immortal

You have not considered the possibility of creation of an Universe with both Hns (a universe with necessary suffering to fulfill the works of God) and Hnot S (a universe without any suffering) simultaneously existing in the cosmos. I know there is not much evidence for the latter universe to prove my case but it is a possibility and hence the conclusion from empirical observation is not quite compelling.

David Hume's essay, 'of the immortality of the soul?' is an excellent work on Life after Death which is must read on this topic. If anyone can come in terms with the style of writing of the philosophers and other thinkers in the Enlightenment Age then its great for you. David Hume makes arguments from three different perspectives and strongly criticizes the religious superstition of the immortality of the soul. 1. Moral arguments 2. Metaphysical arguments 3. Arguments from Physical grounds On all these three occasions he assumes the existence of God and then goes on to give his arguments that even then there are no rational reasons for believing in life after death. He says the only reason that exists for believing in life after death is because it says so in the revealed religion which can be put in his own words as "I am indebted to God for revealing the immortality of the soul to humanity because there are no rational reasons for believing in it". Therefore the answer to the question is there are no empirical evidences and no rational reasons to believe in the immorality of the soul. He also criticizes the society for condemning those who commit suicide, from the same argument from design for the existence of God he goes on to argue that it is God himself who takes one's life away even when one has committed suicide. The argument is that why condemn suicide and not condemn those who move aside when a stone is falling on their head if God's influence exists in every actions of ours and in providence derived from the design argument for the existence of God itself. There is no wonder why the Age of Reason was called the Age of Enlightenment.

Can you kindly rephrase your question? It doesn't make much sense.

If you determine the underlying causes for altruism then it is a fact that most of the behaviors in humans are determined by genes and the motives are inherently selfish even though the individuals themselves displaying benevolent behavior are not aware of that which implies that altruism is an illusion. I personally am skeptical about the underlying causes for conscious thinking and hence I think Real altruism in humans do exist.

Your pet theories and hypotheses belong here in the speculations forum, once they have been tested and accepted as a valid scientific model only then you can post such a content in the mainstream forum.

Even in Consciousness studies religion and science don't overlap, however the conclusions of such studies have strong implications for religion. Even the Mahayana Buddhist's believe in Gods, Demons and tantric practices. Can you name a religion where God or an impersonal God is irrelevant?

The God of this ancient monistic system exists in the external physical world and the doctrine is that multiplicity of the world is false which implies God is all that is there and hence the word 'monism'. Therefore a human using a pc in a reality which exists only in the mind cannot be the true God.

Someone in the physics forums, may be a physics expert, posted this article some time back. It gives a good insight into the problem of time in theoretical physics, haven't got my head into it to understand it clearly though. Hope that helps.

I fourth that opinion with CR, CP and SJ. This is the best layout for a discussion forum compared to other sites.

Men who know God and who have the ability to show the kingdom of God to others are 'men of God'. In Valentinian theology divinity exists in everything, all is God, humans, angels and just everything. You edited this post after I replied to it but you failed to notify me about it. I guess I have already explained that in my PM by giving rational reasons as to how that worldview has the potential of being real. The Self- knowledge of God won't turn the earth into heaven instead it gives a way to fulfill and carry out God's work with out under going any suffering, that's the difference between free men and those who are in bondage. I'm talking metaphysical truths here and they doesn't necessarily have to be true. Its hypothetical.

I'm not sure as to whether this condition is satisfied or not. The use of the word 'By now'? Almost all scholars in the field agree that most of the practical knowledge has been lost and we need to start all over again from scratch but I don't think they have been officially studied and rejected. The possibility of revealed truths are very important for religion to have any truth in it at all, the knowledge gained from those revealed truths should be able to passed on to others and should be very useful, I don't think they have been studied extensively and any serious attempts being made to recover the lost knowledge. We should have this knowledge if religion has any truth in it.

Okay will do. Religion and science are of a different magisteria, no true genuine theist will ever talk about science and psychology in his scholarly works, he talks about the kingdom of God not the material world of science, the reasons for persisting with theistic ideology is that these two different magisteria conclude the same thing about the nature of reality. The Holy Scriptures + oral traditions by itself cannot be an evidence for anything but Holy scriptures + oral traditions --> revelations. If one tradition claimed to had revelations about unicorns and an another claimed about Bugs Bunny then we could have safely ignored them as rubbish but if the majority of the world's religion's oral traditions + revelations claimed to have observed the same thing again and again over thousands of years then that needs an explanation and a clear cut investigation is required. I never claimed that I have positive evidence for God, I said I want to investigate it. I cannot convince anyone to believe in God with just the Holy scriptures + oral traditions, unless you have revelations you'll be skeptical about it, even theists cannot make up their minds on it and convince themselves but Holy scriptures + oral traditions form the highest authority while discussing religion among theists, if you reject the very basis of those things then its pointless to argue about religion. If you expect genuine theists to back up their every claim with demonstrable evidence in the objective world then that requires time but I completely disagree with you for saying that a theistic ideology is ridiculous, its not, theologians do care about intellectual honesty and are very rational and their arguments have merit on its own right.

Professor Max Muller said: “The Upanishads are the sources of the Vedanta philosophy, a system in which human speculation seems to have reached the pinnacle of metaphysical thought. They are to me like light of the morning, like the pure air of the mountain – so simple, so true, if once understood. The subject of Upanishads is not physical sciences, but metaphysical". Their metaphysics is quite like this. This is my philosophical justification for believing in a God, unfortunately their metaphysics is purely religious and hence the belief in a deity. The evidences are anecdotal and an investigation is required in the kind of methods used to make this possible and to repeat it. This is a typical example of the kind of crap philosophers come up with but it is these things which might go on to be a perfection of philosophy. It does provide a solution to our metaphysical problems only if we resort into subjective idealism.

I don't think it is ridiculous, there are compelling reasons and arguments in philosophy, metaphysics, science, psychology etc which forces the theists to investigate such an ideology. I'm not trying to fix anything, I just gave an interpretation which already exists in majority of the oral traditions of the world. I don't know, I would love to investigate all of them.

The oral traditions are there to guide one to have revelations and in such a way a metaphysical truth is established, anyone can have those revelations and the truth will be self-evident, even I don't know which interpretations are correct and which aren't, I just presented a different point of view. Don't be silly, the word 'men of god' refers to the whole of humanity, there were mystics who were women, St. Theresa of Avila is one.

Not so useful and handy for investigating the metaphysical and the ontological aspects of nature in order to give an objective account of reality. The urge in theists for believing in God is due to the hope that God gives such an explanation and also an objective account of reality and this is the reason why man is religious. It becomes a belief if someone tries to falsify religion using the scientific method since religion as such lies in the realm of metaphysics.

The natural sciences doesn't completely ignore the arguments of Kant though, instead it says all positive metaphysical theories are undecidable unfalsifiable, if they are falsifiable then they are pretty much in the scientific realm itself. The whole Copenhagen Interpretation is based on such thinking. If we take his arguments seriously then no one even the natural sciences cannot make a positive assertion and assert that the world is like this or like that, then do we have to resort into some kind of Kantian transcendentalism? Can you enlighten me on this?

Then kindly take some time to read this--> Valentinus- A Gnostic for all seasons. It is one of the point of views which gives a different insight to SDD. Do you still think that God is not doing his duty after reading the Valentinian theology? Yes, true, it is God's duty but humanity was inherently made imperfect and that is an illusion due to ignorance and hence from Gnosis point of view SDD can be eradicated only through the perfect or the self-knowledge of God. The Holy scriptures by themselves cannot be an authority while discussing religion, the oral traditions of religions are equally important too and only the oral traditions gives us a correct and a practical interpretation of the holy scriptures. The Zohar, Talmud, Midrash etc are equally important. If the whole goal of the 30 odd books of the Bible is to show humanity the kingdom of God and his son Jesus Christ then we should care to understand his secret oral teachings. Valentinus, a christian mystic in the 2nd century got that knowledge from Theodus and he inturn got that knowledge from the apostle Paul and in this way that knowledge can be traced back to God himself. Therefore the interpretations of the men of God are the highest authority since their interpretations are based on revelations and not by making up stuff on their own.

The default position is not that they don't exist the default position is that we don't know. While discussing Philosophy especially metaphysical things we don't positively assert anything, it is by default understood that it falls under speculative metaphysics, no one should be allowed to discuss these issues in the mainstream science forums but it should be allowed here in the philosophy section. Yes, most of what philosophers do is crap and a waste of time but it is these crap crackpot ideas which might go on to become a perfection of science. You say someone else, who is that someone else refers to, it has to be someone from the intellectual community and with out having a dialect how can we even comprehend what others point of views are, most of philosophy is done through dialect and not all philosophers end their ideas there, some go on to test their ideas and turn it to accepted science.

ESP cannot be positively disproved by Science and whatever evidences that are there they are anecdotal. One problem is the repeatability of ESP, even if I give you a method which shows that ESP is possible I cannot ensure you that you'll have a ESP every time you repeat that method, it can take months, years or just 15 days or it may not happen at all. One need to step up to the realm to realize ESP and to demonstrate any unusual genuine phenomena it takes time since such knowledge is unpredictable.

I'm not clinging to the orthodox religions of the world, I'm arguing from the point of different Gnosis schools from different parts of the world who claim to have known God and the exact nature of reality. If we keep aside the mythology of those Gnosis schools of thought all of there teachings harmonize well with each other and they speak in one tone and in line with each other and they weren't monotheistic but were pagans and believed in many gods and in many different other worlds. I still think that those gnostic schools stands on their own and I doesn't want to infer anything from the commonality of their teachings. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnosticism Hence my views aren't commonly accepted by either the scientific consensus nor the orthodox religions. Those doctors won't give me the freedom from bondage, it is God who frees us from bondage, suffering and death.

I personally don't like this reductionist approach towards religion and the way of explaining its origins in evolutionary terms. I take the top down approach. Religion retaliates and asks why is man scientific and believes so much in the scientific method?

By doing good you cannot heal SDD (Suffering, Destruction and Death), its impossible, what you need is perfection and that knowledge has to come from God or through the men of God. God not only commands the Ten commandments, in fact he commands every action of every sentient being in this world and therefore the world is in the care of God and everything that is happening is the play of God to fulfill his works.

May be but your hypothesis is unfalsifiable and its unscientific and lies outside of science, mainly in metaphysics.

Humans were put on earth to do God's work and to fulfill his purpose and the purpose being that we need to enjoy this world and live here up to your maximum life span by gaining the perfect knowledge of God. In that way you cannot sin nor commit anything evil. We cannot heal anything ourselves we need a master to guide us to the path of righteousness and such a seed in a master can only be sown by God. It neither encourages us to do good nor it encourages to do evil. I think the OP is being spiritually immature and we find a lot of them here and the reason why I didn't replied to the OP when I first saw this thread.