Why is the æternal substance the Creator rather than anything else?

[Donnadogsoth]

Tough luck that electrodes can cause emotions.

 

Does a descending knife cause a pear to bifurcate?  Only if you believe in Newtonian materialism.  A Leibnizian would counter that nothing strictly causes anything else, but the pear splits in two in perfect harmony with the descent of the knife.  So with your electrode and its associate emotion.

 

Do you have any objection why God should not therefore be love, without needing electrical stimulation to achieve that state?

[ofd]

Only if you believe in Newtonian materialism.

 

Even people who don't believe in 'Newtonian materialism' see that a knive causes a pear to be split. 

 

A Leibnizian would counter that nothing strictly causes anything else, but the pear splits in two in perfect harmony with the descent of the knife.

 

Berkleyans believe that nothing exists outside the mind of god. Doesn't make it true. 

 

But, what if the human mind, as every experience tells us, precedes all matter?

 

Which experience?

[Donnadogsoth]

Even people who don't believe in 'Newtonian materialism' see that a knive causes a pear to be split. 

 

This hits the problem of how substance A can "force" substance B to act in a certain way.  Does substance A court substance B, invite it over to A's place and persuade it over tea?

 

Berkleyans believe that nothing exists outside the mind of god. Doesn't make it true. 

 

We have just been discussing this earlier this thread.  The only solution to existence is the Origin.

 

Which experience?

 

Every experience announces itself as preceding to all predicates.

[ofd]

So your position is that when you cut a pear with a knife, the pear splits itself in harmony with the knife and when you hit it with a hammer it gets smashed also in harmony with the hammer?

[Donnadogsoth]

So your position is that when you cut a pear with a knife, the pear splits itself in harmony with the knife and when you hit it with a hammer it gets smashed also in harmony with the hammer?

 

You've got it.

[wintermute]

That's so if the human mind follows matter, that we are puppets of matter, so that we can say a brainscan demonstrates brain activity "causes" an emotion.  But, what if the human mind, as every experience tells us, precedes all matter?  Before we can look at a brainscan and see the "cause" of our emotion, we have to exist as mental beings, and as shown earlier, all material predicates are functions of the subject.  The monads are windowless and uncaused, except that God has created them and orchestrated them into an apparent material cause and effect, that we might rationally understand and act in the Universe.  The human mind is therefore antecedent to all causes aside from God.  Our emotions are not "parts" of us any more than God's love is a part of God; we are both partsless and unified.

 

I agree that "before we can look at a brainscan ... we have to exist as mental beings"; however, to exist as mental beings requires brain activity. It is impossible to prove that the mind precedes matter because matter is the only medium through which we experience existence. To illustrate the problem, let me ask you two questions: did you exist as a "mental being" prior to your physical conception? If so, how would you prove it?

[Donnadogsoth]

I agree that "before we can look at a brainscan ... we have to exist as mental beings"; however, to exist as mental beings requires brain activity. It is impossible to prove that the mind precedes matter because matter is the only medium through which we experience existence. To illustrate the problem, let me ask you two questions: did you exist as a "mental being" prior to your physical conception? If so, how would you prove it?

 

What is matter as “the only medium through which we experience experience”? If it is brute “is” then we collapse into materialist determinism and must submit our resignation as philosophers. If it is a shadow of principled interaction, though, then we must locate reality only in terms of those principles, which means that those principles are what are mediating our experience of experience.

 

Specifically, what is the human mind? It embodies creativity that is the most powerful force in the Universe, capable of altering the face of Terra and theoretically the entire Universe as well, in ways more radical and more quickly than the other great forces such as gravitation, the nuclear forces, and electromagnetism. This force, creativity, capable of fissing and fusing atoms, capable of acting like a fast-forward geological process in altering the faces of entire planets, does not exist as a mechanical happenstance like a Slinky that Fate has set in motion down a flight of stairs toward a hypothetical Heat Death. Rather, it is fundamental to the Universe itself, capable of, through mankind, discovering and exploiting universal laws for its own benefit.

 

Such a force would instead of being mechanical happenstance, be a force imbued into Nature itself. V.I. Vernadsky termed it the Noösphere or realm of cognitive interaction with the Universe. Characteristically, it is more powerful in the long term than the Biosphere or realm of biological activity, which, in turn, is more powerful than what we might call the Lithosphere or realm of abiotic activity. The Noösphere as an ordering principle precedes all specific manifestations of man's minds, just as gravity preceded the elliptical orbits of the planets.

 

To answer your question, then, is to ask where did the orbit of Ceres exist prior to the creation of the Solar System? Answer: Slumbering in the potential of the Universe. So with my mind, prior to the arrangement of principles which comprise what my mind experiences as matter, my mind was slumbering as potential, just as it will so slumber after those principles have taken my experienced material body apart. Gravity and creativity exist before orbits and men, calling those latter forth into active experience through their interactions.

 

The proof of this is in the potency of man to alter the Universe for his benefit. Without that, we would be wretched apes. With it, we see that the Universe is arranged such that the laws of the Universe are actually the laws of our mind. In that sense then we never die, and, like Christ, we preceded our own conception.

[Soulfire]

If I were an Atheist, I think life would be easier in some ways and harder in others. Easier in that I wouldn't have to worry about explaining my Pantheism to people, my particular brand of it, but harder in that people would likely scoff at me out of subconscious or unconscious fear of me being right. I don't scoff at the Atheists but I do fear that they are right: that there is NOTHING beyond this one, single, often dissatisfactory life, and that we ought to be grateful even for this, because we defied the odds by being born at all, despite the legions of others that could have been born if one thing had gone differently at any point during conception, or the millions of ways in which something might have gone wrong either during or after pregnancy, and I might not be here now. As incomprehensible as it may be to a scientifically-minded individual, however, I love my Pantheism. Where and how did God originate? Hinduism has the answer! Cycles: it always was and always will be due to the eternally expanding and contracting nature of the Universe, which God is, of course. God is the Universe, and everything in it: everything that ever was, will be, is now, or could be. God is the absolute potential for creation, sustainability, destruction, and recreation, which is the natural cycle of all things. Hindus provide the cyclical viewpoint and Pantheists the totality of God: God is not merely present everywhere, but truly is everything. Think of it, and it is God. Anything that can be conceived is God, and everything that cannot be conceived as well. Daoism holds this answer as well: the good, the bad, and everything in between, all things being arbitrarily or subjectively labeled as "good", "bad", or "other", all of that is God. Buddhism, then, provides the path for finding out this truth, which is to become one with everything in a state of perfect peace and understanding, knowing the totality of your own being, and therefore the totality of God. Think of it: before you existed in the body you have now, what were you? Nutrients and elements in your parents' bodies. And where did those things come from? Why, from the Earth, which has its origins in the Big Bang. We are the result of the Big Bang, as is everything else, and when we die and our bodies decay or are burned, we absolve into our natural state once again and become the totality without individual ego. This totality is God. And it's therefore not arrogant for anyone to say "There is no God", because there IS no God in terms of the eternally separate entity to which we could never be united, and which we could never understand. Likewise, it is not arrogant to say "I am God", because that is true in that you are a one-time formation of the elements which dissolve into everything at the end of your life. We are the Universe, we are God. There is no other.

 

And that's my Pantheism. I welcome as many challengers as I may, "God" willing, receive. Challenge me, people: it's the only way I'll learn.

 

Also, I apologize if this is excessively long. I only just got approved tonight to be allowed to come on here and speak to you magnificent people. I hope I am welcome.

[Donnadogsoth]

On 4/15/2017 at 11:18 PM, Soulfire said:

If I were an Atheist, I think life would be easier in some ways and harder in others. Easier in that I wouldn't have to worry about explaining my Pantheism to people, my particular brand of it, but harder in that people would likely scoff at me out of subconscious or unconscious fear of me being right. I don't scoff at the Atheists but I do fear that they are right: that there is NOTHING beyond this one, single, often dissatisfactory life, and that we ought to be grateful even for this, because we defied the odds by being born at all, despite the legions of others that could have been born if one thing had gone differently at any point during conception, or the millions of ways in which something might have gone wrong either during or after pregnancy, and I might not be here now. As incomprehensible as it may be to a scientifically-minded individual, however, I love my Pantheism. Where and how did God originate? Hinduism has the answer! Cycles: it always was and always will be due to the eternally expanding and contracting nature of the Universe, which God is, of course. God is the Universe, and everything in it: everything that ever was, will be, is now, or could be. God is the absolute potential for creation, sustainability, destruction, and recreation, which is the natural cycle of all things. Hindus provide the cyclical viewpoint and Pantheists the totality of God: God is not merely present everywhere, but truly is everything. Think of it, and it is God. Anything that can be conceived is God, and everything that cannot be conceived as well. Daoism holds this answer as well: the good, the bad, and everything in between, all things being arbitrarily or subjectively labeled as "good", "bad", or "other", all of that is God. Buddhism, then, provides the path for finding out this truth, which is to become one with everything in a state of perfect peace and understanding, knowing the totality of your own being, and therefore the totality of God. Think of it: before you existed in the body you have now, what were you? Nutrients and elements in your parents' bodies. And where did those things come from? Why, from the Earth, which has its origins in the Big Bang. We are the result of the Big Bang, as is everything else, and when we die and our bodies decay or are burned, we absolve into our natural state once again and become the totality without individual ego. This totality is God. And it's therefore not arrogant for anyone to say "There is no God", because there IS no God in terms of the eternally separate entity to which we could never be united, and which we could never understand. Likewise, it is not arrogant to say "I am God", because that is true in that you are a one-time formation of the elements which dissolve into everything at the end of your life. We are the Universe, we are God. There is no other.

And that's my Pantheism. I welcome as many challengers as I may, "God" willing, receive. Challenge me, people: it's the only way I'll learn.

Also, I apologize if this is excessively long. I only just got approved tonight to be allowed to come on here and speak to you magnificent people. I hope I am welcome.

Why would God torture himself by bothering to create the Universe?  I realise you say God is the Universe.  My question stands:  why would God hurt himself?  Life hurts.  If it didn't there would be no religion.  Why does God hurt himself, and on a large scale, for long, long periods of time?  Why does God tolerate ugliness, and brokenness, and blasphemy, and pain?  Why is he so masochistic and incompetent?

I'll tell you why:  because God is loveless, and God is lonely.  There is no one except God so God pretends to love his big toe.  He is lonely and he cuts himself until he hurts and bleeds and from the cuts spring forth dancing bubbles of creation that he is entranced by, falling into his own reflections and dying to himself so that he can experience love for another...even another shaped like a big toe.

God will never be satisfied in his lovelessness and so he will never stop casting his spells of illusion to pretend there is someone else, to pretend that he is a creator, to pretend he has love, love, love.  Love is all he needs, and love is all he will never have.

[Soulfire]

I think the issue here is that (with respect; I get that you have faith here) you still speak of God as something other. To say that everything is God is to assume that God is not separate, not "other", from everything that we can perceive with our senses. Look at your walls and you see God, look at a gun and you see God, look at yourself and you see God. Neutral, negative, and positive, all of it is God. Nothing is "other" from anything else because it's all of one piece in reality. Where did this all start? The Big Bang? As you see, all of what is came from that one moment of time, and from the "singularity" as science calls it, so it really all is one. You are as much me as you are the sky, the earth, everything. And I am as much myself as I am everything else. And that is all God. I don't know whether we can consider this without of course considering the inevitability of pain in life, because of course there is pain in life, but nothing is lasting, not even that. If there was a time before consciousness, and therefore consciousness of pain, then there was at one time no such thing as pain. Likewise, there will be a time after pain. God's existence is therefore not dictated by this, nor by any other seemingly lasting or inevitable thing. Pain requires consciousness, or at least a body to feel, and there are only an incredibly small minority of things that are capable of that sensation. Does the Earth feel pain when you walk on it? I would feel pain if you were to walk on my back, but not the Earth. Do you see what I mean at all?

 

[Donnadogsoth]

1 hour ago, Soulfire said:

I think the issue here is that (with respect; I get that you have faith here) you still speak of God as something other. To say that everything is God is to assume that God is not separate, not "other", from everything that we can perceive with our senses. Look at your walls and you see God, look at a gun and you see God, look at yourself and you see God. Neutral, negative, and positive, all of it is God. Nothing is "other" from anything else because it's all of one piece in reality. Where did this all start? The Big Bang? As you see, all of what is came from that one moment of time, and from the "singularity" as science calls it, so it really all is one. You are as much me as you are the sky, the earth, everything. And I am as much myself as I am everything else. And that is all God. I don't know whether we can consider this without of course considering the inevitability of pain in life, because of course there is pain in life, but nothing is lasting, not even that. If there was a time before consciousness, and therefore consciousness of pain, then there was at one time no such thing as pain. Likewise, there will be a time after pain. God's existence is therefore not dictated by this, nor by any other seemingly lasting or inevitable thing. Pain requires consciousness, or at least a body to feel, and there are only an incredibly small minority of things that are capable of that sensation. Does the Earth feel pain when you walk on it? I would feel pain if you were to walk on my back, but not the Earth. Do you see what I mean at all?

 

I see that you don't see that God's love (your love, my love) is a fraud.

[Soulfire]

A fraud? No, love is truth. Love is the highest truth, in fact, because it can break down so many of our self-imposed barriers. Perhaps you aren't aware of your own love, but even in terms of petty, personal belongings, you must have some attachments? And the people in your life, you can't tell me you don't love your own people. I'm not asking you to love me or to love strangers, or anything of that sort, but to be conscious of love is to be conscious of your own Godhead. You are God too, remember. Everything is. That includes every person as well.

[Donnadogsoth]

3 minutes ago, Soulfire said:

A fraud? No, love is truth. Love is the highest truth, in fact, because it can break down so many of our self-imposed barriers. Perhaps you aren't aware of your own love, but even in terms of petty, personal belongings, you must have some attachments? And the people in your life, you can't tell me you don't love your own people. I'm not asking you to love me or to love strangers, or anything of that sort, but to be conscious of love is to be conscious of your own Godhead. You are God too, remember. Everything is. That includes every person as well.

If God is all there is then there is no love.  The love you describe as "the highest truth" is nothing more than divine masturbation.

[Soulfire]

Divine actuality, my dear, not divine masturbation.

 

Also, you're very quick on the response. I can appreciate that.

[Donnadogsoth]

1 hour ago, Soulfire said:

Divine actuality, my dear, not divine masturbation.

 

Also, you're very quick on the response. I can appreciate that.

Love cannot exist apart from two distinct beings loving each other.  If all is God then there is no love.

[Soulfire]

If I may beg your pardon, your possessions, any place you loved growing up, your memories of happy times...none of these can love you back, and yet you yourself feel affection for them. There can of course be love without two sentient beings loving one another. The fact that we can love that which lacks its own individual consciousness is proof of this.

[Donnadogsoth]

On 4/18/2017 at 9:06 PM, Soulfire said:

If I may beg your pardon, your possessions, any place you loved growing up, your memories of happy times...none of these can love you back, and yet you yourself feel affection for them. There can of course be love without two sentient beings loving one another. The fact that we can love that which lacks its own individual consciousness is proof of this.

Legerdemain.  My childhood "love" for my teddy bear is jejune and irrelevant compared to my love for my family and friends.  Affection might be a better term, attachment, etc. for "love" for the inanimate.  Love between people is the only thing meriting the term "love" in the long term.  The pantheist God is "loving" an empty room.

[Soulfire]

An empty room? Yet we are both still here.  

Jokes, but Pantheism doesn't really have a God. Not "a" God, mind. Everything is God so it's more like "being" God, not "having" God, and certainly not in the singular. I worship in all the individual ways of all the individual faiths: I've been far enough into meditation trance to induce visual, auditory, and tactile hallucination (no drugs), I've prostrated on the ground and proclaimed the greatness of God as a Muslim would, I've prayed to Christ and to Buddha, I've lived as a Daoist lives, I've sung "Hare Krishna" up to the sky. It's all of one piece to me. The only true love, in my view, is love of the whole, is love of all that is, because there is ONLY God. Remember from now on: I'm a Pantheist, not a Buddhist. Though I do agree with the idea of detachment, it's only so that you can love God, that is, everything, equally and properly. I think so anyway. Please disagree to your heart's content. I want you to if you do.  

[RichardY]

So did the Eternal Father create sock puppets? Or is it more like the beginning of the movie Prometheus? The bit where the engineer jumps into the river and dissolves, so is no longer present, as such. 

 

1 hour ago, Soulfire said:

I've been far enough into meditation trance to induce visual, auditory, and tactile hallucination (no drugs), 

Sounds like fun, how long do you have to wait, I'm guessing it's longer than 5 seconds.

[Soulfire]

Longer than five seconds, yes. But the time will vary, depending on my level of mental clarity at the time. Oddly enough, it sometimes helps to be exhausted, because my mind is more silent, which allows me to dive into my subconscious more easily, but usually it's best to be sharp mentally. If you want to test it, though it may not work for you because everyone's brain works differently, my personal method is to concentrate on the insides of my eyelids. Traditionally, one would concentrate on the breath, but that isn't constant enough, I find, because the breath fluctuates, in and out and in. The insides of your eyelids don't change, though, and you have to focus on something constant in order to get your mind "there", wherever that exactly is. Concentrate not on your lack of vision with your eyes closed, but on the presence of vision: I don't know why this works for me, but to think "I can see, I'm seeing the insides of my eyelids, my eyes are working on that" works for me. And then you start seeing beyond your own eyes.  Or "eye" in my case since I'm blind in one of them.

[Donnadogsoth]

6 hours ago, Soulfire said:

An empty room? Yet we are both still here.  

Jokes, but Pantheism doesn't really have a God. Not "a" God, mind. Everything is God so it's more like "being" God, not "having" God, and certainly not in the singular. I worship in all the individual ways of all the individual faiths: I've been far enough into meditation trance to induce visual, auditory, and tactile hallucination (no drugs), I've prostrated on the ground and proclaimed the greatness of God as a Muslim would, I've prayed to Christ and to Buddha, I've lived as a Daoist lives, I've sung "Hare Krishna" up to the sky. It's all of one piece to me. The only true love, in my view, is love of the whole, is love of all that is, because there is ONLY God. Remember from now on: I'm a Pantheist, not a Buddhist. Though I do agree with the idea of detachment, it's only so that you can love God, that is, everything, equally and properly. I think so anyway. Please disagree to your heart's content. I want you to if you do.  

If there is no creator God, no "a" God, where did the substance of personal consciousness come from?

[Soulfire]

Evolution. God evolves as we evolve. That which does not change dies, and God's not dead, so God must change. God lives as long as change happens. God IS the change, one with it.

[Donnadogsoth]

I disagree that an æternal God is dead.  Such is temporal thinking; æternity is not a succession of moments but a single all-encompassing moment.  But, that's not to the point:

I think you misunderstand my question.  Where did consciousness come from if not from a great Archetype of consciousness?  Where does experience come from if not from a capital Experience which understands what experience is and can create it?  Your proposition appears to suggest that existence started as nothingness and then "evolved" into higher and higher stages of complexity and higher qualities of existence.  I dispute this.  Existence does not come from non-existence;  life does not come from non-life; and cognition does not come from non-cognition.  These things require a God to create them, to construct the Universe the way a master architect constructs a great house.  In a manner of speaking, being, living, and thinking are all created top-down by the Creator.  That the universe he constructed is evolutionary is a matter of that universe being able to develop, but it does not mean that God develops.  God is already perfect, what should he develop into?

[Soulfire]

Consciousness came from Evolution. Period. I will not argue Creationism versus Evolution with you or anyone else because I refuse to fight a battle that's already lost to people who won't see sense. Begging the pardon of Creationists here, mind you. It's just, I'm sorry, but here's one thing:

God is literally ALWAYS portrayed in the Abrahamic religions as male. Islam steps away from this in that they at least know that God can't be described in or through any human understanding, of which gender is a mere archetype, but to stick with the more literalistic form of the argument, how could God have created females if "He" had never seen a vagina or breasts? I'm being flippant but I hope you understand what I mean. There can't have just been one archetype. Either God is all or God is at least many, as Hinduism would imply, and the Devis (Goddesses) also had a hand in creation. But this entire discourse presupposes an external God, and I don't believe in that kind of God. God is everything there is and so cannot be apart from anything.

[Donnadogsoth]

21 minutes ago, Soulfire said:

Consciousness came from Evolution. Period. I will not argue Creationism versus Evolution with you or anyone else because I refuse to fight a battle that's already lost to people who won't see sense. Begging the pardon of Creationists here, mind you. It's just, I'm sorry, but here's one thing:

God is literally ALWAYS portrayed in the Abrahamic religions as male. Islam steps away from this in that they at least know that God can't be described in or through any human understanding, of which gender is a mere archetype, but to stick with the more literalistic form of the argument, how could God have created females if "He" had never seen a vagina or breasts? I'm being flippant but I hope you understand what I mean. There can't have just been one archetype. Either God is all or God is at least many, as Hinduism would imply, and the Devis (Goddesses) also had a hand in creation. But this entire discourse presupposes an external God, and I don't believe in that kind of God. God is everything there is and so cannot be apart from anything.

You misunderstand me further.  Whether the material Universe arises from special creation or from evolution, is not at issue.  What my question was, was, where did consciousness as an experience come from if not from a Creator.  Where did the colour red come from if not from an Origin that contained the colour red in its understanding?  You're saying "evolution" as if that explains and settles the matter; it does not.  You have placed yourself with those who argue consciousness is an "epiphenomenon" that inexplicably arises when certain chemicals are combined.  Why?  Why should brains produce minds?  Why aren't we all zombies lacking all minds?  The existence of being, life, and cognition make no sense unless we can posit an Original source for them, rather than an evolutionary nothing from which consciousness "came from" somehow.

[Soulfire]

Evolution really CAN explain this though, I promise, because it's not like, one day, there was no such thing as consciousness, and then the next day there was. It was so gradual a process that you and I can't even fathom how slow it was. I do maintain, being the Pantheist I am, that God is that evolution, and continues to be, and I would say that that is where life comes from. I know that carbon is an extremely "vital" element in terms of its capacity to somehow produce life, but...I don't really understand this myself, to be honest. I mean, the dirt is mostly carbon, a piece of wood is mostly carbon, but there must, I think, be something ALIVE in those things in order for humans to have it too...cognition, though, arose due to evolution. There can be no doubt of that. I'm just not so sure about the LIFE thing. I don't know whether any scientist is, even. I'd have to ask my friend Marty. He's smart like that and he'd know. Or, if he doesn't know, he can at least tell me the theories we have now. I'm more spiritually-minded than he is and not quite as in to biomechanics and all that stuff as he is.

 

If I look like I'm sticking my foot in my mouth, I MIGHT be. At least on the life point, though not on the cognition point. You can't convince me that that didn't come from the course of evolution. And we're talking billions of years here, hon, not just it popping into existence one day.

[Donnadogsoth]

39 minutes ago, Soulfire said:

Evolution really CAN explain this though, I promise, because it's not like, one day, there was no such thing as consciousness, and then the next day there was. It was so gradual a process that you and I can't even fathom how slow it was. I do maintain, being the Pantheist I am, that God is that evolution, and continues to be, and I would say that that is where life comes from. I know that carbon is an extremely "vital" element in terms of its capacity to somehow produce life, but...I don't really understand this myself, to be honest. I mean, the dirt is mostly carbon, a piece of wood is mostly carbon, but there must, I think, be something ALIVE in those things in order for humans to have it too...cognition, though, arose due to evolution. There can be no doubt of that. I'm just not so sure about the LIFE thing. I don't know whether any scientist is, even. I'd have to ask my friend Marty. He's smart like that and he'd know. Or, if he doesn't know, he can at least tell me the theories we have now. I'm more spiritually-minded than he is and not quite as in to biomechanics and all that stuff as he is.

 

If I look like I'm sticking my foot in my mouth, I MIGHT be. At least on the life point, though not on the cognition point. You can't convince me that that didn't come from the course of evolution. And we're talking billions of years here, hon, not just it popping into existence one day.

Human cognition is not present in the lower forms of life, nor in the abiotic things.  This is not a difference in degree, but in kind.  Animals do not understand metaphor, they cannot frame scientific hypotheses, they cannot discover universal physical principles by which they increase the carrying capacity of their territory.  Only humans can do these things, which makes cognition a unique property to human beings.  Where did that come from?  "Evolution" is not an answer, since the commodity of cognition is not an aggregate of atoms or tissues, but a superimposed essence.  To avoid reductionism, this essence had to come from somewhere.  The only option is it came from a Creator God of superhuman intelligence and will.  A "God" who merely is the Universe but not outside of it cannot be the source of the transcendent cognition; such a "God" is identical to an atheistic universe.

[Notsuper]

On 12/7/2016 at 8:49 PM, Donnadogsoth said:

1.Why does the æternal substance which is not absolute nothing, yet is not contingent something, equate to the Creator of the Universe?

a. As per Leibniz, it is the nature of existence that every existing thing has a soul. This must be so for soul is the only substance possible; all experiences are “parts” (in a loose sense of the word) of the respective experiencing souls like projections on a screen. So, without souls, nothing would exist. Nothing is impossible, as shown above, so there must be something, whether contingent or æternal. Since contingent things cannot self-subsist, their origin must lie in the latter. Thus the nature of the æternal must be that it has an experiencing soul.

I found the part in bold extremely amusing. You are simultaneously saying that nothing is impossible, and that nothing is not possible; and you continue to say that various things must be and cannot be, as if there are no possible alternatives, seemingly missing or ignoring one (or more) meaning(s) of what you've said. Such is the nature of making a point, I suppose, but in a discussion such as this, where the topic is such an abstract concept, I don't think there's any context on which to base the exclusion of any interpretations.

It seems to me that this topic is more a matter of defining nothing than anything, so my answer will be focused on that. (All this nothing is going to be fun)

I think nothing is a matter of perception. Going back to the thread you linked as proof that nothing cannot be aeturnal...

On 11/14/2016 at 4:54 PM, Donnadogsoth said:

The thing to realise is why this problem is so slippery:  the word "nothing" is ill-defined.  What is "nothing"?  You might say "emptiness" or "absence" or "vacuum," to which I say, give me an example in real life of "nothing".  You point to an empty can of beans.  I say, "That's filled with air".  You point to the night sky, and I say, "It's filled with black."  You give me a vacuum tube and I say, "It's filled with space."  So go ahead, point to anything that we can say is "nothing" at all, with no qualities, no predicates, nothing.

Ignoring (but not really) the obvious point of 'give me an example of a real life aeturnal thing', it can be said that air and space are indeed nothing, from the perspective of the person who does not know what they are, at least. We both see the same thing, but we call it by different names. If we're speaking the same language, this means that one or both of our names has a subjective element to it (or at least one of us is just wrong, but let's ignore that for now). In this case, I think it's fair to say that 'nothing' can be taken to mean 'that which I do not know of' or 'that which I do not recognize' or (best of all, perhaps) 'that which has no meaning to me'. After all, even if you tell me there's air in that jar; to me, air still only means 'the nothing I see in that jar', if not 'just something that guy made up'.

Using this definition, anything can be nothing, and nothing can be anything. It goes without saying, then, that nothing can be something, and vice-versa.

...I had more to say, but I've lost my train of thought. I'll just leave at this, for now.

[RichardY]

Could Monism or "one substance" be a get out of jail free card? If that is the nature of being, doesn't it effectively destroy the concept of Ethics, makes everything predetermined. Unless God switched off God-mode, and became the "Messiah". In which case aren't people splitting the concept of a one god anyway? Zeus/Jupiter/Aten/Ra/Helios/Krishna/Woden/God, Micheal/Horus/Jesus/Apollo/Thor/Muhammed/Zarathustra,  Gabriel/Kali/Loki/Nemesis/Djinn etc......

Wouldn't a multitude of Gods be more fun as with Dualism potentially? Anyone see the STTNG episode with Worf returning from a Bat'leth tournament, where he is split between alternate realities, but his mind is always in the same place? 

Why "Right Being"? why not "Right Action"/becoming?

[Soulfire]

Hey, so I went and asked my scientifically-minded friend Marty about this and I'm going to quote him here directly, if you don't mind.

"Life does not equal cognition. We don’t know exactly how life got started, but what we know is that the building blocks can form naturally. It’s just chemistry, albeit very advanced chemistry. Life can essentially be described as the reaction L+N->2L+W, where L is living matter, N is nutrients and W is waste. A living cell takes in nutrients and grows, ultimately producing a copy of itself. All such reactions we know of involves L including carbon (although in principle, it doesn’t have to). This is because carbon can form long chains; without this property, amino acids, proteins and DNA could never exist (there are other elements than carbon that have this property, such as silicon). Cognition is information processing; the ability to take in, process, store and react to information. You can have life without cognition (e.g. plants), and you can (at least in principle) have cognition without life (e.g. a really advanced AI)."

And that's pretty much the best I can give you at this time.

[Soulfire]

Also, not to be a bitch, but may I point out the rather obvious use of "God of the Gaps" here...?

[Donnadogsoth]

48 minutes ago, Soulfire said:

Also, not to be a bitch, but may I point out the rather obvious use of "God of the Gaps" here...?

You've ignored my post.  Where does the substance of cognition come from?  Don't talk to me about "information processing".  If information processing were the substance of cognition there would be no consciousness at all, man would be a computer-controlled organism, mindless, a zombie.  Where did the actual substance, the reality, the subjective actuality of cognition come from?  In case we're pretending to be zombies, ignoring the fact of our own minds, cognition is proven to be a species-level higher, that is to say, an infinitude higher in terms of power over the Universe, than all non-cognitive forms of power, namely the biotic and abiotic realms, by the willful activity of man upon the Universe.  Where did that come from?  Not the growing of the apple, not the biological principles involved in growing it, but the redness of the apple?

[RichardY]

9 hours ago, Soulfire said:

Hey, so I went and asked my scientifically-minded friend Marty about this and I'm going to quote him here directly, if you don't mind.t "Life does not equal cognition. We don’t know exactly how life got started, but what we know is that the building blocks can form naturally. It’s just chemistry, albeit very advanced chemistry. Life can essentially be described as the reaction L+N->2L+W, where L is living matter, N is nutrients and W is waste. A living cell takes in nutrients and grows, ultimately producing a copy of itself. All such reactions we know of involves L including carbon (although in principle, it doesn’t have to). This is because carbon can form long chains; without this property, amino acids, proteins and DNA could never exist (there are other elements than carbon that have this property, such as silicon). Cognition is information processing; the ability to take in, process, store and react to information. You can have life without cognition (e.g. plants), and you can (at least in principle) have cognition without life (e.g. a really advanced AI)."

And that's pretty much the best I can give you at this time.

"Going out on a limb" but could trees have cognition? I mean in the Bible there is the tree of knowledge. Plus trees often form very large networks. I guess they would be lacking a CNS, but then again you have fly traps, so maybe there's something to the idea. Maybe trees might have some capacity for cognition just very slow or spread out rhythm. Plus the movie Avatar.....

In terms of cognition trees react to climate, go dormant. If their grazed it can keep them in  juvenile state. They also store information in their seeds. If one tree goes dormant maybe they get effected quicker, like bananas ripening. If there's fire it can help with the plants life cycle, perhaps trigger the release of certain hormones.