HOLY SMOKE!

If you tell people something...

Enough Times.....

With Enough Conviction...

***

THEY WILL BELIEVE ALMOST ANYTHING!

***

(Look at Religion!)

Scientology is the Donald Trump of Religions!

 Scientology is the 'Donald Trump' of Religions!

The 'Toronto Star' likes my books!

 Allan W. Janssen has written a fascinating book about religion... and the search for God and meaning throughout human history. 

From the earliest burial rituals to the main religions of modern times, he examines what we believe and how these beliefs were formed. 

The book is filled with illustrations and wonderful quotes, such as the ending quote from Arthur C. Clarke: "One of my objections to religion is that it prevents the search for God." (And that quote pretty well epitomizes what Mr. Janssen has to say about the matter!) 

The message as I perceive it is that when a religion is written down and a priesthood or other system of leaders is established, then that religion can be used for whatever purpose the leadership decides it should be used for, and true believers will not question it, since to do so would be a sin. (And when people do not dare to question... that is where the trouble begins!) 

The first part of the book covers the history of human development and how religion began. It includes a very detailed timeline that is very helpful in putting everything into perspective. 

The second part of the book has to do with how religious leaders emerged and how religion began to be used for various purposes by these leaders. 

One part of this section that I found particularly interesting was the section on Memes, those phrases, images, and ideas that become repeated so often that they become a part of our culture and our thoughts. 

How do these memes relate to religion and spirituality? That's an interesting question, which is explored in (The Plain Truth About) God in detail. 

I found this book to be well-researched and filled with intriguing information. I believe that any open-minded person with an interest in human culture and religion will find it useful and enlightening, as well as entertaining to read. 

This is not a dry textbook but a vital exploration of human beings and our search for a bigger meaning, and what the results of that search have and can lead to. 

(The Plain Truth about) God? is a very good overview of the subject of humanity and religion, and I highly recommend it to all open-minded readers. --Toronto Star

ALL FOUR OF THEM ARE OVER HERE -->

 

The 'Toronto Star' likes my books!

Allan W. Janssen has written a fascinating book about religion... and the search for God and meaning throughout human history. 

From the earliest burial rituals to the main religions of modern times, he examines what we believe and how these beliefs were formed. 

The book is filled with illustrations and wonderful quotes, such as the ending quote from Arthur C. Clarke: "One of my objections to religion is that it prevents the search for God." (And that quote pretty well epitomizes what Mr. Janssen has to say about the matter!) 

The message as I perceive it is that when a religion is written down and a priesthood or other system of leaders is established, then that religion can be used for whatever purpose the leadership decides it should be used for, and true believers will not question it, since to do so would be a sin. (And when people do not dare to question... that is where the trouble begins!) 

The first part of the book covers the history of human development and how religion began. It includes a very detailed timeline that is very helpful in putting everything into perspective. 

The second part of the book has to do with how religious leaders emerged and how religion began to be used for various purposes by these leaders. 

One part of this section that I found particularly interesting was the section on Memes, those phrases, images, and ideas that become repeated so often that they become a part of our culture and our thoughts. 

How do these memes relate to religion and spirituality? That's an interesting question, which is explored in (The Plain Truth About) God in detail. 

I found this book to be well-researched and filled with intriguing information. I believe that any open-minded person with an interest in human culture and religion will find it useful and enlightening, as well as entertaining to read. 

This is not a dry textbook but a vital exploration of human beings and our search for a bigger meaning, and what the results of that search have and can lead to. 

(The Plain Truth about) God? is a very good overview of the subject of humanity and religion, and I highly recommend it to all open-minded readers. --Toronto Star

ALL FOUR OF THEM ARE OVER HERE -->

 

 

  

Saturday Morning Confusion: How I found out AI is not conscious!

The concept is simple enough...! (Once you get your head around the nuts and bolts of it!) 

"We, (meaning all of us) are actually part of that Divine presence we call God... and manifest ourselves as an 'individual' much like the phrase: "We are all just waves in the ocean!" (This is God playing the game of life vicariously through us, kids!)

This means there is an underlying commonality between all the "waves" (people) ...and it is through this underlying Presence (GOD) that we can best explain the concept of "genetic memory" and how it passes from one generation to the next!

Now... here comes the rub!

I went on CHAT GTP to see what it would say about this hypothesis  for genetic memory... and since the program is only designed to look for information that is already on the Internet (it's just a smart tape recorder) ...the damned program couldn't make any connection between 'waves on the ocean' and 'genetic memory.' (It seems it couldn't use its "imagination" to postulate something that wasn't already there!)

Here's what it said:

The concept of genetic memory and the phrase "we are all just waves in the ocean" are not directly related, but I can help clarify both concepts for you.

Genetic Memory:

1. Genetic memory refers to the idea that some knowledge or experiences can be inherited through genetic material (DNA) from one generation to the next. It suggests that certain traits or behaviours may be encoded in an organism's DNA and passed down to its offspring. However, the concept of genetic memory is highly debated among scientists and lacks strong empirical support. While genes can influence various aspects of an organism's development and behaviour, the idea of direct transmission of specific memories or experiences through genes is not well-established in scientific research.

2. "We are all just waves in the ocean": The phrase "we are all just waves in the ocean" is more of a philosophical or metaphorical statement about interconnectedness and unity. It suggests that, like waves in the ocean, we are all part of a larger whole and share commonalities with one another. This phrase is often used to express a sense of oneness or interconnectedness among all living beings. (Hence a conduit for "genetic memory! -Ed.)

3. In summary, genetic memory and the concept of being waves in the ocean are distinct ideas. Genetic memory is a speculative concept related to the transmission of knowledge or experiences through genes, while the latter phrase is a metaphorical expression of interconnectedness and unity among individuals.

4. They do not directly explain each other, as one deals with genetics and the other with philosophical or metaphysical ideas.

Yup, that's all it wrote folks... A.I. just couldn't make the connection between the two because it doesn't really think for itself..., it just takes what it finds on the Internet and presents that as an original thought!! (This is also why it makes so many mistakes!!!)

I hope I explained this properly!!!!

Why I'm not religious!

Read all about it in my book "GOD?" Available here:Amazon.com: G O D ?: (A Series of Essays About the Nature of God and Religion!) (WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?): 9798846535060: Janssen, Allan Wilhelm: Books
 

It’s all in your head!

From my book : 

"AN EXPLORATION OF RELIGION!"

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088LH21TB

GOD AND CONSCIOUSNESS! 

With all the fuss over the nature of consciousness and/or God lately..., I guess a few examples would be in order about now. 

(Remember, our  consciousness is just an example of God expressing Itself through us... because deep down that's what we are!)

So! You could say that we live in a duality of body and mind. 

“Consciousness,” is an emergent property of the unconscious mind, which is the true seat of our identity. And our “subconscious” mind is simply the connection that joins the Universality of a Supreme Being with our conscious thoughts. Hence my term: “Consciousness is the physical manifestation of God within us!”

***

FIRST: Eastern Philosophy:

Consciousness is not a substance that anyone can experience.

Consciousness is a concept that points to the luminosity which is behind seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling and thinking.

This luminosity is the SUBJECT that is INTELLIGENT and ALIVE and is also nameless, formless, dimension-less, non-local and non-temporal.

This SUBJECT does not know any boundary, which means that IT IS infinite and eternal.

This SUBJECT is a no-thing and non-material REALITY that can never be known as an object.

IT can only be intuited by the eye of wisdom.

The eye can see everything else, in fact the entire cosmos but it can never look at itself. It can never know itself as an object but it can intuit its own existence.

All that the eye can say is “I see this cosmos and therefore I AM”.

In exactly the same fashion THIS mysterious SUBJECT can never know itself as an object but IT can only intuit itself.

All that the SUBJECT can say is “I perceive this cosmos and therefore I AM”.

This is the declaration of the "Upanishads."

The one who knows this is a knower of Brahman.

*** 

Second: The following arguments are along the line of thought experiments that force us to confront the limits of human experience and inquiry. 

The Nature of Consciousness: By Alan Watts  

What you are, basically, deep, and deep down, and far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself. 

In Hindu mythology, the world is the drama of God. 

God is not something with a white beard that sits on a throne and has royal prerogatives. 

God in Indian mythology is the self:    Satchitananda. 

Which means: 

-'sat,' -that which is- 

-'chit,' -that which is consciousness- 

-'ananda,' which is –bliss- 

SO! 

Let's suppose you were able, every night, to dream any dream you wanted to dream, and that you could, for example, have the power to dream in one night 75 years worth of time.  (A lifetime.) 

And you would, naturally, as you began on this adventure of dreams, fulfill all your wishes. 

You would have every kind of pleasure you could conceive, and after several nights of 75 years of total pleasure, you would say 'Well, that was pretty great.” 

But now, let's have a surprise! 

To make it more interesting, let's have a dream which isn't under your control. 

“Where something is going to happen to me, and I don't know what it's going to be.” 

Then you would get more and more adventurous, and you would take further and further gambles as to what you would dream until finally, you would dream where you are now.  

You would dream the dream of the life that you are living today. 

Because the whole nature of God, according to this idea, is to play that you’re not. 

Not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the self, the deep-down basic whatever there is. 

And you're all that, only you're pretending you're not.

And it's perfectly OK to pretend you're not. 

The life you're living is what YOU have put yourself into. 

Only you won't admit it, because you want to play the game that’s happening to you. 

Now here's the drama.   

You are the central self! 

You can call it God, or you can call it anything you like ……, and it's all of us. 

It's playing all the parts of everything, everywhere and anywhere. 

It's playing the game of hide and seek with yourself.  

***

 From Wikipedia: New Mysterianism is a philosophy proposing that certain problems will never be explained, or at the least cannot be explained by the human mind at its current evolutionary stage. (This problem is most often referred to as the “hard” problem of consciousness.) 

Owen Flanagan noted in his 1991 book Science of the Mind that some modern thinkers have suggested that consciousness may never be completely explained. 

These "Old Mysterians" are thinkers throughout history who have put forward a similar position. 

They include Leibniz, Descartes, and Thomas Huxley. 

Huxley wrote, "How it is that there is anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness, which comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue!”              

Noam Chomsky, meanwhile, distinguishes between problems which seem solvable …, at least in principle, through scientific methods and mysteries which do not …., even in principle. 

He notes that the cognitive capabilities of all organisms are limited by their biology. E.g., a mouse will never speak like a human. 

In the same way, certain problems may be beyond our understanding. (We shall talk about this some more!) The term ‘New Mysterianism’ has been extended by some writers to encompass the wider philosophical position that humans do not have the intellectual ability to solve many hard problems, not just the problem of consciousness, at a scientific level. 

For example, in the mind-body problem, emergent materialism claims that humans are not smart enough to determine "the relationship between mind and matter." (Dualism)

The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why there is any physical state that is conscious rather than nonconscious.  

The usual methods of science involve the explanation of functional, dynamical, and structural properties - explanations of what a thing does, how it changes over time, and how it is put together. But even after we have explained the functional, dynamical, and structural properties of the conscious mind, we can still meaningfully ask the question:

Why is it conscious? 

This suggests that an explanation of consciousness will have to go beyond the methods of science.  

 Therefore, this presents a hard problem for science. (Or perhaps it marks the limits of what science can explain.) 

Explaining why consciousness occurs at all can be contrasted with so-called “easy problems” of explaining the function, dynamics, and structure of consciousness.  

These features can be explained using the usual methods of science.  

But that leaves the question of why there is something there when these functions, dynamics, and structures are present. 

People like Dawkins and Hitchens attempt to use a physics version of the psychological “soft” problem in defining our reality, and when they run into a limit on their conjectures they postulate this to mean that there is just not enough information, rather than admitting there is a “hard’ problem in physics.  

This ‘hard’ problem is the Universe seems to be a duality. 

(Dualism is strongly associated with the thoughts of René Descartes, which holds that the mind is a nonphysical, and therefore non-spatial substance. Descartes identified the mind as having consciousness and self-awareness, and distinguished this from the brain as the seat of intelligence.) 

He was the first to formulate the mind-body problem in the form in which it exists today. It asserts that when matter is organized in the appropriate way (i.e., in the way that living human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge! 

Hence, it is a sub-branch of emergent materialism.  

The term dualism was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse. 

But it has been more generalized in other usages lately to indicate a system that contains two essential parts, i.e. positive-negative, matter-antimatter, observer and observed and of course the corporeal and non-corporeal, which is the Christian dualism of God and creation. (In the philosophy of mind, dualism is any of a narrow variety of views about the relationship between mind and matter, which claims that mind and matter are two ontologically separate categories.)

Matter, by any definition or classification, is inert and without purpose. (We look at it objectively.) 

 Mind, or consciousness, on the other hand, is separate from any material state and it operates with a certain purpose. (It is subjective.) 

This confirms our contemporary scientific hypothesis that without the subjective mind to do the observing, there would be no objective matter!  

(If a tree falls in the forest, etc.) 

*** 

The Mystery of Consciousness. 

So!  How is it that unconscious events can give rise to consciousness? 

This is the hard problem, and the only reason the hard problem of consciousness is hard is that we don’t accept the fact that it is “ab extra,” or not part of this Universe.  

We are an expression of what is referred to as Cosmic Consciousness, just as all living things are to a greater or lesser degree. 

This system explains how consciousness can exist to varying degrees among humans and other animals. 

(The theory incorporates some elements of panpsychism, the philosophy that the mind is not only present in humans, but all things.) 

This flies in the face of theories of self and identity by people such as Daniel Dennett, Susan Blackmore and Richard Dawkins as they postulate that the concept of “Me” or “I” is an illusion.  

If anything, it’s the other way around. The Universe is the illusion! 

***

The Mystery of Consciousness by Sam Harris:  

The term “consciousness” is notoriously difficult to define, therefore many a debate about its character has been waged without the participants’ finding a topic such as common ground.

By “consciousness,” I mean simply “sentience,” is the most unadorned sense. Whatever else consciousness may or may not be in physical terms, the difference between it and unconsciousness is first and foremost a matter of subjective experience. 

Either the lights are on, or they are not. To say that a creature is conscious, therefore, is not to say anything about its behaviour…., no screams need to be heard, or wincing seen, for a person to be in pain.  

It is surely a sign of our intellectual progress that a discussion of consciousness no longer must begin with a debate about its existence.

*** 

By Sam Harris:

The hard problem, however, is that no evidence for consciousness exists in the physical world. 

Physical events are simply mute as to whether it is “like something” to be what they are. The only thing in this Universe that attests to the existence of consciousness is consciousness itself. The only clue to subjectivity, as such, is subjectivity.

Absolutely nothing about a brain, when surveyed as a physical system, suggests that it is a focus of the experience.

Were we not already brimming with consciousness ourselves, we would find no evidence of it in the physical Universe.

Nor would we have any notion of the many experiential states that it gives rise to the painfulness of pain, for instance, as it puts in an appearance only in consciousness!

If we look for consciousness in the physical world, all we find are increasingly complex systems giving rise to increasingly complex behaviour.

The fact that the behaviour of our fellow human beings persuade us that they are conscious does not get us any closer to linking consciousness to physical events.

 Most scientists think that consciousness emerges from complexity and we have compelling reasons for believing this because the only signs of consciousness we see in the Universe are found in evolved organisms like ourselves.

Nevertheless, this notion of emergence strikes me as nothing more than a restatement of a miracle.

To say that consciousness emerged at some point in the evolution of life doesn’t give us an inkling of how it could emerge from unconscious processes,

I believe that this notion of emergence is incomprehensible — rather like a naïve conception of the big bang. The idea that everything (matter, space-time, their antecedent causes, and the very laws that govern their emergence) simply sprang into being out of nothing seems worse than a paradox.

“Nothing,” after all, is precisely that which cannot give rise to “anything,” let alone “everything.”

Many physicists realize this, of course. To say “Everything came out of nothing” is to assert a brute fact that defies our most basic intuitions of cause and effect—a miracle, in other words.

Likewise, the idea that consciousness is identical to (or emerged from) unconscious physical events is, I would argue, also impossible to properly conceive.

Consciousness - the sheer fact that this Universe is illuminated by sentience - is precisely what unconsciousness is not.

And I believe that no description of unconscious complexity will fully account for it. It seems to me that just as “something” and “nothing,” however juxtaposed, can do no explanatory work.

An analysis of purely physical processes will never yield a picture of consciousness.

The Universe is filled with physical phenomena that appear devoid of consciousness. From the birth of stars and planets to the early stages of cell division in a human embryo, the structures and processes we find in Nature seem to lack an inner life.

At some point in the development of certain complex organisms, however, consciousness emerges.

This miracle does not depend on a change of material, for you and I are built of the same atoms as a fern or a ham sandwich.

Many readers did not understand why the emergence of consciousness should pose a special problem to science. 

Every feature of the human mind and body emerges throughout development: Why is consciousness more perplexing than language or digestion?

The problem is that the distance between unconsciousness and consciousness must be traversed in a single stride if traversed at all.

Just as the appearance of something out of nothing cannot be explained by our saying that the first something was “very small,” the birth of consciousness is rendered no less mysterious by saying that the simplest minds have only a glimmer of it. This situation has been characterized as an “explanatory gap” and the “hard problem of consciousness,” and it is surely both.

But couldn’t mature neuroscience nevertheless offer a proper explanation of human consciousness in terms of its underlying brain processes?

We have reasons to believe that reductions of this sort are neither possible nor conceptually coherent. Nothing about a brain, studied at any scale (spatial or temporal), even suggests that it might harbour consciousness.

Nothing about human behaviour, or language, or culture, demonstrates that these products are mediated by subjectivity. We simply know that they are - a fact that we appreciate in ourselves directly, and in others by analogy.

Here is where the distinction between studying consciousness and studying its contents becomes paramount. For these reasons, it is difficult to imagine what experimental findings could render the emergence of consciousness comprehensible. This is not to say, however, that our understanding of ourselves won’t change in surprising ways through our study of the brain.

While we know many things about ourselves in anatomical, physiological, and evolutionary terms, we do not know why it is “like something” to be what we are.

The fact that the Universe is illuminated where you stand—that your thoughts and moods and sensations have a qualitative character—is a mystery, exceeded only by the mystery that there should be something rather than nothing in this Universe…….!      

By Sam Harris 

(For the sake of simplicity... and brevity, let's describe God as something similar to "The Force" in the Star Wars movies!)