Opethian
Active Member
I don't believe in souls at all to be honest. I don't believe in free will either.
Everything is just cause and effect, and everything follows the laws of physics, and except for the uncertainty of Heisenberg, everything that would ever happen could be calculated with an infinitely complex equation, and all the data available in the universe at a certain point. Our minds are just abstractions of input acquisition and processing to a central system. All I am is my body, there's nothing more to me. And I'm just a medium for input and output. All I use to make decisions is the state of my body, the input I get from my sensory systems and my memories and experiences/instinct stored in my brain.
Of course, this is a hard thing to accept, as it eliminates all abilities of some organism/human being better than the other, and everyone loves to feel better than something/someone else. Yet I have been able to accept this and cross that boundary. I know I'm not better than anything else, not even better than a child molester or Hitler. I was just lucky to have better genetics, and to have grown up in a better environment, and having better life experiences. It's all just a chain of action/reaction. Most animals are different from us in that way that with them, the system of input/processing/output is much less subtly integrated in the organism. In humans these processes have become so complex and subtly covered up in the abstraction to our 'consciousness' that it would almost seem that we have free will. But we don't.
Think about it. Whenever you help someone/something, you are doing it for a reason. Everybody is selfish, and all actions are selfish. If you help an old lady to cross the street, you are doing it for the feeling of satisfaction you get afterwards in your body, or for the gratitude in the lady's eyes. If you donate money to certain organisations that help the poor/people with AIDS/whatever you are doing it because you don't like the feeling of being able to help them and not doing it, and also for the feeling of satisfaction. EVERY ACTION done by organisms has a reason directly connected to increasing their personal well being, or in the case of some organisms that sacrifice themselves for their colony/herd/whatever, at least their species. Everything has a reason, and nothing is better, in the original meaning of good and evil, than anything else. You can only say something is better/worse in a certain context, which differs for everyone/everything.
We live in a world of cause and effect. Scientists' goal is to get as close as they can to the first cause before we hit the last effect. But who knows, there might not be one, and we might be living in a circular chain of cause and effect.
Don't wast your life on arrogance, pride, hate, hypocrisy, or dishonesty. Just make sure you have a good time before it ends.
Everything is just cause and effect, and everything follows the laws of physics, and except for the uncertainty of Heisenberg, everything that would ever happen could be calculated with an infinitely complex equation, and all the data available in the universe at a certain point. Our minds are just abstractions of input acquisition and processing to a central system. All I am is my body, there's nothing more to me. And I'm just a medium for input and output. All I use to make decisions is the state of my body, the input I get from my sensory systems and my memories and experiences/instinct stored in my brain.
Of course, this is a hard thing to accept, as it eliminates all abilities of some organism/human being better than the other, and everyone loves to feel better than something/someone else. Yet I have been able to accept this and cross that boundary. I know I'm not better than anything else, not even better than a child molester or Hitler. I was just lucky to have better genetics, and to have grown up in a better environment, and having better life experiences. It's all just a chain of action/reaction. Most animals are different from us in that way that with them, the system of input/processing/output is much less subtly integrated in the organism. In humans these processes have become so complex and subtly covered up in the abstraction to our 'consciousness' that it would almost seem that we have free will. But we don't.
Think about it. Whenever you help someone/something, you are doing it for a reason. Everybody is selfish, and all actions are selfish. If you help an old lady to cross the street, you are doing it for the feeling of satisfaction you get afterwards in your body, or for the gratitude in the lady's eyes. If you donate money to certain organisations that help the poor/people with AIDS/whatever you are doing it because you don't like the feeling of being able to help them and not doing it, and also for the feeling of satisfaction. EVERY ACTION done by organisms has a reason directly connected to increasing their personal well being, or in the case of some organisms that sacrifice themselves for their colony/herd/whatever, at least their species. Everything has a reason, and nothing is better, in the original meaning of good and evil, than anything else. You can only say something is better/worse in a certain context, which differs for everyone/everything.
We live in a world of cause and effect. Scientists' goal is to get as close as they can to the first cause before we hit the last effect. But who knows, there might not be one, and we might be living in a circular chain of cause and effect.
Don't wast your life on arrogance, pride, hate, hypocrisy, or dishonesty. Just make sure you have a good time before it ends.
