Interesting (alternative) life philosophies?

hexer

hexer

It's PJ!
Modder
Does anyone have interesting life philosophy he or she would like to share?

I for example, was raised to believe in a God but ever since I studied theology and philosophy (with some psychology as a hobby), I came to the conclusion that everything is governed by LOGIC. As a Christian I couldn't explain reality (maybe religion doesn't want to explain reality) but logic helped me understand why are we here in the first place. I felt indescribable calmness once everything fell into place and this has helped me recognize some obscure but bad life choices.

Since logic governs my personal beliefs here are some of the more interesting ones I have:

- I believe that there is no starting point of the universe and I believe that it has always existed in one or the other form.
- I don't believe in parallel universes but only a single one, this one.
- I don't believe that there's an end to the universe but that it's infinite.
- I don't think a creator (GOD) exists.
- I don't believe in the afterlife because I think that was created by people who can't cope with reality or their hard life.
- I believe that the meaning of life is to extend life.
- Living and nonliving matter cannot exist without the other one thus I believe life existed always and always will.
- Just because you can imagine something that could exist (a dragon), doesn't mean it exists somewhere unless its environment led to the evolution of such a being.
- I don't believe in chaos, only more complex order.
- etc.

Anyone else?
 
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Don't know if it's interesting, but it helped me with a couple of "headpains" when realized that humans think from a standpoint where they are the center - everything that matters is your future (which also directs the thinking into a linear, vectorial fashion), everything that is judged is judged by human standarts so everything revolves around the ego. Our planet as the only source of life is by default the center of the universe for us psycologically and everything that is not life is kind of shelved as a non primary thing. When i have too much clutter in my mind i try to think of less (nothing would be preferable, but not possible) and envision myself as not an individual, but as a simple particle of the universe, not as an individual particle, just a particle that has no bias towards iteslf in thinking. And then i start to realize how structured our thinking is and that we are probably much further away from our view of ourselfs as an advanced species.

If i would have to guess, i'd say that the "thing", the absolute, the "truth", the ultimate is not based on anything that is around us, including the latter abstract terms and things like space, time, reality etc.

Anyway, all of this that i wrote is useless, as i often find that i cannot fully explain the deeper contents of my thoughts in words (not to say that they are too sophisticated, just can't find the words for the appropriate meaning in the mind), so i kind of feel like - Zhuangzi: “Where is that man who has forgotten words that I may have a word with him?” :lol:
 
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I struggle with philosophies because they are sortof not "up for grabs", if you know what I mean. Truth is truth, and the task is to find out what exactly it is - which, in essence, is not possible, because truth is perception and we percieve things imperfectly, because we are organic blobs with monitoring thingies attached to our proximal extreme.

But then I think - what else do I have? I have my truth limited by my organic, blobby anatomy, my brain and my eyes - but what else can I rely on?

So... based on that, I exist in a truly infinite universe. I regard "big bang" as a "cycle", and I regard universes as being something that is many. I fail to understand how there can be "only one" of any thing in this reality - so, like most other things, universes must be many, many, many - possibly infinite in numbers. I think infinity is real, and hard to comprehend to planet-bound creatures. Since a planet is of limited area, planetary things will always be limited as well. But the number OF planets may be unlimited - with the assumption the numbr of universes is unlimited - therefore all matter is unlimited as well.
Which makes things interesting, for example, is there more hydrogen than uranium in the cosmic expanse - if both materials exist in unlimited numbers?

With true infinity there will also be "alternate realities", in other words, physical places, separated by space and/or time, depending, where another me exists, not that this helps me in any way.

As for life - there is none. There is only complexity in chemical process. Chemical processes are bound to happen. No chemical process will suddenly go "you know what? I'm feeling a bit under the weather today, so I guess I won't combust as I'm supposed to." they react, compulsively. That is life - they are complex chains of circular reaction, self sustained by aeons of random trial and error.
Life is not a "special property" separating cosmos into living and unliving. Best way to understand the non-separation, is to study what the most basic form of life actually is - a piece of nucleic acid - not even protected by a protein coat (viroids). Life-based complex chemicals, such as enzymes are also an example of what "proto-life" could have looked like.

Life is space bothers me, but I have the following take on it:
take 1. LIFE in space has a certain odds. The odds are Earth/Space, so, 1/[huge number] <---at least 1!!!
take 2. HUMANS-type life in space has a certain odds. The odds are Humans/All organisms ever existed on earth/Space <---these odds are horrendous, but still, at least 1 to [gigantic number] to [yet a gigantic number], but at least one!!!
 
Ok.

I believe that there is no "one right path". God created many different paths to suit the different peoples on Earth. He knew that as divided as people were, there was no way in hell one path or religion could bring everyone together.

Instead, I believe that these religions are simply different paths which ultimately lead to the same thing: reuniting with our creator:

• Zoroastrianism
• Christianity
• Judaism
• Hinduism
• Buddhism
• Sikhism
• Taoism
• Jainism
• There May Be More We Haven't Heard Of Yet

I believe that the "prophets" or "founders" of these religions were all indeed prophets, sent by divine will itself to spread their word (whether they knew it or not). And I hardly believe that everyone has a destiny. To be given a destiny you have to be extremely important, otherwise you are just making your own way. Anyways, there are two kinds of prophets. "Messengers" are prophets who don't teach about God, but rather how to live your life. Examples would include Buddha and Lao Tzu. "Disciples" are prophets who teach about God. Examples include "Jesus, Moses, and the Sikh Gurus".

I believe that the only way we can possibly reunite with our creator is to achieve Enlightenment. So to achieve this, I try to mix all of the paths mentioned above.

I believe that to achieve Enlightenment, the first thing you have to do is to understand a couple of "realizations".

1) All major paths are just different paths leading to the same thing.
2) God prefers men to be good to eachother first, and for men to worship him second.
3) ---

As for afterlife, I believe until you hit Enlightenment, when you die you will be reincarnated (somewhere close to where you died. Your soul will float along like a radio-wave until it finds an infant still in the womb to inhabit and manifest in. For those infants that don't have a reincarnated soul in them, a new soul will be created to fill the body). But when you do reach Enlightenment, instead of reincarnation when you die, you go to be with the creator for eternity. When the world ends, those who weren't Enlightened will be purified in fire (Zoroastrian belief, it doesn't mean "Hell" as in the Christian/Muslim sense, but in a non-painful sense. Look it up for more info), and then go to be with the creator.

Achieving Enlightenment isn't as hard as the Buddhists make it out to be. Its very simple, can be achieved by the most simplest of men, and can be achieved in less than a lifetime. All it requires is following the path of Dharma (which translates roughly to "The Way" in some Indian languages), and staying true to that path. Once you realize the truth of our existence and being, and have lived your life as a good person and faithfully, you will have hit Enlightenment.

One last thing, many people ask "Do you believe Jesus is the son of God".

I tend to confuse people with my answer, so I will make it simple. Do I believe he is the son of God, like we are all sons and daughters of God? Yes. Do I believe he was special, a prophet, and put here for a reason? Yes. Do I believe that he IS God? No.

Also I skipped some of my "realizations" because I'm slightly in a rush. Once I get home from Uni I will post em up, or edit my post.\

EDIT 1: I also to was raised Christian, and I left to discover the truth (in which I feel I did). I had several near-death experiences which the doctors assured my father I would die or come out to have the mentality of a three year old child (first one: Grand Maul Seizure. Was Clinically dead for around 15 minutes. Second one: I got hit by a car, and had a brain hemorrhage. They were gonna cut my skull so the swelling in my brain could expand. However my father prayed (I know many of you don't believe in prayer) and the next catscan before the operation the blood was gone). My father also had a few life-death experiences in which he said he saw God. Yeah I know many of you are atheist, and thats cool.

I'm half Sioux, and the Sioux believe in one Great Spirit called Wakan Takan. They also believe in many lesser spirits. Good watchful and protector spirits, evil spirits, animal and nature spirits, etc. I have many Native American spirituality beliefs.

I also feel that there is no way monotheistic and even polytheistic religions made this big an impact on the Earth and none of it was even close to being correct. Also the way the big bang happened and the universe was created required absolute perfection. Those atoms had to be in the right space, and at the right time, and had to be going to exact speed they were going and collide at the exact moment they did to create the universe (and I realize many of you are going to argue with me on this). The chances were like hitting a lottery ten times in a row.

Also for science, yes, I believe in everything science has to offer, including the creation of the universe and evolution. I believe these were just steps to the ultimate design. Like building a staircase. It has to start somewhere, somehow, and couldn't have been done by natural design.
 
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Alternative life philosophies? This implies you know 'the standard life philosophy', right? Do tell me what that one is 'cause I'm dying to find out. :lol:

Pessimistic meta-induction (Larry Laudan) is my favourite way of dealing with reality.
 
alec said:
Alternative life philosophies? This implies you know 'the standard life philosophy', right? Do tell me what that one is 'cause I'm dying to find out. :lol:
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I've taken Creationism as a "standard life philosophy." For example, in Croatia most people think like this - I am here because God created me, I will live and die in the way he wants to and that's all there is to it. Here that is "standard" and anything else is "alternative."
 
hexer said:
alec said:
Alternative life philosophies? This implies you know 'the standard life philosophy', right? Do tell me what that one is 'cause I'm dying to find out. :lol:
Click to expand...

I've taken Creationism as a "standard life philosophy." For example, in Croatia most people think like this - I am here because God created me, I will live and die in the way he wants to and that's all there is to it. Here that is "standard" and anything else is "alternative."
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"Creationism" goes beyond "I am here because God created me", and deals with litteral interpretation of the Genesis (or as close to litteral as possible) mainly the idea of all animals existing at the same time before the flood, earth being a few thousand years old, and such

I sincerely hope such a radical belief is not commonplace in Croatia, but if it is - ouch :I
 
hexer said:
For example, in Croatia most people think like this - I am here because God created me, I will live and die in the way he wants to and that's all there is to it. Here that is "standard" and anything else is "alternative."
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Do you have some information to back that claim up, like some survey, or is that just from your personal experience and perception?
 
It's true. I think more than 70% of the population declared them selves catholic on the last census. Croatia's relationship with the Vatican goes back centuries, the Vatican was the first to recognize our independence in the 90 and as far as i know every pope has visited croatia at least once during his life time except darth sidious.

Naturally this gives the church enormous power.

EDIT: lord sidious was here too. lol i didn't know that
 
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Not that I doubted hexen's words or anything, but it's weird to actually have Croats confirm that. I've read many newspapers etc. claiming similar figures when it comes to religion in Croatia, but eh, given where I live, I never gave much credit to it and thought it was a bit overblown, so to speak.
Guess it wasn't.
 
Atomkilla said:
hexer said:
For example, in Croatia most people think like this - I am here because God created me, I will live and die in the way he wants to and that's all there is to it. Here that is "standard" and anything else is "alternative."
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Do you have some information to back that claim up, like some survey, or is that just from your personal experience and perception?
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Maybe a wrong choice in words would be my guess. Take Poland, as example, where 90% of the population has a catholic confesion. Now of course, that doesnt mean that ALL of them are die hard catholics, probably only a rather small portion, but I think considering the history of our western society, the christian beliefs and "idelogy" is still very prevelent in many nations, without the intention to declare this as the "norm", there is no "norm" as far as the view on phylosphy and life goes, but you can say that certain regions tend to follow a different school of pholosphy, like how very often the "greek" pholosphy is dominant in Western nations, where we also see very often making its way in our politics for example, Europe developed over time a humanistic world view - not always in a positive way as the french revolution has shown. So there is for many things a common ground, as far as some of the roots goes. People in Arabian or Asian nations have a totally different view on life and situations in general. To go with one example, for the Asian culture a role model for war was Sun Tzu, where war is seen as necessity that should be avoided, while the Europeans had their Carl von Clausewitz where War was part of politics. Now of course both, Europeans and Asians had their fair share of wars, and I am sure not saying that the Asians have been less violent compared to the Europeans, but it shows a difference in the historical roots. How people, in general, saw life. I mean we all grow up with our parents, most of the time, go to schools, which teach us the lessons in a certain way, watching TV. You can see this when you compare the way how WW2 is treated in different nations, like the US, Germany, Russia etc. If you ask a German who won WW2 you might get a totally different anwser compared to a Russian or someone from the US.
 
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I'm pretty sure it's generally accepted around the world that the allies won WWII.

edit: I'm just teasing. I know what you mean.
 
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I think we all really know what reality is and different peoples philosophies differ only in the words and ideas chosen to describe it. I also think that people are just cogs in a unfathomable machine encompassing at least everything we can observe and trying to figure out past what we all already know is as fruitless as a copper wire trying to figure out a computer. It knows how to carry electricity from point a to point b and thats all its capable of knowing because thats all it needs to know to perform its function.
 
BonusWaffle said:
I think we all really know what reality is
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We don't know what reality is (we really don't have the faintest clue*), but we're trying to figure it out. That's called 'science'.

BonusWaffle said:
and different peoples philosophies differ only in the words and ideas chosen to describe it.
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Philosophy is not science. What someone thinks or believes in is not science unless it has been proven by experimentation and/or cold hard data.
That different philosophies differ only in the words and ideas chosen to describe it is a claim which is, funnily enough, true and horribly false at the same time, simply because of the way you phrased it.
Kind of like saying: two stories differ only in the words and sentences chosen to tell it. Well, d'uh! Good one, Sherlock.
And if you care to think about it a little further, you should figure out that that isn't all.

* E.g. no one can tell you exactly what matter is or what energy is.
 
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Do you honestly think im an idiot or do you just feel like being a dick?

I'm well aware we havent come up with a set of rules that can explain quantum physics for example, thats irrelevant to my point. What im trying to say is that I think that the idea of god, the big bang, erebus, and any other ideas explaining reality are really all the exact same thing, we've all come to the same conclusion and are just using different words and ideas to describe that conclusion.
 
BonusWaffle said:
Do you honestly think im an idiot or do you just feel like being a dick?
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How did you arrive at these conclusions? Because I found obvious mistakes in your post and pointed them out to you? Odd answer, Waffle.

BonusWaffle said:
I'm well aware we havent come up with a set of rules that can explain quantum physics for example, thats irrelevant to my point.
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Oh man... We DO have a set of rules which explains quantum behaviour. In fact, quantum mechanics is the most succesful theory so far to describe reality.

BonusWaffle said:
What im trying to say is that I think that the idea of god, the big bang, erebus, and any other ideas explaining reality are really all the exact same thing, we've all come to the same conclusion and are just using different words and ideas to describe that conclusion.
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And what I am trying to say is that you are blatantly wrong. I don't even think that you are wrong, I know you are wrong.
 
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