h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

ANNIE

you write good stuff

no need to share your NDE. i imagine that it would be impossible for you to adequately describe it in words [as the human language is limited].
i can't speak for anybody else, but i, for one, would not belittle your account of your NDE.
i'm very open-minded and i already am WAY impressed by your intellect and ideas . so, anything you say with conviction, i take seriously. some things that you say, i don't agree with, but i don't say i'm any more right than you are .

i must say that my dear friend, SusY [who has joined us as 'imagine'] just shared with me a very profound experience that she had. it was something that felt much more intense AND qualitatively different than anything else in her experience. she is utterly unable to express this feeling in words. i found her account of this totally fascinating. even though it seemed to her to be a spiritual experience, she atttributes it to neurobiology.
i won't go into any more detail because i don't know if she'd want it posted. i brought this up b/c i think that her experience and your NDE are alike in that neither can be expressed in words and the feel of the experience was of unprecedented intensity and quality.


PeteY out!

%-| ?

You see I wonder why neurobiology can't just be considered to be the facilitator of the spiritual experience.

it CAN be, but some folks consider to be an unnecessary addition to physical processes leading to subjective experiences...
some people want to explain things as simply as possible and invoking spirituality, to some, is adding something that is not necessary to explain the observed phenomenon.



peteY out!

if u know stuff about the big bang, ull realiza how improbable it was that our universe survived let alone us being made, something or somone helped, it could be "god," but we might have the wrong idea of god, maybe hes part of an advanced race who make universes for a living, maybe if we discover the meaning of life they will beam us out and give us super inteligence, 100% control of our brain so we could do anything, espeasally if we have telekenisis, and they might give us inmortality, if it were only me to get it for discovering them, i would come back to earth and laugh at everyone who said i was wasting my life, cause now i have all eternity.

Sorry that started to sound to much like a science-fiction, i think i might use that next time i need to right a story in school.

hey, If the universe is infinite, then im "a" center, 214189 * 0 + 42, you posted:

"if u know stuff about the big bang, ull realiza how improbable it was that our universe survived let alone us being made, something or somone helped"

i beg to differ
i know the big bang quite well and i see no reason to invoke some entity that "helped" create the universe.
1st of all, no matter HOW improbable or even apparently IMpossible, we need not invoke a higher power.
2nd of all, how do you calculate the low probablities of which you are referring to?

%-| ?

I post, therefore I am.



I can see where this is coming from as a way of visualising the different things that the mind does, like verbal thinking, visual thinking, body control thinking, and the "deeper" processes of integration. Did you see it as a metaphor, or as literal?



I can't see how that would work. How do I decide what to think without thinking? Do I have to decide what to decide? And decide what to decide to decide?

Plainly it's being real would have been threatening to his worldview. Which is his problem, not yours. And I say that as someone with a sceptical worldview, as you know.
Still - I think ALL memories are at least a bit like this, anyway; yours, mine, everybody's. We reconstruct an experience each time we remember it in the light of what we have learnt since - but subtly, like a painter adding a dab of colour to a work that's never "quite" finished.



Well exactly. So why do we need a spirit to be a facilitator of the spiritual experience?

And finally, since we're talking about the meaning of life, what is the meaning of meaning in this context?

"Yes, I know, but..."

"Well, I'm a philosopher. That's what philosophers do."

Noggin

Hasselfree attempts to answer a row of philosophical questions

'Different levels of thinking..' Literally.
Anyone with a mind will know that there is more than one 'voice' in there. Arguement and counter arguement to name two. Plus unconscious 'thought' processing (what else can we call it ?)

'Thinking is free will manifested.'

This is one of those things where it's hard to explain and get it right.
Whatever situation a person is confronted with, we have the freedom of choice to decide how to feel about that situation.
In a way yes you have to decide what to decide, and you are free to make that decision, whatever anyone else tells you you SHOULD be thinking at that moment.
The anti side of this, the giving up of this free will, would be called brain washing, a very unpleasant manipulative tool.
Even the captive in the cell, has this freedom of thought.
We can choose to be positive about a situation or negative.
In the above example positive thought can mean the difference between survival and death.

That was nice what you said about the negative guy and his world view.
Sometimes we are stuck in our mind sets (me too) which mean that somebody who is older and who you feel has an authorative slant on the world can 'change' the way you think and make a younger person feel that their self esteem isn't real.
I had cast this older person in the role of parental figure, it was hard for me to think 'outside' the frame and challenge his authority at that time.

'Why do we need a spirit to be a facilitator of the spiritual experience?'

Because in my humble opinion that is the meaning of life.
We are more than the physical body. I only have to listen to an inspirational piece of music to feel that mankind is about more than , eating, sleeping, procreating and surviving as long as possible before dying .

If there was no spark in us all there would be no spiritual experience in the same way that is we had no body there would be no physical experience.
And I didn't say the 'spirit ' was the falicitator I said neurobiology was . The mind creates thinsg which are not physical we call it imagination.
but imagination is always the first thing before something becomes a reality.

Imagination/dreams/invention comes before creation and thereby a reality.
what we think we make real

%- | ? The thing i was saying about improbabilty that the universe would survive, is this, When it started it was infinitly small and infinitly dence, then it expanded, if it had gone one part of one hundred thousand milion slower it would have recolapsed on itself, if you think about it, whats the chance of it suceeding, unless something helped or someone has an improbabiliy drive?

This is just something i wrote to try to explain to someone why some people r the way they r:


Free Will?

How many people feel they have a calling in life?

By this I mean how many of you think you were put on this Earth to do something, if this something involves Science or Mathematics, people will most probably call you a nerd, but you have a passion to do this thing that is calling you, people say you don’t have to do it, you have free will, well maybe a few people do but I say the main percent cant resist. Why?

If you are walking down the street and someone calls your name from behind you, you turn around, this may seem very natural and have nothing to do with what I was talking about, but you think you have the choice to ignore the call, but you still will look back just because you feel you must.

This is very similar to the type of calling I was talking about in the beginning you can feel the calling and you feel you must answer it, now turning around in the street is a lot quicker and may not take much effort but the meaning is there, it may consume your entire life answering this call but it doesn’t seem to be boring or take forever because you feel that you must answer it.

So in a way, you have not got that much free will over the choice of whether to do it or not, though the rest of humanity will think you are an idiot for wasting your life and not having any “fun” which is very hard to define, for some people will say fun is going out to parties, drinking, smoking, getting stoned, laid, etc but then others will say that’s just boring and stupid and find making new discoveries in the field of science and mathematics amazingly interesting.

Could this all be because of that calling? Or were we maybe just born that way or are we just plain well different because of free will? Maybe it’s a mixture of both the calling and free will, I am a person who is interested in science and mathematics but also really enjoys a “good time” at parties, though I only ever drink and not take drugs or anything like that. Now is this because I chose to like both? I believe not, because when I think of it through another persons eyes who thinks science is boring, I see why they think that, mainly because until just over a year before now I was one of them, then suddenly just changed, I saw a video of how amazing space was and became interested in that then started reading thing about which mentioned other things so I read about those, etc. I now saw why people liked it, I then began to hear that calling voice, and I am looking back to see what it is, but not changing my whole life to it, but think I must also follow it.

By Jonathan Sharper

It sounds to me that this is evidence for free will.
If you answer a 'call' that you WANT to answer when the rest of the world calls it wrong, bad or 'nerdy',you are making a choice.
what you want to do versus what you feel others want you to do.
The problem would be if you hated it and still felt obliged to do it.

i stopped looking for a meaning to life a long time ago. now i just spend my time searching for punchlines. which is not to say that life doesn't have a meaning but that the search for punchlines provides a lot more laughs. and 42.

Don't worry -be happy

I know what you mean about being called Iffy. I don't know if we "choose" the things that drive us in this way, but as long as they are OUR motives, they are the result of our free will.

Did you read any of the discussion I gave you a link to?

Noggin

I have decided that there is no pre-defined meaning of life.
I might have one but I dont care what it is cause I will waste my whole life trying to figure it out then die without fulfilling it, so I am just gonna do life.

Amanda out

amanda,

good attitude.

as annie said, Life is an illusion, so make the illusion work FOR you...



peteY!

Go Annie!


I am with you (almost) on this one.

Amanda

amanda,

what do you mean by "almost"?

%-| ?

hedging a bet, safest course of action if you ask me

Read the manual. Look under "Adams, Douglas"

Oops -- time warp there. The above posting is of course a reply to posting 20 by Maverick, "What is this whole thing about 42? Does that mean you know the true meaning of life when you are 42?"

to AMANDA:

Hey, today is gonna totally suck @$$ for me
working all day and then i'm on call tonight
so, i might not have time to talk to you today , so i wanted to send ya a little shout out now before my hell begins
"HI AMANDA!"
and, no way in hell i'm gonna be able to make any flap jaks today

hope your "confrontation" at school went well today
i presume that you used "F**K" at least 5 times?
did you read my little post of what i thought you might wanna say?

ok, i'm off to hell

have a nice day!
hope your mega pasta meal has dislodged from where ever it was stuck!

TARA!

PeteY out

%-| ?