Atheism and (some form of) Spirituality?

[Zeluvia]

That makes sense, although I'll probably need to come up with a definition of what exactly it is that I'm thinking about, since at the moment my idea of spirituality is somewhat vague. May I ask what your defintion of a spiritual "realm" encompassed? For now, I guess I'm trying to look at how others have approached the question and see if that might give me some ideas on how to approach it myself. Most cultures seem to have developed the concept of non-physical entities, such as spirits, ghosts, etc. One question I've been thinking about is why we develop these ideas and why they persist. Is it just the way the human brain works? I know that some of it can be explained as attempting to explain the natural world, but is there some basis for the idea of existence after the death of the body? It's certainly an interesting concept to consider.

The basis is in your mind, in your memory, and in your dreams.

If you have ever lost a person close to you, you know that you still "see" them, sometimes still feel them, and definitely dream about them.

Because we are social animals, we have to create internal constructions of "other minds". We judge our actions against what these "other minds" will think. When we are close to someone, we have a construct of that person, that does not go away when that person does.

I think the first "gods" were ancestors.

[PolarBeer]

Have you read much of anything about Pantheism? I can't quite tell if it's the sort of thing you're thinking of or not. Perhaps Naturalistic Pantheism?

[Nicholas]

• Edited by a Moderator •

Thank you for posting. I think you can ask the moderators for permission to post in threads in this sub-forum if you feel that you can contribute to the discussion, but until then I think, as the OP, I might have some authority to grant permission allowing you to post in this specific thread, but I could be mistaken. But anyway, unless the moderators tell me that I'm mistaken, I would be pleased if you could continue to contribute to this discussion.

But it is getting late, and I have to put off deep philosophical ponderings for another time,

[M.Talkingsworth]

Lately I've been doing some thinking about the possibility of things beyond the realm of the natural world and was wondering if anyone else had any thoughts on the possibilty of some sort of spiritual realm of existence.

Have you ever seen the movie GATTACA? If not, it is about the not to distant future when humans have begun to engineer themselves and those few people who are not fortunate enough to be engineered become a "lower class" of sorts. They are only able to hold menial jobs, cannot get health insurance, things like that. Well, there is one person among this genetic lower class who aspires to be an astronaut. He devises a plan to change his identity and is able to out-perform all of his genetic superiors and achieve his goal, despite all odds. It is implied, by the movie, that it is his spirit that is able to accomplish this. I do not think they mean it as an actual separate entity, but that humans have a non-quantiy-able part of them. I am not sure if this requires a separate reality, bu I think it is ireal

[Eudaimonist]

Lately I've been doing some thinking about the possibility of things beyond the realm of the natural world and was wondering if anyone else had any thoughts on the possibilty of some sort of spiritual realm of existence.

I regard myself as spiritual, but I don't use the same definition as you. I regard spirituality as the effort to gain an improved vantagepoint on the deep issues of life for the sake of personal growth or transcendence. It is about internal values, by which I mean those related to character, wisdom, and the experience of life. Being spiritual may be contrasted with being a materialistic person who is primarily concerned with external values such as wealth, status, or power.

To answer your question directly, no, I don't see any rational reason to think that a spiritual realm of existence exists or is possible. I'm not claiming omniscience or infallibility. I would be happy to be proven wrong.


eudaimonia,

Mark

[SatanTheAlien]

I personally don't believe in spiritual because it is not defined exactly what spirit is. However, I do believe reality is very bizarre and has things like ghosts in it. I believe ghosts to be made of the same substance all reality is made of, information. I personally do not believe reality is physical. Nothing is physical. Everything is information at the core, and nothing but information. The core of all being is pure acts, which I call pureons now because the name is cool and stuck after a thread I made.

I also believe in a natural model for reincarnation. What people call soul is also made of information, and thus, that information can be scrabbled, and your can thus lose yoru consciousness forever, i.e. cease to be. That is, what people call the soul can die. Forever. Just as human consciousness dies forever. The soul also has the potential to live forever because all of it's parts (particles) are fully exchanged without error. The reason humans die is because human particles aren't always exchanged fully. It is sort of like a copy of a disk being copied over and over, each time with little errors until the program on the disk ceases to function. Death to the program. Nam, or what people call the soul doesn't have this problem. So it will not die unless something kills it, and they are extremely hard forms to destroy.

I have a very complex philosophy, and at the core of it, there is no eternal mind, no creator, no God.

[Eudaimonist]

I personally do not believe reality is physical. Nothing is physical. Everything is information at the core, and nothing but information.

What is "information"?


eudaimonia,

Mark

[SatanTheAlien]

Good question. Information is attributes without form. Now that I think about it, perhaps code would be a better word, but even then, not so. I probably need to just use pureons = attributes without form, pure acts.

Then I thought maybe the word data would work, but the dictionary defintion of that word didn't fit either. Perhaps the word bit would work, but that is a bit missleading because pureons aren't just positive or negative or off and on. There are perhaps googolplexes of types of pureons, each being like a bit, though, the most fundamental attribute. So with perhaps googolplexes of fundamental, interacting attributes, and with them all interacting, we get the awesome emergent properties responsible for consciousness.

In fact, I wouldn't have a problem with using a hard drive analogy for the collective of pureons. Of course, it isn't a hard drive because it is not physical. The collective of pureons are pure acts.

[Eudaimonist]

Good question. Information is attributes without form.

Are you imagining some sort of power of interaction that does not itself have form, but is still between physical entities that have form?

So with perhaps googolplexes of fundamental, interacting attributes, and with them all interacting, we get the awesome emergent properties responsible for consciousness.

Oh, so then the pureons are not themselves conscious, but work together in some way to create an emergent phenomenon of consciousness. Is that right?


eudaimonia,

Mark

[SatanTheAlien]

Are you imagining some sort of power of interaction that does not itself have form, but is still between physical entities that have form?

No because nothing in reality is physical. Physical is an illusion of interacting attributes. They give rise to forces, but even the force is not really a force. It's like when you have two magnets repell each other. It might feel like they touch, but they don't. Atoms don't touch. My hand never touches anything. It just feels like it does. This is because of interacting forces.

So it is more like a video game. If I were a video game character I might think a wall is solid because I bounce off it, but that wall isn't even there. It's an illusion. The coding tells me to bounce off it when I hit it. With modern games, this is done with physics engines. Reality is just a very complex video game, so to speak.

[SatanTheAlien]

Oh, so then the pureons are not themselves conscious, but work together in some way to create an emergent phenomenon of consciousness. Is that right?

In so few words, yes.

[Eudaimonist]

Reality is just a very complex video game, so to speak.

Let's go with that for a moment. A videogame might not be physical in the way that we think since it is really the result of computations happening "behind the scenes", but the computer running the video game is usually thought of as having physical form. So, what is this "computer" behind the video game of the universe? How would you describe this?


eudaimonia,

Mark

[SatanTheAlien]

So, what is this "computer" behind the video game of the universe? How would you describe this?

Interacting pureons. Pureons are pure acts. For example, say one pureon "type" has a positive attribute, and another type has a negative attribute. Positives are called P and Negatives N. When a P and P interact, they push each other away. When a N and P are close together the attract each other. Now this seems to imply that they are form. How would they attract or push at each other if they are pure act? It is that little bit in them, that data that causes them to interact that way, and when they do, when two attract, they give rise to an emergent property that is not a pureon, but at the core the emergent property is interacting pureons.

But what about space? Where does this data exist? If they are intereacting actions, those actions must be interacting someplace, right? That space, which is nto the same as space-time is eternal with pureons, for without it pureons couldn't exist. So there is an eternal volume, so to speak, for lack of a better word. Perhaps the holographic universe prinicple would serve as a good analogy.