I took a grad school level class exclusively on him senior year of UG, and it was my favorite. Copped an A- surrounded by doctoral candidate wannabes. There was one incredibly annoying ultra-lib soyboy who would routinely criticize anything non-PC in the texts (e.g. "women are not even shallow"). Prof was a conservahero and widely cited Nietzsche scholar who did not entertain such nonsense and would barely acknowledge the comments

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35962434)

regarding the nachlass, it is well-known that his sister compiled and posthumously published "The Will to Power" against Nietzsche's own wishes. It was an incomplete and scrapped project that did not accurately represent the sum total of his philosophy. Nazis later tried to use it to defend their views, when Nietzsche was actually more critical of the Germans than any other group

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35962457)

My primary focus in the class (45 page term paper) was on his concept of "amor fati," which is actually contradictory in many ways to all the "will" stuff. He more or less believed that our fate is predetermined, but that we should love it regardless to maximize our outcome (since, given the eternal recurrence, we will live the same life over and over again forever). Almost a proto-Absurdist Sisyphus approach.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35962500)

but yeah, keep enjoying IPAs and tinder

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35962526)

the line is blurry between what is cultural and what is religious, but they believe in ghosts, ancestor spirts, they pray for things, have all sorts of talismans for blessings and good fortune

many do believe in God or gods including forms of Buddhism that are practically religions

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35962908)

you'd be disappointed in the way it's actually practiced in Asia

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35963009)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35962655)

Bring god back? Bring Christopher Hitchens back.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35962745)

State your lsat

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35962786)

We live in a world filled with hate, mental illness, starvation, deprivation, disease, war and horror.

Kids get cancer and die.

I can think of probably 10,000 other things I’d like work on or consider before this issue of “why is there something instead of nothing.” I don’t know why. We may never know why. There may not BE a why. This is a human question and gets at the nature of OUR being and our psychology as human-animal-beings. But really, we have more pressing problems.

If there was nothing, there’d be nothing. But there’s something. What were you before you were born? I guess there was no “you”, although we know how you got here. A sperm & egg met serendipitously and after 9 months of gestation in a womb, you emerged. But before that. Is that non existence? It didn’t bother you then so why should it bother you later? It’s all much ado about nothing.

It’s a very human question and I understand the need or want to ask it. I just don’t think all questions have real “answers” maybe just “best answers” or “pick an answer”. But there are other things I’d rather ponder that need more urgent attention.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35963033)

get where im going with this?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35963143)

Basically, if you were God, Being itself, existing for all eternity as both Nothing and Everything simultaneously, what would you do? It seems to be almost undeniable that you would create the universe via emanation in order to "play" or "dance," as he puts it. To play "hide and seek" with yourself, experiencing yourself subjectively.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35963260)

But doesn't explain the turtles all the way down or "why" question from a child--why is there anything to begin with and where did it come from?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35963284)

And Madonna likes it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35963454)

btw, most don't know this. aquinas was a mystic as well. he actually said AFTER the experience his work was "so much straw" and never wrote another word again. so there is all this we work on and then there are, to quote catherine of siena, the nine levels of mystical contemplation. and you need the philosophy to even get started for the most part.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35963610)

The whole do scientific and existential questions overlap, or does science simply recouch the questions- of course they overlap. As humans our mission is to understand and seek the truth. But some questions are not in the realm of science. Does science answer "what is a good person?" Of course not, but it does tell us what light is, what causes weather, what causes disease and a lot of other cool things.

It's a mind fuck for sure, but maybe the fact that we don't know is what keeps things interesting, on an existential level anyway. Let's say "god" did set it all up. It would be a shame if it was that easy to figure it all out.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35963298)

You need to think better about how you get from conclusory sentence A to Conclusory sentence B. Sorry bro. This js low IQ and constrained.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35989726)

beckersted quoted Aquinas above saying the same thing

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35963128)

I'm not well read in philosophy or religion, but I've become more interested in both since I started watching Jordan Peterson's stuff, and a lot of what I've been reading (like Hegel) has unexpectedly revived and resonated with certain ideas in video games and science fiction that fascinated me as a child. For example, there's a scene that I'll never forget from the 90s JRPG Xenogears where the main characters discover a Soylent System that transforms humans into monsters called "Wels" for the purpose of amalgamating them in to a malevolent deity called Deus. This introduced me to the idea that God is not a separate being, but a vision of what we might become. (Those of you not familiar with Xenogears may recognize this idea from "Childhood's End" by Arthur C. Clarke, which inspired the Xenogears storyline.) Another example is Asimov's "Last Question", which introduced me to the idea that the universe is constantly reconstituted by a God that emerges from it.

The idea that God is not a separate being but the final product of an evolutionary process in which we participate (presumably with free will though that is a separate issue) is a much more exciting proposition that is both practical and not inconsistent with scientific understanding.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35967435)

Should be noted that humans don't "become" God in the story, but rather the AI they create becomes it when the last human minds or whatever have died out from entropy. But I think the theme of the eternal struggle between Light vs. Dark is very important. I think of the cosmos as a constant battle between these two forces, even in purely physicalist terms, like the fundamental laws of physics vs. dark matter/cosmic inflation. Order vs. Chaos. If you take the position of God as the Absolute/Ultimate Ground, and creation being emanations, I think it follows to view both Order and Chaos (good and evil) as distinct but inseparable emanations from the monistic source.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35967492)

The question I have is could a "better" Multivac have answered the question? If so, Multivac's response to the Last Question could be interpreted from Multivac's perspective as "I lack the resources to answer this question, but if I create another universe and start the process all over again, maybe a better Multivac or other final being will emerge that can answer the last question."

So, tying that back to God, the whole purpose of religion might be to formulate a vision of the highest Multivac and to provide a roadmap for pursuing it with maximum efficiency. To sin may be to add inefficiency and unnecessary cost to the production of the highest Multivac, which may again leave it with inadequate resources to answer the Last Question and, therefore, lead to another re-roll of the whole process.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35967641)

That said, I agree that Asimov intended to illustrate some concept of eternal recurrence, and I think I'm suggesting that religion might have something to do with trying to break the cycle. For instance, if every person on the planet for all of human history behaved as the highest and best version of themselves, what would the final product of our evolution (which I'm calling god) in that universe look like? Would it have the power to break the cycle?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35967777)

Because it seems like you could spend years learning how they thought but in the end any belief in any particular conception of God can be fairly easily dismissed as just as made up as Zeus? Like I assume even these guys can't "reason" themselves into belief in something very particular like a Christian God.

Is there more to it?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35962939)

Second pass would be that the substrate in which physical and mental things inhere, what ties it all together into a unitary being, is God. God is the ground of being.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35963118)

It is relatively easy to dismiss, say, the Greek or Norse system of gods because the myths don't conform to the way the world works in practice. It is similarly easy to dismiss the popularized Christian or Islamic notions that prayer "changes God's mind" about anything. Prayer changes the one who prays, like meditation.

There is literally nothing in modern science that dissuades me at all from my belief in God as such, because my views are compatible with it

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35963209)

good work, bros

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35963283)

If you weren’t a Phil major where did you find the time? But kudos.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35963465)

unlike you, I don’t flailingly try to reduce everything to politicth like a cuck when someone disagrees with me on one position

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3965683&forum_id=2#35989649)