Random Fact of The Day: Nikola Tesla suffered from colombophillia- he fell in love with pigeons.
He invented A/C current and wireless. He was an amazing physicist.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
Wouldn't disagree to that.
But other methods are flawed in other ways, making an effort to combine methods and approaches important.
Peace
Dan
Flawed in the worst way, it's opposed to reason.
"Everything happens through immutable laws, ...everything is necessary... There are, some persons say, some events which are necessary and others which are not. It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and the other were not; that one part of what happens had to happen and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly; others not to reason at all others to persecute those who reason." - Voltaire
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
He invented A/C current and wireless. He was an amazing physicist.
He certainly was, and a very interesting person as well. He was also pathophobic (fear of pathogens), yet would share his house with pigeons, even going so far to say that he loved one particular pigeon as a 'man loves a woman'. Eccentricity often goes hand in hand with brilliance.
"Everything happens through immutable laws, ...everything is necessary... There are, some persons say, some events which are necessary and others which are not. It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and the other were not; that one part of what happens had to happen and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly; others not to reason at all others to persecute those who reason." - Voltaire
How so? Other methods don't have to be opposed to reason. Science does not equal reason. Is it unreasonable to believe an eye-witness account, for instance? Science is a particular method demanding lab-reproducability of phenomena. Reason is more than that.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
How so? Other methods don't have to be opposed to reason. Science does not equal reason. Is it unreasonable to believe an eye-witness account, for instance? Science is a particular method demanding lab-reproducability of phenomena. Reason is more than that.
Peace
Dan
There are reasons to disregard personal experience. It's subjective. Mental disorders. Pareidolia, psychosis, etc..
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
There are reasons to disregard personal experience. It's subjective. Mental disorders. Pareidolia, psychosis, etc..
You consistently trust subjective experiences by people called scientists, don't you? An experience experienced by a human being is by definition subjective, as it happens to a subject. A scientist reports what he sees, hears, smells aka his experience to a wider audience. For us to be able to know a scientific fact, one scientist must have experienced it and related it to the rest of us. It is corroborated if other subjects (scientists) report the same phenomena.
You seem to outline criterias for not trusting certain people's accounts of experiences, and that is completely in line with what I have been sketching as the system of discrimination and variable trust of sources. The main reason we believe science, is because we generally rate it higher on our "trust-meter" than some-random-guy-in-Iowa.
Given this nature of knowledge, then it becomes less clear why one shouldn't trust experiences that are reported from many sources and are similar in nature. Besides our confidence in science, that is.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
You consistently trust subjective experiences by people called scientists, don't you? An experience experienced by a human being is by definition subjective, as it happens to a subject. A scientist reports what he sees, hears, smells aka his experience to a wider audience. For us to be able to know a scientific fact, one scientist must have experienced it and related it to the rest of us. It is corroborated if other subjects (scientists) report the same phenomena.
You seem to outline criterias for not trusting certain people's accounts of experiences, and that is completely in line with what I have been sketching as the system of discrimination and variable trust of sources. The main reason we believe science, is because we generally rate it higher on our "trust-meter" than some-random-guy-in-Iowa.
Given this nature of knowledge, then it becomes less clear why one shouldn't trust experiences that are reported from many sources and are similar in nature. Besides our confidence in science, that is.
Peace
Dan
The scientific method is flawless over time. By comparison to anything else. Philosophical thought that gave rise to all these mystic interpretations of human experience has evolved for thousands of years. Science has only a few hundred and has already transformed our lives. Nothing stacks up to science, not even close. It works because the universe is deterministic.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
The scientific method is flawless over time. By comparison to anything else. Philosophical thought that gave rise to all these mystic interpretations of human experience has evolved for thousands of years. Science has only a few hundred and has already transformed our lives. Nothing stacks up to science, not even close. It works because the universe is deterministic.
Well, it's good to hear your ideology is working for you. But nothing in that statement is anything beyond ideology, opinion and interpretation. I dont share your optimism, nor the complete faith in science, nor the complete disregard of everything outside the realm of science.
I could start with my entire science criticism over again, but that is really not what this is about here and now (mind you, criticism of science is not the same as wanting to abolish or remove science and opt for theocracy). You are, however, completely dodging my point about everything being based on subjective accounts, also science. Your reply wasn't a reply at all, just a yelled slogan in support of science.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Well, it's good to hear your ideology is working for you. But nothing in that statement is anything beyond ideology, opinion and interpretation. I dont share your optimism, nor the complete faith in science, nor the complete disregard of everything outside the realm of science.
I could start with my entire science criticism over again, but that is really not what this is about here and now (mind you, criticism of science is not the same as wanting to abolish or remove science and opt for theocracy). You are, however, completely dodging my point about everything being based on subjective accounts, also science. Your reply wasn't a reply at all, just a yelled slogan in support of science.
Peace
Dan
Well, there is the science of theocracy, the science of philosophy, the science of ...
Well, it's good to hear your ideology is working for you. But nothing in that statement is anything beyond ideology, opinion and interpretation. I dont share your optimism, nor the complete faith in science, nor the complete disregard of everything outside the realm of science.
I could start with my entire science criticism over again, but that is really not what this is about here and now (mind you, criticism of science is not the same as wanting to abolish or remove science and opt for theocracy). You are, however, completely dodging my point about everything being based on subjective accounts, also science. Your reply wasn't a reply at all, just a yelled slogan in support of science.
Peace
Dan
Dude,
You are ultimately going to rationalize by saying science is observed through subjective experience and therefor all subjective experience is equally as viable and I just don't buy that you really believe that. Science is done in a controlled environment by professionals. You can take philosophy too far, even to say that you can't prove your own existence. Philosophy is great for thinking up things to test scientifically, but it's horrible at providing answers. I just think what you are saying is unreasonable.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
You are ultimately going to rationalize by saying science is observed through subjective experience and therefor all subjective experience is equally as viable and I just don't buy that you really believe that. Science is done in a controlled environment by professionals. You can take philosophy too far, even to say that you can't prove your own existence. Philosophy is great for thinking up things to test scientifically, but it's horrible at providing answers. I just think what you are saying is unreasonable.
Everyone is unique. Everyone has their own history, including scientists. The scientist who discovered a way to map DNA "discovered" it one day as it just came to him like a light bulb in the brain. That creative light, or intuitiveness, is a unique sort of thing that can't be examined under a microscope or dissected through any scientific means.
Everyone is unique. Everyone has their own history, including scientists. The scientist who discovered a way to map DNA "discovered" it one day as it just came to him like a light bulb in the brain. That creative light, or intuitiveness, is a unique sort of thing that can't be examined under a microscope or dissected through any scientific means.
Very nice, gue. I've always been fascinated with 'origins' of inspiration and creative ideas!
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance,
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
You are ultimately going to rationalize by saying science is observed through subjective experience and therefor all subjective experience is equally as viable and I just don't buy that you really believe that. Science is done in a controlled environment by professionals. You can take philosophy too far, even to say that you can't prove your own existence. Philosophy is great for thinking up things to test scientifically, but it's horrible at providing answers. I just think what you are saying is unreasonable.
All subjective experience is as viable to the person experiencing it, certainly. But my point is not to equate science and every subjective experience. What I did want to do was to point out that aspect is also important for science. I rate science high on most issues for the reasons you provide. However, you should never lose sight of the root in subjective experience. My point is not discrediting science in its totality. Again, as is always my point in my debates with you more or less, is pointing out the limitations and implicit premises of science. Science is dong fine with the possibilities and opportunities it has. But I dont subscribe to scientism. Philosophy and science are two sides of the same coin, like it or not.
As for the horribleness of philosophy to provide answer I could point out that science came from philosophy, and a certain brand of it. And scientific reasoning and reason as a guideline in general is a concept of philosophy. Science is more or less the execution of a particular brand of philosophy.
Science is great for proving how things act in lab environments, and proving or disproving reduced operationalizations of concepts. I know how it works, I am a trained scientist myself. Social sciences to be exact, but the methodology is largely the same. I know what we can and can't know about the things we study, and how hard it can be to verify in reality, no matter how impeccably reasonable and logic models we use.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
All subjective experience is as viable to the person experiencing it, certainly. But my point is not to equate science and every subjective experience. What I did want to do was to point out that aspect is also important for science. I rate science high on most issues for the reasons you provide. However, you should never lose sight of the root in subjective experience. My point is not discrediting science in its totality. Again, as is always my point in my debates with you more or less, is pointing out the limitations and implicit premises of science. Science is dong fine with the possibilities and opportunities it has. But I dont subscribe to scientism. Philosophy and science are two sides of the same coin, like it or not.
As for the horribleness of philosophy to provide answer I could point out that science came from philosophy, and a certain brand of it. And scientific reasoning and reason as a guideline in general is a concept of philosophy. Science is more or less the execution of a particular brand of philosophy.
Science is great for proving how things act in lab environments, and proving or disproving reduced operationalizations of concepts. I know how it works, I am a trained scientist myself. Social sciences to be exact, but the methodology is largely the same. I know what we can and can't know about the things we study, and how hard it can be to verify in reality, no matter how impeccably reasonable and logic models we use.
Peace
Dan
I didn't realize everyone on this forum is a newager. Well thankfully I'm not alone. Enjoy your holier than the universe view of reality.
"You will say that I feel free. This is an illusion, which may be compared to that of the fly in the fable, who, upon the pole of a heavy carriage, applauded himself for directing its course. Man, who thinks himself free, is a fly who imagines he has power to move the universe, while he is himself unknowingly carried along by it." -- Baron d'Hobach
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
Everyone is unique. Everyone has their own history, including scientists. The scientist who discovered a way to map DNA "discovered" it one day as it just came to him like a light bulb in the brain. That creative light, or intuitiveness, is a unique sort of thing that can't be examined under a microscope or dissected through any scientific means.
Oh you mean Francis Crick
Yea, I'm reading his book.
That is a defeatist perspective and I'm glad that the scientific community by enlarge disagrees with you.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
I didn't realize everyone on this forum is a newager. Well thankfully I'm not alone. Enjoy your holier than the universe view of reality.
"You will say that I feel free. This is an illusion, which may be compared to that of the fly in the fable, who, upon the pole of a heavy carriage, applauded himself for directing its course. Man, who thinks himself free, is a fly who imagines he has power to move the universe, while he is himself unknowingly carried along by it." -- Baron d'Hobach
??????? And relevance of the quote, unless you automatically assume that I am your complete anti-thesis for disagreeing and discussing what you determine self-evident? We arent even debating free will nor determinism which that quote was aimed towards.
Again man, if you dont wanna discuss and have fits when you read the word philosophy, or anything science is criticized then suit yourself. What i posted about philosophy and science is not exactly controversial as it is among the first things we learn at the university pre-course. Here's a link if you want on the issue on the philosophy of science: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Science
There is nothing newage about my last post. It is based in the (rather big) philosophical school of phenomenology (whose main issue is not forgetting that the human is always our starting point) and many developments within sciences the last decades, where the things I laid out for you here is more and more accepted.
If you are out of arguments, then just say so. If you dont wanna discuss, dont discuss.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
??????? And relevance of the quote, unless you automatically assume that I am your complete anti-thesis for disagreeing and discussing what you determine self-evident? We arent even debating free will nor determinism which that quote was aimed towards.
Again man, if you dont wanna discuss and have fits when you read the word philosophy, or anything science is criticized then suit yourself. What i posted about philosophy and science is not exactly controversial as it is among the first things we learn at the university pre-course. Here's a link if you want on the issue on the philosophy of science: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Science
There is nothing newage about my last post. It is based in the (rather big) philosophical school of phenomenology (whose main issue is not forgetting that the human is always our starting point) and many developments within sciences the last decades, where the things I laid out for you here is more and more accepted.
If you are out of arguments, then just say so. If you dont wanna discuss, dont discuss.
Peace
Dan
No, it's your rationalization that because science has flaws such as phenomenology, that you will invest your belief in other bullshit. You constantly say that science is flawed, I know it is in the immediate sense, but over time it isn't. I think you are doing this to substantiate your own experience and opinions. Hey man, I'm a human too, I know what it is like to have experience. I just sacrifice my comfort for objective truth and there is no reason to believe otherwise.
This disregard for the best practical method of discovery in favour of hallucinagenic experience is newage.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
No, it's your rationalization that because science has flaws such as phenomenology, that you will invest your belief in other bullshit. You constantly say that science is flawed, I know it is in the immediate sense, but over time it isn't. I think you are doing this to substantiate your own experience and opinions. Hey man, I'm a human too, I know what it is like to have experience. I just sacrifice my comfort for objective truth and there is no reason to believe otherwise.
This disregard for the best practical method of discovery in favour of hallucinagenic experience is newage.
Where do you get the idea that I am throwing science away to go mystic? You're either with science or against it? That's the part I'm not getting. I feel your responses are jumping to a conclusion through mediary steps I dont see. Science is not a program you sign up to and have to accept or reject the whole package. Some parts are more certain and solid than other parts.
What I do is try to establish what science in the utmost sense actually is and how it works, and what is it's most major blind spots. Like you say, science is flawed, but you then use ideology to say it won't be in the future. I dont share that ideology. And you dont seem to realize that it is ideology you are pushing many times.
And I won't even start on the whole "objective truth" since I know you will disregard it as nonsense in a brusque manner. The key question is "How can you find objective truth being limited to experiences from subjective human individuals?" It is not discrediting all of science, again, it's about the limitations. And current mainstream orthodox science has several.
I'll take it as a small victory that you actually acknowledged science is flawed. You have hard of doing that. Science is a good tool, but it is not omniscient and wont be in the foreseeable future either. And its not like picking a team, and always having to side with it.
And you haven't really countered my arguments from a few posts back. The debate has just been diverted into a "with us or against us" case for science.
(edit) Do the names of Popper and Kuhn mean anything to you?
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Where do you get the idea that I am throwing science away to go mystic? You're either with science or against it? That's the part I'm not getting. I feel your responses are jumping to a conclusion through mediary steps I dont see. Science is not a program you sign up to and have to accept or reject the whole package. Some parts are more certain and solid than other parts.
What I do is try to establish what science in the utmost sense actually is and how it works, and what is it's most major blind spots. Like you say, science is flawed, but you then use ideology to say it won't be in the future. I dont share that ideology. And you dont seem to realize that it is ideology you are pushing many times.
And I won't even start on the whole "objective truth" since I know you will disregard it as nonsense in a brusque manner. The key question is "How can you find objective truth being limited to experiences from subjective human individuals?" It is not discrediting all of science, again, it's about the limitations. And current mainstream orthodox science has several.
I'll take it as a small victory that you actually acknowledged science is flawed. You have hard of doing that. Science is a good tool, but it is not omniscient and wont be in the foreseeable future either. And its not like picking a team, and always having to side with it.
And you haven't really countered my arguments from a few posts back. The debate has just been diverted into a "with us or against us" case for science.
(edit) Do the names of Popper and Kuhn mean anything to you?
Peace
Dan
You aren't even looking for scientific explanations. Benjamin Libet, Francis Crick, Christof Koch, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Split-Brain patients, Schizophrenia. You forget that we can very easily destroy consciousness by destroying the brain. Something that many guys like Stuart Hameroff an anaesthesiologist also forget. Of all people he should know, he's in the practice of suppressing consciousness.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
You aren't even looking for scientific explanations. Benjamin Libet, Francis Crick, Christof Koch, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Split-Brain patients, Schizophrenia. You forget that we can very easily destroy consciousness by destroying the brain. Something that many guys like Stuart Hameroff an anaesthesiologist also forget. Of all people he should know, he's in the practice of suppressing consciousness.
I'll listen to scientific explanations, yes. But I dont see how us being able to destroy the brain is any argument in the current debate. Humans are easily destroyed, I dont argue otherwise. For the last posts you have been talking scientism.
But I am debating the philosophical underpinnings of science in general, in other words, it's reason, logic and rhetoric. I asked if you had heard the names of Popper and Kuhn, as they are both central to understanding how science works and what it can and cannot do. Popper with the understanding that science can ever only disprove a hypothesis, and never prove it. A hypothesis can at best be "not unproven yet". Kuhn with the theory on scientific paradigms, and their incompatability.
You seem to think that science has appeared out of thin air as an objective tool that will always show us the truth. In reality, science stems from a long philosophical tradition, and rests upon several philosophical premises for it to be correct. You seem to be oblivious to these. Science is man-made and has no existence in itself. It is a tool in our quest to understand our surroundings, and one that has yielded a lot of results. However, we have no way to affirm that we really are right in our theories, like Popper posits, our current knowledge is at best "still not disproved" and it seems to fit somewhat what we know about the world. This is why I won't go aboard on any positivistic scientism. Science provides knowledge, but it is no supreme authority on everything that is, although it tells us a lot about a lot.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
I dont have 1 hour, sorry. Peeked at the first 10 secs.
I am outlining criticism towards science and it's limits by now. I know we started with god, but it's really not what we're on about by now.
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
I'll listen to scientific explanations, yes. But I dont see how us being able to destroy the brain is any argument in the current debate. Humans are easily destroyed, I dont argue otherwise. For the last posts you have been talking scientism.
But I am debating the philosophical underpinnings of science in general, in other words, it's reason, logic and rhetoric. I asked if you had heard the names of Popper and Kuhn, as they are both central to understanding how science works and what it can and cannot do. Popper with the understanding that science can ever only disprove a hypothesis, and never prove it. A hypothesis can at best be "not unproven yet". Kuhn with the theory on scientific paradigms, and their incompatability.
You seem to think that science has appeared out of thin air as an objective tool that will always show us the truth. In reality, science stems from a long philosophical tradition, and rests upon several philosophical premises for it to be correct. You seem to be oblivious to these. Science is man-made and has no existence in itself. It is a tool in our quest to understand our surroundings, and one that has yielded a lot of results. However, we have no way to affirm that we really are right in our theories, like Popper posits, our current knowledge is at best "still not disproved" and it seems to fit somewhat what we know about the world. This is why I won't go aboard on any positivistic scientism. Science provides knowledge, but it is no supreme authority on everything that is, although it tells us a lot about a lot.
Peace
Dan
You can philosophically argue anything. You can even go far as to say nothing exists but consciousness. But that's ridiculous to me. There is some extent to which this thinking is ridiculous. Call science a philosophy, but it's based on principles that make it very affective. I don't particularly think the view of these two men is correct either. When I was a caveman, I never questioned the existence of a boar or a rock. It was proven. Proof is the amount of evidence that it takes to convince a person it's proven.
Ok, so we take some things for granted. What we see is what really is, for the most part. The video I linked you outlines the experiments or observations of 3 men; Dr. Michael Persinger, V. Ramachandran and Andrew Newberg. Persinger can stimulate religious experience with transcranial magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobe. It reports a case where he removed a clock radio from a little girls room to stop her from seeing a ghost. He tried the experiment on Richard Dawkins and it had no effect. This brought up some questions for me, like did Dawkins know what the experiment was about? That would be an important control, one Persinger took with the other patients. Somehow I doubt Dawkins was unaware. Persinger said that 80% of people have religious experiences, based on the population of ontario. I wonder if this is because 20% of people are atheists. And also if he did the experiment with a hindu or buddhist, what kind of experience would they have? Would they experience God or something else? Secondly Ramachandran applied detectors to the subjects hands, to test for galvanatic response. He showed them words on a screen, either sexual, religious or neutral words like "tire". Most people had a high response to sexual words, but people with temporal lobe epilepsy had high response to religious words. Andrew Newberg had subjects meditate and monitored the blood-flow in the brain. He found that people meditating had lowered pareital lobe activity, the area of the brain associated with feelings of self, correlating with the oneness feeling they have. The video concludes that religion should embrace science as it appears we have an antenna to God, or perhaps not. I think not. For one specific reason. 20% of subjects don't have religious experiences. If everyone has a metaphysical soul or consciousness that persists after death and the brain is equipped with a wire to that metaphysical plane, then why don't some people have it? Are they soul-less creatures? Is that what atheists become, soul-less animals that corrupt the spirituality of man? Why would God create such a creature? And besides this is getting pretty speculative already. I agree we could go either way with this idea of spirituality, but in light of scientific observations over other observations and predictable outcomes like removing the clock radio or Persinger's TMS device. I'd be far more inclined to believe that spirituality is something we are equipped with for survival purposes. It also makes me wonder if our increase in the use of electromagnetism has something to do with the huge amount of alien abductions. All these radio waves and junk are interfering with our brains. Our cranium will block a lot of it, but it seems like some of it still gets through.
Anyway, believe whatever it is you want to believe. I don't care if I have a soul or not, I suspect I don't in light of scientific evidence and I guess my scientism or interpretation of the evidence. It's not like I've never had temporal lobe activity, although I don't normally unless I put myself into a position to stimulate temporal lobe activity. Anyway.
*End Transmission*
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
Ahnimus, that's gotta be your best and most relevant post yet in this debate. No more science is best slogans, but telling me why you think like you do, back it up with experiments and whatnot. Now I understand your position, and (drumroll) I agree with most of it.
Now a few comments:
Popper's claim is very relevant to science. First thing we were taught at university pre-course more or less was his falsifiability thesis. You can't disregard it when doing science. You can never prove, only disprove a theory. It's falsifiability is what makes it a scientific theory. However, when a theory has withstood many attempts to be disproved, our confidence in it increases of course. This is central in statistics (which is a very central part in virtually all science) where the conclusive result is the negative result. A positive result, or a correlation, is much harder to nail down. Or why there is a correlation. Here's a wiki on Popper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
The 80% / 20% religious/soulless thing, I think you are stretching a bit too far. Rather than concluding that the final 20% are soulless, you should focus on 80% reporting such experiences. Forget god and bible and theology in this. If 80% experience something, it's gotta be something. Which kinda has been one of my main points in this debate.
For me, that spiritual experience can be induced through experiment does not disprove that it may be external. It's interesting experiments though.
'd be far more inclined to believe that spirituality is something we are equipped with for survival purposes. It also makes me wonder if our increase in the use of electromagnetism has something to do with the huge amount of alien abductions. All these radio waves and junk are interfering with our brains. Our cranium will block a lot of it, but it seems like some of it still gets through.
Interesting theory. And I mean it. Not "interesting" as in "bullshit". I am prone to speculations like that myself.
I like this post, and I hope there will be more like these, instead of what we've been doing for the last page or so. I really like reading your thoughts when you let go a bit and don't armour yourself in slightly arrogant science-is-best-and-all-that-is attitude and stonewalling any differing view. I think you are a smart person, and someone with very interesting views, but with a bit more attitude than necessary at times. Maybe it's this place that does it, and you are used to debating people who aren't really interested. But remember when posting with me that I am not a religious person, I'm borderline atheist depending on how you define it, but I am interested in these spiritual/transcendental/religious experiences. And I am more skeptical towards science than you, but that is not because I have a religious agenda. Science is about being skeptical, but it should also be applied to science itself. I think that's a good principle.
Anyway, I'm all ears if you wanna go further with this. But now, I gotta go to work. See you!
Peace
Dan
"YOU [humans] NEED TO BELIEVE IN THINGS THAT AREN'T TRUE. HOW ELSE CAN THEY BECOME?" - Death
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Persinger said that 80% of people have religious experiences, based on the population of ontario. I wonder if this is because 20% of people are atheists. And also if he did the experiment with a hindu or buddhist, what kind of experience would they have? Would they experience God or something else? Secondly Ramachandran applied detectors to the subjects hands, to test for galvanatic response. He showed them words on a screen, either sexual, religious or neutral words like "tire". Most people had a high response to sexual words, but people with temporal lobe epilepsy had high response to religious words. Andrew Newberg had subjects meditate and monitored the blood-flow in the brain. He found that people meditating had lowered pareital lobe activity, the area of the brain associated with feelings of self, correlating with the oneness feeling they have. The video concludes that religion should embrace science as it appears we have an antenna to God, or perhaps not. I think not. For one specific reason. 20% of subjects don't have religious experiences. If everyone has a metaphysical soul or consciousness that persists after death and the brain is equipped with a wire to that metaphysical plane, then why don't some people have it? Are they soul-less creatures? Is that what atheists become, soul-less animals that corrupt the spirituality of man? Why would God create such a creature? And besides this is getting pretty speculative already. I agree we could go either way with this idea of spirituality, but in light of scientific observations over other observations and predictable outcomes like removing the clock radio or Persinger's TMS device. I'd be far more inclined to believe that spirituality is something we are equipped with for survival purposes. It also makes me wonder if our increase in the use of electromagnetism has something to do with the huge amount of alien abductions. All these radio waves and junk are interfering with our brains. Our cranium will block a lot of it, but it seems like some of it still gets through.
Very interesting, Ahnimus.........made me think of another possibility. What if, meditation or prayer or whatever develops a certain kind of "muscle" that cannot be developed without training. IF there is a variety of mediation or prayer which can open the mind, and IF someone practices EVERY SINGLE DAY, then after some period of time it only makes sense that the serious practitioner will learn things about and realize a level of openness that the casually-interested or uninterested person will not. Could this not account for the 20%? The unpracticed mind simply cannot see like the practiced mind. I don't mean this as a belittling judgment, it's just the reality of practice versus not practicing. Someone who practices at any discipline will obviously be 'better' at it than the unpracticed.
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance,
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
Ahnimus, that's gotta be your best and most relevant post yet in this debate. No more science is best slogans, but telling me why you think like you do, back it up with experiments and whatnot. Now I understand your position, and (drumroll) I agree with most of it.
Now a few comments:
Popper's claim is very relevant to science. First thing we were taught at university pre-course more or less was his falsifiability thesis. You can't disregard it when doing science. You can never prove, only disprove a theory. It's falsifiability is what makes it a scientific theory. However, when a theory has withstood many attempts to be disproved, our confidence in it increases of course. This is central in statistics (which is a very central part in virtually all science) where the conclusive result is the negative result. A positive result, or a correlation, is much harder to nail down. Or why there is a correlation. Here's a wiki on Popper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
The 80% / 20% religious/soulless thing, I think you are stretching a bit too far. Rather than concluding that the final 20% are soulless, you should focus on 80% reporting such experiences. Forget god and bible and theology in this. If 80% experience something, it's gotta be something. Which kinda has been one of my main points in this debate.
For me, that spiritual experience can be induced through experiment does not disprove that it may be external. It's interesting experiments though.
Interesting theory. And I mean it. Not "interesting" as in "bullshit". I am prone to speculations like that myself.
I like this post, and I hope there will be more like these, instead of what we've been doing for the last page or so. I really like reading your thoughts when you let go a bit and don't armour yourself in slightly arrogant science-is-best-and-all-that-is attitude and stonewalling any differing view. I think you are a smart person, and someone with very interesting views, but with a bit more attitude than necessary at times. Maybe it's this place that does it, and you are used to debating people who aren't really interested. But remember when posting with me that I am not a religious person, I'm borderline atheist depending on how you define it, but I am interested in these spiritual/transcendental/religious experiences. And I am more skeptical towards science than you, but that is not because I have a religious agenda. Science is about being skeptical, but it should also be applied to science itself. I think that's a good principle.
Anyway, I'm all ears if you wanna go further with this. But now, I gotta go to work. See you!
Peace
Dan
I agree that falsifiability is important. And in-fact I do probe the research methods used when I investigate claims. I do this based on an understanding I got from a science textbook which explained the need for skepticism. So, it's not that I have blind faith in every headline I read, but I probe them deeper and determine for myself if it's credible. This usually requires a peer review of some sort.
Why would I focus on the 80% reporting religious experiences, the 20% are just important. I can't see it being a natural thing, granted by the Judeo-Christian God because it wouldn't make any moral sense for God to only grant it to 80% of people.
But I mean, my interpretation of it is based on a secular humanist/hard determinist viewpoint. I know I can't convince you that you are not free, so it would be difficult to see how I draw the conclusion that these are merely hallucinations.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
Very interesting, Ahnimus.........made me think of another possibility. What if, meditation or prayer or whatever develops a certain kind of "muscle" that cannot be developed without training. IF there is a variety of mediation or prayer which can open the mind, and IF someone practices EVERY SINGLE DAY, then after some period of time it only makes sense that the serious practitioner will learn things about and realize a level of openness that the casually-interested or uninterested person will not. Could this not account for the 20%? The unpracticed mind simply cannot see like the practiced mind. I don't mean this as a belittling judgment, it's just the reality of practice versus not practicing. Someone who practices at any discipline will obviously be 'better' at it than the unpracticed.
Well... I don't believe in free-will, I believe everyone's actions are determined by a set of fixed natural laws. So it's difficult for me to see how a soul or spirit could exist in any form that's been described.
I necessarily have the passion for writing this, and you have the passion for condemning me; both of us are equally fools, equally the toys of destiny. Your nature is to do harm, mine is to love truth, and to make it public in spite of you. - Voltaire
Well... I don't believe in free-will, I believe everyone's actions are determined by a set of fixed natural laws. So it's difficult for me to see how a soul or spirit could exist in any form that's been described.
Comments
He invented A/C current and wireless. He was an amazing physicist.
Flawed in the worst way, it's opposed to reason.
"Everything happens through immutable laws, ...everything is necessary... There are, some persons say, some events which are necessary and others which are not. It would be very comic that one part of the world was arranged, and the other were not; that one part of what happens had to happen and that another part of what happens did not have to happen. If one looks closely at it, one sees that the doctrine contrary to that of destiny is absurd; but there are many people destined to reason badly; others not to reason at all others to persecute those who reason." - Voltaire
He certainly was, and a very interesting person as well. He was also pathophobic (fear of pathogens), yet would share his house with pigeons, even going so far to say that he loved one particular pigeon as a 'man loves a woman'. Eccentricity often goes hand in hand with brilliance.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
There are reasons to disregard personal experience. It's subjective. Mental disorders. Pareidolia, psychosis, etc..
You seem to outline criterias for not trusting certain people's accounts of experiences, and that is completely in line with what I have been sketching as the system of discrimination and variable trust of sources. The main reason we believe science, is because we generally rate it higher on our "trust-meter" than some-random-guy-in-Iowa.
Given this nature of knowledge, then it becomes less clear why one shouldn't trust experiences that are reported from many sources and are similar in nature. Besides our confidence in science, that is.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
The scientific method is flawless over time. By comparison to anything else. Philosophical thought that gave rise to all these mystic interpretations of human experience has evolved for thousands of years. Science has only a few hundred and has already transformed our lives. Nothing stacks up to science, not even close. It works because the universe is deterministic.
Sounds philosophical, to me.
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
I could start with my entire science criticism over again, but that is really not what this is about here and now (mind you, criticism of science is not the same as wanting to abolish or remove science and opt for theocracy). You are, however, completely dodging my point about everything being based on subjective accounts, also science. Your reply wasn't a reply at all, just a yelled slogan in support of science.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
Dude,
You are ultimately going to rationalize by saying science is observed through subjective experience and therefor all subjective experience is equally as viable and I just don't buy that you really believe that. Science is done in a controlled environment by professionals. You can take philosophy too far, even to say that you can't prove your own existence. Philosophy is great for thinking up things to test scientifically, but it's horrible at providing answers. I just think what you are saying is unreasonable.
Everyone is unique. Everyone has their own history, including scientists. The scientist who discovered a way to map DNA "discovered" it one day as it just came to him like a light bulb in the brain. That creative light, or intuitiveness, is a unique sort of thing that can't be examined under a microscope or dissected through any scientific means.
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
Very nice, gue. I've always been fascinated with 'origins' of inspiration and creative ideas!
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
As for the horribleness of philosophy to provide answer I could point out that science came from philosophy, and a certain brand of it. And scientific reasoning and reason as a guideline in general is a concept of philosophy. Science is more or less the execution of a particular brand of philosophy.
Science is great for proving how things act in lab environments, and proving or disproving reduced operationalizations of concepts. I know how it works, I am a trained scientist myself. Social sciences to be exact, but the methodology is largely the same. I know what we can and can't know about the things we study, and how hard it can be to verify in reality, no matter how impeccably reasonable and logic models we use.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
I didn't realize everyone on this forum is a newager. Well thankfully I'm not alone. Enjoy your holier than the universe view of reality.
"You will say that I feel free. This is an illusion, which may be compared to that of the fly in the fable, who, upon the pole of a heavy carriage, applauded himself for directing its course. Man, who thinks himself free, is a fly who imagines he has power to move the universe, while he is himself unknowingly carried along by it." -- Baron d'Hobach
Oh you mean Francis Crick
Yea, I'm reading his book.
That is a defeatist perspective and I'm glad that the scientific community by enlarge disagrees with you.
Never heard of him. The words come from me.
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.
Again man, if you dont wanna discuss and have fits when you read the word philosophy, or anything science is criticized then suit yourself. What i posted about philosophy and science is not exactly controversial as it is among the first things we learn at the university pre-course. Here's a link if you want on the issue on the philosophy of science: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Science
There is nothing newage about my last post. It is based in the (rather big) philosophical school of phenomenology (whose main issue is not forgetting that the human is always our starting point) and many developments within sciences the last decades, where the things I laid out for you here is more and more accepted.
If you are out of arguments, then just say so. If you dont wanna discuss, dont discuss.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
No, it's your rationalization that because science has flaws such as phenomenology, that you will invest your belief in other bullshit. You constantly say that science is flawed, I know it is in the immediate sense, but over time it isn't. I think you are doing this to substantiate your own experience and opinions. Hey man, I'm a human too, I know what it is like to have experience. I just sacrifice my comfort for objective truth and there is no reason to believe otherwise.
Just like how C.J. Jung says it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eenmBDU_k3o
This disregard for the best practical method of discovery in favour of hallucinagenic experience is newage.
What I do is try to establish what science in the utmost sense actually is and how it works, and what is it's most major blind spots. Like you say, science is flawed, but you then use ideology to say it won't be in the future. I dont share that ideology. And you dont seem to realize that it is ideology you are pushing many times.
And I won't even start on the whole "objective truth" since I know you will disregard it as nonsense in a brusque manner. The key question is "How can you find objective truth being limited to experiences from subjective human individuals?" It is not discrediting all of science, again, it's about the limitations. And current mainstream orthodox science has several.
I'll take it as a small victory that you actually acknowledged science is flawed. You have hard of doing that. Science is a good tool, but it is not omniscient and wont be in the foreseeable future either. And its not like picking a team, and always having to side with it.
And you haven't really countered my arguments from a few posts back. The debate has just been diverted into a "with us or against us" case for science.
(edit) Do the names of Popper and Kuhn mean anything to you?
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
You aren't even looking for scientific explanations. Benjamin Libet, Francis Crick, Christof Koch, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Split-Brain patients, Schizophrenia. You forget that we can very easily destroy consciousness by destroying the brain. Something that many guys like Stuart Hameroff an anaesthesiologist also forget. Of all people he should know, he's in the practice of suppressing consciousness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYlMEOGMAFY
But I am debating the philosophical underpinnings of science in general, in other words, it's reason, logic and rhetoric. I asked if you had heard the names of Popper and Kuhn, as they are both central to understanding how science works and what it can and cannot do. Popper with the understanding that science can ever only disprove a hypothesis, and never prove it. A hypothesis can at best be "not unproven yet". Kuhn with the theory on scientific paradigms, and their incompatability.
You seem to think that science has appeared out of thin air as an objective tool that will always show us the truth. In reality, science stems from a long philosophical tradition, and rests upon several philosophical premises for it to be correct. You seem to be oblivious to these. Science is man-made and has no existence in itself. It is a tool in our quest to understand our surroundings, and one that has yielded a lot of results. However, we have no way to affirm that we really are right in our theories, like Popper posits, our current knowledge is at best "still not disproved" and it seems to fit somewhat what we know about the world. This is why I won't go aboard on any positivistic scientism. Science provides knowledge, but it is no supreme authority on everything that is, although it tells us a lot about a lot.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
I am outlining criticism towards science and it's limits by now. I know we started with god, but it's really not what we're on about by now.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
You can philosophically argue anything. You can even go far as to say nothing exists but consciousness. But that's ridiculous to me. There is some extent to which this thinking is ridiculous. Call science a philosophy, but it's based on principles that make it very affective. I don't particularly think the view of these two men is correct either. When I was a caveman, I never questioned the existence of a boar or a rock. It was proven. Proof is the amount of evidence that it takes to convince a person it's proven.
Ok, so we take some things for granted. What we see is what really is, for the most part. The video I linked you outlines the experiments or observations of 3 men; Dr. Michael Persinger, V. Ramachandran and Andrew Newberg. Persinger can stimulate religious experience with transcranial magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobe. It reports a case where he removed a clock radio from a little girls room to stop her from seeing a ghost. He tried the experiment on Richard Dawkins and it had no effect. This brought up some questions for me, like did Dawkins know what the experiment was about? That would be an important control, one Persinger took with the other patients. Somehow I doubt Dawkins was unaware. Persinger said that 80% of people have religious experiences, based on the population of ontario. I wonder if this is because 20% of people are atheists. And also if he did the experiment with a hindu or buddhist, what kind of experience would they have? Would they experience God or something else? Secondly Ramachandran applied detectors to the subjects hands, to test for galvanatic response. He showed them words on a screen, either sexual, religious or neutral words like "tire". Most people had a high response to sexual words, but people with temporal lobe epilepsy had high response to religious words. Andrew Newberg had subjects meditate and monitored the blood-flow in the brain. He found that people meditating had lowered pareital lobe activity, the area of the brain associated with feelings of self, correlating with the oneness feeling they have. The video concludes that religion should embrace science as it appears we have an antenna to God, or perhaps not. I think not. For one specific reason. 20% of subjects don't have religious experiences. If everyone has a metaphysical soul or consciousness that persists after death and the brain is equipped with a wire to that metaphysical plane, then why don't some people have it? Are they soul-less creatures? Is that what atheists become, soul-less animals that corrupt the spirituality of man? Why would God create such a creature? And besides this is getting pretty speculative already. I agree we could go either way with this idea of spirituality, but in light of scientific observations over other observations and predictable outcomes like removing the clock radio or Persinger's TMS device. I'd be far more inclined to believe that spirituality is something we are equipped with for survival purposes. It also makes me wonder if our increase in the use of electromagnetism has something to do with the huge amount of alien abductions. All these radio waves and junk are interfering with our brains. Our cranium will block a lot of it, but it seems like some of it still gets through.
Anyway, believe whatever it is you want to believe. I don't care if I have a soul or not, I suspect I don't in light of scientific evidence and I guess my scientism or interpretation of the evidence. It's not like I've never had temporal lobe activity, although I don't normally unless I put myself into a position to stimulate temporal lobe activity. Anyway.
*End Transmission*
Now a few comments:
Popper's claim is very relevant to science. First thing we were taught at university pre-course more or less was his falsifiability thesis. You can't disregard it when doing science. You can never prove, only disprove a theory. It's falsifiability is what makes it a scientific theory. However, when a theory has withstood many attempts to be disproved, our confidence in it increases of course. This is central in statistics (which is a very central part in virtually all science) where the conclusive result is the negative result. A positive result, or a correlation, is much harder to nail down. Or why there is a correlation. Here's a wiki on Popper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
The 80% / 20% religious/soulless thing, I think you are stretching a bit too far. Rather than concluding that the final 20% are soulless, you should focus on 80% reporting such experiences. Forget god and bible and theology in this. If 80% experience something, it's gotta be something. Which kinda has been one of my main points in this debate.
For me, that spiritual experience can be induced through experiment does not disprove that it may be external. It's interesting experiments though.
Interesting theory. And I mean it. Not "interesting" as in "bullshit".
I like this post, and I hope there will be more like these, instead of what we've been doing for the last page or so. I really like reading your thoughts when you let go a bit and don't armour yourself in slightly arrogant science-is-best-and-all-that-is attitude and stonewalling any differing view. I think you are a smart person, and someone with very interesting views, but with a bit more attitude than necessary at times. Maybe it's this place that does it, and you are used to debating people who aren't really interested. But remember when posting with me that I am not a religious person, I'm borderline atheist depending on how you define it, but I am interested in these spiritual/transcendental/religious experiences. And I am more skeptical towards science than you, but that is not because I have a religious agenda. Science is about being skeptical, but it should also be applied to science itself. I think that's a good principle.
Anyway, I'm all ears if you wanna go further with this. But now, I gotta go to work. See you!
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Very interesting, Ahnimus.........made me think of another possibility. What if, meditation or prayer or whatever develops a certain kind of "muscle" that cannot be developed without training. IF there is a variety of mediation or prayer which can open the mind, and IF someone practices EVERY SINGLE DAY, then after some period of time it only makes sense that the serious practitioner will learn things about and realize a level of openness that the casually-interested or uninterested person will not. Could this not account for the 20%? The unpracticed mind simply cannot see like the practiced mind. I don't mean this as a belittling judgment, it's just the reality of practice versus not practicing. Someone who practices at any discipline will obviously be 'better' at it than the unpracticed.
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
I agree that falsifiability is important. And in-fact I do probe the research methods used when I investigate claims. I do this based on an understanding I got from a science textbook which explained the need for skepticism. So, it's not that I have blind faith in every headline I read, but I probe them deeper and determine for myself if it's credible. This usually requires a peer review of some sort.
Why would I focus on the 80% reporting religious experiences, the 20% are just important. I can't see it being a natural thing, granted by the Judeo-Christian God because it wouldn't make any moral sense for God to only grant it to 80% of people.
But I mean, my interpretation of it is based on a secular humanist/hard determinist viewpoint. I know I can't convince you that you are not free, so it would be difficult to see how I draw the conclusion that these are merely hallucinations.
Well... I don't believe in free-will, I believe everyone's actions are determined by a set of fixed natural laws. So it's difficult for me to see how a soul or spirit could exist in any form that's been described.
"Actions" or behaviors?
all posts by ©gue_barium are protected under US copyright law and are not to be reproduced, exchanged or sold
except by express written permission of ©gue_barium, the author.