[INFJ] Atheism

Ren said:

Good to hear. Being able to pick that up and wanting to work on it is a sign of emotional intelligence.

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Did you notice, Ren?

I remember when I first came to the forum - before all of my bother - and feeling very very centred. I carried what I can only describe as a 'beneficence' that I've lost along the way. I don't blame the forum, of course, but I've definitely noticed.

Deleted member 16771 said:

Did you notice, Ren?

I remember when I first came to the forum - before all of my bother - and feeling very very centred. I carried what I can only describe as a 'beneficence' that I've lost along the way. I don't blame the forum, of course, but I've definitely noticed.

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What are you referring to by "all of your bother"?

Well, I can only speak for myself, but yes I have definitely noticed a change. I guess you've been a bit harsher and contrarian than you were before, and seeming less open to the possibility of changing your mind on stuff. We all go through such phases—what's crucial is noticing it and re-calibrating accordingly.

I don't think you've been a monster or anything lol, far from it, but I do think you've flirted with arrogance on a couple occasions. Do you think the compliments you hear sometimes get to your head unnoticed or is it due to a different cause? I feel at times that you want to embody a certain kind of ideal and that perhaps this can lead to this de-centering from yourself you're talking about.

PS. As this thread is about atheism let me pre-empt being accused of derailing things: I'm an agnostic, everyone feel free to challenge me.

Ren said:

I'm an agnostic, everyone feel free to challenge me.

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lol what is there to challenge? You don’t know and that’s fine. It would be stupid to take a perspective just for the sake of it. I’m agnostic about global warming at the moment.

Ren said:

What are you referring to by "all of your bother"?

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With my ex.

Ren said:

Well, I can only speak for myself, but yes I have definitely noticed a change. I guess you've been a bit harsher and contrarian than you were before, and seeming less open to the possibility of changing your mind on stuff. We all go through such phases—what's crucial is noticing it and re-calibrating accordingly.

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Yes that's it: 'harsher and contrarian'; much more willing to bypass some social graces in order to make a point and position myself as a kind of devil's advocate which deliberately delegated a moderacy to others which should have been mine.

Ren said:

I don't think you've been a monster or anything lol, far from it, but I do think you've flirted with arrogance on a couple occasions. Do you think the compliments you hear sometimes get to your head unnoticed or is it due to a different cause? I feel at times that you want to embody a certain kind of ideal and that perhaps this can lead to this de-centering from yourself you're talking about.

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I don't think it's compliments; quite the opposite. I inhabit a kindness when I'm riding high in confidence and centredness, and the opposite when I'm feeling more insecure, though rarely do I recognise this at the time. For all that I've tried to cultivate an awareness of my own mental states and feelings, I've definitely got blindspots, where the symptoms of being low aren't immediately obvious, and manifest in more indirect ways.

What's kicked me into awareness this time is the fact that I recently had a look at an old forum I was a member of about ten years ago, and the conceitedness there was embarassingly obvious at times. For example, I name-dropped a few times where it wasn't necessary, and it's clear that this guy (me) was doing it to make people aware of his learning. In other places, people are gushing with praise because I'd done something enormous to help them or created something everyone could use (e.g. I was involved in a group story project, and created a whole Atlas of beautiful maps of the world and everybody's nations and cities - they each created a 'state' in the world), so that person (me) is clearly not wholly a dick.

At the time, everybody was dying around me and I was lonely, so I know where it came from. It was vested in insecurity and wanting to impress people.

Then today I recalled the denouement of my existential crisis and shamed myself at the lessons I've forgotten. I lost that 'beneficence' and walked around with a lot less warmth - in fact I was cold and stern. So today I had a walk up to the Cathedral, inhabiting this 'centredness' and 'beneficence', and the contrast was obvious. It helped that it's a glorious day - clear blue skies with a chill frost, with warm but stark light breaching over the rooves of these ancient buildings.

I'm a bit more aware of this state now, so I'm going to have to watch myself for a while. The relationship with my mum has deteriorated, too - it was in a good place, but I've gone about correcting her behaviours in the wrong way recently (over Christmas). With exasperation rather than love.

Now don't get me wrong, I know I haven't been a complete dick, and my 'love' has been present for the most part, but I definitely lost that inhabitiveness of being completely centred. And there's a gulf of difference between 'having some' of something and 'inhabiting' it.

So yeah, it's a bit of a surprise that it feels now like such a big difference, but it definitely crept up on me throughout the year. I think part of it must be to do with losing the self esteem I had in my previous line of work, and being now very isolated and living in a completely self-serving, if necessary, way.

Deleted member 16771 said:

With my ex.


Yes that's it: 'harsher and contrarian'; much more willing to bypass some social graces in order to make a point and position myself as a kind of devil's advocate which deliberately delegated a moderacy to others which should have been mine.


I don't think it's compliments; quite the opposite. I inhabit a kindness when I'm riding high in confidence and centredness, and the opposite when I'm feeling more insecure, though rarely do I recognise this at the time. For all that I've tried to cultivate an awareness of my own mental states and feelings, I've definitely got blindspots, where the symptoms of being low aren't immediately obvious, and manifest in more indirect ways.

What's kicked me into awareness this time is the fact that I recently had a look at an old forum I was a member of about ten years ago, and the conceitedness there was embarassingly obvious at times. For example, I name-dropped a few times where it wasn't necessary, and it's clear that this guy (me) was doing it to make people aware of his learning. In other places, people are gushing with praise because I'd done something enormous to help them or created something everyone could use (e.g. I was involved in a group story project, and created a whole Atlas of beautiful maps of the world and everybody's nations and cities - they each created a 'state' in the world), so that person (me) is clearly not wholly a dick.

At the time, everybody was dying around me and I was lonely, so I know where it came from. It was vested in insecurity and wanting to impress people.

Then today I recalled the denouement of my existential crisis and shamed myself at the lessons I've forgotten. I lost that 'beneficence' and walked around with a lot less warmth - in fact I was cold and stern. So today I had a walk up to the Cathedral, inhabiting this 'centredness' and 'beneficence', and the contrast was obvious. It helped that it's a glorious day - clear blue skies with a chill frost, with warm but stark light breaching over the rooves of these ancient buildings.

I'm a bit more aware of this state now, so I'm going to have to watch myself for a while. The relationship with my mum has deteriorated, too - it was in a good place, but I've gone about correcting her behaviours in the wrong way recently (over Christmas). With exasperation rather than love.

Now don't get me wrong, I know I haven't been a complete dick, and my 'love' has been present for the most part, but I definitely lost that inhabitiveness of being completely centred. And there's a gulf of difference between 'having some' of something and 'inhabiting' it.

So yeah, it's a bit of a surprise that it feels now like such a big difference, but it definitely crept up on me throughout the year. I think part of it must be to do with losing the self esteem I had in my previous line of work, and being now very isolated and living in a completely self-serving, if necessary, way.

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Don't fret it Hos. You have been exploring important superego stuff - which all of us with eyes can see. It's counter-cultural, and it's bound to appear a little exaggerated at times, but it's necessary way beyond just yourself. As long as you rebalance every so often then all's well.

John K said:

lol what is there to challenge? You don’t know and that’s fine. It would be stupid to take a perspective just for the sake of it.

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I think an ignostic could challenge me for implicitly accepting—with my agnosticism—that the question about the existence of God is meaningful.

But this leads to another interesting question, namely is there a concept of God that is coherent and unambiguous. I think that perhaps, in this case, the onus should be on the ignostic to demonstrate there is no such concept, because that position would go against our commonsense intuitions.

John K said:

As long as you rebalance every so often then all's well.

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I hope so, John. I just hope I haven't miffed my loved ones and not noticed.

Deleted member 16771 said:

I hope so, John. I just hope I haven't miffed my loved ones and not noticed.

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Yes, do take care of them - the ones that can't easily understand your journey. It's almost certain that a simple gesture of love is enough. But from the little I've seen of your mum, (on the video you posted a few weeks ago) I suspect she's well up with where you are, even if she can't express it too well. She seemed pretty shrewd to me.

Ren said:

I think an ignostic could challenge me for implicitly accepting—with my agnosticism—that the question about the existence of God is meaningful.

But this leads to another interesting question, namely is there a concept of God that is coherent and unambiguous. I think that perhaps, in this case, the onus should be on the ignostic to demonstrate there is no such concept, because that position would go against our commonsense intuitions.

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LOL anyone could challenge anybody about any non trivial concept on that sort of basis. I suspect that anything at all can be deconstructed quite visciously with a little effort. Certainly someone can question whether the concept of God is sufficiently meaningful to be an object of discussion, but then at this level of depth so is it questionionable whether an objective reality is meaningful.

John K said:

LOL anyone could challenge anybody about any non trivial concept on that sort of basis. I suspect that anything at all can be deconstructed quite visciously with a little effort. Certainly someone can question whether the concept of God is sufficiently meaningful to be an object of discussion, but then at this level of depth so is it questionionable whether an objective reality is meaningful.

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I agree, but in principle nothing prevents anyone from attempting to give a formal proof that the concept God is incoherent/ambiguous.

I think that as long as you remain at the formal level you're more or less safe against vicious deconstruction/the extension of such tactics to all nontrivial concepts, if only because the formality of the argument would make its fallacies (if any) directly apparent. I would be wary of any other kind of deconstruction because like you said it's a dangerous springboard to relativism.

I think some of us westerners are afraid of atheism, because once we reject God, we feel alone.
We reject the idea of God and life after death, but we keep the abrahamic idea of being a "visitor" in the world, of being dual, something different from the material world and our own body.
Then, the existential dread comes. We are poor little ghosts stuck in a world of cold, uncaring matter, a world we try but ultimately fail to control, and on top of that, eventually, everything will crumble away. Talk about depressing.

Some parts of eastern philosophy approached the situation differently. Is there a true self, a true "you"? It certainly seems like so, and yet, we are like the ship of Theseus. Over the course of our lives, we are constantly damaged and torn apart (literally), and we rebuild ourselves. At some point, everything that we once were has been replaced, but we still consider that our individuality, what makes us "us", has been preserved along the way. We eat living things. Don't they become us? When we die, don't we become all sorts of other things?

Consciousness certainly feels like an "on/off" phenomenon. It creates abstractions and concepts of things it perceives, to better process them, but I think at some point (like in the case of human consciousness), consciousness may be so extreme and aware that it creates a very convincing abstraction of itself. We feel like we can think about ourselves, our true selves, but can we really? We can think about ourselves conceptually, but if concepts are incomplete abstractions, then do we ever get a grasp of that true self, that "hidden center" of our beings? Is there even such a thing to begin with? Do forests have a center? If you start cutting trees, at which point does it stop being a forest? If you break a pottery bowl, then where does it go? Was there really a bowl, or was the bowl an abstraction?

AJ_ said:

If you ever have some time, in my humble opinion, Alan Watts does a good job of offering a more sensible model of consciousness/the universe (unlike the myths mentioned above) that draws from eastern thought.

Here is a link to the text of the seminar
Here is the seminar:

Have fun on your journey [/USER]

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Highly recommended watch! Alan Watts is a great explainer of core, eastern ideas, and I think one of the most articulate men I've ever heard.

java said:

Consciousness certainly feels like an "on/off" phenomenon. It creates abstractions and concepts of things it perceives, to better process them, but I think at some point (like in the case of human consciousness), consciousness may be so extreme and aware that it creates a very convincing abstraction of itself. We feel like we can think about ourselves, our true selves, but can we really? We can think about ourselves conceptually, but if concepts are incomplete abstractions, then do we ever get a grasp of that true self, that "hidden center" of our beings? Is there even such a thing to begin with?

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I think a way out of this might be to argue that the so-called 'sense of self' is a pre-conceptual experience, which is only conceptualised later.

Also, consciousness and selfhood are not the same thing. I think it is obvious that we are conscious beings, but it is a much more complicated matter to prove we are self-conscious in the sense of having a genuine sense of self. Hume argued that we do not, i.e. that we are only the sum of our experiences and cannot ever access an experience of self. I think it is probably still the majority view among contemporary philosophers, but there has been a trend recently towards reconsidering that question.

TheDevvil156 said:

I am misunderstood too.And yes that is language barrier.If I am mistyped for INFJ well I don't have an idea why.Some say that I am a thinker and some a feeler people have mixed opinions about me As mysdlf I will be considered as a feeler.I was to the school counselor today and shr said that people consider me weird because of my ADHD not for the way I am.I am counseling depressed people.People with anger issues.I consider myself and unhealthy IXFX(INFJ or other types my brain is a mess after today).Well I am not looking for rarity I am looking for people that can understand me.

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That's pretty understandable.

Ren said:

Also, consciousness and selfhood are not the same thing. I think it is obvious that we are conscious beings, but it is a much more complicated matter to prove we are self-conscious in the sense of having a genuine sense of self. Hume argued that we do not, i.e. that we are only the sum of our experiences and cannot ever access an experience of self. I think it is probably still the majority view among contemporary philosophers, but there has been a trend recently towards reconsidering that question.

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I fall on that side too. I think the self is an illusion. The idea of self came intuitively with this sense we all have, of being somewhere behind our eyes. But as neurology progresses, I think it's an idea that becomes less and less elegant, and unnecessary to the model of consciousness. Nowadays, suggesting an unchanging immaterial substance in the mind brings more questions than it answers.

Eastern philosophy...yuck. I don't like anymore, ever since I went on 10 day silent meditation retreat a few years ago. I was really desperate back then.

Well, I like Confucianism to some extent. Much more than Daoism and Buddhism.

while I love the astrophysics of the universe, and recognize that we are the stuff of stars. . the question remains, what caused it to all come together and where did ll those atoms come from. . what energy caused the "big bang" that set it all in motion. My uncle was a research professor at UC Berkley, obsessed with discovery of the scientific causes of the generation of life in the universe. Now I did try to read his works, which lost me at the second paragraph. . but his conclusion was that with what we currently know to be true, there is no explanation for life if you remove the existence of an external force. . ..just sayin

TheDevvil156 said:

I am happy that I could find someone like you.At least you listened to me.And sorry if I upset you with something(I think I done it to you or somebody else.My brain is messed up)

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It wasn't me, so no worries here.

I don't think your brain is messed up. It may be scrambled right now, and if you're truly INFJ well... get used to that, hehe. My brain is constantly scrambled even as an adult. So I have to talk in circles or write everything out just to make sense of it all!

Don't apologize for being you. You're just figuring yourself out at your age. I haven't read all your posts yet so maybe you said something negative elsewhere but whats important now is that you acknowledge that it was rude, apologize sincerely, and move on, learning from the experience. That's the mature thing to do.

Ren said:

I agree, but in principle nothing prevents anyone from attempting to give a formal proof that the concept God is incoherent/ambiguous.

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Of course. Mind you it's one thing to attempt to prove or disprove something using logic, it's another to use logic to determine whether a question is well-defined. I'm very suspicious of attempts to reject the notion of God on the basis of incoherence simply because if there is a God then he is at least in part well beyond the comprehension of humans. I suspect that any success in the endevour would just spotlight a limitation in human intellectual equipment rather than express a truth. By this I don't mean that the logical steps would be flawed, but that logic itself would be unequal to the task set and an inappropriate tool with which to explore the issue.