161 posts shown.
Sam Martinez9 said:Of course, otherwise atheism wouldn't even exist as a concept.
However, as long as someone identifies as a believer, they operate from a set of established foundations—principles like the existence of God or the divinity of Jesus—that they aren't meant to abandon. These truths serve as the bedrock upon which they build all their other perspectives on the world.
In that sense, their degree of intellectual freedom is somewhat limited.
Take your current position, for example. You are clearly a believer, and you seem unable to accept the premise that believers are inherently bound to believe in God. Because you're already working within that constraint, you're exerting quite a bit of effort to try and prove that such a limitation doesn't actually exist.
"As long as someone is a believer"... but people aren't stuck being believers forever.
We have the freedom to change our minds. If someone chooses to limit themselves, that's a choice they're making voluntarily.
If you look closely, this applies to everything. If you want to read Hegel, you have to go in believing he's worth reading. If you're a Marxist, you have to accept that Marxist theory is correct.
Sam Martinez9 said:If a believer stops believing, they cease being a believer and become an atheist. If an atheist begins to believe, they stop being an atheist and become a believer.
The last point serves as a fine illustration—you aren't doubting that Jesus was God; rather, you are pondering the nature of divinity itself.
True. People are free to change their minds and become atheists, Buddhists, or whatever else they choose. Having an open or closed mind isn't inherently tied to your stance on God.
I can doubt if I want to, too. You can question anything. Sometimes, though, choosing to believe is a much stronger act than doubting.
Sam Martinez9 said:However, you can't just walk away from the core tenets of your faith. You don't necessarily have to sit in a church pew every Sunday, but you can't claim that Jesus wasn't God.
Everything else we believe about how this world works is ultimately built upon those foundational principles.
True, though it sounds to me like you're describing a closed mindset.
A believer can lose their faith, and an atheist can certainly become religious.
For me, asking whether Jesus was God or not isn't enough. The much more interesting question is what it actually means to be God, or even what "God" signifies in the first place.
Sam Martinez9 said:Good grief, what was I actually getting at in my last couple of posts?
I'm talking about believers—people who actually belong to a religion—not atheists or agnostics. My point is: how does a member of a faith actually differ from an atheist, an agnostic, or someone who just doesn't subscribe to any religion at all?
Besides, an atheist can certainly be fascinated by Christianity (or Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) as a tradition or a historical phenomenon. Just because someone studies religions doesn't mean they are a believer or a member of that faith. A Catholic can study Islam all day long without suddenly becoming a Muslim.
However, if someone *is* a believer, and they truly adhere to Christian teachings, then they must believe in the existence of God and that Jesus was God.
An atheist isn't bound by those beliefs; they are free to view the world however they see fit, following wherever their own mind leads them.
An atheist is simply someone who doesn't believe in God. You can believe in God, or even in Jesus, without being an active follower of a specific religion.
Sam Martinez9 said:I’m struggling to follow this logic.
Doesn't religion essentially require its followers to adhere to the doctrines laid out in their sacred texts?
To put it plainly: can a Catholic, for instance, really view Jesus through a lens that contradicts the Bible or the interpretations provided by their priests and the Pope?
A Catholic can't simply conclude: *Jesus wasn't God; he was just an ordinary man, a historical figure preserved through oral tradition and eventually recorded in the Gospels. Therefore, gods aren't real.*
If one starts from the fundamental premise that God exists and that Jesus was indeed God, then true free thought becomes an impossibility.
You don't have to start from that premise, and you certainly don't have to be a believer.
Sure, if you're an active member of the Church, there's an expectation to align with official doctrines, but being a believer isn't mandatory.
Personally, I'm more interested in Christianity as a cultural tradition rather than the Church or its specific rituals...
Sam Martinez9 said:If a religion demands that a person think specifically according to what is written in the Bible, then that is a restriction. If someone is forced to believe they were created in God's image and isn't permitted to entertain any other perspective, then we are talking about a restriction, aren't we?
You don't have to see it that way. Why wouldn't someone be able to think differently?
Sam Martinez9 said:I think we can observe traces of consciousness everywhere. Plants, animals, even inanimate objects react to their environment in subtle ways. Personally, I’m not a believer, so my worldview isn't restricted by Christian doctrine.
Why do you feel like it’s a limitation?
Sam Martinez9 said:Exactly. That’s why people say we’ve seen a return to the beginning with the New Age movement; our understanding of nature is essentially a snake biting its own tail.
Our ancestors lived in harmony with the wild rather than being boxed into concrete skyscrapers. They were surrounded by flora and fauna, observing them intimately every single day of their lives. It stands to reason, then, that they recognized the profound similarities between humans and all other living beings.
They even attributed animistic qualities to inanimate objects—to rivers, massive boulders, and simple stones...
Living creatures aren't just mindless robots merely reacting to external stimuli.
There are far too many arguments against that view.
But if that's true, consciousness would exist in everything, and humanity would be its greatest achievement—what Christianity describes as being made in the image of God.
Sam Martinez9 said:If we assume consciousness is infinite, then logic dictates it must, and indeed should, manifest across all living organisms and potentially even within inanimate matter itself. An infinite consciousness would be expressed throughout an infinite universe; it wouldn't simply wait billions of years before making its presence known.
It’s a sentiment you see quite often in various animistic traditions, which suggest that a living spirit resides in everything.
Sam Martinez9 said:But you were discussing consciousness itself, not necessarily self-awareness, weren't you?
You mentioned that consciousness is infinite—so, do you believe consciousness is inherently infinite, or does it require self-awareness to reach that state?
I certainly agree that a bacterium and a human don't share the same degree of consciousness, but there's just no concrete evidence to suggest that self-awareness is an exclusively human trait.
What I mean is pure consciousness—the kind that reaches its highest expression in humans (and perhaps other beings out there in the universe). That doesn't mean animals lack self-awareness; they likely possess it, just to varying degrees.
Sam Martinez9 said:But I did use the term living organism, didn't I? And both plants and bacteria fall under that umbrella, right? So, if they're living organisms, they possess a form of consciousness—they respond to what's happening around them.
Take a bacterium, for instance. It moves toward nutrients, recognizes its surroundings, and steers clear of what it perceives as toxic...
True, but humans have self-awareness. A bacterium just reacts.
Basically, human consciousness is on an entirely different level.
Sam Martinez9 said:In my view, consciousness is simply the capacity of a living organism to respond to its environment. It can't be an illusion, because the biological response itself isn't an illusion.
I don't think it's quite that simple. Plants and bacteria react to their surroundings too, but we wouldn't call them conscious.
Sam Martinez9 said:There is simply no evidence to suggest that consciousness is infinite. Nor is there any proof that the universe itself is infinite—though if anything possesses such scale, it would be the cosmos.
We only ever observe manifestations of consciousness within living organisms, and those organisms are finite. It stands to reason that consciousness might simply emerge within an organism and vanish entirely upon its death.
So, you're essentially arguing that consciousness is nothing more than what some people call a brain-based illusion.
Sam Martinez9 said:But why?
What actually lasts is the consciousness that observes everything else.
Sam Martinez9 said:I think that’s an illusion. Everything in a person's life is finite; everything eventually reaches its conclusion. A single day, a career, a week, even the years spent in elementary school, high school, college, friendships, and even marriages—it's all strictly bound by time.
And it isn't just about the end point; everything is in a constant state of flux while it's happening. Nothing stays static, and nothing lasts forever.
Personally, I find the idea of an infinite life to be rather meaningless. But then again, that's just my perspective and how I feel. Of course, others are free to think and feel quite differently.
But if everything truly is finite, then there has to be something else out there—something permanent and eternal.
That’s why almost every tradition ever recorded points toward some kind of spiritual existence or an unseen order.
Sam Martinez9 said:The point is life itself.
It can actually be quite meaningful, if you look at it that way.
But, through everything we do, we’re ultimately reaching for the infinite.
feralranger said:People frequently tend to examine the prejudices of others through a microscope while viewing their own through a telescope held entirely backward. Your reactions align perfectly with this distortion, leading you to lose all semblance of restraint and resort to trolling—which, frankly, isn't an unexpected psychological defense mechanism.
This is, for instance, a documentary that tackles modernist biases by confronting them with rigorous science that lacks any sort of ideological agenda or hidden motive.
Modern-day narrow-mindedness can be just as suffocating as the old-fashioned variety; occasionally, it proves to be even more stubborn and closed off. It varies from case to case...
So-called "scientific research" is often contradictory (particularly within the less exact sciences), which implies they are certainly not infallible and should never be accepted blindly as dogma or as some kind of "sacred scripture."
Indeed, those are the only two modes available. There are also instances where psychological abusers (as I have personally witnessed with a close friend of mine) gloat over her much like a mother might after giving a child a quick swat on the backside because they failed to respond to verbal commands or other cues.
We never physically disciplined our children, yet I wouldn't dare presume to be a superior parent to that friend of mine who favored the swatting method... and I suspect her children might actually fare better in life, a correlation that could potentially be linked to these very issues... though, much like anything that remains empirically unprovable, it is subject to various interpretations...
"A good spanking is a blessing from above," my elders used to say.
Joseph Bailey41 said:This is such an interesting topic. Sociolinguistics also suggests that language acts as a sort of mental prison. Still, trying to grasp a pre-linguistic state feels nearly impossible, unless you're perhaps looking into some pretty intense entheogens. 😁
I’m particularly drawn to the idea of timelessness serving as the bridge between pure spontaneity and conscious thought. I'd love to hear if anyone here knows a bit more about that concept.
He talks about timelessness as a liberation from "clock time," which is obviously essential for a civilized society (before civilization, in that sense, time didn't really exist). He just adds that wordlessness—some sort of primal, direct form of communication—is also necessary.
Just to be clear, I’m not personally claiming these views. I’m presenting the perspective of the American author John Zerzan, a philosopher and anarchist. Zerzan argues that human civilization was essentially a mistake, and he identifies time and language as the primary drivers behind humanity's alienation from nature.
"According to Lévy-Bruhl, Durkheim, and others, the main qualitative difference between a 'primitive mind' and our own is that in primitive people, there is no separation during the moment of experience; 'the savage mind totalizes,' as Lévi-Strauss put it. Consequently, we have long been taught that this primal unity was destined to fail—that alienation is an inherent part of being human, and that consciousness itself depends on it.
Just as objectified time was considered essential for consciousness—Hegel referred to this as 'necessary alienation'—nearly the same argument has been made regarding language, which is also a flawed assumption. Language can rightly be viewed as a fundamental ideology, perhaps representing a separation from the natural world just as profound as the emergence of independent time. And if timelessness dissolves the gap between spontaneity and consciousness, perhaps a state without language is equally necessary.
Adorno wrote in Minima Moralia: 'For happiness, as for truth: we do not have it, but we are in it.' This could be a perfect description of the human species before the arrival of time and language—before the divisions and distances that destroyed authenticity. Language is the core theme of this inquiry, examined in its most virulent form. Our Nietzschean fragment introduces his central perspective: 'words dilute and brutalize; words depersonalize; words strangely make the ordinary seem common.'
"In this sense, speaking in terms of structure, it is obvious that 'freedom of speech' does not exist; grammar acts as an invisible 'control of thought' within our unseen prison. Through language, we have already adapted ourselves to a world devoid of freedom.
Objectification—the tendency to perceive concepts as if they were perceived directly, and to treat concepts as if they were physical objects—is the foundation of both language and ideology. Language represents the objectification of one's own experiences, causing the mind to dismantle them into parts that can be manipulated like objects through the use of concepts. Horkheimer pointed out that ideology is shaped more by who people are—mentally constrained and entirely dependent on the connections offered to them—than by what they believe. In a statement that applies just as accurately to language as it does to ideology, he added that people experience everything solely within a conventional web of concepts.
It is often claimed that objectification is necessary for mental functioning; that by creating concepts—which, admittedly, can be confused with actual life relations and qualities—we manage to resolve almost unbearable states when one experience is compared to another.
Regarding this distancing from experience, Cassirer noted: 'It seems that physical reality diminishes in proportion to the growth of symbolic activity.' Representation and uniformity begin with language, reminding us of the Heideggerian claim that something extraordinarily important was lost along with the rise of civilization."