Still, I don't want to harm my thoughts either, which is what a psychedelic does.

I have hallucinated on demand many times of the same object, I know it can be replicated.

I can't let doubt bring me down if I'm going to fly.  I know what's true.  And no, it won't be off a roof but on a stage with many people watching.

I liked your post rassah, but I beg to differ that personal encounters of god are proof of existence.  How else can you explain something ripping a hole into this dimension and interacting with you?

I can explain how evolution in consciousness leads to evolved physical states.

Lost 50 pounds in 6 months after finding my soul and soul mate.  No working out, just being positive and with psychedelics which evolves consciousness.  I had invega, an anti-psychotic that blocks out your brain, shot into me against my will and I gained 20-30 pounds in a matter of weeks.  Now invega is nearly 70-80% out of me and I am getting back in shape fast.

This works on every scale.

For example, evolution in consciousness leads to evolved physical states rather than vice versa.

The atheist position in these examples seems to be based on a logical fallacy: that absence of evidence implies evidence of absence. That's just wrong and unscientific. For scientists to be true-to-form (or atheists claiming a scientific basis for their beliefs), they basically can't be atheists. Positive evidence can always be disputed and rejected and so on, but pretty much the only things they can do with an absence of evidence is:
1) look for it
2) wait until somebody else finds some

Of course there's also a 3rd option:
3) ignore the issue
but then they're not doing any science and there's no science backing their views either.

Both the agnostic and theistic views are more logical. E.g., for theists: their beliefs have a basis, i.e. personal experience, and they correctly label their belief as a belief. Similarly for agnostics: lack of evidence does not imply anything, it's just a lack of evidence and there's nothing to suggest that some new knowledge won't emerge in a future.

For the most part I don't believe in the 'stories', although some of them are likely based on historical events (e.g.: floods happen all the time, massive climatic events also happen occasionally). However, I'm sure I've mentioned Qualia a couple of times already in this thread -- real, observable phenomena that 21st century science still can't explain. Everybody (those without disabilities) sees colours or hears sounds but what the hell is this process? I'm not talking about mechanical/electrical/chemical series of events tickling the brain-machine, I'm talking about the conscious mind that bears witness to it all.


To throw a spanner in the works and directly question epiphenomenal views of the world, if free will doesn't exist, then surely consciousness would never have evolved in the first place? (If it somehow evolved). To quickly elaborate on what I mean: if free will doesn't exist, then the conscious mind basically can't do anything anyway. It would be a helpless prisoner inside someone's body, sensing everything that they do, but being unable to exert any influence over that motion-picture experience. I've heard theories that an illusion of free will somehow evolved to combat the problem of "the feeling of helplessly observing the world from someone's body"... but come on, invoking evolution to fix a problem that needn't exist in the first place? That's why they call it the HARD problem of consciousness, i.e.: it's not easy.

If one cannot believe in Jesus, is one ready to become Jesus?

Atheism makes no sense. If you want to call yourself an atheist because you don't believe there's a god, that's fine. But to try to claim that there can't be a god is just utterly insane.

In order of logic, from sane to insane:
Agnosticism: "There might be a moose in these woods."
Theism: "There is a moose in these woods, but I have no evidence."
Atheism: "There can't possibly, under any circumstance or at any point in time, be a moose in these woods, but I have no proof."

Every sound wave and light wave you emit will forever stream across the universe.  Every movement has it's own gravitational pull which can be felt at an ever exponentially decreasing rate, but still present.

You existence affects the entire universe.

@"the joint" you have a hard time with local loop.

The fact that life give itself some meaning is just a local loop, and as so doesn't impose condition on the rest of the universe.

If the sun explode, earth would be reduced to dust, and the universe will continue as pointless as it was before.
The universe is pointless because the universe has no will.

The problem with human thinking, is it try to search meaning and patterns everywhere, that's how we evolved. Because it's useful to know that a lion wants to eat or that an other person has an aim, as it help us anticipate action of others and so survive with more efficiency.
Alas searching pattern where there is none is detrimental, and the worse is we will find (false) patterns.
Just like when you look in the sky and see faces, our brain is hard-wired to see faces everywhere, this doesn't mean there is faces drawn everywhere, you have just been tricked by your brain.

The same happen with the universe : "it has to have a meaning because otherwise my brain is lost".
So what an atheist do, is accept the fact that universe has no will, despite the fact that his primal brain cry for a meaning.
Other people would invent a supreme been that look like them to give them this meaning that they what so much.

The same goes for infinity or emptiness (or the absence of everything) , infinity and void are difficult concept to grasp. That's why people don't accept void, and always want to put something there, whether it is a god or a super alien.