Did aliens or God create the human race?

[sgreger1]

If you state something about medical research you ought to come up with valid proof otherwise it's considered false.

Oh the irony is thick. Precious, do you not see that that was my exact point in regards to the aura/soul thing? That if you state something about a medical issue (sleep paralysis), you had better have proof otherwise it's false. There is a mountian of proof that sleep paralysis and the like are just your body still remaining paralyzed when you sleep but you waking up a bit early. There is no evidence for a soul/aura etc. So it is false for you to say any of your "proofs" of a soul are proofs of anything.

[sgreger1]

It simply says that everything is God, or the Absolute, everything is One, in the sense that everything is of the same "stuff", but takes on forms, but these forms are "maya", which means "that which is not" in that they are not real, at best transitory, as the real essence is non-material and eternal.

Beautifull. That is exactly my take, and why I have always had a special place in my heart for many Buddhist and East Indian ways of thinking/Philosophy. I love the way they describe the universe as all made of the same stuff, and how we are just temporary redistributions of that stuff. It's sort of like how the waves of the ocean are all distinct from one another but ultimately are all part of the same ocean, and the wave's respective size or signature is transatory and will soon change forms back into the ocean, where it will then emerge in a different shape but remain made of the same basic thing as it always was.

Energy changes wavelengths and vibrations and takes many different forms, but the system is a closed system with nothing created or lost. Therefore all energy of every form is recycled. This doesn't mean our minds lives on after death like the buddhists believe (in my opinion anyways), but we must realize that we aren't our minds anyways. We take on these bodies for a short time and the minds we have are part of the body, it is lost once the body is lost, it is the energy that orriginally constituted us that goes on, but it has no thoughts or memories or humans concepts attached to it, it's just energy.

[devilock76]

Epic status guaranteed. This thread brought Tom back...

Ken

[tom502]

sgreg- well, we also have to consider the interconnectedness of everything, and the laws of cause and effect, and all actions have reactions. This to me, is why I accept transmigration, or reincarnation. It's like a spiritual evolution of the consciousness. We witness this in our own lives, as we evolve in consciousness. And so, nothing just stops, or disappears, but it's continuous, and based on the karma(actions) be have made in this life, and before this life, which, along with our developed degree of consciousness determines our next manifestation after the current body is no longer animated.


Hi Ken.

[heders]

[devilock76]

Hi Ken.

Howdy stranger, despite our past barbs exchanged here and another place, I must admit you were missed...

Ken

[Roo]

Howdy stranger, despite our past barbs exchanged here and another place, I must admit you were missed...

Ken

You are totally missed Tom, good to see you. I liked your post about Vedism.

[sgreger1]

sgreg- well, we also have to consider the interconnectedness of everything, and the laws of cause and effect, and all actions have reactions. This to me, is why I accept transmigration, or reincarnation. It's like a spiritual evolution of the consciousness. We witness this in our own lives, as we evolve in consciousness. And so, nothing just stops, or disappears, but it's continuous, and based on the karma(actions) be have made in this life, and before this life, which, along with our developed degree of consciousness determines our next manifestation after the current body is no longer animated.

I see the interconnectedness of all things, cause and effect, and the all the rest, but to me I don't see how any of this would allow for reincarnation. Yes the energy is recycled, but it is not done so in the sense that one human dies = their energy is then recycled into a new human. If that were the case, it would require some sort of intelligent force that specifically coordinated this process. I think humans are like ants in the sense that it doesn't matter so much what the individual ants do, but rather what they accomplish in aggregate. So in this sense, karma has some way of transfering on because if everyone had more of a "pay it forward" attitude than we as a species would accomplish more than we already have. But I just don't see how reincarnation would work because how does the "essence" of the person who dies get recycled into another human?

And more importantly, how do you account for the fact that the population increases exponentially, where do all the extra souls/essences come from, or where were they hiding when there were only 10k people on earth as opposed to several billion?

It took 2 million years for us to reach a population of 7 billion, the next 3 billion will be here in 50 years. Where do all the souls come from if the ones who die are reincarnated into the ones being born?

[devilock76]

Religion used to be a way to explain things we couldn't possibly understand, like why is the sky blue, where does the sun go at night, what is an eclipse.

Now it is used to try to back peddle around all the things science is now able to answer.

Chakras and reincarnation oh my.

The only PROVEN recycling of the human body is worm food...

Ken

[tom502]

sgreg- I don't claim to be the know it all, but to me it is our developed consciousness that determines our next life along with our accumulated karma. I mean, nothing disappears, it's all an everflowing continuance. To me, if there was no reincarnation, we'd all be the same. For it is our past karma and degrees of consciouness evolution that brought us to this life, this planet, this body, into this family, etc. If there was none of that, which makes us all different, and in different circumstances(our karma from time without beginning) then we'd all have a blank slate and be like identical clones. As far as the population, well, in Indian thought, we transmigrate from all the various forms of life, insect, animal, all of them, evolving to human. And I don't think this all just applied to Earth, but the all of everywhere, and many species on Earth become extinct, or shrink, so those jivas could be coming back as humans, as well as humans are always coming back often in worse conditions than they were because of negative karma, and this could relate to other realms or planets too. Of course this is all philsophy and can't be proven objectively, but based on what I said above, it does make logical sense to me. More than just saying "it's Gods will", or "God works in mysterious ways", not that you or anyone else is saying that, but the goal to me, is to come up with something that at least makes sense to me, and everyone is at their own respective state of conscious awareness, so we all won't always agree, or see things the same.

Hi Roo.

[sgreger1]

sgreg- I don't claim to be the know it all, but to me it is our developed consciousness that determines our next life along with our accumulated karma. I mean, nothing disappears, it's all an everflowing continuance. To me, if there was no reincarnation, we'd all be the same. For it is our past karma and degrees of consciouness evolution that brought us to this life, this planet, this body, into this family, etc. If there was none of that, which makes us all different, and in different circumstances(our karma from time without beginning) then we'd all have a blank slate and be like identical clones. As far as the population, well, in Indian thought, we transmigrate from all the various forms of life, insect, animal, all of them, evolving to human. And I don't think this all just applied to Earth, but the all of everywhere, and many species on Earth become extinct, or shrink, so those jivas could be coming back as humans, as well as humans are always coming back often in worse conditions than they were because of negative karma, and this could relate to other realms or planets too. Of course this is all philsophy and can't be proven objectively, but based on what I said above, it does make logical sense to me. More than just saying "it's Gods will", or "God works in mysterious ways", not that you or anyone else is saying that, but the goal to me, is to come up with something that at least makes sense to me, and everyone is at their own respective state of conscious awareness, so we all won't always agree, or see things the same.

Hi Roo.

This whole thread is pretty much in the realm of philosophy, as are most interesting subjects. On the question of "If this weren't the case, than why are we all different, we would just have a blank slate" etc etc, I recommend reading a book called "The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial Of Human Nature, by Steven Pinker". Essentially, the reason we are all different can be thoroughly explained by genetics, in addition to the environment we grow up in (but mainly genetics).

[Roo]

sgreg- I don't claim to be the know it all, but to me it is our developed consciousness that determines our next life along with our accumulated karma. I mean, nothing disappears, it's all an everflowing continuance. To me, if there was no reincarnation, we'd all be the same. For it is our past karma and degrees of consciouness evolution that brought us to this life, this planet, this body, into this family, etc. If there was none of that, which makes us all different, and in different circumstances(our karma from time without beginning) then we'd all have a blank slate and be like identical clones. As far as the population, well, in Indian thought, we transmigrate from all the various forms of life, insect, animal, all of them, evolving to human. And I don't think this all just applied to Earth, but the all of everywhere, and many species on Earth become extinct, or shrink, so those jivas could be coming back as humans, as well as humans are always coming back often in worse conditions than they were because of negative karma, and this could relate to other realms or planets too. Of course this is all philsophy and can't be proven objectively, but based on what I said above, it does make logical sense to me. More than just saying "it's Gods will", or "God works in mysterious ways", not that you or anyone else is saying that, but the goal to me, is to come up with something that at least makes sense to me, and everyone is at their own respective state of conscious awareness, so we all won't always agree, or see things the same.

Hi Roo.

I think instead of being the product of our past karma we are the product of our genetic history and the environment in which we matured. I do not think we would all be "clean slates" and for all purposes equal as each and every one of us comes from a unique genetic lineage, and our character is equal parts nurture to nature I believe.

Edit: didn't read sgreger's post before I posted. Pinker is an interesting thinker, I like his books for the most part.

[tom502]

But that's based on our purely body status. Why is one person born Paris Hilton, and someone else born some starving kid in war torn Libya? I mean, why are certain people born healthy and in a good home, while others are born to a street walkin' crack whore? This goes beyond physical genetics, which may say why you have blue eyes, but this is past karma that leads the jiva to kae birth in a certain body.

[Roo]

Does that leave room for pity and sympathy for the garbage-eater in Calcutta? I know that under the caste system it does not, but what about you? Just curious. Or do you think "well, you shouldn't have been such a dick in your past life". In my understanding the Hindu approach is more toward the latter, the Buddhist definitely the former. Having said that, one main impetus for Buddhism in the first place was to transcend the caste system. Tom! Nice to have you back. Hope you buy some snus and stick around a while.

[tom502]

Everyone has their own karma, but the Gita teaches to see all with equal vision, as the paramatma within.
While the caste system was, and in some ways still in existence in India, most all of the Vedanitic teachers I have known of was against caste by birth system. Sri Aurobind, Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekanada, Baba Mutananda, Srila Prabhupada, Shri Ram Sharma Acharya.... I don't any Vedic teachers that supported the caste by birth system, I think it's more an ingrained cultural thing.