Philosophy Now Forum

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 11:34 am

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 10:16 am

seeds wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 9:54 pmI realize that you and I have covered this territory many times in the past,...

...but hey, if you're going to list the questionable creation stories of some of the more outspoken lunatics on this forum,...

(btw, thanks a heap, old bean, for lumping your old mucker in with the likes of Age)

Ah, well the lunacy is not in the ideas, it is in the conviction with which they are held. I can't prove that the ideas of Mr Can, Senad Dizdarevic, Age or any of the other prima facie nutters are wrong. What would make any of them actual nutters would be their insistence that only their interpretation could be true. I think the tentative way you present your ideas excludes you from that.

seeds wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 9:54 pm...then don't forget to include (in absentia) the millions of esteemed materialists who also offer-up highly questionable (and unprovable) creation stories.

Ya gotta understand that materialism is a very broad church. In its simplest form, it is just the belief that there is something other than ideas, and the working hypothesis of day to day physics is that the something is at least one quantum field. For practical purposes, a field is anywhere that a force can, at least in theory, be measured, generally by observing the effect on objects upon which the field has influence. Materialism is the belief that something other than ideas causes those effects, which seems entirely plausible, but no competent physicist will insist we really understand any of the mechanisms that result in fields such as electric, magnetic or gravitational, all of which we can measure very accurately without knowing what causes them.

seeds wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 9:54 pmI shan't bore you again with the details, but I am of course referring to the shallow thinkers who hold a religious-like "faith" in the notion that the unfathomable order of just our one little solar "system" alone...

(never mind the ordered status of the estimated two trillion galaxies of other solar "systems")

...can be attributed to the chance stumble-bumbling's of the blind and mindless meanderings of gravity and thermodynamics.

That's quite the unprovable "creation story," don't you think?

Yup. But then all creation stories are unprovable.

seeds wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 9:54 pmYet that is almost precisely what hardcore materialists must accept if they are going to profess their, again, "faith" in the creative abilities of blind and mindless materialism.

Oh, and don't forget to include the creation story of yet another "branch" of esteemed materialists...

(such as Sean Carroll, Max Tegmark, and David Deutsch, to name a few)

...who resolutely believe that millions of "copies" of you, and of me, and of all two trillion of the abovementioned galaxies, just now "sprang into existence"...

(as in "branched-off" of our universe)

...from the alleged interplay that took place between your eyes and that of the photons of light emitted from your computer screen in the time it took you to read this sentence.

Boy, that's a doozy, no?

Indeed, when it comes to "unprovable/utterly nonsensical" creation stories,...

...I suggest that my story, Age's story (whatever that is), the new guy's "karmicons" story, the Biblical story, the Koran story, the Hindu story, the Buddhist story, etc., etc.,...

...are all put to utter shame by the sheer outrageousness of the materialist's MWI story, yet you failed to mention it.

How come?
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For the same reason I didn't mention the ideas of Plato, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel or any of the thousands of possibilities explored by scientists and philosophers over the ages - there's just too many of them. But since you bring it up, yeah it's a doozy. Here's the thing I'm struggling with at the moment: if something is possible, what is there to stop it being actual? To put it another way, if you remove everything that exists, including any gods, have you eliminated possibility? I don't know the answer and while I understand Senad Dizdarevic argues that you can't create something out of nothing, and I suspect Mr Can would claim that without his god nothing is possible, my gut feeling, my aesthetic choice as I sometimes frame it, is that even if god is removed, or does't exist in the first place, possibility remains. Therefore there is something greater than any god and all versions of the ontological argument are unsound; unless possibility in some sense is god. Now, am I mad enough to think that is possible? Absolutely, but not so mad as to believe that because it is an irrefutable hypothesis, it is therefore true.
It's a fun idea though and it is a context that can make sense of the many worlds interpretation. If it is possible that possibility is in some sense 'god' and can create anything, what prevents 'god' from creating every world that is possible? Is a god that does that not greater than a god that can only create one imperfect world? How might a god create every possible world, you say? Well, one way is to create a universe in which every possible quantum state is real - if a particle can go left, then in one corner of the universe, it does so; in another, it goes right and, here's the bit that really freaks you out, in every possible corner, the particle goes in every possible direction. If a god that could do that exists, why would it not do so?

Possibility is even more interesting than probability. The thing about God is that He can and does choose which possibility must be the case.What He chooses is what religionists call His "Word" . excuse the capital letter "He" ---it's convenient for marking the personal pronoun not as an honorific. God is the Measurer par excellence. Measuring is what He does for a living. Believers accept God's measurements as the only possibility to be actualised.

*Daoism paints a good allegorical picture:- the multitude of possibilities is female and the actualising event is male .

*Similarly God impregnated Mary.

*Similarly Zeus impregnated Leda and others.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 11:34 am

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 10:16 amHere's the thing I'm struggling with at the moment: if something is possible, what is there to stop it being actual?...

...Possibility is even more interesting than probability. The thing about God is that He can and does choose which possibility must be the case.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 11:34 amWhat He chooses is what religionists call His "Word"...

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 12:07 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 11:34 am

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 10:16 amHere's the thing I'm struggling with at the moment: if something is possible, what is there to stop it being actual?...

...Possibility is even more interesting than probability. The thing about God is that He can and does choose which possibility must be the case.

In which case god is either limited by some constraints on possibility, and therefore not omnipotent; or, as you suggest here:

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 11:34 amWhat He chooses is what religionists call His "Word"...

Well then you get into the argument about free will. If god does all the choosing, what role do we play? See, one of the possibilities that make this bonkers idea sexy, is that it allows the possibility that a genuinely omnipotent and omnibenevolent god has created circumstances in which every soul has every possible choice available to them. Therefore, at least one iteration will make all the appropriate choices to please their god and make it through the Pearly Gates, if that is where you wish to go.
Think I'll pay a visit to the shrink now.

Some religionists, such as Al-Ash‘ari in Islam or William of Ockham in Christian scholasticism, deny that truth is an intrinsic attribute of God, treating it instead as dependent on God’s will.

Research credit ChatGPT

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 12:33 pmBut constraints are relative conditions so they don't apply to God.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 12:33 pmHe chooses what He sees to be good.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 12:50 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 12:33 pmBut constraints are relative conditions so they don't apply to God.

Ok. So God is unconstrained.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 12:33 pmHe chooses what He sees to be good.

Why could an unconstrained god not see more than one good?

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 10:40 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 6:05 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 10:36 am ...it seems to me you are claiming that while everyone experiences god, anyone whose interpretation is different to yours is condemned to whatever your particular version of hell is.

Well, will, there are "experiences" and "experiences." Let me suggest what I mean by that.

I know who Taylor Swift is. In that sense, I have "experienced" her. I have seen her likeness on TV. I have heard her music. I have even heard some rumours of her romantic attachments lately. They're all in the press. But would you say I have "experienced" Taylor Swift? In a sense, yes; I know she exists. But in another sense, no; I've never met her, have no real contact with her, don't even desire one, and have little use for her music and none for her personal life.

Which way are we using the word "experience" when we say men all have an "experience of God"? I suggest it's in the first way.

In which case you have no direct experience of 'God'.

Which brings us back to the argumentum ad populum you attempt here:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Oct 11, 2025 4:05 amThe evidence of God is around us. It's on every side, actually. I can see it, and so can almost the entire rest of the human race, at least in partial measure; for 92% of them believe in at least the likelihood of some sort of "god."

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 5:28 pmAll I pointed out was that one can claim different kinds of "experience." I didn't say I don't have one, or that you don't, perhaps -- how would I know about you, just as you wouldn't know about me? But not all "experiences" are equal. That much is for sure.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 12, 2025 3:49 amI find it personally amazing how hard people keep working to keep themselves from seeing it.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 5:28 pmI wasn't making an argument based on proportion of numbers, so no ad populum. I was just pointing out that the claim of the plausiblity of the existence of God is not at all a rare phenomenon, so the contrary argument -- say, that 'your experience doesn't count for most people,' or 'not enough people' have one or another kind of awareness of God doesn't really get much traction with reality.

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 11:39 am I submit that quantum physics has ousted the traditional transcendent, supernatural God and enthroned the totally immanent God---- who is of course a poetic way to describe Humanism.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 9:15 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 5:28 pmAll I pointed out was that one can claim different kinds of "experience." I didn't say I don't have one, or that you don't, perhaps -- how would I know about you, just as you wouldn't know about me? But not all "experiences" are equal. That much is for sure.

All experiences are equal in that they are experiences.

It really takes very little effort to accept that there are different potential causes for precisely the same experience; certainly less than it takes to restrict the possibilities to one.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 5:28 pmI wasn't making an argument based on proportion of numbers, so no ad populum. I was just pointing out that the claim of the plausiblity of the existence of God is not at all a rare phenomenon, so the contrary argument -- say, that 'your experience doesn't count for most people,' or 'not enough people' have one or another kind of awareness of God doesn't really get much traction with reality.

I disagree.

The reality is that even among people who profess to be Christians, the plausiblity of the existence of your god is a rare phenomenon.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 10:16 am Ya gotta understand that materialism is a very broad church.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 10:16 am In its simplest form, it is just the belief that there is something other than ideas,...

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 10:16 am But since you bring it [MWI] up, yeah it's a doozy. Here's the thing I'm struggling with at the moment: if something is possible, what is there to stop it being actual?...

...It's a fun idea though and it is a context that can make sense of the many worlds interpretation. If it is possible that possibility is in some sense 'god' and can create anything, what prevents 'god' from creating every world that is possible?

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 8:48 am

seeds wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 8:32 pm

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 7:27 pm

Hi, I asked AI Copilot for some of the sources:

Ancient Atheists and Non-Believers

1. University of Cambridge Study

Tim Whitmarsh, Professor of Greek Culture, argues that atheism is as natural to humans as religion. His research shows that ancient societies tolerated and even embraced atheistic thought, especially in polytheistic cultures like Greece and Rome.
“People in the ancient world did not always believe in the gods… atheists thrived in the polytheistic societies of the ancient world.”

Source: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/dis ... s-religion

2. Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World

This book by Tim Whitmarsh explores ancient Greek thinkers who rejected divine authority. Key figures include:

• Diagoras of Melos – openly mocked religion and was labeled “the first atheist.”
• Theodorus the Atheist – denied the existence of gods and was exiled for his views.
• Democritus – proposed a materialist universe without divine intervention.

Source: https://www.worldhistory.org/review/180 ... ent-world/

3. Wikipedia: History of Atheism

The entry outlines how explicit atheism dates back to ancient India, China, and Greece. Philosophers like Charvaka in India and Xunzi in China rejected supernatural beliefs.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_atheism

The karmicons, energy beings, and humans from higher dimensions, and members of the Evil Karmic Organization, believed that the universe is in balance between Good and Evil. They created our part of the cosmos in a dialectical form of dual opposition - yin-yang, white and black, theists and atheists, to establish the "balance" between opposing forces.

They were Evil, so they made a step further and intentionally created conflicts between the oppositions to produce negative energy. Read more about the Karmic Organization here: https://god-doesntexist.com/the-karmic- ... the-truth/

The karmicons also created all religions, gods, and faiths, including Yahweh, Jesus (who never existed as a real person), angels, and Satan and demons. If you start observing the world, you will see this dual pattern. If you want to check my statement, I suggest you learn lucid dreaming and use it to meet inhabitants of other planets you dream with every night.

They will tell you that I am telling the truth, and that incarnations are ended. What does that mean? People from the higher planets were forcibly incarnated into people from lower planets. Earth is the lowest, and that is the reason we didn't incarnate. Before incarnation, the karmicons created plans and karmic scripts for the incarnants with details from birth to death. They predetermined everything - thoughts, feelings and emotions, words, and acts. All of them.

Part of the karmic script was also religious orientation. Religious believers on Earth believe in god because the karmicons programmed them to believe. The atheist on Earth doesn't believe in god because the karmicons did not program them to believe in him.

Learn to lucid dream and ask people from other planets about incarnations - if they were forced to go and if they have ended. Here is the article with explanations and exercises: https://god-doesntexist.com/lucid-dream ... in-dreams/

If you want, I will assist you gladly.

By the way, in my book series, I present three objective pieces of evidence and one subjective, experiential. I have decades-long and regular communication with the karmicons, and I know they created all religions, gods, and faiths as part of the incarnational scripts for incarnants who were forcibly incarnated on lower humans' baby bodies.

Religious believers believe that their god movie is real, while I know that it is just a movie, as I know the scriptwriters and directors who created them and their movie.

Remember The Matrix? That's it, a planetary Simulation.

Luckily, the karmicons' Drama is running out, and the day is coming when we, the new Cosmic Administration, https://god-doesntexist.com/cosmic-administration/, will present you the Truth, together with material evidence and concrete persons that created Earth, and in our case, all of its' religions, gods, and faiths, and programmed believers to believe in fairy tales.

Greetings Senad and welcome to the PN loon asylum.

I see that you've already met a few of my fellow patients.

In order to save you from losing a few precious brain cells, I was going to warn you about patient Age who seems to believe that he is channeling an incorporeal intelligence who inspired the writing of the Bible way back when,...

...however,...

(and I mean you no offense, for it would be hypocritical of me [based on my own whacky assertions] not to be open-minded to all possibilities)

...I nevertheless see that you, with this "karmicons" business, could give Age a run for his money.

Again, I don't mean to come off as ridiculing or summarily dismissing your claim,...

...however, if you are going to insist that it is impossible for God to have come into existence from "nothingness" or "somethingness" or whatever it was that gave rise to his (her/its) being,...

...then perhaps if you could give a quick explanation as to how (and from what) these "karmicons" came into existence, it would help clarify your argument.

(P.S., for future reference, if you are going to quote Copilot, or any other chatbot, it would help if you clearly indicate where the quote ends.)
_______

Thank you, you are very kind.



Age has already started to deconstruct his god, so he is halfway to becoming an atheist. He said that his god didn't create the universe from nothing, and that he is not eternal. I will recap his, for most of the Christians, heretic position, in another post.

I understand him and his obsessive fixation that god exists. He is not the only one. Religion is a madhouse, and faith is a mental illness.

We can see the harmful effects of karmic programming everywhere. Besides religious believers, we also have violent persons, sadistic torturers, and addicts who are literally destroying themselves, thinking that that is good for them. They even pay for their poison and financing their illness.

A person who impersonates god and gives Age a false impression of being the "God's chosen one" is just a human from another planet, a karmicon, a karmic con, who is executing part of the karmic script for Age. He is two to three meters above and in front of him, watching him constantly, hearing and feeling everything Age experiences.

I know that my statements about karmicons sound like fantasy. I don't expect you to believe me on my word. We don't need another religion.

That is why I offer a way to check and confirm them.

Every science has its own research methods. Philosophers think. Astronomers observe. Architects digg.

Luckily, and for the time present, there is a superb and easy method to meet inhabitants of other planets and check my statements. Learn to lucid dream and personally meet people from other planets you already dream with every night. Here is the explanation and exercises: https://god-doesntexist.com/lucid-dream ... in-dreams/

I will gladly assist you with your training and research.

There are millions of lucid dreamers on Earth, but they use it for fun, flying, jumping, and playing. There is also the Monroe Institute researching this ability for decades.

Learn and use it to meet inhabitants from other planets. Ask them the questions from my article, and you will realize what is going on and understand that I am telling the truth.

I did not say that "it is impossible for God to have come into existence from "nothingness" or "somethingness" or whatever it was that gave rise to his (her/its) being".

I said that god as Creator of the Universe does not exist because that is not possible - to create Something out of nothing is not possible.

The karmicons, energy beings, and humans from higher dimensions and planets came into existence the same as everybody else.

Existence, not Creation, is eternal. That means that it was never created and will never be destroyed. That also means that everything and everybody in Existence is also eternal.

We never came into existence; we are eternally present in our timeline - in our part of Existence. In one moment, we became conscious (partially during the pregnancy, and fully after birth), and in another moment we lost consciousness (in the Karmic System, they transformed lower humans to their incarnants - humans from the higher planets who were forcibly incarnated into them - after one-week life review on computer tablets - and they lost their personal consciousness, and "died" the second death.

Or in short, people who died on Earth were alive and conscious one week before the karmicons killed them again and transformed them into their incarnants. They left their physical body on Earth and continue in their energy body. That is the same action we perform every night when we dream, exiting the physical body with our energy body.

Existence is Eternal, think about the implications ...

I usually mark quotes; in the above case, it ends with the "Source:".

seeds wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 9:53 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 11:39 am I submit that quantum physics has ousted the traditional transcendent, supernatural God and enthroned the totally immanent God---- who is of course a poetic way to describe Humanism.

Quite the contrary, Belinda.

Quantum physics (at least from my reading of it) has given credence to Bishop Berkeley's concept of the universe being the MIND of God.

And that's because if it is indeed true that the universe is the MIND of a higher consciousness, then the fundamental substance from which the phenomenal contents of that higher MIND is created should resemble "mind-stuff," in that it should be able to be formed into absolutely anything "IMAGINABLE."

And that is precisely what quantum physics (quantum mechanics) implies regarding the substance from which the stars, planets, and our bodies and brains are created.

And just to be clear, that discovery no more zeros-in on what God truly is than would an accurate (scientific assessment) of the substance from which our own thoughts and dreams are created would provide us with a clear understanding of what the "thinker" of thoughts, and the "dreamer" of dreams truly is,...

...for in both cases, the actual ontological status of what both we and God truly are,...

(as in what our "I Am-nesses"/"souls" truly are)

..."transcends" the substance that the "I Am-nesses" use to create what we call "reality."
_______

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 9:59 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 9:15 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 5:28 pmAll I pointed out was that one can claim different kinds of "experience." I didn't say I don't have one, or that you don't, perhaps -- how would I know about you, just as you wouldn't know about me? But not all "experiences" are equal. That much is for sure.

All experiences are equal in that they are experiences.

That's like saying, "All dogs are equal, in that they are dogs." Even if true, it misses a whole lot. There are chihuahuas, and there are great danes. There are small experiences, and there are profound ones.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 9:59 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 9:15 pmIt really takes very little effort to accept that there are different potential causes for precisely the same experience; certainly less than it takes to restrict the possibilities to one.

Causes are always limited to what is both available to and capable of causing the phenomenon in the first place. Sometimes, that's only one thing.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 9:59 pmSometimes it's a couple. Usually, there's a balance of probabilities that makes one much more probable than the other. But all empirical knowing, being a matter of data+faith, involves a potential margin of indecision -- but often, that margin is not very large.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 12, 2025 3:49 amIt's hard to discuss in vague terms, as you are now doing. In specific cases, it's usually easy to see which is which.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 12, 2025 3:49 amYou can know him from the natural world, from your own nature, from conscience, and from revelation...all of which he's made available to everybody.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 6:05 pmAll men know He exists, that Creation displays his handiwork, that morality is real, and so forth.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 3:01 pmSo an Atheist can only insist there's no God by also insisting nobody has ever had any genuine experience of God -- never anyone, in any religion or by any miracle, and never in history, even once.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 5:28 pmAtheists are a statistically rare breed, actually; and their lack of experience would not tell against the experiences of others, because the fact that one man says "I never experienced that" doesn't imply somebody else didn't.

seeds wrote: ↑Fri Oct 17, 2025 2:32 am

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 10:16 am Ya gotta understand that materialism is a very broad church.

As is spirituality.

What's your point?

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 10:16 am In its simplest form, it is just the belief that there is something other than ideas,...

seeds wrote: ↑Fri Oct 17, 2025 2:32 amNo, old bean, in its simplest form...

(at least in regard to the "hardcore" version of materialism)