Is Mars Real

[diamondpenguin]

I've been thinking about it a lot. And I cannot confirm if Mars actually exists. I have seen Jupiter and Saturn through a telescope so I know they are 100 percent existent. So that begs the question are the pictures on the screens real? So tomorrow when the sun goes down I'm gonna pull out the binoculars and look for that mythic red planet in the sky. Just like last week I saw the craters on the moon. There are hundred if not thousands of them. Has anyone else here seen the craters of the moon with your own eyes? 

[EnlightenmentBlog]

Is the back of your head real? Is the reflection of the back of your head on the mirror real? Is the world real when you close your eyes?

[Dazgwny]

On 06/06/2020 at 11:40 AM, EnlightenmentBlog said:

Is the back of your head real? Is the reflection of the back of your head on the mirror real? Is the world real when you close your eyes?

? I don’t think he was quite after a riddle of guru type nature? just ya basic good old down to earth answer

@diamondpenguin yes mate you can see mars with the naked eye. No idea what it looks like through a telescope probably pretty cool with a decent one ??

[EnlightenmentBlog]

@Dazgwny My bad. I was confused by the question. I'll try to rephrase what I meant. 

@diamondpenguin You haven't seen or experienced directly a lot of the things you know. Atoms, molecules, radiation, anatomy, round earth, Big Bang and a thousand more things. Just like Mars. Now you are not going to verify all of these for yourself. We trust that if a lot of people have seen it, it's probably there. 

You post in the spirituality thread of a spiritual forum. I just assumed your question was more spiritual than practical. Peace V

[Nak Khid]

On 6/6/2020 at 6:06 AM, diamondpenguin said:

Is Mars Real

I have the same situation with Kansas and a some other states 

[LastThursday]

How do we know anything exists? How do we know we are not being hoodwinked or gaslighted or are delusional?

The simple answer is faith. A thing exists if we believe it does; and when we stop believing it stops existing.

Mars definitely exists - well it does for me anyway.

 

[Nak Khid]

8 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

A thing exists if we believe it does

 

what about bigfoot? 

[LastThursday]

@Nak Khid I Want To Believe.

Belief doesn't bring something into existence, but belief is necessary to keep something existing.

[Nak Khid]

15 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

@Nak Khid I Want To Believe.

Belief doesn't bring something into existence, but belief is necessary to keep something existing.

what if a rock falls on your head? 

[LastThursday]

@Nak Khid that would definitely constitute existence. My belief in the rock would be 100%. Unless of course it kills me - but that's a different story.

[Nak Khid]

22 minutes ago, LastThursday said:

@Nak Khid that would definitely constitute existence. My belief in the rock would be 100%. Unless of course it kills me - but that's a different story.

what if it was in darkness and you didn't know if it was a golf ball or anything else? 

and it's existence would have struck you before you even considered what it was 

[mandyjw]

On 6/7/2020 at 3:43 PM, Nak Khid said:

I have the same situation with Kansas and a some other states 

 Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. 

[LastThursday]

@Nak Khid ha! My point entirely. Then my belief is even more important. I would still get a conk on the head, that enough exists. But what was it that hit me? My story creating belief factory kicks into overdrive. "Probably a Golf Ball, due to it's weight and it's dimpled texture between my fingers".

When you lack information about something, you fill in the gaps with pure faith. You literally make the "golf ball" exist.

You then contemplate during sleep zzzz...

Upon waking you find out it wasn't a "golf ball" at all but a giant gobstopper and poof! The "golf ball" stopped existing.

Edited June 8, 2020 by LastThursday

[ivankiss]

When you close your eyes can you imagine Mars? How vivid and how in-depth? Can you imagine right now an entire Martian civilization? 

If ya can...Then it exists.

[justfortoday]

@diamondpenguin 

You can verify yourself with a telescope that there IS in fact a “round” shaped red object in the sky. 
 

That doesn’t mean jack shit. That does not mean it is a planet.

It COULD be that space itself is an illusion and your field of vision is simply a flatscreen projecting your reality.

So we’ve labeled these floating things “planets”.

Can you verify for yourself that these are planets? No.

[diamondpenguin]

It seems that planets are giant balls of rock floating in an empty void. 

[Nak Khid]

7 hours ago, justfortoday said:

@diamondpenguin 

You can verify yourself with a telescope that there IS in fact a “round” shaped red object in the sky. 
 

That doesn’t mean jack shit. That does not mean it is a planet.

It COULD be that space itself is an illusion and your field of vision is simply a flatscreen projecting your reality.

So we’ve labeled these floating things “planets”.

Can you verify for yourself that these are planets? No.

I agree Mars is fake

(as is everything but consciousness) 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Nak Khid

[Nak Khid]

8 hours ago, LastThursday said:

@Nak Khid ha! My point entirely. Then my belief is even more important. I would still get a conk on the head, that enough exists. But what was it that hit me? My story creating belief factory kicks into overdrive. "Probably a Golf Ball, due to it's weight and it's dimpled texture between my fingers".

When you lack information about something, you fill in the gaps with pure faith. You literally make the "golf ball" exist.

You then contemplate during sleep zzzz...

Upon waking you find out it wasn't a "golf ball" at all but a giant gobstopper and poof! The "golf ball" stopped existing.

what if you walked into a room and when the house had been constructed 17 years ago a guy named Ed found an old golf ball lying around and had put it inside the wall in the gap for no reason and you have no idea it's there, this golf ball.  On top of that there's also on raisin in there that the other worker Juan had accidentally kicked in there with his foot that Ed dropped on his lunch break. 
So there's this golf ball and raisin inside that wall and you have no idea they are there 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Nak Khid

[SerpaeTetra]

Infinity is the answer, don't look past that, ignore all else

[LastThursday]

2 hours ago, Nak Khid said:

what if you walked into a room and when the house had been constructed 17 years ago a guy named Ed found an old golf ball lying around and had put it inside the wall in the gap for no reason and you have no idea it's there, this golf ball.  On top of that there's also on raisin in there that the other worker Juan had accidentally kicked in there with his foot that Ed dropped on his lunch break. 
So there's this golf ball and raisin inside that wall and you have no idea they are there 

Weird, but I'll roll with it...

Firstly, until I decided to re-model the living room by knocking through the wall, the golf ball and raisin did not exist. Whoa?

Let's call the "stuff" of consciousness something like: appearances. It's very important to understand that appearances are precisely that. An appearance is a sudden discontinuous manifestation in your consciousness. For example you look through your telescope and suddenly a small red blob makes an appearance. The next most important thing is that appearances are transient: they dis-appear just as discontinuously as they appeared in the first place. Your annoying sister digs you in the ribs and you lose the damn red blob through the telescope.

So is there anything which isn't discontinuous in consciousness? Is it all appearances? Yes it's all appearances, everything, the whole lot. 

We can all agree that appearances are something. They are hard to deny. Whilst you are experiencing an appearance, it exists. 

Appearances also morph and meld into each other - it's basically chaos. However, in that sense, appearances don't exist because they are never static.  Existence implies some static quality that lasts for some time period. 

So...

In order to have a sense that anything exists continuously we have to simplify reality. This happens in several ways.

We notice that there are "patterns" in the appearances. These are repetitions in the spatial and temporal arrangements of appearances. But it's worth noting that no two appearances are ever identical - so already this is a huge simplification. The patterns are not real, they only exists as appearances themselves.

Secondly we notice the same patterns recur over time. So already we've gone one level up the hierarchy, there are patterns to the patterns! We might call these patterns: "golf ball" or "raisin" or just plain old objects. We also notice these objects obey certain "laws" of motion and change which are just more patterns.

On up the pattern hierarchy we go. 

Eventually we come to the conclusion that some patterns (objects) persist over time. Note how incredibly weird this is: we have a maelstrom of unique appearances in consciousness, and yet we agree that the golf ball exists and not only that it persists over time. And even weirder than that, even though I have just clapped eyes on the (appearance of the) golf ball as I knock through my wall - I make up a story about it having existed throughout time inside my wall!

Existence, is pure faith.