Agreed. I suspect that all phenomena including consciousness are seeing the same primeval substance in different ways. The history of science has included a series of unifications, and the trend suggests that space, time, matter, energy, force, and consciousness will all be unified eventually. Maxwell unified electricity, magnetism, and light (EM radiation), then the nuclear forces were unified to that, matter and energy (E=mc2), particle and wave, space and time, etc.. It's why I like neutral monism best as an account of the relationship of mind and matter, where neither is an epiphenomenon of the other, but rather, both are faces of a prior substance manifesting in different ways.
You are describing what I call metaphysical reality with no projection into conscious content (experience) - items said to exist but are not testable (claims about it are not falsifiable). Such things aren't worth thinking about. Their ontological status is indistinguishable from nonexistence. I'm thinking of Plato's cave, where experience (Kant's phenomena) is limited to observing the shadows of objects not directly visible (Kant's noumena, or
ding an sich). Suppose we posit the existence of something among the noumena outside the cave (outside the theater of consciousness) that doesn't cast shadows or modify the shadows from things that do. That would be a metaphysical object with no physical manifestation, its existence indistinguishable from its nonexistence, and our apathy on the matter justified. These are the things the claims about which are neither correct nor incorrect, but "not even wrong."
How is that misrepresentation? Misrepresentation occurs when context that reverses the meaning is omitted, as when someone says that scripture there is no God, when what it says is that that is the belief of a fool. You know who does that a lot? Believers, when they cite one of two or more conflicting scriptures to imply that the Bible offers a clear and consistent message when in fact the opposite is the case.
The laws of physics are abstractions that exist in some minds and summarize what can be experienced.
You might have seen my comment above to Alien. Consciousness is an aspect of reality, of nature. It can activate muscles through willpower. It interacts with real things and thus is real itself.
The words of the prophets *HAVE* influenced history. Is that part of an argument that the gods they believed in exist as well as more than ideas in their minds?
Their effect is not evidence for their god's existence, just evidence that that is believed to be the case..
Perhaps that's what we are. How can you know otherwise? By the way it feels? There are good arguments that free will is an illusion.
And how does reducing the number of choices that a person wants to make diminishing their lives? I'd say it would improve their lives if they could not commit acts of malice because it never occurred to them to do so.
Incidentally, what are you expecting heaven to be like? Will souls have free will and urges to harm one another as they did when in bodies before death, or do you think God will remove all of that from their thoughts? And if He does, how is that not the mindless robot you just described and which believers say God does not want his devotees to be.
Yes, in many areas.
You may know that I am an American expatriate living in Mexico. We have local Facebook chat groups. A recent arrival asked where he could get a gun to carry legally. He was told that he can't, that getting a gun permit is difficult and impossible for a carry permit. He was surprised and upset, asking if he's expected to just be a sitting duck in this country. The consensus was that we prefer a country like this one, are glad that he does not have that choice, and glad that nobody else does, either.
No, that idea did not originate with Moses.
None of that is the result of a god belief or requires a god belief to value. In fact, humanism and secular institutions like social democracies do all of that better. I was just involved in a discussion with locals regarding the church. None of us was aware of even one nickel from the collection plate being spent on the community in any way. Look at the States, and the battles between the church and humanists. Who's embodying the Golden Rule there, the Christians banning books, besetting LGBTQ+, and voting for Republicans to impose their beliefs on others using the force of government, or the humanists opposing them at every turn?