Is the self eternal?

[grasping the after wind]

What is the nature of this eternal self? If it is eternal, then it can never change, correct?

Certainly not. Change itself is eternal is it not?

 

[Colter]

I don't disregard things that don't exist. I'm resigned to reality and all of the evidence is that I'll die and be gone. I don't worry about things I can do nothing about. Life's too short.

Well of coarse, that's exactly what I would do if I "didn't worry about things" in a life that's "too short"....join a Christian forum because there are no forums for people whose life is too short.

I will say it was a surprise to me that you read the Urantia Book not once but twice yet couldn't find anything helpful. "They will see without seeing and hear without hearing."

 

[Eudaimonist]

I don't know if you're a fan of the Mad Max trilogy...but even if you'd never seen any of them before I'd still recommend seeing the new one. Great movie.

Yes, I am a fan of the trilogy of movies, but was scared off a bit by a negative review of the new movie. But I will keep your endorsement in mind.

Any opinions about the latest Avengers movie? Is it worth seeing?


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[grasping the after wind]

Do you think that your personal past is infinite? Or do you think that it is bounded, but with "no discernible beginning", meaning something different than an infinite past?

we are not discussing infinity . We are discussing eternality. One could assert that eternal and infinite are separate concepts, one that applies strictly to space and the other strictly to time. Space being an actual physical place while time being something more akin to the metaphysical than the physical in that it is a measurement of change rather than change itself. Depending upon one's POV, they might or might not be intrinsically connected to each other. Either way, we do make some kind of dicstinction between them or we would not have two separate words for them.

And why do you think this? Are you suggesting that you are not a creation of God, and having something of a divine nature? Or what?

It has nothing to do with anything but subjectively viewed objective physical experience. In that experience I have no beginning. I have always been. Unless I could somehow expect to experience an ending i.e. a time when I no longer exist I must assume that I will always be. The OP, from what i can see, has not asked about divinity or creation, but about the self and whether that self is eternal or ephemeral. As I said i have no experience of not existing so to claim knowledge of my personal non existence would be to deny the facts presented to me by my own personal experience. One can, and many do, trust the testimony of others that look strictly upon some time period related to birth and death but since I have no personal experience of either concerning myself how can I affirm its validity concerning my personal selfhood.

 

[Eudaimonist]

It has nothing to do with anything but subjectively viewed objective physical experience. In that experience I have no beginning. I have always been.

Okay, let me see if I understand you correctly. Your life is your eternity because you can only have a subjective experience of your life while you are alive. You have no beginning because you cannot witness yourself transition from non-conscious to conscious. Are you getting at something like that?

Or are you making an epistemological point? Are you saying that since you have no experience of having no experience, you don't have sufficient reason to think that there ever was such a time?


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[KCfromNC]

Indeed. Actually, I sometimes wonder if qualia is the "purest" form of communication available to us.

They have little to do with communication. Communication works best when there's a shared external reality to use as a basis. I.e. you both can point at something and agree that they are blue and round and there are 2 of them. Then when we use the words later we both understand what they refer to.

Qualia are strictly internal feelings. An individual can't even be sure that the qualia they had in the past are the same as the qualia they are currently feeling, much less communicate anything about them in any way to anyone else. All one can say is they are having a feeling of what it is like to experience feelings of an experience. Not much information there.

 

[grasping the after wind]

How about birth? You were born right?

Sorry but i have no recollection of that at all. Is it your position that the self begins at birth? Why would you pick that point in time over other points in time? do you perhaps remember coming into being? di it happen at your birth? Tell me what being born felt like from your personal experience of it.

How about death? You're mortal like the rest of us I assume.

Are you equating self with the idea of lifespan? Not everyone does you know. But the fact is that No, I haven't experienced my death anymore than i have any experience of my birth. Have you experienced your's ? What is it like to not exist and how can you post if you do not exist? Seems contradictory. Or have you been reincarnated or something like that with non existence in between?

You were around in 1789? Tell me what the food was like.

By 1789 are you referring to some subjective date when something was supposed to have happened? Does that concept have any real validity? In my experience, how one views the taste of food is a very subjective and personal thing. Even should i accept the number 1789 as being somehow significant to my selfhood I do not see how my view on what food is like would have any significance.

That double negative bothers me. And yes there will be, but you won't know it because well yea. I understand what you're actually saying, that you have only known you as long as you've been around and never a time before you, but there's flaws in that thinking.

The double negative was a mistake on my part should have been "ever"not "never". There are flaws in all manner of thinking. Thinking is not an exact science. For that matter, science is not an exact science. The point being that if we rely totally upon experience we truncate our options. One needs to use one's imagination in order to even consider the end of awareness of oneself let alone the possibility of a continuation of that awareness beyond the ability of the self to communicate with those that remain in the state that we now reside in. My imagination is actually quite facile. I can discard it if it pleases me but I understand that my options for reasoning become very much limited without it. In my experience, many people will insist that others must discard those parts of their imagination that they(i.e. the insisting party) personally regard as unacceptable while simultaneously insisting that those others accept all things that they are wont to imagine.

 

[grasping the after wind]

Okay, let me see if I understand you correctly. Your life is your eternity because you can only have a subjective experience of your life while you are alive. You have no beginning because you cannot witness yourself transition from non-conscious to conscious. Are you getting at something like that?

Or are you making an epistemological point? Are you saying that since you have no experience of having no experience, you don't have sufficient reason to think that there ever was such a time?

Yes to either or both.

 

[Eudaimonist]

I think that the fact that some have been discovered living normally without a brain shows that the brain is not the self.

Are you sure that you understand that story correctly? I don't recall any story about anyone living without a brain. However, I have heard of stories of a few rare individuals living with a physically very tiny brain. That's not the same thing.

Given the amount of evidence for a mind-brain connection, I think that you'd have to ignore a great deal of evidence to draw the conclusion that you'd like to draw.


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[Ana the Ist]

Yes, I am a fan of the trilogy of movies, but was scared off a bit by a negative review of the new movie. But I will keep your endorsement in mind.

Any opinions about the latest Avengers movie? Is it worth seeing?


eudaimonia,

Mark

Haven't seen it. I bet I know why it got a negative review...it's not the standard action flick. There's so much attention to detail that it looks like a high-art indie movie...if an indie movie had a 100 million + budget and more cars to wreck than a demo derby.

 

[True Scotsman]

Well of coarse, that's exactly what I would do if I "didn't worry about things" in a life that's "too short"....join a Christian forum because there are no forums for people whose life is too short.

I will say it was a surprise to me that you read the Urantia Book not once but twice yet couldn't find anything helpful. "They will see without seeing and hear without hearing."

Why did you misquote me? I said I don't worry about things that I can't change. That only seems reasonable doesn't it? I come here to discuss ideas and advocate for reason. Plenty of Christians join atheist forums to try to convert. I just advocate for reason. To tell you the truth, I have to limit my time here because I start to get very discouraged about the state of the world when I spend too much time here. But I love ideas, always have.

I read the Urantia Book when I was in my 20's. My Grandmother's boyfriend was into it but then he was into reincarnation and all sorts of other things as well. Anything mystical, that was him. I found it to be interesting reading and nothing more. More interesting than the Bible and a part of me would like it to be true. I'd like to visit other planets when I die. But there is no way of validating any of it so why would I take it seriously? To me there's no difference between faith and believing something because you want it to be true. I know that my wants and desires have no effect on reality. It will continue to be what it is no matter how much I might wish it to be different.

 

[True Scotsman]

Okay, let me see if I understand you correctly. Your life is your eternity because you can only have a subjective experience of your life while you are alive. You have no beginning because you cannot witness yourself transition from non-conscious to conscious. Are you getting at something like that?

Or are you making an epistemological point? Are you saying that since you have no experience of having no experience, you don't have sufficient reason to think that there ever was such a time?


eudaimonia,

Mark

It is very good. Like so many modern movies, the pace is so frenetic that it kind of almost made me seasick but the story is good and the special effects and the new characters are really interesting. The second half of the movie was excellent. The best one of the series so far. I'd definitely watch it again and I'm glad I saw it on the big screen.

Edit: Oops I don't know what happened. I meant to reply to your asking about the Avengers movie.

 

[durangodawood]

Its clear that the eternal self is strictly a matter of faith, with no evidence to support it.

But I would prefer that big ME project continue on and on and on.

 

[Colter]

Why did you misquote me? I said I don't worry about things that I can't change. That only seems reasonable doesn't it? I come here to discuss ideas and advocate for reason. Plenty of Christians join atheist forums to try to convert. I just advocate for reason. To tell you the truth, I have to limit my time here because I start to get very discouraged about the state of the world when I spend too much time here. But I love ideas, always have.

I read the Urantia Book when I was in my 20's. My Grandmother's boyfriend was into it but then he was into reincarnation and all sorts of other things as well. Anything mystical, that was him. I found it to be interesting reading and nothing more. More interesting than the Bible and a part of me would like it to be true. I'd like to visit other planets when I die. But there is no way of validating any of it so why would I take it seriously? To me there's no difference between faith and believing something because you want it to be true. I know that my wants and desires have no effect on reality. It will continue to be what it is no matter how much I might wish it to be different.

Thanks for sharing more of your experience with the UB. I get where you are coming from, myself I grew up in a moderate Methodist church. My dad was a closet UB reader from the 60's. Every so often dad, over in his reading chair, would read one of those long profound paragraphs, it was as if I already knew what he was reading and that it was true. I never believed half the Bible and hated going to church. After my psychic change at 22 I began reading the UB in earnest, it answered many of my questions and helped me reconcile at least some of what is in the Bible even though those events were grossly misunderstood and deliberately distorted by Biblical authors. I accept the explanation and revelatory content of the UB as authoritative. I like the teaching that miracles aren't really miracles, we just don't know how things are done by beings that are vastly higher in intelligence than we are. I like the idea that there is no magic, everything has an explanation, that celestial beings aren't magic figures, they are just outside of our range of senses. There is much more but I won't bore you with it.

Thanks again

 

[ananda]

I've been reading a lot of Teilhard lately, so stuff I come across is going through that filter right now. Using the 5 mutable things that you listed, the development of the conscious self could be seen as a spiritual evolutionary process as one moves from matter forward to consciousness. The question asked is comes after consciousness and what will the future human being look like in that regard.

And being a Lover of God, where God is the only reality, the "essential self" would be seen as an activity of God. Which than makes the soul totally eternal, not corruptible in any manor, not changeable, infinite in nature and one with the widest reach of the cosmos while shining forth with the light of the Divine.
.

So, would you say that your "essential self" is God?

 

[ananda]

Our souls came from a place that time doesn't exist, and will return there.
So...people say "eternal."

What part(s) of your soul is eternal? If it is eternal, it is immutable, correct? If it's immutable, then it should forever retain its "original holiness", being untaintable by any deed or unbelief or sin done in this temporal existence, correct?

 

[ananda]

Certainly not. Change itself is eternal is it not?

Buddhists would say no - that change does not exist in nibbana.

 

[ananda]

Are you sure that you understand that story correctly? I don't recall any story about anyone living without a brain. However, I have heard of stories of a few rare individuals living with a physically very tiny brain. That's not the same thing.

Given the amount of evidence for a mind-brain connection, I think that you'd have to ignore a great deal of evidence to draw the conclusion that you'd like to draw.


eudaimonia,

Mark

I believe I am understanding it correctly. A professor of pediatrics determined that a number of individuals with hydrocephalus had brains less than 5% of normal size, one of which only had "a millimeter thick layer of brain tissue" yet he had an IQ of 126. What did I understand incorrectly?

This ties in pretty well with my personal beliefs regarding the mind & brain. The mind (for most people) is the product of the interaction between matter, sensation, perception, mental objects, and consciousness. In these cases of people with tiny brains, I expect the "mental objects" part to be greatly diminished, even while the other components remain neutral. In essence, the man with an IQ of 126 would possess consciousness, but, because his brain was so small, I'd expect his mental chatter to be minimal, and so I would expect him to excel at jhanic meditation.

 

[TillICollapse]

They have little to do with communication. Communication works best when there's a shared external reality to use as a basis. I.e. you both can point at something and agree that they are blue and round and there are 2 of them. Then when we use the words later we both understand what they refer to.

Qualia are strictly internal feelings. An individual can't even be sure that the qualia they had in the past are the same as the qualia they are currently feeling, much less communicate anything about them in any way to anyone else. All one can say is they are having a feeling of what it is like to experience feelings of an experience. Not much information there.

I realize on the face of it, the idea that qualia in such a context has anything to do with shareable communication or even the possibility of being shared between two people is counterintuitive and contradictory, however I was considering both the no private language concept, along with some debatable phenomena.

 

[dlamberth]

So, would you say that your "essential self" is God?

More like an activity of God. But God in a Panentheist sense. Human beings is the cosmos being aware of itself.


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