In a time when we are just beginning to comprehend the possibility that fundamental forces like gravity may not even originate from our dimension and that we're merely shadows on some freakin' cosmic wall, am I the only one who thinks that trying to put anything of divine nature into a human frame of reference is silly?

People are moronic because they try to approach these issues under the impression that they know jack shit about existence. Limited by our paltry senses and merely capable of manipulating existing materials or coming to conclusions based on observable phenomena, we still haven't even started to scrape the surface of the nature of reality, much less what lies beyond it.

Most of you, CA included, are trying way too hard to force a human logical thought process onto something that goes far beyond the scope of mankind. When it comes to fundamental questions that are not provable or disprovable, we are no different from ants trying to digest a textbook on string theory.

My advice? Step back from your personal beliefs, the ever-changing scientific landscape, atheistic dogma, etc. sometimes and realize that too many people in too many places are approaching the subject of God/supernatural anything and such in an arrogant state of mind that brings plenty of self-satisfaction..but very little else.

Don't be like them. Think, ponder, and chuckle at the foolishness of your fellow humans who think their beliefs, or lack thereof, somehow give them an access card to the secrets of the universe.

That is all.

the universe is simple, the only thing that has ever been complex is finding the path to that which we desire. desire breeds complexity, without desire, no complexity. if we desire a secret meaning to the universe, the universe we live in will be very complex indeed. incomprehensible, even.

Wisest post I've seen in this thread. :afro:

I understand that we will likely never understand the existence of anything out of our own existence. This is why as I said before I agree with the agnostic point of view : to make a claim about the existence of a God or anything along the lines of a metaphysics would be ignorant. I disagree with your point about describing the phenomenon though. It is never healthy to not look for answers without a "logical human" outlook. Just because we can never escape from our human logic doesn't mean we should avoid conversation.

what do you think the purpose of ego is?

it's only simple once you've split your self from your ego and can recognize each for what they really are.

also in regards to your comments on existence and being, in my view i only exist as a reflection the existences of everyone else around me and vice versa. then again my sig isn't a lyric or funny quote either.


that's a cheap cop out. the difference is that unlike ants, we have the ability to ascribe to personal beliefs. they don't need to be proven or unproven, only respected. don't insult my intelligence and personal mental development by claiming i'm arrogant for wanting personal satisfaction from the strife in my soul and that i achieved it through introspective contemplation and meditation instead of liquor and whores.

your second part is also kind of insulting and bordering on hypocritical. don't be like 'them' here's how to think in instead. whoopee! it's not that a self-founded belief provides one with the secrets of the universe but that it provides one with acceptable answers to all their questions. the big issue i notice with most people is that they're hung up on being right instead of just being, or that they want to give answers to everyone's questions but their own.

it's kind of like CA said, it IS pretty simple. the challenge is bending your ego to let your head wrap itself around the fact that the bigger picture is really just a simple doodle, and in turn none of us are really as complicated or as special as we've all let our ego convince ourselves of in our youth.

1. A cheap cop out? Get a grip kid. Just because we CAN ascribe to personal beliefs and define ourselves by them doesn't give us an excuse to pull a Richard Dawkins or start up little cults. Such things are evidence of how futile people are, which is why they never amount of anything even in the conventional sense. I don't need liquor and whores to achieve personal satisfaction either, but I also realized somewhere down the line that merely working towards personal satisfaction only brings happiness at a surface level. We need more than that whether you like it or not. For example, investing in another life besides your own.

2. You either misunderstood the purpose of my post or simply missed what I was trying to infer. Personally, I don't care too much about having any questions about the universe because there is no way any answer a human will come up with even a billion years from now will be sufficient to a guy like me, who fully accepts the limitations of the human mind/senses, much less provable to someone like you who can't even grasp something that basic. We assume simplicity because its easy. But since when has that ever been true for anything besides basic cause/effect? People assume simplicity because it hurts their little minds to open up to anything more than that.

3. All we can perceive are observable phenomena, but even rudimentary evidence will show you that there's an infinity of things out there that go beyond the answers we can gain through only observation and measurement. All you have to do is open up a middle school science textbook to see big holes in what people take for granted: electromagnetism and gravity are classified as fundamental forces, but nobody can tell you where they actually came from, much less why they came to be. It's all assumption and arbitrary political points of correctness, and such casts us in a less than flattering light.

3. And this leads me to my last point. Once you understand that even the things you take for granted may not even be fundamental things at all and your living in a time when multiple ridiculously educated scientists are supposing higher planes of reality, can you honestly write off the possibility that supernatural phenomena are merely figments of delusion? Seriously, what do you really know about the world around you besides what you can hold on your hand and what you see on a T.V. screen?

Mr Dave, putting aside whether or not you like my attitude, I'm going to ask you to bend YOUR ego and assume the opposite of what you want me to believe for a minute. That the universe is not a silly, simple doodle, but one groove on the picture frame of something that may not even be a picture to begin with.

People, likewise, are also not nearly as simple and expendable as you wish them to be, and there's far too much going on around us to remain in such a cut-and-dried, generic way of thinking.

In summation, all I want is for people to remain open to complexity and not to take things for granted simply because we can observe it: I'm not trying to convert you to believe in divine stuffz.

i'm not gonna quote everything but how is it still a PERSONAL belief if it's being passed onto and used by anyone else? i'm not advocating cultism here. as for the rest...


really i don't think our views are that divergent, only that you're still a bit of an idealist. if you think spiritual satisfaction only brings surface level happiness then you don't actually have a clue what satisfaction is really about.

as for not having questions about the universe well, that's fine too. i didn't have many either until my late 20s until i'd stared at my bellybutton so much that i finally saw the infinity within myself. you seem to think that i'm somehow afraid or stupid because i've accepted the simplicity of being. i found it to be an incredible challenge to accept, and one that MANY people fail at accomplishing. just because you haven't started conceiving questions about the universe yet doesn't mean you someday won't. there is NO assumption of anything within MY belief and i don't give half a crap whether or not MY belief matters at all to you, odyshape, CA, or anyone else really, because the ONLY person who really has to deal with MY belief is... me.

i'm really not sure what you're getting at with that electromagnetism and gravity bit. school text books have biased and sometimes completely flawed information? unbelievable!

as to your last point it actually goes back to one of my firsts... when your fundamentals might be delusions what do you really have besides belief and why do the specifics of any belief matter if nothing is real? no need for proof, or science, or much of anything, besides a feeling of peace within your soul when you've found YOUR answer.

as for your exercise with the picture, it's already how i perceive myself as an individual within the whole of the human species. like i said earlier i don't think we're that off from each other. really though, how could i have a belief that i only exist as a reflection within other people's existences if i considered them to be simple and expendable?

then again, what if we ARE simple and expendable creature? then what? is your ego willing to let that one slide into the side of 'truth'?

I believe that happiness is always temporary no matter what and looking for happiness that will last permanently is just a waste of time.

satisfaction =/= happiness.

according to nassim haramein (who i take pretty seriously but many people don't) quantum mechanics is basically a huge leap in the wrong direction, and einstein was really close to a grand unified theory. he claims that gravity is, indeed, the result of energy causing space-time to contract, and electromagnetism is actually the result of energy causing space-time to twist... which is how he explains why elementary particles have a spin that doesn't ever slow down despite the friction exerted on them by all the other stuff that exists. you should look into it for yourself if you're interested in such things, torrent "crossing the event horizon"