"I don't need to disprove it as I'm the one who is thinking clearly and rationally about the situation."
Well, I guess you stick to the conventional school of thought and like just the popular ones going around in the idea box. Just because its so damn obvious that the body dies you think your logic is foolproof. But the moon's not made of cheese once you've used your telescope and looked closer.
I've argued in several other places that the brain can infact be merely an organ that processes our conciousness and thoughts, rather than its orignation. That's why a damaged brain may not retain identity though the person exists. 'We' is more than our brains or our bodies.
The evidence is not so tangible. I guess you get this sense of beleif that tells you this isn't it, there's more you gotta work for, there's a reason for all this hardship and heartbreak through which you you have to live your ideals and be a better man. But the beleif comes first, the answers and 'evidence' follows, possibly as result of your beliefs, but that's your human capacity for understanding.
Well, glad that you hypothetically did consider that you'd look back. "I missed absolutely nothing, because I was the one taking full advantage of the ONE chance we get to live our lives." Humor me, how's that?
Excellent argument. Thanks for your wonderful answer, I agree with you completely.
However, I think you'll agree with me when I say that all of the scientific knowledge we have today is insufficient to prove or disprove just about anything. A lot remains explained. And theories are THEORIES, not necessarily facts that can't be refined further, or are 100.0% correct.
Which brings me to the question of my next debate. I hope you'll participate.
Science fiction or religious belief, whatever. Not that these futuristic, unconventional or unpopular concepts eventually do come to be accepted eventually. People would've scoffed you had you told them your conciousness resides in the brain before it wass scientifically discovery.
I argue that the brain is part of the husk you call the body. Our 'being' is really the soul that occupies the body, using its lungs to breathe, its heart to contniue functioning, its brain to think and so on. But once the soul has vacated the 'husk' as you so aptly call it, the soul continues its existence, perhaps outside the physical realm.
'Empty husk of human tissue'? If you think so, you should pull the plug on all those unfortunate people with brain damage in comas etc.
I didn't ask if our bodies continue to exist, I said we. Your analogy of the Pepsi bottle is inappropriate as it refers to the Pepsi bottle not, for example, the glass which continues to exist in another form.
I agree with you. Science does hold a high regard for me and always has. I was trying to say that sceintific analysis is independant of the truth, which may or may not be explained through scientific reasoning at this point of time. I am also trying to make a statement that you shouldn't fall back on science to provide you with all the answers, its boundaries will confine you to being a robot.
:P you're misconstrued perceptions says a lot about what you feel about muzzies. You don't like 'em.
I don't like you 'cos good guy you ain't. (Not necessarily cos you hate muzzies - I don't like the blow up types myself).
You're right: the Koran and Islam is all about hatred, violence, bloodshed - that only Islam can overcome. Islam is a religion of peace and truth, which is the bane of the evil hordes that try so desperately to shroud it.
If you really wanted the truth, you would find the answers in history. But what you want is quite different.
O, sorry, you all thought mr. muzzie was making a death threat.
Btw, I'm not muzzie, not exactly. I do believe in Allah tho, and I do believe you all should fear HIM, 'cos Muhammed was his messenger, and you're being quite impolite (to put it mildly) with your opinions. (If I have something against the pope, I won't expect Christians to appreciate it when I get cheeky. They'll all tell me the same thing: that you're goin down boy).
Anyway, big deal, I guess you all can celebrate that you're all going to hell, have fun.
Just in: a reliable new historical fact says that your great granddaddy was a monkey (old news for y'all Darwinians)
O and before you get your creative juices fired up again, please allow me to explain that when I said "may be you're the one who should be fearing for your life, and I don't mean because of some fatwa", I didn't mean that I'm gonna punch you (or blow you up for that matter). I just meant maybe you'd like to take it easy, just in case there is an Allah, who's gonna strike you down silly for your hatred-inducing comments. But I guess you're free to go around spreading hateful comments if you wish, I don't care. It's not like its gonna make a difference.
Really? Do you understand Arabic, then? Or have you lived in the time of the Prophet and seen this for yourself? You 'sources' are crap. I'm not being emotional, I'm trying my best to coldly explain something. Here's a great analogy: If someone (a polularly known 'source' of information) said your mother was a whore, would you believe him/ her? Please, I'm not insulting your mother (since you're not really insulting the prohet either), and neither do I ever really intend to punch you in the face.
Just because you copy-pasted some text out of a web page somewhere doesn't mean that it's true. There have always been sick twisted folks who have given their best shot at defaming one of the greatest personalities of all times, who swayed the hearts of all the people around him with no more than an offering of the truth, without dazzling miracles.
The arrangement with Ayesha was not a marriage of consumation. She is rejected by dedicated followers of Islam who pledged their alleigiance with the Prophet's true successors, not the corrupts political caliphs of the time who turned tables against the prophet's family to take power into their own hands.
And Ayesha was the daughter of one of these political caliphs. Her true history is not so readily available, especailly on the internet, but she is considered one of the true villains in Islam, who attempted several times to destroy it.
And because of her, and these political caliphs, the world does not know the true face of Islam without making much effort. Facts have been distored and ignored to suit the whims of the fatwa-making clerics that unfortunately represent the Islamic majority today.
While they have been successful in tarnishing its image and in manufacturing a dynasty of fanatical misled Islamists, they could never completely destory it.
Islam in all its purity exists till today. Unfortunately for you, you probably may never know it.
Great wars have been fought over these questions. And time and time again, the truth has had to be subdued, for as natural as it is for humans to beseech the truth, it is also to destroy it. My truth is within my self, I cannot force you to believe it nor stop you from attacking it.
Aaah yes.... I would have to say you're right (why do I have to keep telling you that you should be in the other goddam column??!!)
At the risk of sounding like I'm Neo, I'll just tell you one thing that I realized some time back...
There's a way out
Wonderful argument. Flawed! More than my own, since netiher you nor me has actually discovered the ultimate truth, that both know exists beyond the capacity of modern boundaries.
First off, just because you (or anyone) can't disprove something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
"It is also demonstrable that if our brain in general is damaged, we lose our memory - short term or longterm."
If you use this argument to prove that 'self' is actually the brain, I can use the same to argue that the brain is just an organ that allows you to process the memory into your physical form, not the memory itself, which exists in history regardless of whether your brain has lost its ability to recall it. The same way as I argue that your self exists regardless of your physical ability to realize it.
"Everything we do on this planet - in practice - expresses the fundamental notion that we know that this physical existence, the thing you call "I" or "self" is all that there is."
Not true, I say, since that would apply more to anmals than humans. I had argued that humans (the good ones, at least) follow a code of ethics that is not necessarily correlated to self-interest, which is selfish in nature and does not evaluate the sum of all good (unless you believe that "I" and "we" are the same). In fact, often times the greatest good may be in complete conflict with your selfish desires, yet 'humanity' refers to the achievement of the greatest good, not self-fulfillment. For that reason, I beleive that humans tend towards an idealistic state that is beyond the physical.
Not that I have anything against, you but I'm adding you as my enemy to see how this works, okay. Thanks for your rhetoric any day.
I love you guys. I was wondering how I could tell ya, and here it is.
Your concept is fab. There are a few things you all can probably do to make it even better, like havin a place readers can post suggestions. Sometimes when ure arguin' for or against, 'you think' isn't always in sync with what you think, so I think you need to solve that prob. Also I'd really like to transition some of my debates into a new topic, inviting the debaters from my previous debate and all, but can't figure out a way to do that. I think that you can work on buliding more of a community here, or may be I just haven't been able to appreciate all of your features yet.
I really hope you all evolve nicely so you can keep your thunder.
Once again, I really love ya. And you know what? I think you guys are from the future. Web 3.0, here we come.
I think I'm gonna cry now.
I just loved the character of the Eskeleto guy in Nacho Libre, remarking that "I believe in Science" just because it made him sound like he actually gave 2 pennys to the thought and mainly because he didn't want to bother about religion. Here's to all the guys and gals who've really contributed to my earlier heated debate "Do we continue to exist even when our bodies die?"
"I don't wish to create the illusion of an afterlife simply because it isn't true. When you die, you die, and that's it."
How the hell are you so sure, have you checked out first-hand? If you have let me know and that'll be the end to this debate. In the mean time you might wanna consider there's a universe out there right behind that wall your standing in front of.
"I'm perfectly happy living my life without the thought that once I die I'm going to carry on. The accountability of my actions are here and now, with my family, friends, co-workers, etc. I prefer living my life for those people, not for the big man in the sky who's going to judge me when I finally shuffle off of this mortal coil."
I don't know about the 'big man in the sky' or if that's how you describe God, but you forgot one other person who's gonna judge you (or the only person). In my crazy world, that'd be yourself when you look back at what you missed.
I feel the same sense of direction as you. Only 'dreamland' for you is the afterlife for me. If you meditate upon the (real) meaning in these concepts that religions present (though distorted and ravaged in time by insidiuous dissent), you will find they say the very same thing. For the prophets that said them, were the greatest philosophers of their age, envisioned with divine truths, that people like you and me would take a lifetime (or several lifetimes) to comprehend.
Yes, so true, and more so.
You must realize that there is a truth, a reality that cannot be easily grasped but with the utmost care and wisdom, that is waiting to be discovered.
Pride of false religions and scientific evidence limit perception to that of the obvious and tangible, as it is much more easily understood.
Yes, so true, and more so.
You must realize that there is a truth, a reality that cannot be easily grasped but with the utmost care and wisdom, that is waiting to be discovered.
Pride of false religions and scientific evidence limit perception to that of the obvious and tangible, as it is much more easily understood.
1) he was clearly referring to self awareness and consciousness (no I wasn't - I was debating whether death is an end to existence in every sense of the word)
2) That does not continue to exist after the brain dies unfortunately.
(Prove it. Self awareness and consciousness are absolutely personal to the subject. The brain is an organ that helps you process your thoughts, I'd say, rather than being the thought itself. But I apologize, your science box doesn't allow you accept that)
Can you prove it otherwise? As in prove to me that you don't have a soul and that it doesn't continue to exist. Since you have no proof either, your statement is a result of nothing more than your personal beliefs. Just because nobody's ever seen a platypus, for example, doesn't mean that it doesn't really exist.
What if you could exist without an identity and a memory? What if your soul does in fact retain identity and memory? Can you prove me wrong?
Sure, like animals, our self-interest drives our actions. But our lives are not spent solely for this purpose. As intelligent beings, humans have ideals and conscience, and these play an important part in our decisions.
And as human beings, we have an inclination to the afterlife, and a desire to join the eternal, and commune with the everlasting supernatural infinite realm.
Is all you see what you believe? Or what you believe is what you see. You can cry that there's no evidence, and that it doesn't exist - for your own comfort - because you would rather live day to day like it doesn't matter, it's nonsense. For someone like me, it exists, I can almost reach out and touch it.
Aren't there more ways to 'exist' than in the strictest, most conventional sense of the word - of physical interaction with the tangible? Must we confine ourselves to the scientifically proven materialistic world when we say we exist? What if our existence is as real as the characters in this note, that are actually impressions made by electrical impulses, or more so, a representation of the writer’s thoughts, not just characters that get deleted some day? Are we only the characters or are we actually the thought that live on as a memory even when the words have been consumed? Self-awareness is yet another physical aspect that may or may not cease once our ‘being’ loses the breath of life, but may again be irrelevant when you speak of existence – beyond the physical world. I feel this truth within myself, so I know I exist in the physical sense, as well as in a place reserved for me, because of me, because I was meant to be. You don’t have to accept it, you’ll have your chance again, hopefully.
