What's going on in the minds?

[WhyIsThatSo]

Our perceptions of what is (truth) aren't right or wrong. They are limited and biased by human nature, and always changing.

Well said, and ultimately...….ALL is truth .

 

[Mock Turtle]

The purpose for our being here in this life, is to become "True Human Beings".
None of us have attained to that yet, being here in this flesh body ( animal body ).

But it should be obvious that some are more on their way and a lot closer to that goal than others.
And how one person can blow your brains out without even batting an eye....
while another person could never do such a thing, even if their life depended on it.

Each of us as a separate and individual being are unique and special , each in his own way...
But what makes us really special is that ultimately we are all the same....."God"

You are welcome to your belief, just as all the others with rather different religious or spiritual beliefs are - but it's all in your head rather than in reality. Been reading too much? What exactly do you intake as information?

 

[WhyIsThatSo]

You are welcome to your belief, just as all the others with rather different religious or spiritual beliefs are - but it's all in your head rather than in reality. Been reading too much? What exactly do you intake as information?

any literate person can "read"..

 

[PureX]

As are ALL of our experiences, including the experience of God. The question is whether they are limited and biased to the point that they give incorrect information about the external world.

Why? All our information about the external world is biased, incomplete, and suspect. All that really matters to us is that it 'works' (functions) for us relative to our biased, limited, experience and understanding of being ... here.

 

[Mock Turtle]

any literate person can "read"..

But what? Unless you think it hardly matters what we choose to read or investigate. If I found that many with religious beliefs had as much interest in all the various areas that tend to inform us I might take them more seriously, but although there are some, there are many more who seem to just exist on religious material alone - or a restricted diet of other information, especially if it tends to contradict their existing beliefs.

 

[WhyIsThatSo]

But what? Unless you think it hardly matters what we choose to read or investigate. If I found that many with religious beliefs had as much interest in all the various areas that tend to inform us I might take them more seriously, but although there are some, there are many more who seem to just exist on religious material alone - or a restricted diet of other information, especially if it tends to contradict their existing beliefs.

I'm saying that the ability to read is not enough, because any literate person can "read" ANYTHING. If a person does not have wisdom
and understanding, whatever they "read" will not be of much value to them. Even though they think they are learning something.

 

[Mock Turtle]

I'm saying that the ability to read is not enough, because any literate person can "read" ANYTHING. If a person does not have wisdom
and understanding, whatever they "read" will not be of much value to them. Even though they think they are learning something.

Hardly telling me something I don't already know. How about enlightening us as to what information you are partial to - apart from the obvious?

 

[WhyIsThatSo]

Hardly telling me something I don't already know. How about enlightening us as to what information you are partial to - apart from the obvious?

I'm not partial to any information that is not already available to anyone who truly wants to know. The "info" has always been available.
But up until recently, throughout the last 2000 years of human history, anyone privy to this info who understood and accepted it, was
hunted down like a rabid dog and killed. Which is why all the hostility here now. It has always been this way.

The God of the OT, the "God of this world", the God of the Jews and Orthodox Christians, is NOT the "Father" (True God).
The message of Jesus Christ, the "gospel" (good news), the message He brought to humanity is the " secret hidden since the creation of the world " ( Mathew 13:35 ). This "secret" is that the God who created this physical world is an IMPOSTER, and His aim in creating
this physical realm (world) is to enslave us (humanity) here in a place of suffering.

The Christ came to REVEAL this to humanity. That this is not our home, we don't belong here. There is another place we came from,
where we have always existed in eternity in perfect peace and love. The home of our true "Father". This is the "gospel" (good news)
OF (from) Jesus who is the Christ. Not some fairy tale "away in a manger" BS. And this is WHY He was murdered.

One of the first things Jesus did before He started His "ministry" is go into one of the local synagogues, pick up a scroll
of Isaiah, read and quote these words :
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for He has anointed (chosen) me to announce GOOD NEWS to the poor . He has sent me to proclaim FREEDOM for the CAPTIVES ( prisoners of war ), and recovery of sight (spiritual) to the blind (spiritually). And to RELEASE the oppressed. "

 

[McBell]

um...
Do people who are born deaf have an inner voice?

 

[sealchan]

So why don't some people have inner speech? Studies show that producing inner speech requires a network of brain activity spanning from the frontal lobe to auditory cortex, which is located near your ears.


A viral article has split us into two different ways of thinking. This is the science behind it

I thought this quite interesting. I heard somewhere in the grapevine that because thought process (hearing the inner voice) can't be explained, it "must be" from god. Similiar to if we can't "see" the origin of the universe, it "must be" from god.

The website isn't scientific; so, don't expect it to be so.

The article seems reasonable...just like with dreams, probably everyone dreams every night but dream recall depends on a number of factors including intent and intensity of the dream.

The brain is a organic, calculator and as such has all sorts of shades of gray as to whether a thought will lead to a memory, or even a brain activity will even potentially register to our consciousness depending on the intensity of other inner and outer experiences. My own study of dreams strongly suggests to me that the brain itself, in producing the dream, metaphorically references the "flood" of sensory input while one is awake as a "thing" and also relative levels of light that exist reflect the amount of that flood-energy that reaches different regions of the brain (especially across the cortical hemispheres).

Extroverts tune into external events more and ensure that no inner dialog is incongruous with the outer facts while introverts cultivate a continual inner conversation that grounds them against the "disturbance" that is the outer world. The tides of cognition are many and significant in our psychic landscape.

 

[sealchan]

I've often wondered if this has a bearing on God belief. If someone is prone to hear distinct voices and see images as part of their imagination, does that impact the likelihood of God-belief?

I listened to a podcast recently where someone, who was a fan of Cher, started hearing Cher's voice giving her advice. It wasn't clear if she actually believed Cher was giving her advice, but is it possible those who 'hear God' have something similar going on?

Just putting it out there.

My attention to dreams and to coming to an inner understanding of my feelings lead me to my belief in God out of a context of a sort of default atheism (little to no exposure to church).

 

[sealchan]

My only comment would be to beware of confusing the mechanics with the results.

If I were to take some mind-altering drug and experience God, the mechanics of the drug does not invalidate my experience of God. (Nor validate it.) The point being that we too often assume that because we discovered the mechanisms that enable cognitive (metaphysical) experience, we have somehow invalidated the truth of the experience. And in so doing we invalidate our own humanity. I think this would be a VERY dangerous path for we humans to walk.

This is a good description of the reductive attitude...but from a scientific perspective we are still struggling to understand that it is very likely the case that reality cannot be fully understood or described by reduction to the laws of physics.

Things worthy of being considered real emerge out of the interactions of simpler systems from which one would be hard-pressed to predict that emergent existence.

 

[Mock Turtle]

I'm not partial to any information that is not already available to anyone who truly wants to know. The "info" has always been available.
But up until recently, throughout the last 2000 years of human history, anyone privy to this info who understood and accepted it, was
hunted down like a rabid dog and killed. Which is why all the hostility here now. It has always been this way.

The God of the OT, the "God of this world", the God of the Jews and Orthodox Christians, is NOT the "Father" (True God).
The message of Jesus Christ, the "gospel" (good news), the message He brought to humanity is the " secret hidden since the creation of the world " ( Mathew 13:35 ). This "secret" is that the God who created this physical world is an IMPOSTER, and His aim in creating
this physical realm (world) is to enslave us (humanity) here in a place of suffering.

The Christ came to REVEAL this to humanity. That this is not our home, we don't belong here. There is another place we came from,
where we have always existed in eternity in perfect peace and love. The home of our true "Father". This is the "gospel" (good news)
OF (from) Jesus who is the Christ. Not some fairy tale "away in a manger" BS. And this is WHY He was murdered.

One of the first things Jesus did before He started His "ministry" is go into one of the local synagogues, pick up a scroll
of Isaiah, read and quote these words :
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for He has anointed (chosen) me to announce GOOD NEWS to the poor . He has sent me to proclaim FREEDOM for the CAPTIVES ( prisoners of war ), and recovery of sight (spiritual) to the blind (spiritually). And to RELEASE the oppressed. "

So not looking for anything of value to inform you?

 

[sealchan]

When I think about someone in the past, I am more likely to get a 'feeling' for them, maybe their tone of voice, or the feeling from an expression they made.

No, I do not see their face.

When I was in elementary school, there was a day when the teacher was talking about imagination and how we see pictures of the things we imagine. I got very upset because NOTHING like that had ever happened to me. I thought I simply had no imagination. And, in a sense, I do not. I don't *image* what I am thinking about. I get more bodily sensations of how I would relate to whatever I am 'imagining'.

One of the curious things is that I have pretty good geometric intuition. I can even 'visualize' four dimensional objects. I don't actually have a 'picture'. It's more proprioceptive, but it is good enough to do math.

Who knows...maybe the visual system is, in some areas, a problem given its binocular focus on three-dimensionality.

 

[sealchan]

You know, I never took it no mind we saw in black and white. Something new on me.

I know that I cannot pick colors without having physical models of them...but I also know I dream in color.

 

[Cooky]

So why don't some people have inner speech? Studies show that producing inner speech requires a network of brain activity spanning from the frontal lobe to auditory cortex, which is located near your ears.


A viral article has split us into two different ways of thinking. This is the science behind it

I thought this quite interesting. I heard somewhere in the grapevine that because thought process (hearing the inner voice) can't be explained, it "must be" from god. Similiar to if we can't "see" the origin of the universe, it "must be" from god.

The website isn't scientific; so, don't expect it to be so.

I am one of the people who does not have inner speech.

I have explained this to other people here before, but others seemed to not understand what I was talking about.

...I think in 'feelings' and not in words. The only time I ever think in words, is when I'm planning a speech, or planning on writing.

 

[WhyIsThatSo]

So not looking for anything of value to inform you?

lol....I've never had to look, I was born this way.
one doesn't become a "gnostic", rather the Truth finds you.
I once was "lost" but now I'm found.....the TRUE understanding of the phrase.

 

[sealchan]

OK, I disagree here. I think the mechanics *does* invalidate some versions of God belief.

At most, these show that humans have the capacity to have *very* different perceptions, but they also show that those perceptions can be *wrong*. And that small amounts of some chemicals can affect the brain to that extent, in my mind, just validates the idea that our thoughts and other mental processes are based in the material aspects of our brains.

The strength of the experiences, again in my view, show that very small changes to our physical brains can produce vivid illusions and feelings of 'importance' and 'meaning' that are, ultimately, the result of malfunctioning brains.

One of the brain's great capabilities is to invent ideas that do not seem to conform to external reality but are, nonetheless, useful to human survival. And accidents as often lead to discoveries as intentional effort. The complex, adaptive systems that we are immersed in yield many unexpected, unplanned and unintended fruits.

So I will dispute the absoluteness of what you have said above.

 

[Mock Turtle]

lol....I've never had to look, I was born this way.
one doesn't become a "gnostic", rather the Truth finds you.
I once was "lost" but now I'm found.....the TRUE understanding of the phrase.

Railway station lost property?

 

[sealchan]

I am one of the people who does not have inner speech.

I have explained this to other people here before, but others seemed to not understand what I was talking about.

...I think in 'feelings' and not in words.

I don't think that is necessarily unusual...I certainly think in words but often if someone were to ask me what I was thinking about my attempt to put into words what I was thinking privately often spectacularly fails.

I think that we all think in scenarios, feelings, moods, images vague and bright, conversations, etc...just that we are stronger in different areas at different times.