Do you guys actually believe this stuff?

[JustLikeYou]

The teleological argument was abandoned by academics for a reason man.

You know, my ego really flared up in response to this one. I usually stop listening whenever I hear someone deploying an argument for the existence of God (doesn't matter which), so I was pretty appalled to see my self doing that very thing. Thanks for the catalyst.

As far as God (the One Infinite Creator) is concerned, argument is useless. Experience is all that matters here, and you have either had an experience or you haven't. My guess is that you haven't, but I'm willing to be surprised.

Two comments on the teleological argument I used:
1. It was not meant to prove anything. I was trying to outline the trouble with the random evolution (and biogenesis) model: it is a desperate move by those unwilling to entertain the notion that life and consciousness are properties of the universe, not accidents.
2. The problems with the teleological argument revolve around using it to support the existence of the Judeo-Christian God. The argument as I was using it was not meant to prove a designer God; rather, it was meant to show the greater internal consistency of the conscious universe model.

The inevitability of evolution and the persistence of life on planet Earth are much more consonant with the concept of a (greater) living organism than an accidental phenomenon.

But I don't really expect any of this to sway you. Arguments, after all, can't deliver anything true. They only separate the inconsistent and/or inaccurate from the consistent and/or accurate.

And different emotional states have corresponding physical correlations such as chemical release and stimulation of certain areas in the brain.

You're reducing the phenomenon.

Consider my thought-experiment world where emotions are much clearer than vision (call it Tralfamadore). Suppose the Tralfamadorians have such a rich vocabulary for their emotions and such a keen ability to detect the emotions others are feeing, that they are able to describe reality in terms of emotions. Now, because they still have the sense of touch they can describe the physical world, but this description is rendered in emotional terms. So their anatomy gives a robust account of the emotional layers of the human body (for which we have tragically few words and they are all clunky, like "aura" and "emotional body"), but because they don't pay much attention to vision, their account of the detailed workings of the physical organs is lacking. They can handle trauma because their sense of touch makes it obvious that a leg is broken, for example. Nevertheless, it is quite evident to Tralfamadorian scientists that all sicknesses can be traced back to an emotional problem, a blockage, a misdirect, an imbalance, or some other malfunction that we don't have a word for.

Among the Tralfamadorians, there is a small group of people who have made intentional efforts to cultivate vision. These people, the Vision Cult, think that vision has much more potential than most Tralfamadorians realize. They think it has the power to open up a whole vista of previously unimagined technology. But most Tralfamadorians, for whom vision is just a red alert system, laugh off the Vision Cult. They make jokes about the fuzzy language that the Vision Cult uses for describing what they claim to experience and they demand sophisticated evidence from them. The Vision Cult, of course, has no sophisticated evidence because they have no vocabulary, they have atrophied eyes, and they have trouble agreeing on what they see. So the rest of the Tralfamadorians are happy to reduce the experience of vision to emotions, like they usually do.

Once again, I'm not asserting an argument, just undermining your objection. According to Ra's account, body is intricately intertwined with mind, which suggests that any mental and/or spiritual experience would be expected to produce corresponding changes in the body.

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So I finally read the whole thread. Would have been better if I'd started out that way, but oh well.

I found this:

I am an atheist

and this:

this book is useless for me personally, though I am not a utilitarian I can't deny I have no use for it.

So I was wondering, "Well what the hell are you doing here, then?" And then you said this:

Would it be to flaunt my intellect, yes that's why I must focus on the intellectual abstractions not because I am concerned for the well being of people and would like to voice an opinion that usually gets drowned out in semi cultish echo chambers like this

Now I understand. You have a problem with the people who have this experience:

1. The self congratulatory self appointed title of "seeker", variations include "truth seeker" and "awake" (as opposed to the "sleeping" aka people who do not hold the same beliefs), as the individual progresses on this journey they will eventually label themselves with many identities (you would think the spiritually enlightened would have found themselves) my personal fav was guy who called himself "the lantern bearer" shining light the world lol.

2. A certain excitement at having widened one's scope of what could be conceived to be possible sweeps over the individual which often results in them becoming a slave to their own imagination as the fantasies they entertain are suddenly much more plausible given that the individual now believes that anything is possible or everything is true. This allows for rampant escapism which is essentially regression.

3. The individual feels that the thoughts they stumble upon are now cosmic insights that need to be shared with the world as they are now "awake" and have a moral duty to enlighten others.

4. The individual slowly becomes more and more dissociated, drunk on the belief that they are witness to a transcendental experience of existence, common experience gets interpreted through magical thinking which fuels the fantasy which fuels the dissociation. The individual withdraws more and more into themselves and their own constructed little world.

5. Everyone else is wrong apart from them and the ideas they concocted without any feedback since others are trapped in the material maze. The dismissal of the scientific method occasionally happens but I've seen just as many people try and twist scientific discovery to suit their transcendent agenda, these people almost never understand science.

You think that people should not be subjected to this experience. And you think that any material that helps to induce it needs to be crusaded against. And so here you are crusading. That is very noble of you. I appreciate how motivated you are to do what you see as right.

The problem, as I mentioned at the beginning of this post, is that you lack experience. You are an atheist. That is fine. Be an atheist. Live an atheist and die an atheist if you like. But do not pretend that you understand people who are fervently spiritual, people who claim to be "awakened". When/if you have an experience of your own, you will know.

The space-cadet hippies you see who are influenced by new age literature are usually people who have recently had an awakening experience. They are spiritual babies, and many of them will stay spiritual babies for a long time. When you see these people, you are witnessing a normal phase in the process of a human being becoming a well-grounded spiritual person. They are not mature yet, so please forgive them. They will eventually learn that fuzzy thinking does not deliver on all of its promises.

Yes, the Ra Material does provoke these kinds of attitudes, but these attitudes are not any more unhealthy than young adult hedonism.

With all of that said, I don't really want to discuss the philosophy anymore. The data sets with which you and I are working are incongruent. You are welcome to respond--and I'll read your responses. Maybe I'll even want to continue, I don't know. Either way, you gave me the opportunity to articulate some things I'd never committed to black and white before. Thank you for that.