"It's just in their minds" is what is usually said about those believing in god and religion, well how about this.....
Someone once asked me that how do you know that the memory you have about the past really happened and is not a fed in picture like anything imaginable or a dream.
If you have started to get what i am trying to say then you clearly know that our PAST is also something just in our minds.
Lately I have been thinking about this so deeply.I do not see the reality of existence anything more than a thought. What we are doing right now ceases to exist the very next moment, becomes past and is left just in our minds or thoughts. Our mind works by taking live input through our senses and process it based on what is in our memory, this is the only way we understand what is happening and act accordingly. And I believe we all know how our thinking and actions are biased based on what has been fed to our minds knowing or unknowingly, direct or indirectly.
I am NOT talking about how to know whether we are awake, alive or sleeping.
Reality for us is how our minds understand and interpret our surrounding experiences or is it anything outside of our minds/thoughts.....DO WE EVEN EXIST???? and whose thoughts are we in anyway???As these names given to us are merely there to identify our faces and physical bodies. These are not the names of the thoughts we have. If my thoughts are transferred to your body and yours taken out then I am you, You are not you anymore.
I think there is no real answer to this it is just a twisted question or thought, a gap of understanding or knowledge where god does not fit anymore.
ANYONE KNOW ANY BOOKS about this can also tell the name and writer....really appreciated
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You could read Descartes' Bones, by Russel Shorto.
He gives a fascinating account of the crazy journey of the bones of Rene Descrates, summarizes some of Descartes insights well, and puts to bed the oft misquoted "I think, therefore I am." - which was not at all what Descartes said. Rather, he said something more along the lines of "There is thinking going on, so there must be that which thinks." Descartes work from this conclusion; everything else was doubtable. Right up your ally.
I enjoyed the book thoroughly.
I have given a lot of thought. about this.
"DO WE EVEN EXIST????"
Yes we do, one of the only things we surly know is that:
"I think therefor I am"
The fact that we can reason shows that even if nothing is real, we are processing data, therefor we exist in some form.
On the other hand there is the consciousness hypothesis where we are all connected to the field.
Now everything we experience could be given to us by this field.
Matter itself could be an interpretation of our brains from this field, we could be living in a matrix of energy.
Though i think if the consciousness hypothesis is correct then we are very real and the field just connects us all.
Connects every single atom in the universe in a unified field.
The best proposed candidate for this field thus far is Space itself
The only thing that touches everything and is everywhere.
Space itself has been proven to be full, actually infinitely full of energy.
An important fact to know is that our body is made up of 99.999999% space, every atom is like that.
Did you know that you never ever touched anything?
There is an ocean of space in between whenever you touch the keys on the keyboard.
There is an other hypothesis that space divides itself to infinitely small creating boundary conditions and those boundary conditions are called atoms.
The only reason why we do not die by radiation of the infinite energy of space is because there is perfect equilibrium in space.
(Like a fish not knowing it is in the sea until it experiences a different medium)
Thus this hypothesis proposes that at the center of this division there is the point of singularity where there is perfect equilibrium.
This we call it a black hole.
According to the holographic principle the surface of a black hole can be the perfect place where this field is mapped and thus giving a 2D representation of the universe.(though there is disagreement here about being in actual 3D or not)
If everything is connected then it makes sens that every back hole(every singularity) has all the information of its boundry.
This hypothesis is assuming that that there is a black hole in everything.
That a black hole is the key of understanding the universe.
The evidence to support this hypothesis are:
-Energy is radiating heat in space from every body(where is it going?) and yet it is not lost since energy is converted in a closed system.
-Infinite energy in space
-Black holes seem to be at the center of every galaxy
-The sun obeys Einstein laws of general relativity that were originally designed predicting a singularity(black hole) at the center.
(even though he thought that a singularity could not exist at the time)
-Scaling law shows that there is a relation between the frequency and radius of every boundary in the universe. (boundary= sun,planet,atom,proton)
http://hiup.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/scalinglaw_paper.pdf
This is still theoretical stuff but it is interesting to hear things which are not popularized but do still have the same if not more amount of evidence to support them.
Jeff - "Energy is radiating heat in space from every body(where is it going?) and yet it is not lost since energy is converted in a closed system."
A fundamental and rather shocking misunderstanding of basic thermodynamics.
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Jeff - "Infinite energy in space."
Demonstrably false statement.
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Jeff - "Black holes seem to be at the center of every galaxy"
Another false statement, there are galaxies without central black holes.
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Jeff - "The sun obeys Einstein laws of general relativity that were originally designed predicting a singularity(black hole) at the center."
Not very convincing since all macroscopic objects seem to obey general relativity.
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Jeff - "http://hiup.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/scalinglaw_paper.pdf"
Typical bullshit written by:
Nassim Haramein, a known new age crackpot.
Michael Hyson another new age guru who claims his serious back injury was magically cured by a dolphin with directed sound!
E. A. Rauscher - a remote viewer, ghost hunter and faith healer!
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Don't get your science from new age crackpots!
Ignore anything this guys says because he clearly does not know what he is talking about.
If you believe anything he says, contact me via pm.
I refuse to even debate this kind of person and leave him with only this reply:
"I'm all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius."
Leo Szilard
"Nuh-uh, you're wrong!"
Well, now that the obligatory useless and stupid argument sans evidence has been made, do you care to point out what you believe him to be wrong about? He obviously did you the courtesy of pointing out exactly which claims of yours that he took exception to, so I wonder why you don't seem so willing to reciprocate. Oh, well, I know I shouldn't have expected more than this...
I just want to know why you cited a paper written by the following 3 people:
Michael Hyson -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk1EpnUlKh0 (him talking about how a dolphin healed his back with sound)
E. A. Rauscher -
http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1985-26873-001 (article on psychokinesis)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwGhJ23oS7Y (full of crazy claims about psychic powers)
Nassim Haramein -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXpyjgdd5U8 (UFO's in our solar system video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tzAtOnSUiM (Knights Templar and the Ark of the Covenant), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1ZtxffLg6Y (brain antennas)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F71qWfxgIu4 (sacred geometry)
@Jeff
Responding with just an Ad Hominem logical fallacy isn't very convincing.
Oh, I love me some ad hominem, but only after a more substantial argument. Consider it my idea of a fancy dessert after a fine meal.
I am going to ask a couple of questions that will hopefully make people think more carefully about what has been said thus far:
After Einstein published the definitive version of general relativity in 1916, Karl Schwarzschild showed that if the mass of a star were compressed into a small enough volume, Einstein’s equations went haywire. Time froze; space became infinite. Physicists call that a singularity, a place where the normal laws of nature break down. In 1939 Einstein attempted to disprove the annoying singularity. He argued that a star could not exist under the conditions described by Schwarzschild because the material within it would have to reach orbital velocities equaling the speed of light. So, if Einstein did not believe in black holes until forty years after he coined the theory, how could he have purposely designed it to predict one?
In a system with truly infinite energy, would entropy ever really be a problem?
In physics, heat is energy, and energy is heat. So, all you need for energy to exist is a condition that is above 0 Kelvin. Given this, does it make a great deal of sense to separate them as if they were to different fundamental forces? Do physicists do it?
I'd suggest Allan Watts. He's a damn good philosopher, and actually has a few very interesting lectures on reality and existing. Also you can listen to them for free on you tube, if you don't mind a bit of grainy audio from the 70's.
Other than that, you can hit up some of the philosophers of antiquity such as Descartes, Aristotle, and Plato. Trust me, you're not the first person to think about such things, and you won't be the last.
Do I exist? Yes, the very fact that I am conscious and able to experience anything at all is proof enough to establish my own existence to a reasonable degree. My continued existence implies that my perceptions are accurate enough to keep me alive, or at least not detrimental enough to cause death, so can be tentatively accepted as passably accurate. Trust but verify, as the saying goes, trust your senses until you have compelling reason not to.
Okay, so given that I exist and have established that my senses are at least passable enough to ensure my continued existence until the end of this post, I have no reason to doubt them when they tell me that your post exists. You see, you contend that we have no reason to accept our existence, I would actually argue that we every reason to assume we(individually) exist, and absolutely NO reason to think that we actually do not.
FOUND AN INTERESTING ARTICLE
Reality doesn’t exist until we measure it,
http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-qu...
The non-extant hypothesis loses ground where the senses are dominant and speak otherwise. Regardless of the thoughts that leave us with only suggestions of who we are in our greater scope of happenstance, we are nonetheless as real as we need to be. You choose to be either small and self-diminishing or explorative and expansive. There's no known consequences to suffer yet to express life in the negative (non-extant) is about as counter-intuitive a choice as one can make. Chalk that up to the instinct to survive.
Then again, life as we know it is of no measure to us or revealed in a manner we might gauge its importance. That leaves us with a net worth of nothing. Theists cannot dwell in that realm and therefore cope with their fantasies. Atheists choose to dismiss their fantasies out of a sheer and inescapable tribute to logic. Again we have a net gain of nothing.
What the human animal receives in its short life in the form of a reward for simply living amounts to nothing.
So, I agree, even though we are extant to the senses, we are nothing.
We exist for the sole purpose of propagating the species, for good or bad. Life is just that . . . life with no purpose other than to create . . . whether it's more life, or adding to the history of our species knowing there's a possibility that we will either evolve beyond life, or not at all. The finite nature of it is the reality, and accepting that reality of an eventual 'non-existence' is about as close to peace and a sense of 'self' that one can have in not really caring about legacies.
To imagine we are little more than another's 'thought', is assuming that we have no 'free will or choices', and they/it are exercising their will on us (as all thoughts of individuals are). In that, it's just another way of thinking we are pawns in a much bigger scheme or 'plan' and borders on superstition or gods.
After 52 years of random events and/or thinking and choosing, I have yet to be proven otherwise. And, when I die, I will likely cease as a 'being', as I never was before my birth. Perhaps energy can't be destroyed, but I've never seen any study or evidence that it stays in any coherent pattern or signal beyond the expiration of anyone's body.
Our past is often distorted by our emotions, which are just as valid as any sense of self. How we see our memories is not just a reflection of our experience as it happened from a different point of view . . . it's how we saw it as us, with our emotions, our 'self', and becomes a part of our psyche as we felt it. It's natural that it will be distorted based on that. For example, have you ever watched a video (in my case, 8mm film) of yourself in a moment that was a profound and powerful memory, but found that it was fairly unremarkable or even not the same as you felt you remembered it? (often as a child, far more powerfully). It proves two things . . . that we see, experience, and even shape our own past in our minds, but the existence of the film shows and is proof of the actual event, but through the eyes of another person with the camera (perhaps even narrated by them, as well, with a different take on the moment). With the different perspective, it shows a different opinion, a different view, and different version of the same reality from a different existing person.
Peer-reviewed proof of existence, I suppose. Other than that, you have to delve into deep, philosophical stuff that can be far deeper down a rabbit-hole than a person would want, or perhaps even need, to go.
Just my thoughts, not any 'absolutes'.
The default setting of reality independent of thought is obviously not profound nothingness, as that thought must arise somehow. On that note it seems that we do exist.
Whether we are just small parts of a larger being consciousness I can't tell you. However after the advent of the computer, a similar line of thinking arose comparing human consciousness to really just be a program that a much more developed life form created. Mathematicians refute this line of thinking however, because the programmer of our "reality" would not account for irrational numbers like pi and the square root of two. In other words, the "programmer" wouldn't be able to fit every digit of pi into the program, so at least you can thank irrational numbers for keeping you a little more sane.