[ExI] The Meaning of the Universe

Wed Jun 15 18:41:26 UTC 2016

Then what good is God?  Why not eliminate the middle man, go with the
causal process, and kick God to the curb?

God is a useless fifth wheel. 

 John K Clark

Have you read any Joseph Campbell?  Every tribe has a set of myths.  These
are ways of making sense of the world. men, women, war, everything (also
check out Carl Jung and the contents of the collective unconscious).

An increasing number of people don't seem to need the old myths.  I am one
and apparently you are another.  But some people will go with tradition
rather than thinking and reasoning because of the strong social support
they get from it (and the possible inadequacy of their thinking and
reasoning processes).  They also get a free 'get out of Hell' card, so
death is not a problem now.  If people in this group had one they'd quit
thinking about getting iced.

Many have said that you cannot understand people until you understand their
myths.  I tend to agree.  Worth study if not worth believing.  Most of
Mississippi's trouble come from most of us being Baptist, and I am dead
serious.

bill w

On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 12:13 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 15, 2016 at 11:03 AM, Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>
>> > 
>> god is the sum consciousness of the universe and all possible universes.
>>
>
> 
> And if God is a coconut then God exists because coconuts exist. I think
> words should mean something and if God means an omnipotent omniscient
> conscious being who created the universe then God does not exist. However
> many disagree and although they are perfectly willing to abandon the idea
> of God they are not willing
> to abandon 
> the English word "G-O-D" and
> thus 
> redefine
> the word
>  in
> such a general
>  way that only a fool would say there is no God. So if you redefined "God"
> to mean the sum of all coconuts then God exists, and
>  
> if you redefined "God" to mean the sum of all consciousness
>  
> then
> God 
> also 
> exists; but it's a silly word game.
>
>
>> > 
>> It makes sense to think that, if disparate neurons make our
>> consciousness, then greater interconnected consciousnesses make a bigger
>> emergent mind.
>>
>
> Yes, the different neurons in the bone box on your shoulders are wired
> together and that makes your consciousness; but your neurons are not wired
> to my neurons, if they were we'd be the same person, and we're not.  
>
>
>
>> > 
>> atheism, which is a lack of belief and a lack of caring about knowledge.
>>
>
> That is just nonsense. 
>
>
>> > 
>> The hard, "capital-A-for-" Atheist movement is a head-in-the-sand
>> movement.  Most of them know very LITTLE about science
>>
>
> Atheists like 
> Richard Dawkins
>  or Lawrence Krauss?
>
>
>> > 
>> Science is a tool created by humans to gather information.
>>
>
> Yes.
>
>
>
>> > 
>> We use it to construct models that are able to make good predictions
>> about the world around us
>>
>
> Yes, and religion uses the fear of death to enable some people to gain
> control of other people.
>
> > 
>> "Atheism" is a nebulous non-existent viewpoint.
>>
>
> 
> Nebulous
> ? 
> non-existent
> ? There are just 2 ideas behind atheism, they exist and are clear as a
> bell:
>
> 1) There is no invisible man in the sky who created the universe.
> 2) Even if there were it would explain nothing about the mystery of
> existence,
>
>
>> > 
>> It is the view that we should NOT try to ask why consciousness exists,
>>
>
> Not true. Atheists say it's fine to ask any question including why
> consciousness exists, but what is not fine is to claim to have an answer to
> a question when you do not. The God hypothesis cannot explain
> consciousness, in fact "God did it" can never explain anything unless you
> explain exactly how God did it. Science hasn't explained why there is
> something rather than nothing, but it has explained why there is a lot
> rather than very little;  Science hasn't explained everything but religion
> has NEVER explained anything.
>
> > 
>> You should explore gnostic and mystic traditions of religion.
>
>
> Why? Name one valid fact about reality discovered by a religious person
> or one good moral act performed by a religious person that a nonreligious
> person could not have. And yes I'm aware of the fact that Newton was
> religious, but I think he made his discoveries in spite of his religion not
> because of it, and a nonreligious person could have made those discoveries
> well before the 17th century if there were any nonreligious people around
> back then, but there weren't.  However we've learned a thing or two since
> then and there are now.
>
>
>
>> > 
>> it
>> [God] 
>> can't turn you into a tomato without following a causal process that
>> would actually turn you into a tomato.
>>
>
> Then what good is God?  Why not eliminate the middle man, go with the
> causal process, and kick God to the curb?
>
> God is a useless fifth wheel. 
>
>  John K Clark
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160615/97365969/attachment.html>