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Author Topic:   Belief Statements - Robinrohan
Faith 
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From: Nevada, USA
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Message 2 of 99 (337585)
08-03-2006 2:28 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by AdminAsgara
08-02-2006 11:24 PM


Robin's journey to nihilism
I agree with you that much of creation appears to be haphazard and accidental. I can certainly appreciate design in life forms, however, where the intricacies are astonishing; but in the vast universe and even in earthly landscapes I don't see it: it all looks to me like a pile of rubble. Beauty comes through anyway, but mostly it appears like a lot of tumble-down ruins. I think it was C.S. Lewis who first brought this to my attention, but I don't remember where or his exact words, something about how creation looks like a great thing gone bad. That is how it looks to me. Eventually I understood it all in terms of the Fall.
Good story, Robin. I always enjoy your writing, and you made a good case for nihilism. I happen to know that everything that happens is not an accident but I understand how it looks that way.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 15 of 99 (337822)
08-03-2006 8:38 PM
Reply to: Message 12 by robinrohan
08-03-2006 7:25 PM


Re: purpose, altruism
The only other choice is the religous choice.
Other than suicide or finding your own purpose?
I think RAZD is right, the other option is just living or just not thinking about it much.
I don't remember giving much thought to purpose in my life BC. There were things I liked to do and I tried to do them, and things I didn't like to do and I tried to avoid them, and things I knew I must do so I did them, and that was about it for purpose. Just following one's own inclinations isn't exactly finding a purpose is it? Or is it? Meaning is another thing, however. I did want meaning and couldn't find any of that either.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 20 of 99 (337873)
08-04-2006 7:10 AM
Reply to: Message 18 by Parasomnium
08-04-2006 2:53 AM


Re: Robin, Faith, and the others
Thank you, Parasomnium, I also appreciate your writing, and I'm thoroughly smitten with Robin's writing. Another one here whose writing grabs my attention is Omnivorous. It makes it worth it to take some time crafting sentences knowing there are people around who are sensitive to such things. It's true, though, you can make something trivial sound important if you express it elegantly.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 28 of 99 (337884)
08-04-2006 8:39 AM
Reply to: Message 21 by Parasomnium
08-04-2006 7:51 AM


Re: Robin, Faith, and the others
It makes it worth it to take some time crafting sentences knowing there are people around who are sensitive to such things.
I knew there was something we had in common!
I discovered you are a writer when you wrote the story about your adventures with chickens. NICELY written.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 29 of 99 (337885)
08-04-2006 8:49 AM
Reply to: Message 25 by robinrohan
08-04-2006 8:06 AM


Re: Thank you
Messenjah writes:
I however probably would not last as you have
Robin writes:
No problem. Just stock up on alcoholic beverages.
I wish I didn't laugh at remarks like this. But it is funny. Life is purposeless, so we make our own purposes and that way we're authentic, but we still need to render ourselves unconscious to tolerate it.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 33 of 99 (337909)
08-04-2006 11:02 AM
Reply to: Message 32 by Chronos
08-04-2006 10:53 AM


How I wish. Both Iano and I have presented the gospel to Robin many times to complete uninterest.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 40 of 99 (337960)
08-04-2006 5:45 PM
Reply to: Message 37 by lfen
08-04-2006 2:33 PM


Reading your thoughts always makes me so happy that God is an object, a separate personality who loves and can be loved by a subject, and that he's promised us an eternal existence with our souls or is-ness intact and able to love him for that eternity.
There's just no way that most human beings can grasp such ideas as you are trying to convey, and even less that we can be attracted to such ideas that imply personal dissolution. Even if it were the truth it isn't a truth I could be happy about. I don't understand your attraction to it at all.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 46 of 99 (338026)
08-04-2006 10:46 PM
Reply to: Message 45 by lfen
08-04-2006 9:54 PM


Re: Are beings synonymous with organisms?
But people don't analyze it like this, lfen. We're simply all aware of being a consciousness or self, and we recognize it in others. We may recognize something lesser but somewhat similar in some animals but it's not really relevant to the main idea, which is human consciousness, or soul, or self, or mind or being etc. We all know what it is. We all recognize it. We know what we mean. What's the need for a model? Or a theory of its origin?
The most interesting thing about it, I think, is the awareness of it as a phenomenon, that may suddenly come over one, of being so utterly locked within this peculiar consciousness that is me, and unable to access other consciousnesses, having to know them only through complicated communications and never from the inside-out as we know ourselves. And how our consciousness never leaves but other consciousnesses float in and out of our awareness of them. Sometimes that sense of being so enclosed in this so very specific strangeness of my I-ness can give me chills, make my hair stand on end. It's so ODD my being me and nobody else, only once in the entire history of the world and never again. WHAT IS IT? I want to know. Not how it got here. Not how it connects to physical things. But, what, IN ITSELF, is it?
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 50 of 99 (338079)
08-05-2006 9:57 AM
Reply to: Message 49 by robinrohan
08-05-2006 7:09 AM


Strangeness of the isolated consciousness or self
It can be a lonely feeling.
Can, but what gets to me is a sort of spookiness, the strangeness of it when you really look right at it. We don't usually look right at it -- we look out from it -- but I get chills if I do.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 59 of 99 (338145)
08-05-2006 7:00 PM
Reply to: Message 57 by robinrohan
08-05-2006 6:41 PM


Re: Strangeness of the isolated consciousness or self
Yes, when you look in the mirror.
Yeah I'm pretty spooky in the mirror too, and I suppose you are making a joke, but I meant when you simply contemplate your sense of being an I itself.
When you think about the thinker, when you focus the I on the I, when you are aware of yourself as this consciousness, or really, not thinking about it so much as looking at it with your mind.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 66 of 99 (338168)
08-05-2006 9:14 PM
Reply to: Message 63 by robinrohan
08-05-2006 9:07 PM


No, I did not mean it as a joke. Looking in a mirror carefully is spooky.
I no longer look very carefully. It's discouraging, depressing, but not spooky. Though I guess it could be if one looked that carefully.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 75 of 99 (338178)
08-05-2006 9:37 PM
Reply to: Message 68 by robinrohan
08-05-2006 9:23 PM


Re: Windows to the soul indeed
This thing I'm looking at in the mirror is not dead. It's just not me.
OK, now I get it. Sort of. In my case it's probably just the melancholy fact of aging, though you may mean something more existential about it. Yes, that's definitely not me in the mirror NOW. I was willing to own her up to, oh, maybe twenty years ago.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 77 of 99 (338180)
08-05-2006 9:55 PM
Reply to: Message 68 by robinrohan
08-05-2006 9:23 PM


Re: Windows to the soul indeed
Have to add that what I was talking about, contemplating the I -- not looking in the mirror, which is more the "me" I think -- isn't spooky because it isn't me, it's definitely me, or rather I, and maybe it's spooky because it IS I.
I've been trying to recreate that experience and haven't been able to. I did get into it briefly yesterday. That's what made me aware of the spookiness of it.
Just tried it again. The late afternoon sun on the desk, dappled sun because of all the trees out the window, creates an aching feeling for some reason, a sort of sadness. Existential sadness I want to say. I've noticed this phenomenon many times, simple natural phenomena provoking such specific feelings. It seems to make no sense. There's no content to it, but the feeling is there. Just from the sunlight, nothing else. I look at the sunlight, the feeling is there; I look away, the feeling goes away. So strange. Anyway, I stopped and tried to look at the I that is experiencing that aching feeling. And I got a little feeling of the spookiness.
But I still can't say any better why or what it is.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 79 of 99 (338185)
08-05-2006 10:34 PM
Reply to: Message 78 by nator
08-05-2006 9:56 PM


Re: Windows to the soul indeed
I do not suffer from self-loathing or think myself fundamentally deficient as others seem to, so I can only presume that this is why I am not horribly disturbed by looking in the mirror.
Schraf, this is such a misrepresentation and it's hard to believe you don't realize that and just enjoy mischaracterizing people.

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Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 83 of 99 (338212)
08-06-2006 10:25 AM
Reply to: Message 81 by nator
08-06-2006 6:42 AM


Re: Windows to the soul indeed
I call it like I find it, Faith.
I'm not the only one who comes to this conclusion.
It's a meanspirited mischaracterization no matter who says it.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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