The Grand Illusion

[c4ts]

Wholly illusory, and no doubt masturbatory too, correct?

No, you're not even trying anymore. This is just spam.

 

[Mercutio]

Oh, just to add to the masturbatory foray here, what are you and I doing reflecting on a reality which is entirely meaningless? It was meaningless before we arrived, and it's meaningless after we leave. So, why should we find the "hot dog" between two empty buns? Yet here we are, ha! ... alive and living a big fat lie!

I prefer Ball Park Franks myself. Yep, "They're plump when you cook em' ..."

Paging Dr. Freud...Dr. Freud, you are needed in the R&P subforum immediately...

 

[c4ts]

Sometimes a hotdog is just a hotdog, but in zis case, it is Ballpark Hotdog, ze phallus everybody wants to obtain! Now where is paycheck?

 

[Beerina]

Not at all. If it's all just an illusion, it's not bound by the physical laws of the universe.

That doesn't mean it isn't bound by some laws or other, though. This must be the case as the only other option is things popping into existence unbidden.

And cause and effect are one of these laws.

Cause and effect may be at a much, much lower metaphysical level than mere quantum mechanics or relativity. True randomness ala quantum mechanics is just as nonsensical as pure determinism.

 

[billydkid]

yes

If everything is an illusion and there is no reality, then wouldn't that illusion be our only reality?

Unless you know of, and can show us about "real" reality?

And whos to say that when we die we don't just cease to exist? zip, nada, nothing. why the big fear? If there is nothing after we die, we won't be around to know it.

That is the same point I have tried to make many times - that it is meaningless to call our existence an illusion. We can not even imagine what would constitute a more real reality let alone reference one for comparison. Our existence is what we have defined as reality. Even if there were some other more authentic dimension of reality beyond this one, this reality would still constitute our reality. This is reality. There may be some other alternative, inconceivable reality I suppose, but that has no bearing on the realness of this reality.

 

[Hawk one]

That doesn't mean it isn't bound by some laws or other, though. This must be the case as the only other option is things popping into existence unbidden.

WHatever is outside the universe may still be bound by some other kind of laws, but unless we can actually get outside the universe, there will be no way of telling. So putting in the option about things just popping into existence is no more speculative than claiming that there must be bound by some laws or others. Heck, there may even be laws that requires universes popping into existance unbidden for all anyone knows. Such laws would make our universe non-random (at least not purely random, the way I think you see it), but still not requiring any form of gods.

Even so, I was merely presenting one possible alternative to how our universe could be an "illusion" (which, all things considered, is a rather absurd position to hold. Billykid has already explained why) without requiring some sort of "illusionist", or "god". I will happily admit that my speculations are equally absurd, because that was actually my real point: That we should focus on the universe as it is, since we (as in the human race) at least stand a chance to actually find out a hell of a lot of things about it. Throwing this away for some silly notion about an illusionist at work is by comparison counter-productive, and will ultimately lead nowhere.

Cause and effect may be at a much, much lower metaphysical level than mere quantum mechanics or relativity. True randomness ala quantum mechanics is just as nonsensical as pure determinism.

I haven't read more than the most superficial account of quantum mechanics. But I thought that it was about probabilities, not pure randomness? Could anyone clear this for me? (Bear in mind I'm rather math illiterate)