Mod+ 270. ASU PROF. LAWRENCE KRAUSS CALLS FOR DALAI LAMA TO STEP DOWN OVER REINCARNATION CLAIM

I don't think most people understand that naturalism is an extraordinary claim. This might help explain why it is:
http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/intelligent-design.1228/page-21#post-63094


The laws of nature seem to be relatively simple mathematical relationships. There are only four fundamental forces known by science. How is it that just by chance simple natural laws working alone would include or produce all the factors necessary for life: 20 or 30 cosmological fine tuning factors, at least 15 factors needed to produce habitable planets, at least 20 chemical factors needed for complex life? How is it possible that simple undesigned natural laws working alone could produce the complex machinery of cells and the information needed for simple life and macroevolution? How could such finely-tuned complexity arise at every scale from the atomic to the cosmic from simple undesigned unguided natural laws controlling chance interactions within the universe? The immensity of the problem is a compelling argument for design. If you wanted to design such a complicated thing from simple mathematical relationships, it would require a huge amount of intellectual effort. How could it happen just by chance? (The multiverse, for which there is no evidence, doesn't explain it.)​

According to naturalism, undesigned natural laws caused stars to form after the Big Bang. Inside stars, undesigned natural laws allowed the nuclei of hydrogen atoms to be fused into stable heavier elements like carbon, oxygen, iron, and all the rest. Then undesigned natural laws caused these stars to form supernovae and explode distributing chemical elements throughout the galaxy. These undesigned natural laws ensured that there are not too many supernovae which would be dangerous to life or too few which would not provide enough elements to form planets or life. But the right amount of elements are distributed and planets form that can support life. The chemical elements, due to undesigned natural laws have just the right properties to form bonds that can be broken and reformed according to the chemical needs of biological life.

The cosmological fine-tuning parameters include: the expansion rate of the universe, the gravitational force constant, electromagnetic force constant, the initial entropy of the universe, the mass density of the universe, the strong nuclear force and many others. All these parameters have to have exactly the right values or life could not exist in the universe.

The factors needed for a planet to be habitable include: a location in the habitable zone around its star, its star's location in the galactic habitable zone, a main sequence G2 dwarf star, gas giant planets to protect inner habitable planets from comet impacts, a nearly circular orbit, an oxygen rich atmosphere, the right amount of water, the correct mass, a large moon, plate tectonics, a hot liquid iron interior, a moderate rate of rotation, and other factors. The point here is not that the earth is unique, there might be many planets in the universe like earth. The point is how lucky it is that all these factors needed for life, according to naturalism, arise from undesigned unguided natural laws.

The chemical factors needed for complex life include: Carbon's unique ability to form many different biological compounds. Water's properties as a solvent, its viscosity is just right, it has a high heat capacity which keeps temperatures on the planet and in organisms stable, it is extremely effective for evaporative cooling, it expands when it freezes so it floats providing insulation which keeps large bodies of water, oceans and lakes, from freezing solid which would make life impossible. Oxygen is used in energy metabolism in living organisms, it's produced by photosynthesis in plants, O2 is not a greenhouse gas.

The complex machinery in cells includes: DNA, RNA, enzymes to replicate DNA, enzymes to create mRNA from a DNA template, ribosomes to produce proteins from mRNA, a tRNA for each codon in the genetic code and as many enzymes to connect each tRNA with its amino acid, nuclear membranes, cell membranes, proteins in the membranes that control what goes in and out through the membrane, enzymes used in cellular metabolism, proteins that help other proteins fold, microtubules, etc, etc

The law of conservation of information and the no free lunch theorem indicate that biological information, the information in DNA, could not arise spontaneously from chance, mutation, and natural selection. The only known source of information is an intelligent mind.

Yet, according to naturalism, all the conditions needed for life and life itself are supposed to self-organize through the action of undesigned natural laws working by themselves? To paraphraze Fred Hoyle it seems more likely that a superintellect has monkeyed with the laws of chemistry and physics.​
 
Last edited:
Since this episode was partly centered on reincarnation I will play devil's advocate and pose a couple of skeptical questions:

1) Are spirits waiting in line while living creatures procreate?
Sounds goofy, but it's intentionally provocative.

Think of pregnancy from rape. Not exactly an act of love.
There are between 25 000 to 32 000 instances every year only in the US, not the mention war zones where figures can be scarily high.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_from_rape)

From our perspective it's very hard to conceive how thousands of people were suddenly reborn during the war in Bosnia, Rwanda, Liberia etc...

There is a small sample of data from regression therapy that suggests these events are kind of "decided" in another dimension, so even pregnancy rape would have a "purpose" and souls agreed to participate in advance.

I guess one has to take something like this on faith. There's no way our mind can wrap around such a concept without a brain short circuit :D

The strongest arguments I have against this view is that it doesn't seem to leave much space for choices and free will, but more importantly it contradicts the concept of "earth school" that is usually proposed.

At school, teachers protect the children from harm and intervene before any child is hurt or something bad happens. The kind of school proposed by the evidence in Newton's books and some of the other regressionists, is one where we are taught that fire is hot by being burned alive at the stake. Or that war is horrid by experiencing slaughter and genocide.

It also contradicts much of the spiritual/mediumistic literature, where souls of people killed violently cross over in a state of trauma that takes long time to heal. Similarly the perpetrator of such criminal acts tend to linger in the lower levels, so attached to their negative emotions.

2) Is evolution of the soul really taking place?
We have been around for hundreds of thousands of years but history reports the first civilizations to be only 6-10K years old.
Since then we have had a roller coaster of ups and downs, with very dark periods followed by prosperous and bright ages.

2000 years ago Jesus Christ said that "the meek shall inherit the earth"... unfortunately he forgot to mention when. Even a guestimate would have been nice... :D

On a optimistic day I can certainly find signs in recent history that humans are slowly making the planet a better place, but I fear I am probably just cherry picking. On the whole I don't seem to be able to find convincing evidence that our psyche has evolved towards a more loving, compassionate attitude and that we're better humans than we were, say, 5000 years ago.

Maybe my time scale is just too small for the standards of the Infinite :)

--Devil's advocate mode off--

cheers
I'm not a big fan of the belief that souls agree beforehand to participate in heinous things and one person has to play the "bad guy" so others can learn from it. Your first question is a difficult one and I'm not sure anyone could give an answer that would satisfy everyone. I'm sure there are lessons that can be learned being reborn into war torn countries and into broken families. Also it is possible that like attracts like and the reason a soul is born into a certain condition is because of their state of soul evolution. A newer or less developed soul could learn from just about any incarnation. An older soul perhaps needs specific circumstances to be born into in order to learn the remaining lessons it needs to learn.

I do believe Earth's mass consciousness has risen over the last few thousand years. There of course still exist many people who are still in the consciousness of a few thousand years ago but many others have come up in awareness. This is why slavery is considered wrong, there is concern for the environment, the rights of all people are considered important, there is more tolerance, people tend to choose healthier lifestyles etc.

It is true you can point to certain people or even regions of the earth where there exists a lower state of consciousness but on the whole I believe the mass consciousness of mankind as a whole has steadily climbed especially over the last few hundred years.
 
I think it's telling that Krauss brought up the subject of UFOs several times during the interview and kept using the word 'ridiculous'. Like a lot of skeptics, he's concerned first and foremost with respectability and prestige, and the ridicule factor and giggle factor surrounding topics like UFOs, ghosts, Psi and the afterlife means that he just has to dismiss it all as complete rubbish.

This obsession with reputation and respectability explains a lot of what we see in the skeptic movement. We don't need any sinister conspiracy theories.
 
I guess one has to take something like this on faith. There's no way our mind can wrap around such a concept without a brain short circuit :D

Faith, or the acceptance of the anecdotal evidence that near death experiencers have provided or ancient spiritual traditions. I have no problem wrapping my mind around this concept. I have put forth such a theory here before only to be either ignored or labled as shallow or childish.

I think it could work this way: certain things are pre-determined in accordance to what it is we wish to accomplish here. It's a contract of sorts that we enter into with others. And while this contract can be violated or ignored if one so chooses, it's generally not in your Higher Selfs best interest, nor that of those whom you've entered into these agreements with to do so. When viewed from the perspective of the eternal, things such as rape, violence, war, genocide, etc. aren't quite the horrid abberations they appear to be to us here. And I must stress that here. From our Earthly perspective, these are horrific events. And consequence in the Earthly sphere is all part of it. Both the perpetuation/experience of the act(s) itself(themselves) and the societal consequences. An act of rape, say, has more players than just the perpetuator and victim. It involves family and friends of both, the community in which it takes place, the society whose place it is to determine right from wrong and what laws/rules will be enacted and enforced. Until finally you reach the global scale.

I can easily see how all of that fits in with what NDEers report, ie. we are all interconnected. What may seem like an isolated act, isn't isolated at all.

And while we cannot seem to fathom what purpose these acts serve, it does not mean they do not have meaning. To me, something so egregious as the Holocaust served as one of those major moments, not just in human evolution, but perhaps universal evolution. An act so large,it's effects still reverberate throughout space and time. This grants these major events as not some random act of violence in a meaningless universe, but an act of paramount importance. Lives were taken and lost in an effort to teach not only humans, but perhaps beings beyond this world what it means to love and forgive. The sacrifices made served a far greater purpose than we could ever imagine in this world. And history is full of such things, both great and small.

I can see how this also ties into the other message that comes across, over and over and over again, that everything is as it should be. We are all ok. Eternally ok. I liken it to an avatar in a video game. Your character might be killed, but you, sitting in your living room playing the game, are just fine. This world and our experiences are not the end. They serve a very important purpose, but in the end, we are all going to be just fine, so sit back and enjoy the ride :). Easier said than done, of course.

Maybe my time scale is just too small for the standards of the Infinite :)

The Earthly timescale as a whole is infintesimally small for the standards of eternity.
 
I'm not a big fan of the belief that souls agree beforehand to participate in heinous things and one person has to play the "bad guy" so others can learn from it.

The vast, vast majority of people I've come across do not like this idea. I will admit though, I struggle to understand why. It makes a lot of sense to me, and it allows one to see meaning in the darkest of circumstances. Better that than believing its all random, meaningless violence without a lick of rhyme or reason.

Please, do elaborate, what is it about that theory that is so distasteful?

I ask because I see so much beauty in it, I have a hard time understanding why others really dislike it.
 
It is true you can point to certain people or even regions of the earth where there exists a lower state of consciousness but on the whole I believe the mass consciousness of mankind as a whole has steadily climbed especially over the last few hundred years.
I would like to agree on that, but a couple of world wars and the atomic bombs dropped on japan makes it hard for me to be confident about that.

Take the usual example of Hitler's third reich. While the Nazi's fuhrer is frequently brought up as the example of absolute evil, the interesting aspect is that this sort of evil always find fertile soil to grow "his fruits". Hitler needed tens of thousands of people to build his machine of war and destruction. Some may argue that the vast majority of people at the time did not really know what Hitler was doing in his concentration camps etc... Still there were 1000s and 1000s of people directly involved in the administrative, executive and military ranks of the reich that made Hitler's "vision" possible. (While many more were just ignorant or just indifferent).

I have my doubts that in 2-3 thousand years, a new Hitler figure will not find a similarly fertile soil for his tyrannic plans. But I sincerely hope to be completely wrong.

Maybe thousands of years are a long time for us, but in the eyes of the Source it is just a couple of frames of a infinitely long movie... Unfortunately, as humans, we care more about our own time scale.
 
I think it could work this way: certain things are pre-determined in accordance to what it is we wish to accomplish here. It's a contract of sorts that we enter into with others. And while this contract can be violated or ignored if one so chooses, it's generally not in your Higher Selfs best interest, nor that of those whom you've entered into these agreements with to do so. When viewed from the perspective of the eternal, things such as rape, violence, war, genocide, etc. aren't quite the horrid abberations they appear to be to us here. And I must stress that here. From our Earthly perspective, these are horrific events. And consequence in the Earthly sphere is all part of it. Both the perpetuation/experience of the act(s) itself(themselves) and the societal consequences. An act of rape, say, has more players than just the perpetuator and victim. It involves family and friends of both, the community in which it takes place, the society whose place it is to determine right from wrong and what laws/rules will be enacted and enforced. Until finally you reach the global scale.
Agreed. I like the concept of a larger involvement.
Reminds me of Steiner's description of Karma, starting at the personal level but connected with family karma, group karma etc... up to national karma. To keep the rape subject, what has been happening in India is clearly a problem that touches all levels. From the perpetrators to the system of justice and ultimately the whole society in that country.

And while we cannot seem to fathom what purpose these acts serve, it does not mean they do not have meaning. To me, something so egregious as the Holocaust served as one of those major moments, not just in human evolution, but perhaps universal evolution. An act so large,it's effects still reverberate throughout space and time. This grants these major events as not some random act of violence in a meaningless universe, but an act of paramount importance. Lives were taken and lost in an effort to teach not only humans, but perhaps beings beyond this world what it means to love and forgive. The sacrifices made served a far greater purpose than we could ever imagine in this world. And history is full of such things, both great and small.
This is what usually I think on a good day. :)
Let's say, for the sake of discussion, that today I am on a bad one... I would probably say that the Holocaust was very important for the people in the countries that were involved. I live in Italy and some of my relatives died fighting the fascists before the end of the war. But I think we also have a very short memory and you need to move just a few thousand km away from Europe to see how history keeps repeating itself, almost blindly.

I can see how this also ties into the other message that comes across, over and over and over again, that everything is as it should be. We are all ok. Eternally ok. I liken it to an avatar in a video game. Your character might be killed, but you, sitting in your living room playing the game, are just fine. This world and our experiences are not the end. They serve a very important purpose, but in the end, we are all going to be just fine, so sit back and enjoy the ride :). Easier said than done, of course.
The videogame metaphor works only to a point, because there's a lot of detachment from the game, even when one is fully immersed. When you blow up, there are no true consequences. It's all fun in the end, even if the game is difficult and scary.

But you raise an interesting question. If we could immerse ourselves in a virtual world, Matrix-style, all senses fully engaged, and we could choose the type and basic outline of the story... what would we choose?

Though it would still not match our reality as we'd have knowledge of being in a game. And games can be paused, stopped, restarted, cheated...
 
The vast, vast majority of people I've come across do not like this idea. I will admit though, I struggle to understand why. It makes a lot of sense to me, and it allows one to see meaning in the darkest of circumstances. Better that than believing its all random, meaningless violence without a lick of rhyme or reason.

Please, do elaborate, what is it about that theory that is so distasteful?

I ask because I see so much beauty in it, I have a hard time understanding why others really dislike it.
I don't care for that theory because I think there is more than enough evil in the world that results from selfishness, callousness, greed, stupidity etc to learn certain lessons. In other words it is unnecessary to have a contract with some other soul to kill, rape, or maim us.

These things happen because certain people choose to commit them for their own selfish reasons not because they've made an agreement to do so at least in my opinion. I believe free will can adequately explain violence. I hear a lot of atheists say things such as "If there really was a God he wouldn't let an innocent child suffer". But that raises questions such as: If God would interrupt mankind's free will in order to save a child's life would he do it for an adult? Would he intervene to save someone from losing a leg or arm? Should he then intervene so that nobody gets a bad bruise?

You can see the direction I'm taking. Where would the cut off point be of not intervening. I believe free will is free will the Divine will allow us to do anything we want to do on this planet. However we will also experience the results of our choice. So karma is not a punishment but a teacher. Complete free will is the only way for spiritual growth to happen.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Red
The videogame metaphor works only to a point, because there's a lot of detachment from the game, even when one is fully immersed. When you blow up, there are no true consequences. It's all fun in the end, even if the game is difficult and scary.

Right, detachment would be an issue, hence "the veil". Correct me if I am wrong, but I have a whisper of a memory that in ancient spiritual traditions, like Buddhism or Hinduism, they speak of this same thing? I'll have to do my homework on that...

Though it would still not match our reality as we'd have knowledge of being in a game. And games can be paused, stopped, restarted, cheated...

Yes, like NDEs, OBEs and the like. Perhaps religion, spirituality and the aforementioned experiences serve to provide small reminders and hints, lest we get too lost in the game. Perhaps in some cases, certain spiritual traditions or experiences can be considered "cheating". An NDE certainly can seem like it's "pausing" the game.

But I think we also have a very short memory and you need to move just a few thousand km away from Europe to see how history keeps repeating itself, almost blindly.

Hmm, yes, it certainly seems cyclical at times. Perhaps though, with the advent of technology, such things can be recorded with such ease, and it's sooooo much harder to suppress information than it ever was, maybe this will end the cycle? I don't know, only time will tell. Funny aside here though, as I get older I have a greater appreciation for history. It was never really my thing before, but I find it endlessly fascinating at this time in my life. Maybe history requires a certain level of maturity to appreciate and respect.
 
You can see the direction I'm taking. Where would the cut off point be of not intervening. I believe free will is free will the Divine will allow us to do anything we want to do on this planet. However we will also experience the results of our choice. So karma is not a punishment but a teacher. Complete free will is the only way for spiritual growth to happen.

I don't think this is too far off from the theory Bucky and I proposed above. Free will is certainly involved, and I think that any "God" would be/is more or less hands off so to speak. But I think you are limiting your concept of free will to the Earthly perspective. What appears to be deterministic here, may very well be the implementation of free will by ones higher Self.

What may appear to be selfishness, callousness, greed and stupidity run amok may have higher purpose that isn't entirely able to be fully understood to us, here. This isn't a "mysterious ways" cop out or anything "unknowable". But I can understand why a certain level of amnesia would be required to do what we need to do. Could any of us do what we are doing here, day in/day out if we thought that bliss (if some NDE reports are to be believed) is just a breath away? Could these "evil monsters" do what they agreed to do if they had universal knowledge and the knowledge of the perfect love and acceptance always given to us by "God"? I don't think so...

Maybe I'm being too optimistic though.

My question then becomes, if this is all true, what of these "evil monsters"? What becomes of the Stalins, Hitlers and Husseins? The illusion of being so far removed from the light of "source" would, in my imaginings, be excruciating. Would they forget entirely their higher Self? Is there a "evil monster" healing realm for these souls? Are what we perceive as the "evil monsters" actually the spiritual heavy weights, that have the experience, constitution and stamina to endure such a task in the physical?

Kind of turns the notion of absolute good and absolute evil on its head.

But I've said before how much I hate the concept of absolutes. There is no such thing, IMO.
 
hi here are my thoughts on this from my understanding of hindu/buddhist perspective on this , see if it makes any sense , feel free to point out anything if it seems contradictory to some other point , since i am myself trying to understand how it really works

Since this episode was partly centered on reincarnation I will play devil's advocate and pose a couple of skeptical questions:

1) Are spirits waiting in line while living creatures procreate?
Sounds goofy, but it's intentionally provocative.

Think of pregnancy from rape. Not exactly an act of love.
There are between 25 000 to 32 000 instances every year only in the US, not the mention war zones where figures can be scarily high.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_from_rape)

From our perspective it's very hard to conceive how thousands of people were suddenly reborn during the war in Bosnia, Rwanda, Liberia etc...

There is a small sample of data from regression therapy that suggests these events are kind of "decided" in another dimension, so even pregnancy rape would have a "purpose" and souls agreed to participate in advance.

I guess one has to take something like this on faith. There's no way our mind can wrap around such a concept without a brain short circuit :D

The strongest arguments I have against this view is that it doesn't seem to leave much space for choices and free will, but more importantly it contradicts the concept of "earth school" that is usually proposed.

At school, teachers protect the children from harm and intervene before any child is hurt or something bad happens. The kind of school proposed by the evidence in Newton's books and some of the other regressionists, is one where we are taught that fire is hot by being burned alive at the stake. Or that war is horrid by experiencing slaughter and genocide.

It also contradicts much of the spiritual/mediumistic literature, where souls of people killed violently cross over in a state of trauma that takes long time to heal. Similarly the perpetrator of such criminal acts tend to linger in the lower levels, so attached to their negative emotions.

maybe souls are not waiting , but simply are in a different realm .. when the number of procreations here on earth increases in quick number , the number of souls in that another realm decreases . when it decreases here due to a natural calamity or some other reason , maybe it increases there ? and there could be 100's of realm like these
when the sun is shinning in 1 part of world , it is night in the other and vice versa

your question is basically aimed at Destiny vs free will

both Destiny and free will exist hand in hand .

what is destiny ?
if a man smokes 5-6 packs a cigarette a day , it's his destiny he will smoke the very next day, its not hard to predict . and most likely he will smoke at exactly the same time he is habituated to do , because he is set in a powerful pattern . but is he bound to smoke ?
No if he pushes hard, uses his will he can avoid smoking

the stronger the pattern of destiny or habit , the harder it is to use free will . the quantity or power of free will required would be exactly equal to the power or quantity created by destiny to bring it in balance. just like in order to lift a 5kg stone you need an equal and opposite amount of force which is exerted by gravity

the destiny itself was created by free will , cause leads to effect , effect leads to cause

similarly countries also have Destiny , which is made up by the collection of destiny's of citizens. in order to change the destiny of a country , it will require majority of citizens to change the set pattern . One or two men won't be able to change it alone. this is what they are saying when they say it was "decided". they can look into future
based on patterns and vibrations which are in the present. Like we can tell at what speed and at location will a stone hit if we have all the variables like force used , wind pressure , angle of projection etc.. even a fall of dice can be accurately predicted if we look deep enough and find out at what angles and with how much force did the dice hit the floor

So in your example , maybe there were a lot of souls from past that needed to learn the lesson that what is like to be a child of rape victim . The conditions became favourable for that lesson , so many souls got an opportunity to learn that and move on . so for example those souls who abused the technology and used nuclear weapons against humanity . they still require to learn the lesson how it feels to be abused by technology and politicians. that lesson is pending currently , current conditions are not right for that lesson on a mass scale . current conditions are set for a different lesson. In future when somebody goes banana and launches a nuclear missile , those souls would place themselves as victims of that event to learn how it feels to be abused by technology and politics. those souls are not waiting for that lesson to happen , instead they are learning a different lesson right now favoured by current conditions.

now don't assume that 100 % of those souls were old souls that needed to learn the lesson . many will be new souls as well.

in that school example you gave where teachers protect . the child hasn't learned anything yet . he simply followed the order of an authority . so if a child wants to touch the hot pan and he simply stops because the teacher protected him or said him not to, he didn't learn anything . the desire to touch hot pan is still in his mind and when the condition will be right when there is no teacher to protect he will instantly try to touch that hot pan . when he will receive the pain of touching the hot pan , only then he will truly learn what it is like to touch a hot pan and why not to touch it. then the lesson will be so strongly imprinted in the subconscious mind , he will never require to learn that lesson and will never dare to commit the same mistake again whether the teacher is present or not because the desire is gone now. This is the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

2) Is evolution of the soul really taking place?
We have been around for hundreds of thousands of years but history reports the first civilizations to be only 6-10K years old.
Since then we have had a roller coaster of ups and downs, with very dark periods followed by prosperous and bright ages.

2000 years ago Jesus Christ said that "the meek shall inherit the earth"... unfortunately he forgot to mention when. Even a guestimate would have been nice... :D

On a optimistic day I can certainly find signs in recent history that humans are slowly making the planet a better place, but I fear I am probably just cherry picking. On the whole I don't seem to be able to find convincing evidence that our psyche has evolved towards a more loving, compassionate attitude and that we're better humans than we were, say, 5000 years ago.

Maybe my time scale is just too small for the standards of the Infinite :)

--Devil's advocate mode off--

cheers

Soul is not human. when a Soul evolves and matures he will move on to other realms in different forms suited to his or her maturity level. if you look at hypnotic mediumship, many spirit guides report that they were on earth very very long ago. what happened then did we de-evolve ? No , evolved souls simply moved on to higher realms and new less mature souls took human forms and became more in number than the evolved human souls. Resulting in Dark ages /ignorance/mass murders/wars .


also you are making an assumption that our knowledge of history is correct . ( which is not )

this is a 9,000-10,000 year old site , which shows some serious craftsmanship , ( for hunter gatherer level ) and there are other sites expected to be discovered which are 15,000 year old . that would push human history easily 20,000 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Göbekli_Tepe

even then it is only based on what we have found till now , we have only searched around 5 % of sea . what sort of evidence lies under 95 % of sea waters who knows.

the myth of Atlantis/mahabharata/greek legends are they just fancy stories ? maybe or maybe not :)

that was me playing the part of the Saint's advocate ;)
 
I hear a lot of atheists say things such as "If there really was a God he wouldn't let an innocent child suffer". But that raises questions such as: If God would interrupt mankind's free will in order to save a child's life would he do it for an adult? Would he intervene to save someone from losing a leg or arm? Should he then intervene so that nobody gets a bad bruise?
Mostly I agree with you on the above. But I don't think it leads in a simple way to the rest.
You can see the direction I'm taking. Where would the cut off point be of not intervening. I believe free will is free will the Divine will allow us to do anything we want to do on this planet. However we will also experience the results of our choice. So karma is not a punishment but a teacher. Complete free will is the only way for spiritual growth to happen.
If for example we have already agreed to encounter a certain situation then it is not a breach of our free will for circumstances to be manipulated such that we find ourselves within that scenario.

However, once the stage has been set and the characters nudged into place (according to our own agreement), then we are completely free to play out the rest of the scene in any way we choose. Thus we are entirely free at the stages where it really matters, and the only exceptions are where we have voluntarily agreed to relinquish free will only in order to arrive at that point.

Shakespeare's line "All the world's a stage" often seems literally true to me, we find ourselves playing the starring role in our own unfolding drama.
 
Last edited:
I just finished listening to the whole thing. Alex, my humble opinion is that you're losing your footing when you get into a discussion about "meaning." The end of that rabbit hole is the realization that we're looking at the universe inside-out... too easy to get lost along the way, especially wrestling a greased pig like this guy. Solid ground is the research (in this case, reincarnation research) and his willingness to ignore information that doesn't confirm his view of reality.

Although I agree with you that you can get lost in difficult discussions about meaning... I think it is important to at least touch upon. Materalistic ideas insisting that the universe is fundamentally meaningless have a profound impact on people's individual lives and the course of human history as a whole.
 
Although I agree with you that you can get lost in difficult discussions about meaning... I think it is important to at least touch upon. Materalistic ideas insisting that the universe is fundamentally meaningless have a profound impact on people's individual lives and the course of human history as a whole.
I totally agree. In my YouTube feed yesterday was an interview of Sam Harris with Joe Rogan, specifically addressing the concept of free will. I'll admit, I didn't watch the interview because I've heard it all before ad nauseam, but the comments were what freaked me out a little.

It was bizzare how people would comment on how great Sam Harris was and how smart he was and just the over all general worship attitude towards Harris.

It was just odd at how willingly people go along with the "the universe is meaningless and you have no free will" bandwagon. I could not understand why they were so willing to give up any kind of control over their own lives (or the illusion of control, as Harris would put it).

I cannot for the life of me understand why. What is so appealing about the materialistic paradigm? It's almost as if people want to believe they are nothing more than meat suits. I truly don't get it.

Worse yet were those advocating for our judicial system to see law breakers as innocents held captive by a brain that they cannot control. I was truly left speechless.
 
Last edited:
2) Is evolution of the soul really taking place?
On the whole I don't seem to be able to find convincing evidence that our psyche has evolved towards a more loving, compassionate attitude and that we're better humans than we were, say, 5000 years ago.

This could be considered evidence for "earth school". If earth is an educational institution, we would expect pupils to evolve as they pass on through, but we would expect less change in the institution itself.

If we wanted to transform the "earth school" into an extended holiday and suspend the cycles of history on earth and have an extended golden age, we would have to educate our children in such a manner that they are perfectly compassionate yet not at all soft or complacent. How could this be achieved without extreme hardship? And how could this be achieved without setting up a training ground for them to get a bitter taste of the spartan life? And how could they get that unless that was all they knew?

(I'm not saying "earth school" is the perfect metaphor for this reality, but just playing the devil's devil's advocate :) )
 
Really, has anyone heard Harris, Krauss, Dawkins et al. explain exactly what their end game is? Do they really believe they have no free will? Do they really believe they are nothings living in a nothing universe? Why do they seem to have an agenda for spreading these ideas as far and wide as possible? Do they think they are the exception to the rule, everyone else is meaningless, but not them?

These are smart guys, so how do they not see the glaring holes in their own arguments? How do they not see that their own arguments regarding lack of free will delve into the land of absurdity when closely inspected?

Acknowledging free will does not preclude a belief in a deity, so they could maintain an atheistic world view without the "no free will" absurdities, so why then do they believe this is so?

I know Alex has tried to pin some of these guys down on this and they always seem to waffle or sidestep the issue. Has anyone heard anything regarding any of this from any of these guys?
 
Back
Top