Hi

Welcome back!

It sounds like you've had a difficult journey but have managed to dump the most egregious garbage of YEC upbringing.

But it does seem like you've got a way to go yet. A metaphysical hole that big sucks in all sorts pseudo-philosophical/conspiracy theory bunkum.

Good luck with the rest of your journey.

Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Hangdawg writes: Do you prefer to view reality as a singular mechanism... a block universe with fixed past and future? Or what is a superior metaphysics that I should graduate to... in your opinion?

Well....... I don't view it as any of those things because I don't know what they mean and suspect that they don't mean anything ;-)

If I had a head for cosmological physics I might have something to say about it but I don't so I just accept reality for what's in front of me.

I'm very sceptical that just thinking hard about stuff and making up terminologies can give us answers that are worth much. If that were the case we'd have cracked it a thousand years ago. It very soon gets to be all woo and magical thinking.

Introducing quantum theory into threads like these is a bit like introducing Hitler. I feel an eye roll coming on; anything can be said next. We don't live in a quantum world we live in a big world were big things don't disappear randomly. (Except my car keys of course.)

It seems to me that you're searching very, very hard for some kind of meaning so you're likely to find it in all sorts of woo. I find meaning in family, friends, fishing, work, scotch, log fires etc etc. Just day-to-day reality.

Hangdawg writes: I would reduce your statement to: we live in a world of mechanisms - unbroken causal chains - computable spaces.

Please don't, if you want to know what I think just ask.

To which I would reply

You don't need me in this conversation do you?

To which I would reply: there could be domains of physics as-yet undiscovered that make a mechanism out of what you call "woo". And also, if something truly new happened, a prime cause, an insertion of a new causal chain, you could not see it looking through the lens of science, because science requires something to be repeatable and testable. Something truly new has not happened before and is either unique or has not been repeated enough to be seen by science.

What probability would you assign to it? Is it something you'd bet your house on or is it a bit of a dream?

IMO, moment by moment experience is "new" and that is why we find ourselves here - to explore the boundary between computable (mechanistic) and non-computable spaces.

I'm beginning to think that fundamental Christianity would have been a better choice for you.

Meaning is a symbolic representation of a goal.

Serious point - please don't tell other people what their meaning is. It's theirs not yours. Fishing is not "a symbolic representation of a goal". It's fishing. Some things are exactly as they are. Most things actually..

We can probably agree on that much

Please don't assume.

I did read the rest, but man, what are you on? It feels like the 70s - is it LSD?

Hemingway writes: Okay what do you think?

About what exactly?

I'm not telling you what is meaningful to you... I'm just saying that for anything to be meaningful to anyone it involves a goal, a desire, an intention.

Does it now? Or is that you pushing your views onto me?

You made an assertion - I don't accept it. I don't even accept that life, the universe and everything has or needs meaning.

Spirits fighting in your head doesn't sound terribly real to me.The word delusional springs to mind.

adjective: delusional
characterized by or holding idiosyncratic beliefs or impressions that are contradicted by reality or rational argument, typically as a symptom of mental disorder.