is rooted in attribution of unrelated events to unrelated causes, that'd be a worse form of delusion


sure


[b]
Mostly what humans call Soul is the MIND and the mind is a product of neurological impulses and interactions rooted in general perceptibility of the entity.

I do not believe the claim of a Mind independent of it's causes which is Consciousness, neuroperceptibility..

So if by SOUL one means an independent conscious nothing that exists after death then "No i don't believe that"

Death to me is absolute, but yet i wouldn't like to maintain that absolutely to be an absolute truth i can point it out to be an opinion.

Atoms in our body are components of elements known to be formed in star cores, it is the interactions of these different atoms of different sources brings out the entity perceived to be you and after the seizure of metabolical interactions i think the human components or that of any living organism assimilates back into natural circle as every other natural components.

Unless somehow those interacting atoms that defines you are recycled back exactly as they were with similar or exact impulses, i doubt if there ever will be a conscious you again.

after all there have not been a You before this body.. [/b]

rickfreeman:
well, I believe in the soul but we're free to have our own beliefs. . . I'm not going to condemn you to hell like a certain group of people would. . .

lol. But check this out: in as much as we know that correlation does not always mean causation, what do you have to say about the correlation between man's decreasing regard for spirituality over time and the increasing size of the frontal brain.

Also note that for activities like dreaming and people in hypnotic states,etc (activities considered to be spiritual) brain activity is more active in the 'back brain' (excuse my English, lol)

. . .what explanation can you provide for known cases of reincarnation (look up the scottish boy who remembered his past life on the island of barra)?

Yoruba's called those that reincarnated in quick succession abiku, Igbo's called them ogbanje, the Chinese too had their own name for it. . . How is it that civilizations that NEVER came in contact with each other 'imagined' the same concepts?

Why have our forefathers been able to communicate using sorts of telepathic connections using 'ifa' long before science invented the wireless telephone?

If you're a Nigerian you cannot deny the fact that these things exist, (unless you have not come across people who can do this which I suggest you do if you're truly looking for enlightenment. you might be able to explain it and prove me wrong). . .

To me science is a primitive form of spirituality, as advanced as science may seem.

Ifa have been counting their seeds and sending visual and audio telepathic messages in SETS OF 16 long before the computer was invented. . .

these are all phenomena we are yet to understand. With all these, why experiences have led you to conclude that this physical body is all there is to man? Please share with me. It'd be interesting to hear your point of view

rickfreeman:
let me start by asking this question, u can answer or add yours, but let's respect each other please
does the fact that you don't understand a concept mean that its wrong?

johnydon22:


That'd be a joke cus am quite sure i would laugh at it as much as i would laugh at a little child telling me fairies won't give me a sweet because i don't believe in them..



This simply adds weight to evolutionary assertion of modifications in organisms in relation to environmental, psychological, physical, ecological factors tinkering with the general development of the specie...

Dreams, hypnotic states, automtism are all roped in the nuero-misfiring of the neurological system..

This affirms that what people mostly consider spiritual are simple occurring phenomenons roped around their ignorance..



I simply do not believe such claims unless demonstrated in a form of a quantum field of atom's duality establishing the plausibility of quantum projections of a dual occurring particles to quantify duality of a particular consciousness.

Telling me a little boy said he used to live before and pointed at someone going on his own as his murderer in the previous life is plain absurd and laughable to me.. But like i said above it's open to substantiation..



Every culture in this planet share one or two similarities, this is mostly because new cultures emerge from old ones and so debris of the old ones are bound to be felt in the new.

E.G---> Story of Noah in the bible has its basis on the Epic of Gilgamesh that predates it almost by a thousand years.

Unfounded superstitions as this i have always found to be a simple misunderstanding or misinterpreting of little phenomenons.

"A boy is born with a scar on his stomach" people remembers one of the dead relatives had a similar scar, voila the boy is the dead relative reincarnated.. Now tell me how distinct cultures could not come up with such deductions in such circumstances..?


I have seen a youtube of one IFAA talking brouhaha, turns out it was such a huge disappointment that i wonder how people ruminate such..


I always champion demonstration as a basis of empirical deductions. . . I am a Nigerian and i have seen many of these claims they are nothing more than tricks, natural manipulations, and events people just don't grasp how it is done..

[b] Oh this can be said to be true. . . Most ancient scientific disciplines (Known as Natural Philosophies) are rooted in a kind of superstition and spiritism.. . They see unravelling the mysteries of nature to be a mystical art and thus the endorsement of several unfounded superstitions into it.

Astrology of the ancient would observed the milky way band in the night sky and turn around to assert it is the breast milk of hera in terms of Hellenistic astrologers. . showing they have no clue what exactly they were dealing with **Such superstitions are flimsy and unfounded as bangs on stark ignorance..)

Modern astronomy (which is astrology without the superstition) would observe the milky band and then probe further in order to ascertain what in actuality the occurring phenomenon is and not formulate a kind of archaic superstition.

Keeps showing that what people regurgitate as spirituality/spirity are just natural occurring events that is roped around their fear and ignorance.. [/b]

Don't want to sound blunt but this IFA IFA IFA yorubas mostly yarn about, one might think it would be an outstanding phenomenon worthy of scientific enquiry, a bit of a dose from youtube i was disappointed to my marrows that i do not feel obligated to explain to people the results of their own gullibility.



I do not see any relationship between events that are not understood yet with the continual existence of an independent conscious NOTHING asserted to be a soul.

There are many things we yet don't understand about the universe and most of the things you listed here to me are quite elementary and childish, none the less they do not in any way suggest what you are trying to relate them to.

For one to assert the actuality of an undying consciousness independent of neuro-electro impulses as we know it, that person would have to back it up by establishing he/she was once a conscious entity before this biological machine called Body..

In all i have always found such concepts to be selfish wishful desires of a mind unable to accept the absoluteness of death in the relation to consciousness of a biological entity..

rickfreeman:
let me start by asking this question, u can answer or add yours, but let's respect each other please

does the fact that you don't understand a concept mean that its wrong?

rickfreeman:
let me start by asking this question, u can answer or add yours, but let's respect each other please

does the fact that you don't understand a concept mean that its wrong?

BETATRON:
that you don't understand a thing doesn't in anyway prove that that thing is wrong...it like reading an article by a very knowledgeable scientist.when we bomb into something inexplicable in such article we don't term it as wrong we only acknowledge our limited knowledge(relative to that of the writer)

What is proof of its wrongness is actually the ability to proof that it is wrong

Gayjesus:


We understand the concept and we know it is false

rickfreeman:
like johnydon22 said then, calling yourself a gnostic theist or a gnostic atheist is a wrong position to hold. . . after all, none can completely prove God's existence or disprove God's existence. You can have a conviction that God exists due to your own personal experiences, or a conviction that He doesn't, but you can't claim to know (gnostic) unless you can equally prove it. do you agree?

rickfreeman:
you didn't even answer the question, you just jumped to say that you understand the concept. lol. and then you want to try to reason logically with me.

BETATRON:
the point is it is impossible to proof the existence of God by virtue of EMPERISM or in materialistic terms that is where most religions have failed in the sense that they depict God as a humanoid

The best you can do in this regard is bring forth the laws of cause and effect and the establishment that intelligence cannot be the result of unintelligence as RENE DESCERTES asserts "I exist therefore God exist" and finally agreeing that there is a FIRST cause who inturn reguires no cause -iN ARiSTOTLE's term "the prime mover"

Not trying to subject God to some experiments or asking God to bring himself forth

Yes I agree God existence cannot be proved cause HE is comparable to nothing and cannot be disproved cause he is also comparable to nothing

One can only be certain of His existence---not pointing a finger that this is where God is

Gayjesus:


I already know what you are on about.

rickfreeman:
yeah. . . i think one major problem is that people picture God as what they want Him to be and NOT who He really is. . . they expect all kind of things from Him and then end up getting disappointed. First of all, believe that God does not interfere with His creation. To do that would be contradictory to His Nature, as perfection does not need to be corrected or altered in anyway. When I pray to God, I pray for recognition, be it recognition of my errors or recognition of what I need to do to achieve my goals. And He has never failed me. Either through dreams, or experiences, I am able to recognise whatever I need to, after prayer. This makes me CONVINCED of His existence. This is what you refer to as empiricism. I cannot however prove this to anyone else, because its my own personal experience, and narrating it to someone else might sound stupid. Science tries to explain everything in terms of man's limited understanding of the universe. They try to rationalize things to their intellect. As I compared to johnydon in a post, think of spirituality like king sunny ade playing the guitar. His intuition tells him what to play, and he is able to play the guitar farrrrrr better than those who go to guitar school (science). They have, with their intellect, been able to name each string on the guitar in a way suitable for their own understanding, they have been able to systematically map out each key, each note, and how combinations of different notes produce different sounds but despite all that, they are nowhere near king sunny ade in playing the guitar. now lets imagine they have never seen ade play the guitar, and they hear his masterpiece playing on the radio. Ade then steps up and says he played it. They then ask him to explain how he played it, which notes he combined and so on to produce those beautiful sounds, and to explain it in a way that makes sense according to their ow terms. He cant, and then they laugh and dismiss him that he couldn't have possibly played that beautiful music. Excuse my English and don't mind my analogy, but i hope i was able to pass my point across.

rickfreeman:
cool, you know what im on about, you understand what im saying (even though i didn't even say anything to you) and you declare that its false. well good for you then. the title of the thread is 'open minded discussions' and that doesn't sound very open minded to me. Since you know it all and have come to a conclusion already, then I have nothing to say to you. I want to discuss, not argue. You've arrived at your conclusion so anything I want to say will just be as if im trying to counter your conclusion which I am not. I am of the belief that no one can actually come to a conclusion concerning what we're discussing but you think otherwise. Your username speaks volumes about you. You're probably the type that cannot accept that others have different opinions from yours so you choose to disrespect their beliefs. Have a nice day man

BETATRON:
you're right brother. A lot who claimed to be enlightened (religious wise) are actually swimming in the whirlpool of ignorance,because they have wrongly conceptualized God

Some only worship him because of the fear of hell and others want their wishes fulfilled not actually knowing why he should be worshipped(I.e if heaven and hell were removed from the scene,,what will be the purpose behind our worship)

the problem also lies with the so called clergy men,In the sense that they don't welcome intellectual discussion,,only prayer,deliverance,prayer,deliverance as if that's what matters

Nice topic you've created.

Gayjesus:


Calm down. Like I said I already know what you have in mind. It can't be more that the existence of the Christian god. Am I wrong?

rickfreeman:
I just dream of a world where there is love. From my spiritual convictions, one does not even have to recognise the existence of God to act in accordance with His Will. Because i feel that all human need for this world to be a better place is Love. Genuine care for one another, and willingless to aid each other's development. Mahatma Gandhi said 'Be the Change you want to see in the world.' I might sound like a person with big dreams but my goal in life is to share love with all humanity. I pray for everyone each day to recognise their wrongdoings. To recognise what they nee to do to GROW. But i feel that humans can only recognise if they are open to it. If they are open minded and are willing to listen to others and weigh things objectively. If they have not programmed their mind in a certain way of thought. What i see that religion does it to put fear into people. To make promises to them if they act a certain way, and put fear of the unimaginable if they dont. They even classify Satan as a force of evil. As far as I'm concerned, there is only one God, and therefore one force streaming through creation. We have our free will to do good or bad with it. Having two fores, one of good and one of evil means there are two Gods, which I dont believe in. The most the being 'Satan' can possibly do, if he exists, is to tempt people. But every man has his FREE WILL to decide. Claiming to be 'enlightened' is ridiculous to me, as that means you are declaring that you have reached point where you have nothing new to learn which is impossible for man. I hope we can all spread the message of love in our everyday life

rickfreeman:
lol. youre absolutely 100% wrong. I dont believe in the being with the behaviours that christians define as 'God'. You might want to go assess yourself, whether youre as close minded as religious people. And I told you already I dont have words for you. When you ASSUME you make a ASS of U and ME. You might want to start by being more humble and able to listen to others that disagree with you while still having respect for them. .And if i seemed agitated in my last post I guess I didnt use the right words. I'm as calm is the ocean on a Sunday afternoon. Ive met many people as close minded as you in the few years Ive spent on earth, be they religious or atheists. A few words from someone who thinks he is 'enlightened' isnt enough to make my emotions run out of order.

rickfreeman:
let me start by asking this question, u can answer or add yours, but let's respect each other please
does the fact that you don't understand a concept mean that its wrong?

wiegraf:


No. It also doesn't mean it's right either.

But firstly, how do you determine a concept's validity?

For instance, how do prove these 'souls' you've mentioned exist?

wiegraf:


No. It also doesn't mean it's right either.

But firstly, how do you determine a concept's validity?

For instance, how do prove these 'souls' you've mentioned exist?

BETATRON:
the soul can be proved by it effects in the human,just like electricity and gravity can be proved by there effect on a bulb and a falling body respectively

-Dream is one of the effect of the soul on the humans

-innate yarning for eternal life is another

-the conscience can also be a prove

rickfreeman:
I just dream of a world where there is love. From my spiritual convictions, one does not even have to recognise the existence of God to act in accordance with His Will. Because i feel that all human need for this world to be a better place is Love. Genuine care for one another, and willingless to aid each other's development. Mahatma Gandhi said 'Be the Change you want to see in the world.' I might sound like a person with big dreams but my goal in life is to share love with all humanity. I pray for everyone each day to recognise their wrongdoings. To recognise what they nee to do to GROW. But i feel that humans can only recognise if they are open to it. If they are open minded and are willing to listen to others and weigh things objectively. If they have not programmed their mind in a certain way of thought. What i see that religion does it to put fear into people. To make promises to them if they act a certain way, and put fear of the unimaginable if they dont. They even classify Satan as a force of evil. As far as I'm concerned, there is only one God, and therefore one force streaming through creation. We have our free will to do good or bad with it. Having two fores, one of good and one of evil means there are two Gods, which I dont believe in. The most the being 'Satan' can possibly do, if he exists, is to tempt people. But every man has his FREE WILL to decide. Claiming to be 'enlightened' is ridiculous to me, as that means you are declaring that you have reached point where you have nothing new to learn which is impossible for man. I hope we can all spread the message of love in our everyday life