Philosophy Now Forum

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 12:00 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 11:23 am

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 10:06 am
How did he prove that there is a thought?

By having one.

Like having hands?

I think, according to Descartes, one can be fooled into thinking one has hands when one does not, however one can never be fooled into thinking one doesn't exist when one has thoughts. Hence, I believe he described us as "thinking things" IIRC. (Or at least I know that's true of me, for the most part.)

From Senad’s essay on Lucid Dreaming:

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:25 am In lucid dreams, you will learn many interesting and important facts:

1. We are not alone in our cosmos.

2. People are living on other planets.

3. Before the new Cosmic Administration started, our cosmos was controlled by the Evil Karmic organization.

4. On all the planets in the cosmos, which numbered about 20,000,000 (in words: twenty million), life was similarly hard as it is on Earth. People were energetically, emotionally, and physically limited, had sick, damaged, and deformed bodies, poverty, crime, violence, war, suffering, and death. The Karmic people divided people into the 1% Elite and the 99% mob.

5. People from other planets were forcibly incarnated.

6. A few years ago, we abolished the Karmic organization and all its Evil, including religions and imaginary gods.

We gave fantastic gifts to all inhabitants on the new planets:

A: A new, young, healthy, and beautiful body.

B: A free estate with a house of their choice, equipped with state-of-the-art space technology, which on Earth you can’t even read about in SF (Science Fiction) literature or watch in SF movies.

C: New partners to all singles, and to those who were not satisfied with their current partners.

D: A million euros (dollars) in new currency to everyone aged 18 and over.

E: We brought back to life all the good dead people (after the liberation of the Earth, soon, we will also bring back to life the bad people, but as 5-year-old children, with different names and bodies).

F: The opportunity to educate, create with digital technology, and do entrepreneurial business, even without a company.

And much more, which I write about in my book series Letters to Palkies Messages to My Friends on Another Planet.

You can check and confirm my claims with lucid dreaming in dream worlds during your cosmic travel and meeting with inhabitants of other planets.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:26 pm From Senad’s essay on Lucid Dreaming:

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:25 am In lucid dreams, you will learn many interesting and important facts:

1. We are not alone in our cosmos.

2. People are living on other planets.

3. Before the new Cosmic Administration started, our cosmos was controlled by the Evil Karmic organization.

4. On all the planets in the cosmos, which numbered about 20,000,000 (in words: twenty million), life was similarly hard as it is on Earth. People were energetically, emotionally, and physically limited, had sick, damaged, and deformed bodies, poverty, crime, violence, war, suffering, and death. The Karmic people divided people into the 1% Elite and the 99% mob.

5. People from other planets were forcibly incarnated.

6. A few years ago, we abolished the Karmic organization and all its Evil, including religions and imaginary gods.

We gave fantastic gifts to all inhabitants on the new planets:

A: A new, young, healthy, and beautiful body.

B: A free estate with a house of their choice, equipped with state-of-the-art space technology, which on Earth you can’t even read about in SF (Science Fiction) literature or watch in SF movies.

C: New partners to all singles, and to those who were not satisfied with their current partners.

D: A million euros (dollars) in new currency to everyone aged 18 and over.

E: We brought back to life all the good dead people (after the liberation of the Earth, soon, we will also bring back to life the bad people, but as 5-year-old children, with different names and bodies).

F: The opportunity to educate, create with digital technology, and do entrepreneurial business, even without a company.

And much more, which I write about in my book series Letters to Palkies Messages to My Friends on Another Planet.

You can check and confirm my claims with lucid dreaming in dream worlds during your cosmic travel and meeting with inhabitants of other planets.

Reminds me of the old Steven Wright joke: "I woke up this morning and discovered that everything in my room had been stolen and replaced with an exact duplicate."

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:28 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:26 pm From Senad’s essay on Lucid Dreaming:

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:25 am In lucid dreams, you will learn many interesting and important facts:

1. We are not alone in our cosmos.

2. People are living on other planets.

3. Before the new Cosmic Administration started, our cosmos was controlled by the Evil Karmic organization.

4. On all the planets in the cosmos, which numbered about 20,000,000 (in words: twenty million), life was similarly hard as it is on Earth. People were energetically, emotionally, and physically limited, had sick, damaged, and deformed bodies, poverty, crime, violence, war, suffering, and death. The Karmic people divided people into the 1% Elite and the 99% mob.

5. People from other planets were forcibly incarnated.

6. A few years ago, we abolished the Karmic organization and all its Evil, including religions and imaginary gods.

We gave fantastic gifts to all inhabitants on the new planets:

A: A new, young, healthy, and beautiful body.

B: A free estate with a house of their choice, equipped with state-of-the-art space technology, which on Earth you can’t even read about in SF (Science Fiction) literature or watch in SF movies.

C: New partners to all singles, and to those who were not satisfied with their current partners.

D: A million euros (dollars) in new currency to everyone aged 18 and over.

E: We brought back to life all the good dead people (after the liberation of the Earth, soon, we will also bring back to life the bad people, but as 5-year-old children, with different names and bodies).

F: The opportunity to educate, create with digital technology, and do entrepreneurial business, even without a company.

And much more, which I write about in my book series Letters to Palkies Messages to My Friends on Another Planet.

You can check and confirm my claims with lucid dreaming in dream worlds during your cosmic travel and meeting with inhabitants of other planets.

Reminds me of the old Steven Wright joke: "I woke up this morning and discovered that everything in my room had been stolen and replaced with an exact duplicate."

What Senad reminds me of is someone trying to sell a book.

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 8:32 am

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:51 am "The universe" you talk about is, in fact, just a cosmos, one of many in Existence.

Do not multiply entities beyond necessity. Multiverse is the standard sleight of hand for people who reject simpler explanations for the universe.
If you can't explain the origin of a single universe; you are certainly going to have a harder time explaining the origin of an Existence full of cosmoses.

Precisely!
_______

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 10:03 am

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Mon Oct 27, 2025 8:42 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Mon Oct 27, 2025 7:26 pm Cogito ergo sum.

That means, "I think, therefore I am." I'm not sure how you think that raises an issue. You'll have to spell it out.

Descartes failed to prove anything other than that there is thought.

Far be it from me to interrupt your attempts to set IC straight,...

(and making it clear that we're being quite generous by using the word "prove" here)

...but, no, Descartes did not prove the existence of "thought," he proved the existence of the "thinker" of thought, or the "I Am."

Indeed, "thought" (mental imaging energy) is what the "I Am" shapes into anything it desires.

Anyway, carry on.
_______

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Oct 27, 2025 6:49 pm

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Mon Oct 27, 2025 5:47 pm If you want to learn the truth about life on other planets, read my article on lucid dreaming, learn it, and check it out for yourself:

A man I knew who was involved in the Castaneda scene in LA was a master at lucid dreaming according to his own stories. He was very good at it. But he told me that in the end one sees ‘there’ what one creates through the imagination faculty.

Yes!

And if it is possible that my own whacky theory is true, then what Senad Dizdarevic doesn't realize is that if we are each imbued with the potential of being able to create our own universe out of the fabric of our very own minds,...

...then fabricating an elaborate "story" about meeting "Karmicons" and visiting other planets in one's lucid dreams, is simply a small sampling of that potential.

I don't know if there was any lucid dreaming involved, but people like Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and J.R.R. Tolkien, just to name a few, were certainly good at tapping-in to that infinite creative potential that we all possess.

Senad will no doubt defend his belief in the veracity of his, again, "story" about "Karmicons," but that's because (unless he's just messing with us) he has a deep emotional investment in it.

His "series" probably reveals that he's a pretty good (maybe even excellent) storyteller,...

...however, he's simply not awake enough (not conscious enough) to realize that the truth of reality is far more wonderful, and beautiful, and natural, and perfect for everyone than what his Sci-Fi fantasy suggests.

And what is truly ironic about his insistence that God cannot exist (shades of VA), is that he himself is a potential God who will create and preside over his own personal universe (his own personal "cosmos," to use his word).
_______

seeds wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 6:28 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Mon Oct 27, 2025 6:49 pm

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Mon Oct 27, 2025 5:47 pm If you want to learn the truth about life on other planets, read my article on lucid dreaming, learn it, and check it out for yourself:

A man I knew who was involved in the Castaneda scene in LA was a master at lucid dreaming according to his own stories. He was very good at it. But he told me that in the end one sees ‘there’ what one creates through the imagination faculty.

Yes!

And if it is possible that my own whacky theory is true, then what Senad Dizdarevic doesn't realize is that if we are each imbued with the potential of being able to create our own universe out of the fabric of our very own minds,...

...then fabricating an elaborate "story" about meeting "Karmicons" and visiting other planets in one's lucid dreams, is simply a small sampling of that potential.

I don't know if there was any lucid dreaming involved, but people like Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and J.R.R. Tolkien, just to name a few, were certainly good at tapping-in to that infinite creative potential that we all possess.

Senad will no doubt defend his belief in the veracity of his, again, "story" about "Karmicons," but that's because (unless he's just messing with us) he has a deep emotional investment in it.

His "series" probably reveals that he's a pretty good (maybe even excellent) storyteller,...

...however, he's simply not awake enough (not conscious enough) to realize that the truth of reality is far more wonderful, and beautiful, and natural, and perfect for everyone than what his Sci-Fi fantasy suggests.

And what is truly ironic about his insistence that God cannot exist (shades of VA), is that he himself is a potential God who will create and preside over his own personal universe (his own personal "cosmos," to use his word).
_______

To be successful the fantasy genre must resound with people's real feelings and loyalties.

seeds wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 6:28 pm And what is truly ironic about his insistence that God cannot exist (shades of VA), is that he himself is a potential God who will create and preside over his own personal universe (his own personal "cosmos," to use his word).

Srila Prabhupada (the former guru-leader of the Hari Krishnas) wrote a book: Easy Journey to Other Planets. The thesis is, of course, completely Vedic: that there are infinite worlds and we bind ourselves to ‘worlds’ through laws of karma. Similarly, and this is a primary tenet of yoga-philosophy, we can ‘unbind’ ourselves from this specific world and reincarnate on “higher planets”. In fact there has been a sort of exodus from our strife-ridden planet by wise, elevated souls who use spiritual techniques to break the bonds (to entrapment in this world).

The actual fact which I try to bring to Immanuel’s attention is that, stripped down to its basics, Christianity presents an abbreviated form of the same paradigm. Just as with Vaisnavism (the worship of Vishnu: that aspect or manifestation of God that always incarnates in “fallen” worlds and offers a salvific path and teaching) this is quite precisely the picture that Christianity presents.

In Immanuel’s system the fallen one has to surrender to the savior and, as a result, the subject is ‘discipled’ on invisible planes and, after death, ushered into an Eternal World.

The Vaishnavas operate in the same paradigm except that it is embellished by 100 times. And just as Christians say that the second person of the Trinity is, somehow, God himself, similarly Krishna, Arjuna’s friend, is actually a manifestation of Brahma (who is the author of Being and Existence).

The object, however, in genuine Vaishnavism is not to ‘transcend the world’ and re-merge with Brahma, but rather to become pure devotees of Krishna and serve Krishna in whatever circumstance, or world, or body, in which one finds oneself.

Now, Castaneda is another animal altogether. I doubt that Senad is aware of the degree to which Castaneda ran an extremely cult-like operation in LA which I had some peripheral experience with because a Mexican friend of mine became a member of CC’s inner circle and was the “Blue Scout” (sister figure of the “Orange Scout”).

(For this to make any sense you’d have to have read CC’s books …)

(Also Amy Wallace, the daughter of the author Irving Wallace, was one of CC’s first devotees. She wrote a book about her experience but sadly died quite young. My other friend, “DL” the dreamer, lamented for years his entire association with CC who he regarded as a super-manipulator and immensely destructive. Castaneda is a fascinating figure and one must become familiar with the cultural guru figures, and the books they wrote, to understand post-Christianity (in America in any case).

However, I get the sense that Senad has made something out of dreaming that is distinct, personal and maybe idiosyncratic except he seems to have incorporated “flyers” which I believe correspond to his Karmicons (which correspond to demon-entities and perverted intelligence in other systems).

(I must admit that my ears perked up when the prospect of being assigned a hot new girlfriend/companion was dangled before my carnal greed. I’ve gotta have more than a mere ‘million’ dollars though. A Cosmic credit card filled with unlimited funds, good in this and any of the 20 million worlds is in fact necessary given the rate of universal inflation …)

Belinda wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 7:21 pm To be successful the fantasy genre must resound with people's real feelings and loyalties.

You may be right, but do you have "real feelings" about Hobbits, and Elves, and Dwarfs, and Orcs, and Trolls, and Nazgûl, and Dragons, and magical rings?

Do those "resound with your loyalties" (whatever that means)?

To be successful in the fantasy genre you simply need to create epic stories that carry us off into new and interesting worlds as an escape from the doldrums of either a mundane existence, or that of a terrible existence, or, more likely, just for funzies.
_______

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 7:45 pm

seeds wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 6:28 pm And what is truly ironic about his insistence that God cannot exist (shades of VA), is that he himself is a potential God who will create and preside over his own personal universe (his own personal "cosmos," to use his word).

Srila Prabhupada (the former guru-leader of the Hari Krishnas) wrote a book: Easy Journey to Other Planets. The thesis is, of course, completely Vedic: that there are infinite worlds and we bind ourselves to ‘worlds’ through laws of karma.

Ah yes, here we are dealing with alternate versions of "old paradigm" nonsense.

Okay then...

According to AI Overview...

Srila Prabhupada taught that the reincarnating soul, or jiva-atma, is eternal and therefore has no initial point of creation or existence. He based this on Vedic texts, particularly the Bhagavad Gita, which describes the soul as unborn, primeval, and indestructible.

Instead of focusing on when the soul was created, Prabhupada addressed the related question of how the eternal soul enters the material world. He explained that this happens due to the soul's inherent free will, which allows it to turn away from its original, blissful relationship with Krishna (God) and desire material enjoyment.

First of all, what kind of a knuckleheaded soul (assuming an incorporeal entity has a head) would willfully turn away from "eternal bliss" in order to enter into a hellish material world?

Secondly, how did the incorporeal souls - find out - about, and thus come to "...desire material enjoyment..."?

Thirdly, by what means...

(as in how, and out of what, not to mention, why)

...did Krishna (God) create "material" worlds that trap souls?

And lastly (for now), how many of these reincarnating (non-created) eternal souls exist?
_______

$29.99 per question or a flat fee of $49.99 for all. What is your preferred payment processor? (CashApp, Venmo, Zelle, Paypal and all major card accepted.)

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 11:34 pm $29.99 per question or a flat fee of $49.99 for all. What is your preferred payment processor? (CashApp, Venmo, Zelle, Paypal and all major card accepted.)

I'm a little short on cash right now.

Will you take a small chicken and 3 jellybeans?
_______

Skepdick wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 8:32 am

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:51 am Energy can't be created or destroyed.

Can numbers be created or destroyed?

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:51 am That means that there is a constant amount of Energy.

That means that there is a constant amount of numbers.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:51 am That means that it is not infinite.

Non-sequitur. Constant doesn't imply non-infinite. Nor does it imply finite.

It only implies an unchanging quantity. Whether that quantity is finite or infinite is a separate concern.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:51 am Yes, I agree with you about the specific logical framework. In this case, it is Existence.

Existence is not a logical framework. That's a map-teritory confusion.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:51 am It was never created

So it didn't begin to exist? So it's infinite in the time dimension? Contradiction.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:51 am which means that nobody created it, which means that god as creator does not exist. There is no need to search for god to prove that he does not exist. He does not exist because he can't exist.

From a contradiction any conclusion follows.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:51 am Existence was not created, which means that it is eternal.

So it's infinite. Which you said is impossible.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:51 am "The universe" you talk about is, in fact, just a cosmos, one of many in Existence.

Do not multiply entities beyond necessity. Multiverse is the standard sleight of hand for people who reject simpler explanations for the universe.
If you can't explain the origin of a single universe; you are certainly going to have a harder time explaining the origin of an Existence full of cosmoses.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 28, 2025 5:51 am In our cosmos, there are many sub-cosmoses or dimensions. When the scientists say that the "universe" is 14 billion years old, they in fact talk about the age of just one of the many sub-cosmoses.

No, they don't. They are talking about the one and only universe we know of. The one we live in. Otherwise known as "Existence".

You are working really really hard to lie to yourself. You have started with your desired conclusion (God doesn't exist), then you have invented ad hoc metaphysical structures (multiverse, sub-cosmoses) to avoid problems, redefining standard terms when convenient. Even Ignoring your own contradictions.

You are a master class in motivated reasoning. What you are doing is atheist apologetics.

Numbers are part of the Energy part of Existence; they are eternal, the same as Existence. That means that they can't be created or destroyed.

Yes, there is a constant amount of numbers.

I use the term "constant" in the meaning of "always the same", non-changing, and finite. Energy is finite, so everything in it is also finite or constant or non-changing its quantity.

Maybe is confusing for you, but for me is very clear. Existence is a map (a concept) and a territory (a Reality) at the same time, as it is Everything there is.

Existence was never created, which means that it has no beginning.

You are mixing eternity with infinity. First is the temporal term, the second is spatial.

Existence has two parts: Energy = matter is finite, Pure Awareness as a non-material superstate is infinite. Both parts are eternal in time, in the eternal Now, with different time zones inside the Energy part.

Present my contradiction for your conclusion.

Existence (universe and multiverse) has no origin; it is eternal.