A) After watching the video, what do you take away from it? Do you agree, or disagree? Does it affect your own belief structure? (if it doesn't, that is totally fine!)
It was a nice video. I enjoyed the serene imagery typical of these "deep" philosophical videos heh. Also, I had never heard of Alan Watts before but he seems like a very enlightened gentleman and I'm glad he spread the word about Eastern religions and philosophy. I have looked into Buddhism in the past and while there are some things I disagree with (reincarnation being one), I have always embraced this idea of nothingness/emptiness arising. A good primer site is "the big view" : http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/
However, I found Mr. Watt's explanation more accessible as it spoke to me more in colloquial language. I agree whole-heartedly with his points.
B) What do you think will happen when you die? When family members die? (Please, you can just say what you think, but try and back this up with something (religion/science/void etc... literally anything, but I kind of want this to be deeper than just "well I hope this is what happens", this isn't about what you hope, but what you think)
I believe our consciousness will cease to exist and our bodies will disintegrate into its basic elements. Ditto for my family heh. I base this on the complete lack of evidence for an afterlife under any rigorous scientific testing (no, TV ghost shows and other gibberish don't count for me). Also, I find it laughable that there would exist a God who cares about our individual activity and who has made a lovely heaven/hell for us. Maybe someone set things up in the beginning - like Einstein's God - but that's irrelevant for our day to day lives anyways.
At one point, this belief scared me but now I am more accepting of it. We come from nothing and we go to nothing. In between, we choose the road we take. It's kind of refreshing.
C) Do you believe that Alan Watts has a valid point? Does our universe come from nothingness, and that all of our petty fears don't truly matter because in the end it's all nothingness? (off topic slightly, but based on how all our achievements are nothing but dust, "monopoly from zeitgeist"+ Show Spoiler + so it may be interesting to listen to.
Well, the big bang theory essentially posits our universe coming from nothing. The big crunch vs. infinite expansion demise model changes all the time but both suggest that nothing we do matters.
But it's all relative. Yes, nothing matters as far as the universe is concerned but so what? It still matters to ME that I get my dream job and treat my family well. It probably matters a fuckton to the ant carrying the breadcrumb that he make it back to the nest.
I spent much of my youth looking at this stuff and wondering about death, life, meaning etc. As I've gotten a bit older, I've realized that other smarter individuals have asked the same questions for thousands of years and haven't come up with great answers. I've realized that there aren't great answers to these questions and that if you spend too long on them, you'll miss the good experiences that life has to offer. Just my personal views
On May 26 2012 08:09 Jockmcplop wrote: I am not denying logic at all. I am just saying that you have to be very careful when drawing conclusions from a logical arguement, that the logic has not been 'contaminated' by an assumption at any point.
Not exactly. What you do is clearly define your assumptions.
edit: and the validity of the most fundamental assumptions cannot be proved (because they are prior to proof), instead they make themselves manifest
to put it another way, think about why logic IS logic.
I agree. Hence the reason two completely viewpoints can be supported by logic.
On May 26 2012 08:09 Jockmcplop wrote: I am not denying logic at all. I am just saying that you have to be very careful when drawing conclusions from a logical arguement, that the logic has not been 'contaminated' by an assumption at any point.
Not exactly. What you do is clearly define your assumptions.
edit: and the validity of the most fundamental assumptions cannot be proved (because they are prior to proof), instead they make themselves manifest
to put it another way, think about why logic IS logic.
I agree. Hence the reason two completely viewpoints can be supported by logic.
Well, what you use logic to do is to discover on what fundamental premises the proponents of opposing positions differ.
edit: or to show that somebody's position is incoherent
edit again: and it's important to note that the hardest part of philosophy is not logical inference, but the definition of terms.
I would also recommend Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton on the subject of Christian optimism & paradox/mysticism:
Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say "if you please" to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.
I recommend the read. He's a good writer and it moves quickly. (This isn't a religion plug. As an atheist I found it a sincerely-critical essay... far preferential to, say, Kierkegaard).
In a nutshell, he argues for optimism (by the circle metaphor, ever growing), that optimism is enabled by the mystical (unknowable), while arguing that other beliefs that attempt to explicate everything about the world ultimately reduce the world (to a very small circle). Where asceticism is concerned, he argues that the willful shrinking of the circle into nothingness should be resisted.
This video is a very secular perspective. It is essentially making sense of the secular perspective concerning death. However, I think this is not where the argument should be. If you read further, I think an actual argument that will go somewhere will happen.
I'm going to try and be incredibly deep here.
Now, speaking in terms of philosophy, as a human being. You have lots of questions to answer. You have lots of unknowns to define. You have areas of anthropology, cosmology, ontology, epistemology, ethical questions, political questions, economic questions. You have things to figure out. Death is one of them.
Now, the question is, how do we define things like death, life, what is right and wrong, all the above areas. Well, how do we define anything? We define things based on comparisons. Right light, and dark, good and evil, everyone has heard this before. But it does go farther than opposites. How do I know what a BMW is? I compare it to a prius. I really know what a BMW is if I compare it to a horse, a baseball glove. I know if I take gasoline, and compare it to all the things that a car has, I would figure out that gasoline would make the car run. Right, the more things there are, the better I can define something.
So, therefore we argue, that if I was to know about something, It would be best to know one hundred percent of that something. And if everything, helps me define everything, I will only know 100 percent about one individual thing, if I know every single individual thing and use each one to compare them to each other.
So thus comes into question, is that where do "things" end. Now we come into realms where people should know something. Right, do we end things at the ends of human perception (the 5 senses (6 if you count body language) or do we go beyond the senses, and go into outside of human perception, the supernatural, where God, Nirvana among other religions would exist and end "things" there.
This is now where Im getting back to the first paragraph. People get very very confused when arguing or debating. You know, people debate whether gays should marry or not. Essentially that is going to get you nowhere, if a Christian is taking the identity and characteristics of God, and comparing them to the concept of homosexuality, and an atheist isn't. You have completely different definitions of the concept of homosexuality, and it is impossible to get anywhere if you are defining things differently.
So now, the question really is, where do "things" end. Essentially we just need to know about everything that exists. Right, if there are infinite things, we are never going to get a 100 percent definition of something. An "end" can happen anywhere. Lets say that there is just a proton and an atom in the universe, and that is all that exists. Right I would know 100 percent of the universe. I know a proton makes up an atom and an atom is made up of protons. That is all I could possibly know in the universe. And thats the goal really.
So to skip a few steps, we can say, that I can have 100 percent of a definition in a closed system. Right, so essentially, that I could just use my 5 senses, the limit of my human perception and succeed in knowing everything. I would know the right answer to all ethical questions because i compared each to everything in the universe, and what works and what doesn't. So we don't need more than our senses to have 100 percent of a definition. So saying that, why would we go outside of our senses, giving faith (which is not an optimal thing to do) that there is a supernatural plain of existence (a very complicated subject speaking of) that I can use to define things, when I could not do the action of faith, which is suboptimal to have a definitive answer to the question of death, life, and right and wrong.
death is the same way as before you were born. now, there is a chance we can be born again just as we did now, but we might be totally different organisms but still made up of particles of this universe or perhaps another. in order to prolong our current self, we have to rely on life extension through technology and medical advancements. I believe our best bet is to seek immortality that way. when we figure out how things work, we can gain control over them and bend them to our will.
Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say "if you please" to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.
I recommend the read. He's a good writer and it moves quickly. (This isn't a religion plug. As an atheist I found it a sincerely-critical essay... far preferential to, say, Kierkegaard).
In a nutshell, he argues for optimism (by the circle metaphor, ever growing), that optimism is enabled by the mystical (unknowable), while arguing that other beliefs that attempt to explicate everything about the world ultimately reduce the world (to a very small circle). Where asceticism is concerned, he argues that the willful shrinking of the circle into nothingness should be resisted.
tl;dr -- optimism is for winners
Since when is Buddhism less optimistic than Atheism? Atheism doesn't claim to "not know". They claim that they do know that god does NOT exist. Maybe your confusing Atheists with Agnostic Atheists? Asceticism does not = Nothingness. I didn't see or hear anything in the OP supporting complete asceticism.
On May 26 2012 08:52 xeo1 wrote: death is the same way as before you were born. now, there is a chance we can be born again just as we did now, but we might be totally different organisms but still made up of particles of this universe or perhaps another. in order to prolong our current self, we have to rely on life extension through technology and medical advancements. I believe our best bet is to seek immortality that way. when we figure out how things work, we can gain control over them and bend them to our will.
Lol can't tell if trolling or not, but it's funny no matter.
On May 26 2012 08:33 mmp wrote: I would also recommend Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton on the subject of Christian optimism & paradox/mysticism:
Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say "if you please" to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.
I recommend the read. He's a good writer and it moves quickly. (This isn't a religion plug. As an atheist I found it a sincerely-critical essay... far preferential to, say, Kierkegaard).
In a nutshell, he argues for optimism (by the circle metaphor, ever growing), that optimism is enabled by the mystical (unknowable), while arguing that other beliefs that attempt to explicate everything about the world ultimately reduce the world (to a very small circle). Where asceticism is concerned, he argues that the willful shrinking of the circle into nothingness should be resisted.
tl;dr -- optimism is for winners
Since when is Buddhism less optimistic than Atheism?
I didn't compare Buddhism to atheism. I was offering what Christian optimism has to say about the "will to nothingness," which is that by reveling in nothingness you are denying yourself the broadest potential of life for the sake of tranquility in a very confined space.
every religion has different beliefs about what happens after death. every person regardless of religious affiliation or faith has his/her own views on this subject. and we can think about life and try to philosophize everything and rationalize our lives, but........in the end there are 7 billion something people on this planet, everyone's life is just as valuable as anyone else's. everyone's views and thoughts are just as important as anyone's else's. each of us has feelings, thoughts, dreams, desires. but among the people alive now, we must remember the however many countless thousands and millions and billions(?) of people who have lived and died before us, and the countless many also who will live and die after we leave this planet. every day countless many people around the world die, and countless many are also born on the same day.
in our life we place value on ourself, on our inner thoughts, but anyone has similar thoughts. i always think how useless my own life is, when i think of the billions of people who have lived before i was born, 99% of those people have been born, lived, and died, and no one remembers their name, what they looked like, what their dreams were, what their thoughts were. the people we remember now are the famous ones who invented things, made things, discovered things, were scientists or scholars or contributed something to their society, and ultimately to the world. when you look at this way, that 99% of the people who have lived in the past have been forgotten (or never remembered in the first place) your own life seems insignificant. of course your own life is important to you, and your family and friends. but even everyday you see articles on cnn or yahoo "family killed in accident", "plane crash kills 100", "criminal kills child", and you see these stories and you "what bad people can kill like this", and you feel bad those people have died. but it has no real meaning on your life. people die everyday, even people who are young and have never had an opportunity to realize their potential.......and your own life seems so small by comparison.
so i think that thinking will get you nowhere. sun sets, gets dark, sun rises, morning. every day will go on the same as before. for 60 or 70 years we live in our own heads, our own minds, and we see the world through our own eyes, 1 out of 7 billion, not counting those who have lived in the past, and those who will be born in the future. and we try to make sense of everything we see and feel and touch and experience, with our unique brain and unique eyes and unique feelings. and we reach out to others and share our discoveries and experiences and thoughts and feelings. because we are all stuck together on this tiny rock floating in space, and our life is precious to us, because it is all we personally know, but to others our lives are not nearly as important as we may think
On May 26 2012 08:52 xeo1 wrote: death is the same way as before you were born. now, there is a chance we can be born again just as we did now, but we might be totally different organisms but still made up of particles of this universe or perhaps another. in order to prolong our current self, we have to rely on life extension through technology and medical advancements. I believe our best bet is to seek immortality that way. when we figure out how things work, we can gain control over them and bend them to our will.
Lol can't tell if trolling or not, but it's funny no matter.
On May 26 2012 07:12 furerkip wrote: Uhm, my own belief, and take it for what you will, is that everything around us has value.
Now, the assumption of the videos (that we start from nothing) doesn't quite fit what the world around us; in order to gain a reaction to something, you'd have to realize that the something is not nothing. If nothing is added to gain a reaction, then nothing follows; it's a simple identity problem you can find in math. Additions of nothing are meaningless.
Now, from that observation, I think that the world doesn't follow such a silly notion. For, if we are nothing, then we cannot produce anything besides the thing itself. Thus, things cannot lose mass nor gain it nor anything in terms of physical attributes nor can there be any change in any of their physical attributes either. To continue with this, I cannot actually move things around; that would change their spatial placement and thus a physical property of the object in question. To move these things would require an effort that could not be produced if I was in a state of nothingness.
Now, you may come to the conclusion that we are nothing because we are a minuscule part of the universe; however, that is actually incorrect given the assumption that we are part of the universe. To point this further, would you consider the building blocks of the universe to be unimportant? If we are identifying the universe as something rather than a non existent place, then no, these building blocks are important because without them the universe ceases to exist. If size mattered in the grand scheme of things, would bacteria not affect you in any way because they are smaller than you exponentially and almost do not exist in our relative terms of size? The size of you is unimportant; the universe has a requirement that you exist just so it be the universe it is.
I suppose, you could argue that we are in state of nothing so nothing is actually being produced in such an environment regardless, because nothing actually exists, so it fits the logical syllogism. However, an addition of nothing to nothing can only produce nothing, with no change from the original nothings being done since nothing doesn't exist in multiple properties, but only one. However, in our case, there are changes existing in our "world of nothing"; thus, the original state is not kept the same but rather different from the state it was in originally. And if you are in a different state that original, that is change, and so, regardless of whether the change is not of a significant value, we still denote that as not nothing or just simply put as something.
That's just me though.
I believe perhaps you misunderstood "nothingness"... It isn't about importance, I am as important as you are, as important as everything is, but in the end, as the video attempts to explain with the poetry contest, you aren't polishing a mirror at all, everything you attempt to "value" and "perfect" is polishing your mirror, whereas the mirror doesn't exist, so you simply don't have to polish it because no dust can come of it.
I find your perspective compelling though, but the question I ask is... What makes you decide what has "value"? What does have value? Perhaps the values you have, are what everyone believes are values, but aren't values at all?
My example is love, love is an irrational human function that forsakes logic and generally is just a connection on a chemical level that is near impossible to explain, and yet it happens... But love can be as brief as the snow melting from season to season to as infinite as the universe... Why does this value change?
Another thing, you discuss mass (losing and gaining) but what is mass? Where does it come from? Scientists believe the "big bang" (which is being highly debated) but generally the "higgs field" creates matter... What is the higgs field? If it is not "matter" (mass) than what, might that be?
All we can ask are questions, it is a very curious topic.
This is difficult xD, I hadn't thought so deeply about this.
But I'll try to answer you to the best of my ability.
The value change of love in regards to time is inconsequential to the argument, or rather, according to my definition of nothingness. If we notice a value change, we can regard that as a reaction between things that are not nothing. If we look at it from that standpoint, the effect and affection are of no importance in clarifying the nothingness state but are only important of deciding value. But that doesn't answer your question, probably only makes this rather annoying because it seems like I'm dodging. To tell you the truth, the only way I can imagine your question to be resolved according to the idea of something, because the idea of nothing won't answer your question I think, is if you think of the world in terms of vectors.
And not just some Cartesian plane vectors that follows Euclidean geometry or the vectors involved in Einstein's theory of relativity that exists 3 dimensionally under the affection of time. We have to think in the identity the world is filled with many, many dimensions; that is to say, vectors be drawn from almost anywhere to anywhere with the displacement of the vector being considered the "change." I can't quite say it perfectly, but just understand what I'm talking about is an incredibly complex matrix which I don't exactly know how to formulate into words.
In such a matrix, to plot it on a field, the points can be anywhere; vectors can point anywhere as well. However, due the fact there are so many dimensions, these points can cross each other or not at all be related; also, they can have differing amounts of magnitude. In such a field, we can denote 1 dimension as "love", and then know that things that exist/cross into that specific dimension, regardless of magnitude in terms of time, are and can be called "love."
Not quite sure if that answered your first question well enough, I'm hardly the man with all the answers, I'm just trying to give a good idea of what I think >_>.
As for the question about mass and its creation, it is relatively unsolvable to me. I wouldn't know much about the Higgs field as I'm not really much of a scientist in any regard lol. But I guess the only real response that I have is that we have to realize that the existence of mass can not come from nothing; that is the only thing we can really be sure of. For it to come from nothing would be to say that mass is nothing, and cannot thus be exchanged in any reaction, but I think we can say that's not true just from general observations.
I'll rebut one point, the rest seemed rather thought out and I don't want to stray too offtopic
""only response that I have is that we have to "realize"(poor choice in language, since all science isn't proofs but actually theories that are supported by evidence) that the existence of mass can not come from nothing"
Well, where does it come from? Matter is "something" and that is the "something" and if matter is "something", than the opposite, or non-matter, must be it's opposite nothing, should it not? If that's not the case, since we believe matter builds everything, than matter really isn't what we believed at all... So I conclude that matter is something, and comes from nothing. Similar in my mind, as when cutting a hologram, it produces two perfectly identical images.
On May 26 2012 08:33 mmp wrote: I would also recommend Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton on the subject of Christian optimism & paradox/mysticism:
Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that. Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also. Thus he believed that children were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth. He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man. The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand. The morbid logician seeks to make everything lucid, and succeeds in making everything mysterious. The mystic allows one thing to be mysterious, and everything else becomes lucid. The determinist makes the theory of causation quite clear, and then finds that he cannot say "if you please" to the housemaid. The Christian permits free will to remain a sacred mystery; but because of this his relations with the housemaid become of a sparkling and crystal clearness. He puts the seed of dogma in a central darkness; but it branches forth in all directions with abounding natural health. As we have taken the circle as the symbol of reason and madness, we may very well take the cross as the symbol at once of mystery and of health. Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature; but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and a contradiction, can extend its four arms for ever without altering its shape. Because it has a paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its arms to the four winds; it is a signpost for free travellers.
I recommend the read. He's a good writer and it moves quickly. (This isn't a religion plug. As an atheist I found it a sincerely-critical essay... far preferential to, say, Kierkegaard).
In a nutshell, he argues for optimism (by the circle metaphor, ever growing), that optimism is enabled by the mystical (unknowable), while arguing that other beliefs that attempt to explicate everything about the world ultimately reduce the world (to a very small circle). Where asceticism is concerned, he argues that the willful shrinking of the circle into nothingness should be resisted.
tl;dr -- optimism is for winners
Since when is Buddhism less optimistic than Atheism?
I didn't compare Buddhism to atheism. I was offering what Christian optimism has to say about the "will to nothingness," which is that by reveling in nothingness you are denying yourself the broadest potential of life for the sake of tranquility in a very confined space.
Please keep comments regarding Buddhism vs Christian beliefs aside... Read disclaimer please.
EDIT: This isn't mean't that you two aren't having a very polite discussion regarding it, but you are to PM each other with religion vs religion, I am not one to question ones faith for it isn't my right, and since this threads guidelines were set by me I thought I'd just elaborate on that.
On May 26 2012 07:12 furerkip wrote: Uhm, my own belief, and take it for what you will, is that everything around us has value.
Now, the assumption of the videos (that we start from nothing) doesn't quite fit what the world around us; in order to gain a reaction to something, you'd have to realize that the something is not nothing. If nothing is added to gain a reaction, then nothing follows; it's a simple identity problem you can find in math. Additions of nothing are meaningless.
Now, from that observation, I think that the world doesn't follow such a silly notion. For, if we are nothing, then we cannot produce anything besides the thing itself. Thus, things cannot lose mass nor gain it nor anything in terms of physical attributes nor can there be any change in any of their physical attributes either. To continue with this, I cannot actually move things around; that would change their spatial placement and thus a physical property of the object in question. To move these things would require an effort that could not be produced if I was in a state of nothingness.
Now, you may come to the conclusion that we are nothing because we are a minuscule part of the universe; however, that is actually incorrect given the assumption that we are part of the universe. To point this further, would you consider the building blocks of the universe to be unimportant? If we are identifying the universe as something rather than a non existent place, then no, these building blocks are important because without them the universe ceases to exist. If size mattered in the grand scheme of things, would bacteria not affect you in any way because they are smaller than you exponentially and almost do not exist in our relative terms of size? The size of you is unimportant; the universe has a requirement that you exist just so it be the universe it is.
I suppose, you could argue that we are in state of nothing so nothing is actually being produced in such an environment regardless, because nothing actually exists, so it fits the logical syllogism. However, an addition of nothing to nothing can only produce nothing, with no change from the original nothings being done since nothing doesn't exist in multiple properties, but only one. However, in our case, there are changes existing in our "world of nothing"; thus, the original state is not kept the same but rather different from the state it was in originally. And if you are in a different state that original, that is change, and so, regardless of whether the change is not of a significant value, we still denote that as not nothing or just simply put as something.
That's just me though.
I believe perhaps you misunderstood "nothingness"... It isn't about importance, I am as important as you are, as important as everything is, but in the end, as the video attempts to explain with the poetry contest, you aren't polishing a mirror at all, everything you attempt to "value" and "perfect" is polishing your mirror, whereas the mirror doesn't exist, so you simply don't have to polish it because no dust can come of it.
I find your perspective compelling though, but the question I ask is... What makes you decide what has "value"? What does have value? Perhaps the values you have, are what everyone believes are values, but aren't values at all?
My example is love, love is an irrational human function that forsakes logic and generally is just a connection on a chemical level that is near impossible to explain, and yet it happens... But love can be as brief as the snow melting from season to season to as infinite as the universe... Why does this value change?
Another thing, you discuss mass (losing and gaining) but what is mass? Where does it come from? Scientists believe the "big bang" (which is being highly debated) but generally the "higgs field" creates matter... What is the higgs field? If it is not "matter" (mass) than what, might that be?
All we can ask are questions, it is a very curious topic.
This is difficult xD, I hadn't thought so deeply about this.
But I'll try to answer you to the best of my ability.
The value change of love in regards to time is inconsequential to the argument, or rather, according to my definition of nothingness. If we notice a value change, we can regard that as a reaction between things that are not nothing. If we look at it from that standpoint, the effect and affection are of no importance in clarifying the nothingness state but are only important of deciding value. But that doesn't answer your question, probably only makes this rather annoying because it seems like I'm dodging. To tell you the truth, the only way I can imagine your question to be resolved according to the idea of something, because the idea of nothing won't answer your question I think, is if you think of the world in terms of vectors.
And not just some Cartesian plane vectors that follows Euclidean geometry or the vectors involved in Einstein's theory of relativity that exists 3 dimensionally under the affection of time. We have to think in the identity the world is filled with many, many dimensions; that is to say, vectors be drawn from almost anywhere to anywhere with the displacement of the vector being considered the "change." I can't quite say it perfectly, but just understand what I'm talking about is an incredibly complex matrix which I don't exactly know how to formulate into words.
In such a matrix, to plot it on a field, the points can be anywhere; vectors can point anywhere as well. However, due the fact there are so many dimensions, these points can cross each other or not at all be related; also, they can have differing amounts of magnitude. In such a field, we can denote 1 dimension as "love", and then know that things that exist/cross into that specific dimension, regardless of magnitude in terms of time, are and can be called "love."
Not quite sure if that answered your first question well enough, I'm hardly the man with all the answers, I'm just trying to give a good idea of what I think >_>.
As for the question about mass and its creation, it is relatively unsolvable to me. I wouldn't know much about the Higgs field as I'm not really much of a scientist in any regard lol. But I guess the only real response that I have is that we have to realize that the existence of mass can not come from nothing; that is the only thing we can really be sure of. For it to come from nothing would be to say that mass is nothing, and cannot thus be exchanged in any reaction, but I think we can say that's not true just from general observations.
I'll rebut one point, the rest seemed rather thought out and I don't want to stray too offtopic
""only response that I have is that we have to "realize"(poor choice in language, since all science isn't proofs but actually theories that are supported by evidence) that the existence of mass can not come from nothing"
Well, where does it come from? Matter is "something" and that is the "something" and if matter is "something", than the opposite, or non-matter, must be it's opposite nothing, should it not? If that's not the case, since we believe matter builds everything, than matter really isn't what we believed at all... So I conclude that matter is something, and comes from nothing. Similar in my mind, as when cutting a hologram, it produces two perfectly identical images.
Well, energy exists in places even if no matter exists. The whole idea of a changing state, like with a nuclear reaction where energy comes from the dissipation of matter, could be reversed in such a situation.
Uhm, your assumption is wrong however of negative matter; that would be the equivalent of negative time (time before time), which doesn't follow in a logical progression because nothing can exist before itself. The opposite of matter isn't nonexistence however; you cannot say the opposite of 100 is 0. The enthymeme of our argument is that the sector of the field where the points can be moved is the positive zone of all the dimensions, meaning you cannot go underneath the 0 point of any specific dimension.
I kind of will deny the existence of negative matter, but I think you do as well since it's ridiculous and has not been observable, but again it is impossible for that which has matter's opposite to be nothing, because it would have to be the equivalent mass of nothing of the object in question, which really doesn't make sense, you can't have a certain amount of nothing.
On May 26 2012 08:52 xeo1 wrote: death is the same way as before you were born. now, there is a chance we can be born again just as we did now, but we might be totally different organisms but still made up of particles of this universe or perhaps another. in order to prolong our current self, we have to rely on life extension through technology and medical advancements. I believe our best bet is to seek immortality that way. when we figure out how things work, we can gain control over them and bend them to our will.
Lol can't tell if trolling or not, but it's funny no matter.
On May 26 2012 08:40 RodrigoX wrote: This video is a very secular perspective. It is essentially making sense of the secular perspective concerning death. However, I think this is not where the argument should be. If you read further, I think an actual argument that will go somewhere will happen.
I'm going to try and be incredibly deep here.
Now, speaking in terms of philosophy, as a human being. You have lots of questions to answer. You have lots of unknowns to define. You have areas of anthropology, cosmology, ontology, epistemology, ethical questions, political questions, economic questions. You have things to figure out. Death is one of them.
Now, the question is, how do we define things like death, life, what is right and wrong, all the above areas. Well, how do we define anything? We define things based on comparisons. Right light, and dark, good and evil, everyone has heard this before. But it does go farther than opposites. How do I know what a BMW is? I compare it to a prius. I really know what a BMW is if I compare it to a horse, a baseball glove. I know if I take gasoline, and compare it to all the things that a car has, I would figure out that gasoline would make the car run. Right, the more things there are, the better I can define something.
So, therefore we argue, that if I was to know about something, It would be best to know one hundred percent of that something. And if everything, helps me define everything, I will only know 100 percent about one individual thing, if I know every single individual thing and use each one to compare them to each other.
So thus comes into question, is that where do "things" end. Now we come into realms where people should know something. Right, do we end things at the ends of human perception (the 5 senses (6 if you count body language) or do we go beyond the senses, and go into outside of human perception, the supernatural, where God, Nirvana among other religions would exist and end "things" there.
This is now where Im getting back to the first paragraph. People get very very confused when arguing or debating. You know, people debate whether gays should marry or not. Essentially that is going to get you nowhere, if a Christian is taking the identity and characteristics of God, and comparing them to the concept of homosexuality, and an atheist isn't. You have completely different definitions of the concept of homosexuality, and it is impossible to get anywhere if you are defining things differently.
So now, the question really is, where do "things" end. Essentially we just need to know about everything that exists. Right, if there are infinite things, we are never going to get a 100 percent definition of something. An "end" can happen anywhere. Lets say that there is just a proton and an atom in the universe, and that is all that exists. Right I would know 100 percent of the universe. I know a proton makes up an atom and an atom is made up of protons. That is all I could possibly know in the universe. And thats the goal really.
So to skip a few steps, we can say, that I can have 100 percent of a definition in a closed system. Right, so essentially, that I could just use my 5 senses, the limit of my human perception and succeed in knowing everything. I would know the right answer to all ethical questions because i compared each to everything in the universe, and what works and what doesn't. So we don't need more than our senses to have 100 percent of a definition. So saying that, why would we go outside of our senses, giving faith (which is not an optimal thing to do) that there is a supernatural plain of existence (a very complicated subject speaking of) that I can use to define things, when I could not do the action of faith, which is suboptimal to have a definitive answer to the question of death, life, and right and wrong.
Out of everyone here this is the comment I felt made the most sense for me. I don't really have an opinion on these kind e things I've always felt that in our current stage of the human experience we just don't have the proper tools to form an answer to many certain questions. It is the human experience to keep trying to find out though. As long as it takes people will always look for an answer. I felt this comment, however, made the most sense to me. I agree with everything you said. Well put.
On May 26 2012 07:12 furerkip wrote: Uhm, my own belief, and take it for what you will, is that everything around us has value.
Now, the assumption of the videos (that we start from nothing) doesn't quite fit what the world around us; in order to gain a reaction to something, you'd have to realize that the something is not nothing. If nothing is added to gain a reaction, then nothing follows; it's a simple identity problem you can find in math. Additions of nothing are meaningless.
Now, from that observation, I think that the world doesn't follow such a silly notion. For, if we are nothing, then we cannot produce anything besides the thing itself. Thus, things cannot lose mass nor gain it nor anything in terms of physical attributes nor can there be any change in any of their physical attributes either. To continue with this, I cannot actually move things around; that would change their spatial placement and thus a physical property of the object in question. To move these things would require an effort that could not be produced if I was in a state of nothingness.
Now, you may come to the conclusion that we are nothing because we are a minuscule part of the universe; however, that is actually incorrect given the assumption that we are part of the universe. To point this further, would you consider the building blocks of the universe to be unimportant? If we are identifying the universe as something rather than a non existent place, then no, these building blocks are important because without them the universe ceases to exist. If size mattered in the grand scheme of things, would bacteria not affect you in any way because they are smaller than you exponentially and almost do not exist in our relative terms of size? The size of you is unimportant; the universe has a requirement that you exist just so it be the universe it is.
I suppose, you could argue that we are in state of nothing so nothing is actually being produced in such an environment regardless, because nothing actually exists, so it fits the logical syllogism. However, an addition of nothing to nothing can only produce nothing, with no change from the original nothings being done since nothing doesn't exist in multiple properties, but only one. However, in our case, there are changes existing in our "world of nothing"; thus, the original state is not kept the same but rather different from the state it was in originally. And if you are in a different state that original, that is change, and so, regardless of whether the change is not of a significant value, we still denote that as not nothing or just simply put as something.
That's just me though.
I believe perhaps you misunderstood "nothingness"... It isn't about importance, I am as important as you are, as important as everything is, but in the end, as the video attempts to explain with the poetry contest, you aren't polishing a mirror at all, everything you attempt to "value" and "perfect" is polishing your mirror, whereas the mirror doesn't exist, so you simply don't have to polish it because no dust can come of it.
I find your perspective compelling though, but the question I ask is... What makes you decide what has "value"? What does have value? Perhaps the values you have, are what everyone believes are values, but aren't values at all?
My example is love, love is an irrational human function that forsakes logic and generally is just a connection on a chemical level that is near impossible to explain, and yet it happens... But love can be as brief as the snow melting from season to season to as infinite as the universe... Why does this value change?
Another thing, you discuss mass (losing and gaining) but what is mass? Where does it come from? Scientists believe the "big bang" (which is being highly debated) but generally the "higgs field" creates matter... What is the higgs field? If it is not "matter" (mass) than what, might that be?
All we can ask are questions, it is a very curious topic.
This is difficult xD, I hadn't thought so deeply about this.
But I'll try to answer you to the best of my ability.
The value change of love in regards to time is inconsequential to the argument, or rather, according to my definition of nothingness. If we notice a value change, we can regard that as a reaction between things that are not nothing. If we look at it from that standpoint, the effect and affection are of no importance in clarifying the nothingness state but are only important of deciding value. But that doesn't answer your question, probably only makes this rather annoying because it seems like I'm dodging. To tell you the truth, the only way I can imagine your question to be resolved according to the idea of something, because the idea of nothing won't answer your question I think, is if you think of the world in terms of vectors.
And not just some Cartesian plane vectors that follows Euclidean geometry or the vectors involved in Einstein's theory of relativity that exists 3 dimensionally under the affection of time. We have to think in the identity the world is filled with many, many dimensions; that is to say, vectors be drawn from almost anywhere to anywhere with the displacement of the vector being considered the "change." I can't quite say it perfectly, but just understand what I'm talking about is an incredibly complex matrix which I don't exactly know how to formulate into words.
In such a matrix, to plot it on a field, the points can be anywhere; vectors can point anywhere as well. However, due the fact there are so many dimensions, these points can cross each other or not at all be related; also, they can have differing amounts of magnitude. In such a field, we can denote 1 dimension as "love", and then know that things that exist/cross into that specific dimension, regardless of magnitude in terms of time, are and can be called "love."
Not quite sure if that answered your first question well enough, I'm hardly the man with all the answers, I'm just trying to give a good idea of what I think >_>.
As for the question about mass and its creation, it is relatively unsolvable to me. I wouldn't know much about the Higgs field as I'm not really much of a scientist in any regard lol. But I guess the only real response that I have is that we have to realize that the existence of mass can not come from nothing; that is the only thing we can really be sure of. For it to come from nothing would be to say that mass is nothing, and cannot thus be exchanged in any reaction, but I think we can say that's not true just from general observations.
I'll rebut one point, the rest seemed rather thought out and I don't want to stray too offtopic
""only response that I have is that we have to "realize"(poor choice in language, since all science isn't proofs but actually theories that are supported by evidence) that the existence of mass can not come from nothing"
Well, where does it come from? Matter is "something" and that is the "something" and if matter is "something", than the opposite, or non-matter, must be it's opposite nothing, should it not? If that's not the case, since we believe matter builds everything, than matter really isn't what we believed at all... So I conclude that matter is something, and comes from nothing. Similar in my mind, as when cutting a hologram, it produces two perfectly identical images.
Well, energy exists in places even if no matter exists. The whole idea of a changing state, like with a nuclear reaction where energy comes from the dissipation of matter, could be reversed in such a situation.
Uhm, your assumption is wrong however of negative matter; that would be the equivalent of negative time (time before time), which doesn't follow in a logical progression because nothing can exist before itself. The opposite of matter isn't nonexistence however; you cannot say the opposite of 100 is 0. The enthymeme of our argument is that the sector of the field where the points can be moved is the positive zone of all the dimensions, meaning you cannot go underneath the 0 point of any specific dimension.
I kind of will deny the existence of negative matter, but I think you do as well since it's ridiculous and has not been observable, but again it is impossible for that which has matter's opposite to be nothing, because it would have to be the equivalent mass of nothing of the object in question, which really doesn't make sense, you can't have a certain amount of nothing.
This is only if you speak of nothing as if you mean nothing... Nothing isn't simply nothing, it is similar to consciousness, you can't "grab" your consciousness and it isn't physically there... Yet it is there, we know it is. I find you have to open your mind to the idea to "infinity", and it's different ideas surrounding it.
On May 26 2012 08:40 RodrigoX wrote: This video is a very secular perspective. It is essentially making sense of the secular perspective concerning death. However, I think this is not where the argument should be. If you read further, I think an actual argument that will go somewhere will happen.
I'm going to try and be incredibly deep here.
Now, speaking in terms of philosophy, as a human being. You have lots of questions to answer. You have lots of unknowns to define. You have areas of anthropology, cosmology, ontology, epistemology, ethical questions, political questions, economic questions. You have things to figure out. Death is one of them.
Now, the question is, how do we define things like death, life, what is right and wrong, all the above areas. Well, how do we define anything? We define things based on comparisons. Right light, and dark, good and evil, everyone has heard this before. But it does go farther than opposites. How do I know what a BMW is? I compare it to a prius. I really know what a BMW is if I compare it to a horse, a baseball glove. I know if I take gasoline, and compare it to all the things that a car has, I would figure out that gasoline would make the car run. Right, the more things there are, the better I can define something.
So, therefore we argue, that if I was to know about something, It would be best to know one hundred percent of that something. And if everything, helps me define everything, I will only know 100 percent about one individual thing, if I know every single individual thing and use each one to compare them to each other.
So thus comes into question, is that where do "things" end. Now we come into realms where people should know something. Right, do we end things at the ends of human perception (the 5 senses (6 if you count body language) or do we go beyond the senses, and go into outside of human perception, the supernatural, where God, Nirvana among other religions would exist and end "things" there.
This is now where Im getting back to the first paragraph. People get very very confused when arguing or debating. You know, people debate whether gays should marry or not. Essentially that is going to get you nowhere, if a Christian is taking the identity and characteristics of God, and comparing them to the concept of homosexuality, and an atheist isn't. You have completely different definitions of the concept of homosexuality, and it is impossible to get anywhere if you are defining things differently.
So now, the question really is, where do "things" end. Essentially we just need to know about everything that exists. Right, if there are infinite things, we are never going to get a 100 percent definition of something. An "end" can happen anywhere. Lets say that there is just a proton and an atom in the universe, and that is all that exists. Right I would know 100 percent of the universe. I know a proton makes up an atom and an atom is made up of protons. That is all I could possibly know in the universe. And thats the goal really.
So to skip a few steps, we can say, that I can have 100 percent of a definition in a closed system. Right, so essentially, that I could just use my 5 senses, the limit of my human perception and succeed in knowing everything. I would know the right answer to all ethical questions because i compared each to everything in the universe, and what works and what doesn't. So we don't need more than our senses to have 100 percent of a definition. So saying that, why would we go outside of our senses, giving faith (which is not an optimal thing to do) that there is a supernatural plain of existence (a very complicated subject speaking of) that I can use to define things, when I could not do the action of faith, which is suboptimal to have a definitive answer to the question of death, life, and right and wrong.
Out of everyone here this is the comment I felt made the most sense for me. I don't really have an opinion on these kind e things I've always felt that in our current stage of the human experience we just don't have the proper tools to form an answer to many certain questions. It is the human experience to keep trying to find out though. As long as it takes people will always look for an answer. I felt this comment, however, made the most sense to me. I agree with everything you said. Well put.
I have to agree as well.
there had been a time when I decided to think about all these "deep" stuff until I realize that at the very end, you just have to pick one and believe, despite others might sound more believable to some others or even to yourself.
If anyone really care about how they would be like after they were dead, then you can know that at the minimal is our friends, enemies, family will all be affected. Which is why rather than thinking what will happen to us, it is better to think what kind of message we will pass onto them when we die.
(in buddism, nothingness doesn't mean you have nothing, but rather, because you have no desire, no differences, no wants, no thoughts, therefore you also have everything that you could ever "need, want, have, etc" which is why they say by having nothing, you have everything)
EPT
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