I am an Atheist...

[seer]

There will be a plurality view on any topic, by the definition of plurality. On any question you care to ask, there would always be an answer to the question of "what is the most common viewpoint among atheists on the topic of X?"

If your claim is that there is not a majority view on some particular topic, the onus would be on you to prove that with polling data.

Well can you show me a common moral view among atheists? That includes atheists in the Communist countries that have the highest populations of atheists?

[Starlight]

I said: there is no standard atheistic view on morality or nihilism. Do you disagree?

There will be a plurality view on any topic, by the definition of plurality. On any question you care to ask, there would always be an answer to the question of "what is the most common viewpoint among atheists on the topic of X?"

If your claim is that there is not a majority view on some particular topic, the onus would be on you to prove that with polling data.

[seer]

Seer,

If I may make an appeal to authority here, but the idea that I was talking about, this unconscious synthesis is not mine. It is written about in a book entitled The Crack in The Cosmic Egg, written by Joseph Chilton Peirce. Perhaps I am not articulating it as well as he did...obviously not. I've read this book about 5 times now, as well as the follow up book, Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg. This is my map of reality at the present moment.

Sorry, any one who rejects logic-based systems and rational thought is a non-starter with me.

[Machinist]

Seer,

If I may make an appeal to authority here, but the idea that I was talking about, this unconscious synthesis is not mine. It is written about in a book entitled The Crack in The Cosmic Egg, written by Joseph Chilton Peirce. Perhaps I am not articulating it as well as he did...obviously not. I've read this book about 5 times now, as well as the follow up book, Exploring the Crack in the Cosmic Egg. This is my map of reality at the present moment.

[seer]

It might be that there are some sort of natural laws akin to physical laws, where just as gravity pulls downward, so certain types of behaviors pull spiritually upward or are more 'enlightening' than others on the mental plane.

What the hell are you talking about? What are these natural laws? And what do you mean by spiritually?

[seer]

It's bizarre you accuse your opponents of having individual opinions and arbitrary views, while holding extremely arbitrary and individual opinions yourself. You're a very creative an unorthodox thinker for a Christian poster, and very much hold your own opinion on different issues rather than toeing the Christian line.

Did I say anything here about arbitrary? I said: there is no standard atheistic view on morality or nihilism. Do you disagree?

[seer]

That does seem to be how most religions get started. Judaism and Christianity included.

Of course we would say that it is revelatory.

I do give props to Buddhism though for the amount of time they spend meditating and focusing inwardly upon their own mind and own existence, and so have some respect for them when they then make declarations about what the mind is and how it functions. From a scientific point of view, its demonstrable that their meditative techniques do worthwhile things and psychologists commonly recommend Buddhist meditative techniques to everyone to improve happiness, decrease anger, and improve one's sense of well-being.

Prayer has much of the same effect.Even more so:

Journal of Behavioral Medicine, Vol. 28, No. 4, August 2005 (C©2005)DOI: 10.1007/s10865-005-9008-5Is Spirituality a Critical Ingredient of Meditation?Comparing the Effects of Spiritual Meditation, Secular Meditation, and Relaxation on Spiritual, Psychological,Cardiac, and Pain Outcomes

https://resspir.org/wp-content/uploa...Meditation.pdf

A randomized trial of the effect of prayer on depression and anxiety

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20391859/

So while science tends to consistently disprove Christianity and show that Christianity is a false and made-up religion, to the extent that any Buddhist claims are scientifically testable (most of them are not of course) they tend to be confirmed by scientific testing.

Really? Science proved that Jesus was made up, wasn't the Son of God, and did not rise from the dead?

[Starlight]

Then they made it up.

That does seem to be how most religions get started. Judaism and Christianity included.

I do give props to Buddhism though for the amount of time they spend meditating and focusing inwardly upon their own mind and own existence, and so have some respect for them when they then make declarations about what the mind is and how it functions. From a scientific point of view, its demonstrable that their meditative techniques do worthwhile things and psychologists commonly recommend Buddhist meditative techniques to everyone to improve happiness, decrease anger, and improve one's sense of well-being.

So while science tends to consistently disprove Christianity and show that Christianity is a false and made-up religion, to the extent that any Buddhist claims are scientifically testable (most of them are not of course) they tend to be confirmed by scientific testing.

[Starlight]

Well think about it. You go through a series cycles (death and rebirth) to learn particular behaviors and responses. When you gain pure enlightenment you reach Nirvana. Now ask yourself, what designed this system? What decided that some behaviors are acceptable while others are not? If not a mind akin to a god, then what?

It might be that there are some sort of natural laws akin to physical laws, where just as gravity pulls downward, so certain types of behaviors pull spiritually upward or are more 'enlightening' than others on the mental plane.

But you are overly focusing on really specific religious details about judgment, rather than more general concepts. An afterlife need not imply any judgment at all. There might be no Nirvana, just an endless cycle of rebirth. To pick one analogy from Buddhism, our minds might be as droplets of water, and when the body dies they return to the great ocean of all minds, dissolving into it but not ceasing to be water, only to later take the form of a droplet again. You might personally want to call that ocean 'God' seer, because you do seem to personally like to find things to label 'God', but that 'God' would then just be the mind(s) of all us and wouldn't necessarily have any of the properties that the Christian God does.

Another view might simply be that consciousness is an indestructible and individual entity. Perhaps like the Greeks thought 'atoms' to be the individual particle, Awareness itself is actually the true indivisible construct, and so survives the death of the body to which it is attached, perhaps to be attached to other bodies in future for whatever reason and according to whatever laws of nature happen to govern that process.

Perhaps there is only one Awareness in existence (you can call it 'God' again if you like seer, but it is just you, and just me) and all the lives of every person in history were experienced by that single Awareness, just as on a computer a single CPU can run all the programs.

There are many and various possibilities.

[Starlight]

Interesting! Thanks for the reply! Could you point me to some further reading on this subject?

In the Philosophy subfield of Philosophy of Mind both the Dualist and Idealist positions on the Mind-Body problem take the view that the mind's existence is independent of the body.

One analogy that is sometimes used is that of a radio. Just because a radio is destroyed doesn't mean that what was playing on the radio was itself destroyed, because it was only coming to the radio from elsewhere. Or a laptop connecting to a supercomputer and taking advantage of the computing power the supercomputer can offer it. One possible way it might work is that perhaps our universe is a physical universe, but there are other universes that are mental universes, and a current many worlds theory in quantum physics suggests it might be possible for universes to interact on a quantum level, so perhaps evolution found that by arranging the physical brain in the right way it was able to tap into a mental universe and take advantage of the properties of that universe, harnessing a mind from that universe to guide the body in this one. It might therefore gain a huge evolutionary advantage by doing so, as the mental properties offered by that universe are unparalleled in this one.

I note actually that a common early version of Christianity, Gnosticism, had a similar view to this, but added the view that the mental universe was a pure and good spiritual universe while the physical 'flesh' universe was inherently evil by virtue of being matter and material, and they saw the 'trapping' of pure spiritual souls in/by the material universe as evil, and hence were against human conception and birth. They thought Christ was a spiritual being in the spiritual universe sent by the true God in the spiritual universe who had appeared to us (though not actually taken physical flesh as that would be part of the evil material universe) to rescue us from this evil physical world that they viewed as being ruled over by the evil Old Testament god of the Jews (they viewed the OT god as evil, and the true God as an entity in the spiritual universe who had sent Christ). That version of Christianity survived surprisingly long and was surprisingly popular given it taught its adherents not to have children and hence could only be spread by getting new converts rather than breeding them from existing ones. Eventually it died out as a result, however it is thought that at some point in the 2nd century it had more adherents than what we now term normal Christianity.

I don't have any specific books or articles to recommend on Dualism or Idealism, but googling those and the various topics I've mentioned, as well as the philosophical term 'qualia' which refers to conscious mental experience, might find you something interesting.

[Starlight]

That is silly, there is no standard atheistic view on morality or nihilism. Just individual opinions of atheists.

It's bizarre you accuse your opponents of having individual opinions and arbitrary views, while holding extremely arbitrary and individual opinions yourself. You're a very creative an unorthodox thinker for a Christian poster, and very much hold your own opinion on different issues rather than toeing the Christian line.

It seems to be a general rule of your posts I've noticed, that your own views always fare worse on the criteria you propose, than your opposition does. Given your views so badly fail by your own standards, never mind anyone else's, I am constantly baffled by why you think anyone would take you seriously.

[Machinist]

Then they made it up.

Could we explore "unconscious synthesis' over many generations"?

[seer]

I wouldn't use the word "invent".

Then they made it up.

[Mountain Man]

Agreed.


Mostly agreed, though collective preference is needed to actually enforce the rules.


Also agreed.

Now that we've agreed on the basics, you just need to figure out how to get from there to statements like: "If there is no God then there are no wrong choices in life."

Um... not sure where the disconnect is here.

P1: If atheism is true, then there are no objective standards of right and wrong, and no objective source of moral obligation.
P2: Atheism is true.

Since you agree with both of those premises, then you must necessarily accept the logical conclusion:

C: Therefore, there are no wrong choices in life.

[Stoic]

Exactly. For the atheist, there are no objective standards of right and wrong, no objective source of moral obligation.

Agreed.

It's nothing more than personal preference,

Mostly agreed, though collective preference is needed to actually enforce the rules.

and whether one is a wise man or fool, all will suffer the exact same fate in the end: death and oblivion.

Also agreed.

Now that we've agreed on the basics, you just need to figure out how to get from there to statements like: "If there is no God then there are no wrong choices in life."