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What actually do JREF religious believers believe?

dafydd said:
Punshhh's ideas about ''substances unknown to physics'' is pure fiction. Substances unknown to physics and unknown unknowns cannot be created with a mere wave of the computer keyboard.
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Prove they don't exist, or pipe down.
 
punshhh said:
Prove they don't exist, or pipe down.
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Prove that the invisible leprechauns who accompany me everywhere I go do not exist or pipe down. Your fellow mystic Limbo once claimed that he danced on the dark side of the Moon in his astral body and also walked inside a mountain with a goddess. Do you believe that?
 
kerikiwi said:
We'll prove they don't exist right after you prove that my invisible, pink, winged unicorn doesn't exist
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I do know that unicorns are a fictional creature generated by sailors hundreds of years ago. Both pink ones and invisible things are fictional qualities generated by story tellers. All subjective products of the human mind.

On the other hand we don't know what aspects of the existence we find ourselves in are not known by us, or what effect such things have on that same existence.

We could of course bury our heads in the sand and deny that anything not currently described by science does or can exist. That would be like the ant walking in circles on my computer screen denying that anything other than sand and leaves exist.
 
zooterkin said:
Things that don't exist, for a start.
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The "what" I refer to can only include the set of things a human mind can think of. Such things are only abstract (subjective) constructs of the world we find ourselves in.

It does not include the set of things the human mind cannot think of. Rather like the ant on my computer screen, we cannot pronounce on what in this set exists or not. Or what role or effect it has on the world we find ourselves in.
 
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punshhh said:
It does not include the set of things the human mind cannot think of.
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How do you know that this set exists and is not merely a figment of your imagination? Have you ever considered the possibility that it does not exist? Or why should it exist?
 
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punshhh said:
If your looking for proofs of a spirit world I cannot help you. Short of conducting a death experiment to see what happens next, it is untestable. There are other ways, but they are not scientific (in the classical sense).

Interesting phrase.

I wonder what does not have an effect on the world?

and in what sense we do know there are nil effects (from anything) on the world?


You see when one looks at the issue of existence, our rational thought processes begin to break down.
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Well, you'll never get it, obviously, but things that do not exist do not have an effect on the provable world. Of course belief in things that do not exist can have an effect, and poor understanding of the world can seem to have real effects, but that is true of beliefs that almost certainly contradict yours, such as the actions of primitive witch doctors, or the Aztec practice of butchering people with obsidian knives to keep the sun rising on schedule, or the presumption of right wing Christian apologists that the devastation of hurricane Katrina was a statement from God about homosexuality. People can base their behavior on rubbish but that does not make the basis real.

You can't have this both ways. If the spiritual world is so remote from the physical that no interaction can be seen or tested, then all assumption of interaction is a guess. Whether it chances to be right or wrong, it's still a guess, and no more credible than any other guess.
 
punshhh said:
I do know that unicorns are a fictional creature generated by sailors hundreds of years ago. Both pink ones and invisible things are fictional qualities generated by story tellers. All subjective products of the human mind.
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You know nothing of my unicorn.
 
bruto said:
Stable your own unicorn if you must. Mine is free ranging in its world, meeting lady unicorns and making little unicolts. Its efficacy at this is proof that it is real.
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I just thought that if you stabled it there then mystics would have a chance of coming across it. Unifillies too, surely?
 
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bruto said:
Well, you'll never get it, obviously, but things that do not exist do not have an effect on the provable world.
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I do get this, but this is not what I was saying. For example I know that (physical) pink unicorns don't effect the provable world.
Of course belief in things that do not exist can have an effect, and poor understanding of the world can seem to have real effects, but that is true of beliefs that almost certainly contradict yours, such as the actions of primitive witch doctors, or the Aztec practice of butchering people with obsidian knives to keep the sun rising on schedule, or the presumption of right wing Christian apologists that the devastation of hurricane Katrina was a statement from God about homosexuality. People can base their behavior on rubbish but that does not make the basis real.
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This is an issue about human psychology not about what exists.

You can't have this both ways. If the spiritual world is so remote from the physical that no interaction can be seen or tested, then all assumption of interaction is a guess. Whether it chances to be right or wrong, it's still a guess, and no more credible than any other guess.
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Yes of course and I have not made that assumption. As to whether it is more "credible" than any other guess, that is another question.

I return to my previous point, human guesses are not likely to be accurate reflections of what exists and is not as yet understood by humanity.
 
punshhh said:
I would not presume to confine existence in terms of voluntary or not, I leave it open.

In the acknowledgement that what exists may not conform to our notions about things, including logic or the laws of thermodynamics. I deal with it outside (independent of) any notion of time or space or causality as is familiar in theories of a spacetime continuum (SPC). Or if falling within those ideas as potentially independent of the known SPC, in which we experience our existence.
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Hi, punshhh, thanks for the reply!
I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by 'to take form', then.
...What existence means to me is not a simple thing to explain, as I think about it in conceptual form rather than in language. Basically my position is that if something exists, it takes a form constituted of some kind of substance and is in someway present in respect of other existing things. This form distinguishes the thing or group of things from what its or their none existence (or absence) would constitute.
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Could explain what you mean by that, please?
 
pakeha said:
Hi, punshhh, thanks for the reply!
I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by 'to take form', then.
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Perhaps it might sound better if I put it this way, a hypothetical observer would encounter a form.
Are you thinking of the temporal issue here?

Could explain what you mean by that, please?
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Can you be more specific?

Is "I think about it in conceptual form rather than in language" ok?

I will rephrase the other bit. What exists is in some kind of form or substance. This includes a presence in respect of what else exists. Its lack of existence would be different (I presuppose here that something does exist).
 
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punshhh said:
I will rephrase the other bit. What exists is in some kind of form or substance. This includes a presence in respect of what else exists. Its lack of existence would be different (I presuppose here that something does exist).
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And to think that you once accused me of posting gibberish!
 
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