Why i respect athiests.....

[fivedragons]

"Row, row, row you're boat, gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream."

If one takes the concept of free will beyond the physical plane, one might find oneself in a game of three dimensional chess.

[IJ]

the idea that we need to escape life is goofy, and runs counter to our innate programming (the organisms that didn't care for life died faster and with fewer kids) which is why you don't see droves of people who claim to believe this stuff killing themselves. But here's the trick: to discuss this further defeats the point, because it draws me into mortality discussions that I would rather answer with the action of going out and doing something. So, if you do not here from me further on this matter, it is because I am remodeling my bathrooms. Wish me luck.

[fivedragons]

Good luck.

[-Metablade-]

But here's the fly in the ointment:
What is "we" or "I"?
What defines "I"?
If you say "I" exist in one form or another, what is the "I" that exists ?

I know it's always a mistake to comment on these things, but I'm feeling like doing it just this once.

It's a very good question you ask. I am going to assume for the moment that the physical universe exists and that you exist in it, otherwise I would not bother to respond. I think (as in, I don't KNOW jack, but my current thinking is that) continuity of identity/consciousness is a "working assumption" of our minds. If you could duplicate me (the physical object) exactly in an instant, including the exact state of my brain, both "me's" would believe equally strongly that they were the "real" me. Who could prove otherwise? Whenever your brain is "on", it thinks in terms of having a singular identity and consciousness. Of course even approximate duplication is beyond our current technology, and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is decidedly hostile to a measure-and-copy approach down to the subatomic particle level, but surely it isn't necessary to get down to that level of detail to determine everything needed to make another "thing" that in principle will really think it is "me" from the instant of its creation, complete with all the same memories and personality. If you can do that, it will be just as much "me" as "I" am, whatever that is.

This way of thinking isn't atheistic, it's non-theistic, as far as it goes. It neither supports nor detracts from the idea that God exists. It does, however, detract from the idea that we are supernatural ourselves.

Well said, sir!
And Welcome!

On the nature of "I", I'll refer Alan Watts again on the subject. His take on it was that the "I" or rather, the centrality of "I" is predicated on the individual's own perception of it, is perhaps illusory simply because we lack the physical apparatus to experience the object of "I" from any other means.

My take on this is that if we could experience the centrality of "I" from another location, say, from the perception of the entire universe, would not then all of the "I's" that exist in the form of individual perception not then be simply illusory?

But, as you so precisely put it, the Heisenberg principal has a nasty habit of both verifying and denying this theory, depending on the perception, because if observation from an illusory "I" could influence the aspects of an expanded "I" , then this means that truly the Universe is infinitely more stranger than our tiny monkey brains can even begin fathom.

Perhaps this must be why in Zen, it is said that truth cannot be rationalized, explained, or transmitted, only directly experienced.