I'm gonna pretend to be deep now

  • Thread starter Zero
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In summary, the conversation touches on various topics such as the existence of God, the purpose of the thread, the concept of religious idealism, and the use of poetic imagery in philosophy. The conversation also explores the idea of a mystical experience and how it can be validated or mocked. Ultimately, it can be seen as an exercise in discussing complex and abstract concepts that cannot be easily countered with logical arguments.
  • #1
Zero
My children, I see a world beyond this one, that cannot be touched by the senses of the mind. Only by using the eyes of your heart, the ears of your soul, and the fingers of your pancreas, can you see hear, and touch this invisible world. Do you doubt me? If you only believed hard enoughj, clap your hands,and click your heals together, it will be so. The interruptions and breaks in teh timeflow obscure teh messages from teh past, but the future is like a rainbow trout, swimming in a sea of paperclips.
 
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  • #2
"Since experiences of God are good grounds for the existence of God, are not experiences of the absence of God good grounds for the nonexistence of God? After all, many people have tried to experience God and have failed. Cannot these experiences of the absence of God be used by atheists to counter the theistic argument based on experience of the presence of God?"
Michael Martin, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification
 
  • #3
I once dropped a beer bottle off a 100ft tower, it fell, and 90ft before the ground wind caught it and it hit the steel structure of the tower only to bounce 10ft up and then down onto some rocks where it bounced again and spun over to another pile of jagged rocks only to bounce again and gentle land on the ground, where it rolled very slowly, and as if God himself where playing a joke on us it slowly rolled into a rock just right and cracked. We all laughed in amazement, but then I wouldn't have remembered it if it had just smashed like normal, It's hard to remember routine stuff, it's the odd things we remember most.
 
  • #4
Once, I fell asleep, and I felt like I had lost my arm. I wandered through a weird landscape, that I had never sen, that I had always been in, and whenI awoke, I had slept on my arm, proof that the dream was real.
 
  • #5
Once I Dreamed I was a butterfly, or am I really a butterfly dreaming I am a man?

Chuang Tzu

Is it romance, reality, idealism, or the ineffable?

You decide.
 
  • #6
Walking through the night, I can feel ...stuff. I am smarter than you, if you don't feel...stuff. Ummmm...



Crap, I can't pull it off!
 
  • #7
Actually God doesn't exist for everyone. This is why He created hell. So you can believe whatever you want. Hey it don't bother me none.

Actually you're not judged so much upon what you believe, in as much as what you do with what you believe. In which case you're likely to find many "so-called" Christians in hell.
 
  • #8
I'm probably the stupedest person here for
asking - but I'm gon'na ask anyway :
What is the purpose of this thread ?
 
  • #9
Originally posted by drag
I'm probably the stupedest person here for
asking - but I'm gon'na ask anyway :
What is the purpose of this thread ?
I think it's supposed to be a mockery of religious idealism (or faith).
 
  • #10
Originally posted by Iacchus32
Actually God doesn't exist for everyone. This is why He created hell. So you can believe whatever you want. Hey it don't bother me none.

Actually you're not judged so much upon what you believe, in as much as what you do with what you believe. In which case you're likely to find many "so-called" Christians in hell.

No, Gods and Goddesses lve inside of all of us, but outside too, in the gardem of celery and hope. We are judged by the great ,master who sits in the beer keg throne and mumbles incoherently, thereby proving his wisdom.
 
  • #11
Originally posted by Iacchus32
I think it's supposed to be a mockery of religious idealism (or faith).

Mockery? When I see the spoon, and know its place, you say mockery?? I have dreamed of the tower with seven spires, I KNOW!
 
  • #12
if this is a mockery, it is a mockery of people who are obscure, and believe they are deep. Talking like Yoda doesn't make you a Jedi Master...
 
  • #13
if this is a mockery, it is a mockery of people who are obscure, and believe they are deep. Talking like Yoda doesn't make you a Jedi Master...

Oooooohhhhhh, that's so deep. Tell us more oh great one! How do we become like master Yoda!
 
  • #14
Breath deep the gathering gloom ... Watch lights fade from every room.

Bedsitter people look back and lament ... Another day's useless energy spent.

Impassioned lovers wrestle as one ... Lonely man cries for love and has none.

New mother picks up and suckles her son ... Senior Citizens wish they were young.

Cold hearted orb that rules the night ... Removes the colours from our sight.

Red is grey and yellow white ... But we decide which is right ... And which is an illusion? ...
 
  • #15
Originally posted by wuliheron
How do we become like master Yoda!
wooo... You must feel the FORCE inside you ! wooo...
And then you ought to slap your face real hard
and say - What the HELL is all that BS I just
thought about ?! I MUST get real !

Peace and long life.
 
  • #16
It's a mockery?!

Uh, my interpretation was that this is a thread warning against an over-reliance on poetic imagery in philosophy.

Or maybe it's a textual version of one of those ink blotty things...
 
  • #17
Originally posted by FZ+
It's a mockery?!

Uh, my interpretation was that this is a thread warning against an over-reliance on poetic imagery in philosophy.

Or maybe it's a textual version of one of those ink blotty things...
Didn't you read the first post? Can't you see that he's speaking about a very "mystical experience?" Or, is he just mocking the whole idea of it?

While in the second post, BouldHead tries to validate "his ideas" about atheism ... which is kind of a take off from "knocking religion."
 
  • #18
Well, maybe the ink blot thing might be right after all.

Because the case can be made what that the point of the post is that it dealt with issues in a way that cannot be countered logically, and was hence an exercise in obscuration. It all depends on which part you emphasise.
The interruptions and breaks in teh timeflow obscure teh messages from teh past, but the future is like a rainbow trout, swimming in a sea of paperclips.
For example, if you focus on this statement, it seems abundantly clear that there is no relevance to spiritualism.
My children, I see a world beyond this one, that cannot be touched by the senses of the mind.
And if you focus on this statement (notice phrase senses of the mind), the statement can be interpreted as mocking the idea of external reality beyond perception.

And boulderhead's particular interpretation simply reinforces my idea. This is a post about nothing. You fill the nothing with what you find important.
 
  • #19
I sensed that it somehow had something to do with the "mindlessness" of religion? Seeing as how that was the first thing he tossed out ... i.e., "that cannot be touched by the senses of the mind."
 
  • #20
Admit it. That's rather weak. It is a function of the brain that we select and paint over concepts in order to suit a pattern.
 
  • #21
Screw all that crap, I want to be a Jedi! Can't you guys recognize the wisdom of a master when you hear it!
 
  • #22
I don't think that this thread is a mockery, so much as I think that it is an important message to those of us who believe themselves to sound superior, when they start to speak in riddles/visions or say things like "my children".
 
  • #23
Originally posted by wuliheron
Screw all that crap, I want to be a Jedi!
Can't you guys recognize the wisdom of a
master when you hear it!

I think Mentat's response meant (in the same
tone as yours): Go levitate a frog or something !
 
  • #24
Awe... I'm tired of levitating frogs... I want to learn how to fly!
 
  • #25
Originally posted by Mentat
I don't think that this thread is a mockery, so much as I think that it is an important message to those of us who believe themselves to sound superior, when they start to speak in riddles/visions or say things like "my children".
I might agree with this if wasn't for the fact that Zero has conveyed to me, on more than occasion, that the practice of religion was a "mindless endeavor" (in so many words).

I still maintain that it sounds like a mockery of religion, or mysticism, or anything that smacks of it.
 
  • #26
Originally posted by Iacchus32
I might agree with this if wasn't for the fact that Zero has conveyed to me, on more than occasion, that the practice of religion was a "mindless endeavor" (in so many words).

I still maintain that it sounds like a mockery of religion, or mysticism, or anything that smacks of it.

I believe that those with the aforementioned (in my previous post) attitude are the ones who make a mockery of religion, mysticism, etc. I also think that these people are the ones that have influenced people like Zero, to despise such practices.
 
  • #27
Originally posted by wuliheron
Awe... I'm tired of levitating frogs... I want to learn how to fly!

Isn't that the same thing?

(Just kidding, btw)
 
  • #28
Originally posted by FZ+
And if you focus on this statement (notice phrase senses of the mind), the statement can be interpreted as mocking the idea of external reality beyond perception.
Isn't this the basic line of attack taken when mocking religion in this forum? That in fact religion is just a mockery of reality? Don't tell me it hasn't been implicitly implied as such ...
 
  • #29
No. I am saying here Zero sounds like lifegazer.
 
  • #30
Well, being familar with Zero, I can certainly see why one would think this thread is making fun of religion or anyone who doesn't subscribe to the meaningless, mechanical, box full of rocks view of the universe.

On the other hand, in a way, it is very, very, very much similar to that marvelous "Textrium of Existence" thread which did not have so broad a target.
 
  • #31
Originally posted by FZ+
No. I am saying here Zero sounds like lifegazer.
I never knew that I sounded like a sarcastic atheist. Thanks for pointing this irrational behaviour out to me.
 
  • #32
It is interesting that you took it as a personal attack, where I merely pointed out that the first sentence exactly corresponds to your objection to an external reality beyond perception. If you find that irrational, then that's your problem.
 
  • #33
Well . . . it seems to me that believing "nothing" is smarter than believing lots of things one hasn't personally experienced (as the "faithful" do).

On the other hand . . . let's consider an analogy. Say when you were 13 years old you fell in love (for the very first time) with the most beautiful 14 year old girl in the universe (which I did, or so it seemed). She convinces you that she loves you too, and all goes well until she meets a 17 year old boy and agrees to go steady with him. From that point on she never acknowledges your existence, which is so excruciatingly painful you decide to shut down all feelings of romantic love.

Now, thirty years later you are having discussions with people about romantic love, and you say you don't believe in it. When asked why, you say "because I feel nothing." But, if the reason you feel nothing is because you've shut off your feelings, then is it love that's not real, or is it you've undermined your ability to experience it?
 
  • #34
Originally posted by Iacchus32
Didn't you read the first post? Can't you see that he's speaking about a very "mystical experience?" Or, is he just mocking the whole idea of it?
Why not ask Zero directly, isn't he the one who ought to know? If some meaning can be had from the post then I would say 'take it'. For me Zero's post has some meaning, and this despite my having found it amusing.
While in the second post, BouldHead tries to validate "his ideas" about atheism ... which is kind of a take off from "knocking religion."
You mean validate my own thoughts or those of Zero? What is the difference between 'knocking religion' and presenting another way of looking at something?
 
  • #35
Originally posted by BoulderHead
You mean validate my own thoughts or those of Zero? What is the difference between 'knocking religion' and presenting another way of looking at something?
I mean take the opportunity to validate your own ideas based on him knocking religion.

Of course I doubt that I would have said anything if drag hadn't asked what the thread was about ...

Originally posted by Iacchus32
Originally posted by drag
I'm probably the stupedest person here for
asking - but I'm gon'na ask anyway :
What is the purpose of this thread ?
I think it's supposed to be a mockery of religious idealism (or faith).
 
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