Possibility

I agree. The entire question is pointless, because neither definitions of God nor existence bear any resemblance to either the experience or understan...

For me, the problem with the God debate is that it requires a definition of ‘God’ that can be agreed upon and then objectively measured/observed. Does...

Ok, explain to me why it is foolish to love a plant - as in to do what I can in order to enable that plant to grow, develop and do what it can. Tell m...

Interesting that you relate to plants in the same way as you do to shoes and hairstyles. I don’t, and I’ve already explained my understanding of love,...

Do you really think it’s wasted? Is it wasted to love a plant - to feed and nurture it, give it your time and effort, knowing that it may never show i...

Yes. The speed or duration of time is determined by curved spacetime, not entropy. “the substratum that determines the duration of time is not an inde...

Again, you’re referring to romantic love (which in my view is primarily desire, but potentially points us towards love) as if that were the same love ...

This is not how I see it. Time always flows from low to high entropy, and every other basic law of physics is reversible: acknowledging no difference ...

What you refute as a ‘state of nothingness’ is more accurately a state of zero entropy - which is also the ‘start’ of time as we are aware of it - but...

I did say that for romantic love - DESIRE as you more accurately put it - reciprocity is necessary to advance towards romance, sex, marriage, etc., bu...

Sorry, I didn’t read that as a definition. You seem to be talking specifically about ‘true love’ as romantic love - an emotion that, if reciprocated, ...

The term ‘first cause’ is unhelpful. As sushi pointed out, there cannot be a first cause that is also timeless. Your understanding of a timeless cause...

So when you say, for instance, that you love your dog, are you really putting your dog above yourself, or are you loving the dog as a possession, a pe...

I’m curious as to what is your understanding of ‘a true love’? What do you think it means to love someone? In my view you can love someone who doesn’t...

We feel it is wrong to ‘mess’ with anyone, but we also feel individually weak ourselves in relation to the universe as a whole, if we’re honest. Bully...

We are subject to the laws of physics, but we are not subject to any laws governing evolution. All of our behaviour is rather subject to awareness. We...

We’ve also had the capacity to completely wipe ourselves off the planet for a number of decades now - another opportunity to play the role of God. Whi...

I would agree with most of this. I think we developed the push for survival at a point in our growing awareness when we began defining, quantifying an...

As far as I can tell (so far), I am a collection of complex, interactive processes (chemical and physical) that amount to a feeling, sensing, thinking...

We’re only unaware of the processing of sensory input because our conscious thinking is concerned with the more informative details of our experience....

Sure, life seems pointless now that the light of reason doesn’t have ‘God’ to dialogue with anymore. But for thousands of years it was perfectly reaso...

Religion originally served to counteract the painful and humiliating awareness that what we most value in life is not our own physical existence - by ...

My daily activities are not restricted to conversations on a computer, for starters - which is, I believe, the limit of the Turing test at this stage....

An alternative approach: In my view, we start life with the need to increase awareness, interconnectedness and overall development and achievement. Th...

If you look at evolutionary theory as a matter of survival value, then no, there is no reason for us to have conscious experiences at all. There is al...

My current understanding of consciousness is a work in progress (read: crazyism), but it draws from process philosophy and integrated information theo...

What is ‘nice’? It’s such a non-word, really. A ‘nice’ guy is a guy who doesn’t behave disrespectfully towards you, who appears to take an interest in...

My perspective is quite different to yours. I was born into Christianity, but consider myself SBNR for the purpose of this discussion. In my work I se...

The problem as I see it is that we’ve been barking up the wrong tree since we evolved into a three dimensional awareness of value and subsequently of ...

In my opinion, some people ‘see’ the particle, others ‘see’ the wave...

For many who discuss God, I think the term refers to a concept they are making an attempt to explain, insofar as they understand or experience it - re...

But how aware are we of what is really going on? And what are we doing about it? When we become aware of something like, for instance, the fact that t...

Greater awareness, I think, brought us to this state. I feel the same way as this, but I also relate to TS’s question - I think mayhem has always been...

You’re taking a statement out of context. I wasn’t talking about extraordinary claims - I was talking about intuition, falling in love, ‘gut’ instinct...

Everything you’ve both said is startlingly familiar to me. Sometimes I won’t begin to regret my words until hours later, but other times at social gat...

There are plenty of things that are not philosophy, but that wasn’t the question. You can philosophise about science, but science is not philosophy, n...

I keep going back and forth on this one, to be honest. There is a necessary moral burden, but I’m not convinced that this burden would always be great...

I guess I figure there’s only so much I can do and still be true to myself. But hey, if you’re gonna put me in charge, that’s what you get... And I do...

I’ve been attempting to answer this in the spirit of the inquiry, but I keep coming up against some issues. My first reaction was ‘here’s a perfectly ...

I give up.

I would think the ‘good’ of a promise is contingent upon integrity as always morally good, rather than adherence to correct promise-making procedure. ...

I only asked you to re-read what I wrote. If anyone is being uncouth... I’m not convinced Jesus, Socrates, Buddha or Robin Hood were actual, historica...

Your first statement still assumes that the ‘Christianity’ to which this particular pastor is referring must be a ‘religion’, and therefore fulfill al...

Are you confusing ‘literal’ with ‘literary’?

What makes you so sure?

The Greek word translated as ‘meek’ does not have the same meaning as the word commonly in use today. What praos means is more along the lines of self...

If you read all of Timothy and understand it in context, you would recognise that the letters were written not as public letters to a congregation, bu...

Or perhaps you read it wrong. Show me where I’ve described belief in a ‘literal and historical Jesus’, because I don’t see it.

I have followed the biblical narrative as a journey in developing awareness of God, and it has led me to interact with God in a different way than the...

Thanks for the reference - I’m already intrigued by his approach to the objectivity-subjectivity tension. Bear with me, as I withdraw for further stud...