Hellooo everyone! This video took way to long to push out. Hopefully I didn’t mess it up with my audio issues and speech! Though, if you do enjoy this video I would like to ask you to subscribe, link, and share! But only do that if you enjoyed it- if not you can even drop a dislike.
It's the same for all people. Imagine at the end of your life you found out that God is real and you now have to face the consequences of your life. I must say, this is far more nightmarish than me finding out that God doesn't exist.
in secularism, is there something with permanent(?) or permeating(?) worth? that holds you even when some people/you could naturally move past world soul?
On the contrary, dementia (and stroke) proves the nonexistence of the soul. How could a soul exist in fractions during a process of constant partial degradation? As an ABD dementia researcher at an R01 institution, yes, it is one of the greatest terrors of existence. Despite this, I still find comfort in its inherent mutual exclusivity with ensoulment.
Your assumption is that Soul is a function of mind, but it may not be, it may be something separate from both mind and body, yet in contact with both. The Soul, if given a physical form, might be more of a coherent electro-magnetic field, maintained within the body by the most energetic organs, the brain and the heart. What would be the purpose of such a thing? To maintain contact with the Universe, that is, with the flow of energy, starting at the "Big Bang" and continuing through all things. There is no place, that we know of, where there is no motion, no energetic fields, no absolute cold, no place where the energy of the Big Bang Universe does not touch. That is, in fact, the definition of the Universe. So why would this be? Perhaps the Universe is trying to understand itself. We know there is intelligence living within the Universe, we are that intelligence and we may not be the only one. If one were to think of God, outside of religion, we might see the Universe as the embodiment of the God. Everything that happens teaches the Universe how such things happen, so the Universe can learn more about itself. Does this mean there are intelligent stars? I don't know, maybe, maybe there are more kinds of intelligence than I know about or can understand, but each thing I do learn, the Universe learns, after all, you and I are all parts of the Universe, no less important that a star. We are teaching the Universe, or maybe God, how to be Human. That would be the purpose of the Soul and why it isn't destroyed when the mind goes or the body dies. And I wonder too, if, maybe, the "Big Bang" wasn't the birth of the Universe, but the conception of it, birth to take place when it has developed enough to exist outside of itself. Just a thought.
What makes you think your "mystical experiences" are not just hallucinations? Like your other religious beliefs and rituals, just because you WANT them to hold some ultimate meaning doesn't mean they do. I don't want to fool myself into feeling good, I want to search for truth. Science is certainly imperfect, but it is far better at finding truth than any religion. And if that means admitting that the only meaning in life is a result of our biology, that's fine with me. Gods are for children who can't face the truth.
When it comes to a person's individual experience, where do you suspect they find truth? You want truth, but if you're looking for truth from science then it's empirical truth you value. But mystics and religion people have an entirely different epistemic concern. It's like you're coming at someone playing baseball and demanding they play by football rules, you do see how silly that is right? Religious and mystical experiences aren't about truth in the form you want, so they shouldn't need their truths to hold up to your particular standards. What matters in the realm of the mystical is does it have pragmatic value for my own life? I don't understand why my fellow atheists have to strive so hard to try to prove religious people wrong, just let them have their own thing. Sure there was a time when we lived in a religion dominated society, and any efforts of religious people to influence politics that we should fight against with rigor, intelligence, and ferocity. But the drive toward mystical experience is a profoundly human impulse we will never get rid of nor should we. Whether the mystical experience is chemicals in the brain or not is ultimately irrelevant to whether or not it gives people a sense of meaning.
@@technoshaman101 So you;re an atheist who has mystical, supernatural experiences. That seems like a contradiction. Can you tell me something important you have learned from these experiences?
@@RayG817 I was born having "mystical" experiences at various points throughout my life. Started having them long before I knew anything about religion, first one I can recall was when I was about 6, it was a synthetic experience of seeming to perceive sound moving around me. Then later I saw tiny creatures that floated on the wind and to my child's mind anyway I believed they controlled the wind. Then there was a sense of unity accompanied by a profound and to this day unshakable sense that I know who I authentically am, I was about 10 for that one. I don't say supernatural, because this implies I believe I know what these experiences are. I do not know what they are, for all I know it is nothing more than chemicals in my brain. I could even be schizophrenic, but schizophrenia usually produces negative experiences that make life miserable all the experiences I've had are uplifting. The experience of unity with everything gave a sense of profound empathy that has never left me. I also continue to experience union from time to time, and the experience itself: A. Produces the best stress relief of anything I've ever experienced, leaving me devoid of any negative stress for a month after on average B. Fills me to the brim with a sense of love and joy C. Enhances self worth and sense of capability dramatically Every one of these experiences, which I continue to have to this day (I'm 40 now and still not religious) leaves me with enhanced cognitive capacities after and with useful insights. I could go on, every "mystical" experience (which is just to say useful alternate state of consciousness) has some benefit, even if that benefit is just that it makes life feel meaningful, which is nothing to scoff at, it's a sublimely useful thing to have meaning. Still I don't believe any of this is truly spiritual, I will on occasion say I'm spiritual for a short easy way of talking to certain people. But I don't believe in a god, I don't believe in spirits, I don't believe in the supernatural, and I suspend judgement as to exactly what it is that happens when I have these experiences. It probably is just chemicals, but they are useful states so why not go with it. Hell I wouldnt be able to stop having these experiences if I wanted to unless I took maybe psychiatric meds but why medicate away something so enriching? All of this is besides the point though, why not let religious people have their beliefs?
@@RayG817 I made a reply to this but now I'm not seeing it here. This will be a bit shorter than the one I originally typed. Basically an atheist, as I'm sure you know doesn't believe in anything supernatural, and neither do I. I do not consider my alternate states of consciousness to be supernatural. Now as for mystical, I prefer this word because, at least as far as I understand the word the term doesn't require that the mystical experience be something true, or actual. For all I know it is all chemicals in my brain... Though I would posit that the phenomenological experience I have amounts to more than chemicals in the end, just as systems are more the sum of their parts. But none of what I'm saying means that my experiences are anything supernatural or that they prove the existence of God, spirits, or other entities. I do think you'd benefit from looking into the emerging Christian atheist movement, I'm not one of them, but it might help you think around these seeming contradictions. I have a very complex and nuanced response to all this that doesn't fit here. For now suffice to say that all I know is that I have life enriching alternate states of consciousness, that I've had spontaneously since I was a little child. But I don't know what these states are for sure, and I don't need to assume I know, I'm ok with not knowing for sure. What I do know is that these alternate states are extremely useful, and not just for me, looking into the growing body of evidence around psychedelic therapy for instance. My own experiences, like the experience of Oneness: A. Enhances empathy B. Leaves me feeling stress free for a month longer after the experience C. Fills me with love, joy and confidence D. Enhances cognitive capabilities, I'm a writer and a visual artist and after such an experience I tend to enter a Flow state where the art practically makes its self, I become hyper productive with seemingly little to no expenditure of energy. I recommend people meditate and engage in ritual so they can find out for themselves. You don't have to be religious to have these experience, studies have found that alternate states are actually quite common in varying degrees. I say let people have their religion so long as they keep it separate from politics. I will say that some points in history religious people looked down on mystics because if you can have such an experience then you don't need a priest. So claiming such experiences for ourselves is a rebellion against dogmatism especially if we refuse to classify our experiences. But hey if you want you can even believe in the hyper-idea of God, just don't believe in some sort of actual god, even the Christians don't know the actual god, but the idea is useful even if we recognize it as nothing more than supernormal stimulus.
There is no paradox mentioned in your video, from a secular purely materialist standpoint it is entirely acceptable to say that a person with dementia simply looses their coherent sense of identity when their brain stops working properly. It’s also not a paradox to say that the brain creates our sense of time, and that the brain not working would disrupt our sense of time. I don’t see a logical need for anything spiritual or religious in this account. Now I’d like to quality what I just said by noting that I am actually a very spiritual person, I’m just evaluating the logic of your argument, and I find it seriously lacking. It was thought provoking though. I also wonder how much you’ve researched Eastern philosophies like Buddhism which account for the phenomena you’ve described quite well, the Buddhists are very much aligned to Hume when it comes to his bundle theory of the self, and they provide a resolution to all that that doesn’t necessarily require a deity. Part of this resolution comes from the eastern understanding of the concept of absence, I recommend reading Byung Chul Hun’s book by the name of Absence. Also there is a book, can’t recall the author now called the Giving Tree on eastern philosophy and it covers at one point their views on nothingness. Also Hindu Advaita Vedanta methodology pulls a Descartian analysis of what we can know but doesn’t stop at “I think therefore I am”, but questions even the reality of thought to see we can observe thought, and even suspend thought, and still we are, therefore we are pure awareness itself.
@davidecapannelli6681 I disagree. Though many arguments do end up going down this road where there is or seems to be some crucial misunderstanding, I wouldn't place all them in this camp. When this does happen though it tends to be do to what I consider a fundamental mistake of trying to play by scientific materialistic rules to justify spirituality and religion. The idea is something like since science, materialism and rationality have captured the hearts and minds of the masses we have to show them that God, spirit, and other such phenomenon fit into this predominant frame work. Science also makes a similar mistake when looking at the history of religions, they assume that religions, and cultures came up with their mythology in an attempt to explain the natural world. This assumption that they are attempting to explain the natural world has a modicum of truth but is largely false. I would propose that prescientific cultures were largely interested in their inner world and in their mystical experiences. I suspect ancient people's had many more mystical experiences as their lives where well suited for such. As someone who's had spontaneous mystical experiences his entire life i can attest there are certain environments and activities more likely to trigger such states of consciousness: being close to nature, close knit community, art and ritual, solitude, and more but I don't want to make this too long. All of these things I just listed we know were in greater abundance in the ancient worlds. Sure we have plenty of art, but with a ritual life and narratives literally tied into the warp and weft of how people loved their day to day lives art was a part of everything, and was a way of living. The point is these people were more concerned with their psychological well being, and in the deeply life affirming value of mystical realizations. Nietzsche called it with his metaphorical death of God, we now live in a time profoundly removed from a sense of meaning. But ancient people were primarily not concerned with understanding their world but with creating meaning. So if the old way, the way of religion was to give people a sense of meaning, and science has stripped the world of that meaning, because creating meaning isnt the priority or purpose of science, then why do apologists spend so much time trying to show arguments that allow religion to hold up against rational materialist scrutiny? Instead show the pragmatic value of a sense of meaning. Scientists and atheists sometimes propose that you can get meaning from a scientific world view, and to be fair you can from anything. Yet scientists aren't helping create rituals and community tied to life affirming narratives, and there are signs that modern people are longing for just this! But religions do need to account for the mistakes religions have made and show they won't fall into the same traps as they used to. I.e. repression and oppression of people's. Dogmatism that becomes violence etc.
This is true. I research dementia at an R01 institution. Experiences of mysticism are common, originate from mysterious but mundane patterns of neural activation, and should still instill a sense of wonder. William James did not claim those experiences were of numinous origin. Yet they can and should should inspire from a secular standpoint.
@@RayG817 I’d love to have you on the channel to set up a debate regarding the existence of God. Do you have any contact information? Any other social medias I could get a hold of you from.
Hellooo everyone! This video took way to long to push out. Hopefully I didn’t mess it up with my audio issues and speech!
Though, if you do enjoy this video I would like to ask you to subscribe, link, and share! But only do that if you enjoyed it- if not you can even drop a dislike.
On the other hand, the religious person's nightmare is the likelihood that everything they believe is wrong.
@@RayG817 That’s probability, if you prove the existence of God then you have to assume deism or theism/ all evidence points to theism.
It's the same for all people. Imagine at the end of your life you found out that God is real and you now have to face the consequences of your life.
I must say, this is far more nightmarish than me finding out that God doesn't exist.
Awesome video,i feel like to comment even if i do rarely
Thank you for your support! I am happy to have you as one of my subscribers! Welcome to the Postmortem family ❤️ 🙏
in secularism, is there something with permanent(?) or permeating(?) worth? that holds you even when some people/you could naturally move past world soul?
everything is elaborated nicely with a very good level of research
On the contrary, dementia (and stroke) proves the nonexistence of the soul. How could a soul exist in fractions during a process of constant partial degradation?
As an ABD dementia researcher at an R01 institution, yes, it is one of the greatest terrors of existence. Despite this, I still find comfort in its inherent mutual exclusivity with ensoulment.
Your assumption is that Soul is a function of mind, but it may not be, it may be something separate from both mind and body, yet in contact with both. The Soul, if given a physical form, might be more of a coherent electro-magnetic field, maintained within the body by the most energetic organs, the brain and the heart. What would be the purpose of such a thing? To maintain contact with the Universe, that is, with the flow of energy, starting at the "Big Bang" and continuing through all things. There is no place, that we know of, where there is no motion, no energetic fields, no absolute cold, no place where the energy of the Big Bang Universe does not touch. That is, in fact, the definition of the Universe. So why would this be? Perhaps the Universe is trying to understand itself. We know there is intelligence living within the Universe, we are that intelligence and we may not be the only one. If one were to think of God, outside of religion, we might see the Universe as the embodiment of the God. Everything that happens teaches the Universe how such things happen, so the Universe can learn more about itself. Does this mean there are intelligent stars? I don't know, maybe, maybe there are more kinds of intelligence than I know about or can understand, but each thing I do learn, the Universe learns, after all, you and I are all parts of the Universe, no less important that a star. We are teaching the Universe, or maybe God, how to be Human. That would be the purpose of the Soul and why it isn't destroyed when the mind goes or the body dies. And I wonder too, if, maybe, the "Big Bang" wasn't the birth of the Universe, but the conception of it, birth to take place when it has developed enough to exist outside of itself. Just a thought.
Sorry, I don't feel it really explained itself well
What makes you think your "mystical experiences" are not just hallucinations? Like your other religious beliefs and rituals, just because you WANT them to hold some ultimate meaning doesn't mean they do. I don't want to fool myself into feeling good, I want to search for truth. Science is certainly imperfect, but it is far better at finding truth than any religion. And if that means admitting that the only meaning in life is a result of our biology, that's fine with me. Gods are for children who can't face the truth.
When it comes to a person's individual experience, where do you suspect they find truth?
You want truth, but if you're looking for truth from science then it's empirical truth you value. But mystics and religion people have an entirely different epistemic concern. It's like you're coming at someone playing baseball and demanding they play by football rules, you do see how silly that is right? Religious and mystical experiences aren't about truth in the form you want, so they shouldn't need their truths to hold up to your particular standards. What matters in the realm of the mystical is does it have pragmatic value for my own life? I don't understand why my fellow atheists have to strive so hard to try to prove religious people wrong, just let them have their own thing. Sure there was a time when we lived in a religion dominated society, and any efforts of religious people to influence politics that we should fight against with rigor, intelligence, and ferocity. But the drive toward mystical experience is a profoundly human impulse we will never get rid of nor should we. Whether the mystical experience is chemicals in the brain or not is ultimately irrelevant to whether or not it gives people a sense of meaning.
@@technoshaman101 So you;re an atheist who has mystical, supernatural experiences. That seems like a contradiction. Can you tell me something important you have learned from these experiences?
@@RayG817 I was born having "mystical" experiences at various points throughout my life. Started having them long before I knew anything about religion, first one I can recall was when I was about 6, it was a synthetic experience of seeming to perceive sound moving around me. Then later I saw tiny creatures that floated on the wind and to my child's mind anyway I believed they controlled the wind. Then there was a sense of unity accompanied by a profound and to this day unshakable sense that I know who I authentically am, I was about 10 for that one.
I don't say supernatural, because this implies I believe I know what these experiences are. I do not know what they are, for all I know it is nothing more than chemicals in my brain. I could even be schizophrenic, but schizophrenia usually produces negative experiences that make life miserable all the experiences I've had are uplifting.
The experience of unity with everything gave a sense of profound empathy that has never left me. I also continue to experience union from time to time, and the experience itself:
A. Produces the best stress relief of anything I've ever experienced, leaving me devoid of any negative stress for a month after on average
B. Fills me to the brim with a sense of love and joy
C. Enhances self worth and sense of capability dramatically
Every one of these experiences, which I continue to have to this day (I'm 40 now and still not religious) leaves me with enhanced cognitive capacities after and with useful insights.
I could go on, every "mystical" experience (which is just to say useful alternate state of consciousness) has some benefit, even if that benefit is just that it makes life feel meaningful, which is nothing to scoff at, it's a sublimely useful thing to have meaning.
Still I don't believe any of this is truly spiritual, I will on occasion say I'm spiritual for a short easy way of talking to certain people. But I don't believe in a god, I don't believe in spirits, I don't believe in the supernatural, and I suspend judgement as to exactly what it is that happens when I have these experiences. It probably is just chemicals, but they are useful states so why not go with it. Hell I wouldnt be able to stop having these experiences if I wanted to unless I took maybe psychiatric meds but why medicate away something so enriching?
All of this is besides the point though, why not let religious people have their beliefs?
@@RayG817 I made a reply to this but now I'm not seeing it here. This will be a bit shorter than the one I originally typed.
Basically an atheist, as I'm sure you know doesn't believe in anything supernatural, and neither do I. I do not consider my alternate states of consciousness to be supernatural.
Now as for mystical, I prefer this word because, at least as far as I understand the word the term doesn't require that the mystical experience be something true, or actual. For all I know it is all chemicals in my brain... Though I would posit that the phenomenological experience I have amounts to more than chemicals in the end, just as systems are more the sum of their parts. But none of what I'm saying means that my experiences are anything supernatural or that they prove the existence of God, spirits, or other entities.
I do think you'd benefit from looking into the emerging Christian atheist movement, I'm not one of them, but it might help you think around these seeming contradictions.
I have a very complex and nuanced response to all this that doesn't fit here. For now suffice to say that all I know is that I have life enriching alternate states of consciousness, that I've had spontaneously since I was a little child. But I don't know what these states are for sure, and I don't need to assume I know, I'm ok with not knowing for sure.
What I do know is that these alternate states are extremely useful, and not just for me, looking into the growing body of evidence around psychedelic therapy for instance.
My own experiences, like the experience of Oneness:
A. Enhances empathy
B. Leaves me feeling stress free for a month longer after the experience
C. Fills me with love, joy and confidence
D. Enhances cognitive capabilities, I'm a writer and a visual artist and after such an experience I tend to enter a Flow state where the art practically makes its self, I become hyper productive with seemingly little to no expenditure of energy.
I recommend people meditate and engage in ritual so they can find out for themselves. You don't have to be religious to have these experience, studies have found that alternate states are actually quite common in varying degrees.
I say let people have their religion so long as they keep it separate from politics. I will say that some points in history religious people looked down on mystics because if you can have such an experience then you don't need a priest. So claiming such experiences for ourselves is a rebellion against dogmatism especially if we refuse to classify our experiences.
But hey if you want you can even believe in the hyper-idea of God, just don't believe in some sort of actual god, even the Christians don't know the actual god, but the idea is useful even if we recognize it as nothing more than supernormal stimulus.
There is no paradox mentioned in your video, from a secular purely materialist standpoint it is entirely acceptable to say that a person with dementia simply looses their coherent sense of identity when their brain stops working properly. It’s also not a paradox to say that the brain creates our sense of time, and that the brain not working would disrupt our sense of time. I don’t see a logical need for anything spiritual or religious in this account.
Now I’d like to quality what I just said by noting that I am actually a very spiritual person, I’m just evaluating the logic of your argument, and I find it seriously lacking. It was thought provoking though. I also wonder how much you’ve researched Eastern philosophies like Buddhism which account for the phenomena you’ve described quite well, the Buddhists are very much aligned to Hume when it comes to his bundle theory of the self, and they provide a resolution to all that that doesn’t necessarily require a deity. Part of this resolution comes from the eastern understanding of the concept of absence, I recommend reading Byung Chul Hun’s book by the name of Absence. Also there is a book, can’t recall the author now called the Giving Tree on eastern philosophy and it covers at one point their views on nothingness. Also Hindu Advaita Vedanta methodology pulls a Descartian analysis of what we can know but doesn’t stop at “I think therefore I am”, but questions even the reality of thought to see we can observe thought, and even suspend thought, and still we are, therefore we are pure awareness itself.
Every single argument for Religion is literally just a person not understanding something.
@@technoshaman101 I can make a part 2 responding towards this.
@davidecapannelli6681 What a wonderful comment! I must remember this.
@davidecapannelli6681 I disagree. Though many arguments do end up going down this road where there is or seems to be some crucial misunderstanding, I wouldn't place all them in this camp. When this does happen though it tends to be do to what I consider a fundamental mistake of trying to play by scientific materialistic rules to justify spirituality and religion. The idea is something like since science, materialism and rationality have captured the hearts and minds of the masses we have to show them that God, spirit, and other such phenomenon fit into this predominant frame work. Science also makes a similar mistake when looking at the history of religions, they assume that religions, and cultures came up with their mythology in an attempt to explain the natural world. This assumption that they are attempting to explain the natural world has a modicum of truth but is largely false. I would propose that prescientific cultures were largely interested in their inner world and in their mystical experiences. I suspect ancient people's had many more mystical experiences as their lives where well suited for such. As someone who's had spontaneous mystical experiences his entire life i can attest there are certain environments and activities more likely to trigger such states of consciousness: being close to nature, close knit community, art and ritual, solitude, and more but I don't want to make this too long.
All of these things I just listed we know were in greater abundance in the ancient worlds. Sure we have plenty of art, but with a ritual life and narratives literally tied into the warp and weft of how people loved their day to day lives art was a part of everything, and was a way of living.
The point is these people were more concerned with their psychological well being, and in the deeply life affirming value of mystical realizations. Nietzsche called it with his metaphorical death of God, we now live in a time profoundly removed from a sense of meaning. But ancient people were primarily not concerned with understanding their world but with creating meaning.
So if the old way, the way of religion was to give people a sense of meaning, and science has stripped the world of that meaning, because creating meaning isnt the priority or purpose of science, then why do apologists spend so much time trying to show arguments that allow religion to hold up against rational materialist scrutiny?
Instead show the pragmatic value of a sense of meaning. Scientists and atheists sometimes propose that you can get meaning from a scientific world view, and to be fair you can from anything. Yet scientists aren't helping create rituals and community tied to life affirming narratives, and there are signs that modern people are longing for just this!
But religions do need to account for the mistakes religions have made and show they won't fall into the same traps as they used to. I.e. repression and oppression of people's. Dogmatism that becomes violence etc.
This is true. I research dementia at an R01 institution. Experiences of mysticism are common, originate from mysterious but mundane patterns of neural activation, and should still instill a sense of wonder. William James did not claim those experiences were of numinous origin. Yet they can and should should inspire from a secular standpoint.
Sorry, but no evidence points to theism. None. That's just your wishful thinking. You can't seem to tell the difference.
@@RayG817 I’d love to have you on the channel to set up a debate regarding the existence of God. Do you have any contact information? Any other social medias I could get a hold of you from.
@@PostMortemReason I'm happy just to debate you in the comments -- where it's an even playing field.
@@RayG817 Itll still be an even playing field if we debate online, itll just be uploaded on TH-cam. No Nig difference.
@@PostMortemReason You never told me why you think your mystical experiences are anything more than chemical reactions in your brain.
@@RayG817 I’ll be up to discuss it on my channel :)