On Human Origins, I Am Right, and Here's Why:

Originally posted by TheWill
reply to post by NorEaster

 

you broke my brain.

"I think, therefore I am"?

I think I understand what you are saying - we think not only of situations in the abstract, but our actual selves in the abstract, too, more than just the ability to recognise that I, as a physical entity, am like another, and so what another can do, I can (observational learning), but the thought that I am in fact more than a physical entity, I am me.

Like I said, you broke my brain. I shall have to re-examine what you said after supper, and perhaps I'll make a little more in a second reply, once I've digested both food and text.

edit on 16/1/2011 by TheWill because: (no reason given)

Information - like activity - has a broad range of manifestations. It's easy to recognize it in activity. A ball rolls across the floor. Simple enough, but if examined, this scenario reveals several layers of organized activity holons that are joined together as the activity holon represented by the informational fact that a ball rolls across the floor. These are a few layers.

1. The event unit collective of the ball's predictable movement across the floor
2. The parting of gaseous molecules that provide predictable resistance to the ball's momentum, preventing that momentum from being endless
3. The activity holon that is the ball itself - including the atomic structure brought into writhing and relentlessly morphing existence by the frenetic activity of the sub-atomic bits that pitch in to do what's needed to maintain the ball's seemingly stable and concrete spherical presence.

Of course, we can examine the floor itself and the planet and all that, but I think the point is made. Activity can be simple - a straight movement from point A to point B. Or it can be the matrix created by multiple layers of organized activity that combine to become and mainatin matter. Imagine the matrixing involved in the thinking activity of the human brain. Hard to really quantify the layering involved, but it obviously exists.

Information also exists in a variety of physical manifestation, but instead of being active organization, information is the result of active organization. The more sophisticated the organized activity, the more sophisticated the information holon. The truth is that information emerges as a direct response to event, and let's say that the event is the human brain's moment to moment realization that it exists within the physical environment that contains it. Imagine that string of information bursts.

We call those bursts - as they collect with other bursts from the same author, as they do - human consciousness. The lifetime of these bursts gathering together as a unique and identified collective becomes a whole that lives on after the death of the brain itself. We call it eternal life, and in a very real sense, it is. Information fully represents the event that brings it into existence. This includes the conscious and aware nature of the hyper dynamic corporeal brain. We call this information spirit. We name a lot of things that we don't understand.

I hope this helps.

Originally posted by
reply to post by TheWill

 

I couldn't even begin to say how we got here or where we came from but i do have one thing that is driving me crazy and that is if you go by evolution how did man get the EGO?
It seems (just my opinion) is the biggest problem for mankind is the EGO.
If we go with evolution how did this come about to progress at such a rate that man will cut off his nose to spite his face so to speak for the sake of his EGO?
If we go with God then why would God give man an EGO knowing that it is self destructive and his creation is doomed from the beginning and how could he not see the outcome of his creation if he is all knowing? so why create something to see it destroy itself?
I am just a simple person trying to understand and never asked to be here and given a choice i would prefer to have never existed but i am here not of my own free will so if God gave man free will how is it that i don't have a choice to be here or not from the very beginning? Why are we forced to enter this existence?
If we go back to evolution when and why did the same cells that created man just stop and when and why did fish stop coming out of the water turning into apes and when and why did apes stop becoming man?
Any ideas??

Dear laslidealist,

It certainly can be daunting to look at the issue of existence as we are flooded with opinions based on the outcomes people want. A common argument is that if there are differing views than nothing can be known, that is an attempt to heard people to not have decisive views and makes them easier to manipulate. The truth exists whether or not we know it, the issue is to try and understand what we can.

24 hours a day you are aware of one thing, that you are having an experience of existence. You are aware of your own being. You may not have asked to exist; but, maybe existence is unavoidable. Before we can ask why, we need to establish the groundwork of what we do know. You know you are a self-aware being which experiences pleasure and pain and an unlimited number of other emotions. That has consequences.

Whether this universe is a representation (some quantum physicists are saying we live in a fractal universe and this is all just a representation of the quantum) or completely material, you still experience it. The next question that philosophy has attempted to answer is whether or not others exist as self aware being, this is especially difficult to answer if you believe everything is an illusion.

We have two choices, "reality" is physical or it is a representation. In either case we experience it as real. We react to it. Descartes is a good place to start if you wish to look at the base principals of existence and his writings can be found on-line. Look inside your heart, do you feel as if you are the only sentience that exists? Probably not, few do. The exact nature of the material is beyond because we can only observe a very small amount of what is around us.

Why do you presume that God wants to destroy everything or that he created it for that effect. Lets look at the effect of our existence within this reality, it causes us to change and grow. Growth can be unsettling as our nature is to want to rest, to avoid pain and increase pleasure; but, this does not promote learning or growth. We can choose to be evolving beings, learning and building upon what we do know or to just ignore the nature of our reality.

Rather than focus on creation (be in spiritual or natural) we have to focus on are sentience, self-awareness. As we go along that path, and it takes more than a post to do this, we may come up with answers that make us feel uncomfortable. The truth for everyone of us is that one day we became aware of ourselves and that in and of itself leaves a lot to consider.

I am not saying this next part is the truth, it is however a possible answer. Sentience exists, you exist. We begin as purely emotional beings, over time we learn symbols and language that allows us to begin to make sense of our emotions and control them. By controlling our responses we can begin to examine the nature of our reality rather than just respond to pain and pleasure, we can make independent responses to the world around us.

What if God were the totality of all life's awareness? The bible says God split himself into three. I find that interesting, why split himself? My answer is that in order to see the limits of what is possible he created others to find all the possible answers, to see the limits. To find the limits means the limits of pain, pleasure, boredom and every other emotion we are capable of having. This is the exact opposite of thinking we were created just to have pleasure.

The creation of the bible does not begin with human beings, it begins with the word. Most people assume this means the name Jesus and it may; but, it does not matter, existence began when God moved from being alone and emotion to the creation of words and the ability to create, ;he chose to create others. You asked for an ideas and that is what I attempted to give, ideas. I should say that what I am proposing is not an original idea, it has been written about. The author of the Exorcist, William Peter Blatty, used to discuss it.

The essence of the two opposing spiritual beliefs is that we evolve as individuals due to our trials and successes OR that after this life we all become one, no variation (Eastern Mystery Religions). What if it was a choice, what if that were the choice you get and the choice is determined by the choices you make in life, to manage your emotions and learn or to just want to have comfort. What if God created you so that you could make an informed decision to exist and that meant you had to take some time living the consequences of your choices on earth so that you could make them for eternity? That would explain the need for ego and the need for challenge. Be well.

UPDATE:

The first thing God had Adam do was to name all the animals. I mention this because we have language, it is part of the answer, the nature of language and how it allows us to conceive of and understand our existence. The more precise our language the better we can consider alternatives. I ask the question of why we even have language, plenty of animals exist without it.

reply to post by NorEaster


Having broken my brain with your earlier post, it seems to be back in one place. Bizarrely, considering that they are a part of maths that usually breaks my brain, the word "matrices" seemed to help me.

The human experience, combined with multiple layers of processing of said experience and relating and interconnecting back and forth creates an eternally unique collection of information concept which, for want of a better word, is the "soul". Our "souls" being no more than our peculiar take on this collection of information, they do not die with us but continue indefinitely?

I suspect that that's not it, still, but thanks for dumbing it down for me, anyway.

reply to post by TheWill


Hey, thanks for the correct plural of matrix. I knew I was wrong with "matrixes", but my spellcheck never offered an alternative, and I really needed that plural to make the point. I'll never forget that word now.

reply to post by NorEaster


Funny, my brain just substituted it in. I didn't even notice its absence. Just underlines the impressiveness of the human brain, I guess.

You're welcome.

The one that really annoyed me is the plural of hypothesis. I spent the whole of first year writing "hypothesises", only to realise that when people had "hypotheses" in their papers, it wasn't a typo.

Originally posted by TheWill
reply to post by NorEaster

 

The human experience, combined with multiple layers of processing of said experience and relating and interconnecting back and forth creates an eternally unique collection of information concept which, for want of a better word, is the "soul". Our "souls" being no more than our peculiar take on this collection of information, they do not die with us but continue indefinitely?

I suspect that that's not it, still, but thanks for dumbing it down for me, anyway.

The logical argument involves several broad points to be made and properly defended in kind, and as I said, there's really no way to present that breadth of examination in a thread. The nature of indivisible unitary existence is the only place to really start when detailing the whole issue, and that takes quite a bit to simply read - let alone figure out how to "dumb it down" for forum posting.

It's easy to make broad statements about the Oneness and the primacy of universal consciousness. The riffs that make it possible to claim a supernatural deity with supreme capacity and endless presence - beginningless, endless, and free of all manners of resistiction - have existed for thousands of years, so how hard is it to make that sound reasonable? Not hard at all. It's not so easy to detail the logic that allows for such primordial sophistication. Mainly because such a thing violates the basic nature of existential logic.

In truth, "souls" - as described by theologians, religionists, and other enlightened transcendents - don't exist, and never have existed. Plato invented the soul to try and explain why he could observe himself observing himself. He credits Socrates, but who knows where Socrates got it from. The details begin to get vague once you reach past Plato and into the shadows where 90% of what we still believe came from.

The modern human being on Planet Earth is faced with beliefs that directly contradict factual knowledge, and with each breakthrough in science and technology, that contradiction becomes more and more destructive to the human psyche. Most of the modern industrialized world has already walked off on religion, with the ones who remain digging their heels in ever harder to prevent the mounting evidence from blowing their belief anchors to hell through their overwhelming presence and legitimacy. The American Evangelical community has become like a little kid running down the hall with his hands tight over his ears and yelling "la la la la la la..I can't hear you...la la la la". It'd be funny if they didn't have such a stranglehold on the culture of the US military community. That fact makes it dangerous.

There are folks on this board who imagine all kinds of indefensible notions, and it seems as if reality doesn't and shouldn't have any place in determining what is or isn't real for most of them. This happens with increasing regularity when nothing makes sense anymore. Real becomes elastic, and perception declares itself to be reality. I don't know. I feel as though I'm on the right path, but then I'm sure you do too. One thing is for sure. We not both right.

reply to post by NorEaster


I mostly agree and enjoy the way in which you presented your comments. A real discussion requires that it take time and clarify each point along the ways, starting from the fundamentals. If others were willing, I would enjoy going down that road.

Originally posted by AQuestion
reply to post by NorEaster

 

I mostly agree and enjoy the way in which you presented your comments. A real discussion requires that it take time and clarify each point along the ways, starting from the fundamentals. If others were willing, I would enjoy going down that road.

I hate to sound as if I'm trying to hawk a book, but if you do want to know why I think I'm on to something here, the book is available, and it'd be easier for you to simply get it and take the time that it does take to piece the whole of it together. It's not a quick read, but it does start from the very beginning (the very instant of existential emergence from a true void) and lays the entire thing out for the reader who is willing to start at the beginning and challenge every bit of what's being suggested.

The link to the book's Amazon.com page in right in my signature, and while I have been posting a lot of what the book asserts, I haven't been presenting the whole of what causes human beings to see themselves as they do, and why we've invented the theologies and superstitions that we have. In the end, what we believe is as much a part of what we are as the molecules that present us within the corporeal realm. You can't dismiss that very real aspect of the human mammal, regadless of whether you embrace that aspect as being valid or not. It definitely exists as part of the whole that defines what it means to be human on Planet Earth.

I'd be willing to further define specifics for anyone who's already read the book, but there's no possible way to present the necessary foundation here. It takes 2/3 of the book to establish that framework, and the book is 118,000 words long. Without that foundation of logic, responsible extrapolation, and direct empirical data, woven properly together to define the sub-structure as it actually exists, the premise assertions sound no better than the rest of the stuff on this site. In fact, this is probably the only premise that becomes more and more plausible the deeper you look into it. Not a loose end in the whole thing.

If you do decide to take the time to examine it, I'd be interested in your opinion. I really would.

the truth lies in the FACT that GOD is EGO without the E for Evil Devil and with the D of Divinity.
That's why i'm right and you're wrong.

Originally posted by drakus
the truth lies in the FACT that GOD is EGO without the E for Evil Devil and with the D of Divinity.
That's why i'm right and you're wrong.

Gee. I need to come up with a cool catch-phrase so that I can be right too. And, like god is dog spelled backward. Think about it.

Originally posted by NorEaster

Originally posted by drakus
the truth lies in the FACT that GOD is EGO without the E for Evil Devil and with the D of Divinity.
That's why i'm right and you're wrong.

Gee. I need to come up with a cool catch-phrase so that I can be right too. And, like god is dog spelled backward. Think about it.

Those are sooo the sign of the times...
By the way if you astrally multiply God x Dog, you get the date for the Armaggedon.
Either that, or 42.

Originally posted by drakus

Originally posted by NorEaster

Originally posted by drakus
the truth lies in the FACT that GOD is EGO without the E for Evil Devil and with the D of Divinity.
That's why i'm right and you're wrong.

Gee. I need to come up with a cool catch-phrase so that I can be right too. And, like god is dog spelled backward. Think about it.

Those are sooo the sign of the times...
By the way if you astrally multiply God x Dog, you get the date for the Armaggedon.
Either that, or 42.

Whoa......


By the way, what's with 42? I saw on another board that someone was asking about it, so I Googled it, but it wasn't very definitive as to why it's supposed to be meaningful. I ask because if I do my Chaldean Numerology Destiny Number calculation using Leeya Thompson's phonetic technique (it's a new breakthrough in finally getting the Numerology thing right after all these centuries) then my Destiny Number comes out to be 42/6.

So, of course I'm curious about 42. Other than it correlates with the Tarot's 2 of Cups (a pretty nice card) I don't have anything traditionally definitive to associate it with. Any suggestions?

42 is the answer to the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything Else