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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Here's another gem by Madbolter:
Things get sticky when "the way the world IS" is made synonymous with, in effect, "the way the world appears to us," which is what physicists do. Thus, physicists think that "snow is white" is synonymous with "snow appears white to us." In other words, empirical observations (that are themselves thoroughly interpreted) are made synonymous with what the actual metaphysical facts are.
I didn't know physicists did that. I didn't know they "made synonymous" reality and perception of reality. I don't think Ed "makes synonymous" the two.
When this sloppiness (of writing or thinking) is combined with the convoluted high-falutin phraseology (that is so characteristic of traditional academic philosophy and theology, that is so unneccessary) is it surprising he isn't understood any better than this alexander-solz guy (of the Taco) or is it surprising someone like Atkins thinks academic philosophy (as an academic discipline) has run its course? Not to me.
After investing some time working through his convolutions that ultimately leads one in circles, I learned last year better to skip his posts, to spend the limited time and energy I have elsewhere in interesting subjects, of which there are many.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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rrrAdam-
I am not referring to religious belief which starts from an already established set of premises. I am referring to mystical spirituality where one quiets the mind and waits to see what happens. I am more interested in the experimental than the theoretical.
In my experience so far what I have found is that changes first occur to the biochemistry of the the brain and body, then the electrical activity, and then there are many things that happen unexpectedly even when one is not meditating. Of course this process takes many years and one's world view is changed though one doesn't necessarily interpret these experiences within an established religious framework.
Eventually, things that are said to be scientifically impossible (healings, precognition, intuitions that put a person in the right place at the right time to help someone, maybe even save their life, are experienced which help oneself or others, if one is open to them. Of course a materialist will just write them all off as statistical anamalies but for those who experience them, they are real, and they were worth making the effort for.
Perhaps it is even the wrong approach to ask where such experiences come from. Maybe it is enough to simply be grateful that the human mind is capable of experiencing such things, whatever the source. Understand... My bad.
I would suggest that since it is apparent that people who are trained to meditate show much more evidence of what you suggest than those who aren't (baseline), and can even influence and control it, that it is a physical process occuring in the brain, with zero outside influence.
Why zero outside influence? Because there is no REASON to infer one. And, again, as I sure you will agree... A lack of knowledge in all areas of something physical does not equal or require something suprnatural is involved.
Sure, it's [ipossible that an alien species, or even God, lives behind the event horizons of black holes, forever hidden form our view... But that they, or he/she, can manipulate our experiences by exploiting some unknown energy (that can leave the blackhole) in relation to some also unknown recievers in our brains... But It is pretty unlikely. And for me to suggest that as a real possibility, isn't gonna bear much fruit.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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i was quite impressed by sagan's one and only novel, contact, which laid down an outline for a dialogue between the spiritual and the scientific. don't go by the movie, which isn't bad, but it doesn't do justice to the book.
shortly after contact was published, sagan gave a talk at ucla. i got to comment on how i enjoyed his venture into noveldom, and did he intend to do it again? yes, he said, he thought he might, and then he told us how jody foster had been signed for a movie version.
sagan came out with one very disappointing book after that, his demon-haunted world: science as a candle in the dark, which effectively destroyed the outline for dialogue he drew in contact and demonstrated an ignorance of matters spiritual and mythical which belies the basic threat these things represent to all close-minded scientists. i sometimes wonder what happened with the guy.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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it is a common criticism of science: that we make things up to conform to our own world view... problem with that criticism is that the independent reproducible results. One can go on to say we have mass delusion, but it's hard to explain a nuclear explosion as a delusional act, we certainly didn't conjure it up out of our collective will or our belief in something that is not real.
madbolter1 is actually questioning whether what is accessible empirically is all there is to the universe. Certainly we have thoughts that are not realizable, that is, violate what we know to be empirical fact. The question at hand is whether or not to promote those thoughts and experiences to have an equal or greater authority than empirical knowledge.
It also gets to the primacy we place on our consciousness and our specialness as a species... but if those thoughts and that consciousness is a set of behavior traits that we learn to experience in a particular way through our enculturation, then it is difficult to argue which explanation is more correct than any other. There is no guide but our experience, and our experience is limited and heavily influenced by what we learn. Philosophy doesn't help you decide as there is no criteria that selects one way of interpreting our experience over another,
...except for empirical demonstration.
You have real experiences... but you may not be able or even capable of understanding them. Empiricism probably is the only way out of this...
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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Well, I have Contact, the book, the movie, too, and I have Demon Haunted World - there's nothing inconsistent between any of them. I give them all Grade A. So that's another data point for you, a contrasting one.
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Of course the works of Carl Sagan would eventually rub ANY paranormalist the wrong way.
Obvious throughout his work, Sagan thought paranormal (hyperatics) was bunk. So do umpteen million others who have made nature investigation (e.g., through science) their life work.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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sagan came out with one very disappointing book after that, his demon-haunted world: science as a candle in the dark Wow! I thought that was an awsome book.
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rockermike
Trad climber
Berkeley
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HFCS writes:
When this sloppiness (of writing or thinking) is combined with the convoluted high-falutin phraseology (that is so characteristic of traditional academic philosophy and theology, that is so unneccessary) is it surprising he isn't understood any better than this alexander-solz guy (of the Taco) or is it surprising someone like Atkins thinks academic philosophy (as an academic discipline) has run its course? Not to me.
I'm not sure how you criticize MB for "sloppy thinking/writing" then criticize him for "high-falutin phraseology". The language of "academic" philosophy is extremely precise. Otherwise everyone would be just blowing steam and read into others arguments just what they themselves already think. But admittedly there is a bit of a guild language to it, and if you aren't initiated its hard to follow - but not so much as quantum physics IMHO. But then my academic background is in philosophy, intellectual history and theology - though not at the level that MB is discussing. Hence I have something to learn. Whereas Ed's stuff is mostly Greek to me. ha
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jstan
climber
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A few minor things:
Meditation is an iterative training process and most of the human functionalities adapt in such an environment. It is a survival mechanism. One who meditates would be expected to achieve change.
We don't have all the answers. Life has to be incredibly dull if you feel you do have all the answers. There is strong data that whales and now perhaps even birds are able to sense the earth's magnetic field and are able to navigate using it. Indeed I expect before long we will see experimentation in which some large migratory birds are fitted with a GPS and specially designed conductors on or about the head. To see if the birds lose their way when the current is turned on.
Very high magnetic fields are reported to induce changes in a person's sense of taste. Indeed I expect we have a lot to learn about our own sensory capabilities. At the present rate of progress in science - it could show up in tomorrow's newspapers.
Finally a comment on philosophy. You pick it up very quickly when a person has the intention of talking philosophy. Individually, words are used very sloppily but they are assembled with great attention to detail. How they sound and how they fit together.
Actual philosophical discussions are driven by fascinating ideas and do not show this characteristic.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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rrrAdam and Ed-
I do believe we have a kind of concurrence. It seems to me that it has taken about a year and a half and about four of these threads, but finally we understand what the parameters of the discussion really are.
I see things as an anthropologist, so to me we are talking two different cultures and two different languages here, but since all of us have scientific training, we are able to have a civilized discussion and see the benefits and limits of both world views.
If we truly are an insignificant species with little that resembles free will, perhaps physics, philosophy, and meditation are all just guilty pleasures on the way to extinction?
Meanwhile I would really like to thank all the scientific types who have participated in these threads as I had't thought about the world of physics for almost 40 years and it has been a really interesting challenge to learn what has been happening in the meantime.
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Crodog
Social climber
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Without God, September 25, 2008 - Steven Weinberg
It is not my purpose here to argue that the decline of religious belief is a good thing (although I think it is), or to try to talk anyone out of their religion, as eloquent recent books by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens have. So far in my life, in arguing for spending more money on scientific research and higher education, or against spending on ballistic missile defense or sending people to Mars, I think I have achieved a perfect record of never having changed anyone’s mind. Rather, I want just to offer a few opinions, on the basis of no expertise whatever, for those who have already lost their religious beliefs, or who may be losing them, or fear that they will lose their beliefs, about how it is possible to live without God.
First, a warning: we had better beware of substitutes. It has often been noted that the greatest horrors of the twentieth century were perpetrated by regimes—Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China—that while rejecting some or all of the teachings of religion, copied characteristics of religion at its worst: infallible leaders, sacred writings, mass rituals, the execution of apostates, and a sense of community that justified exterminating those outside the community.
When I was an undergraduate I knew a rabbi, Will Herberg, who worried about my lack of religious faith. He warned me that we must worship God, because otherwise we would start worshiping each other. He was right about the danger, but I would suggest a different cure: we should get out of the habit of worshiping anything.
I’m not going to say that it’s easy to live without God, that science is all you need. For a physicist, it is indeed a great joy to learn how we can use beautiful mathematics to understand the real world. We struggle to understand nature, building a great chain of research institutes, from the Museum of Alexandria and the House of Wisdom of Baghdad to today’s CERN and Fermilab. But we know that we will never get to the bottom of things, because whatever theory unifies all observed particles and forces, we will never know why it is that that theory describes the real world and not some other theory.
Worse, the worldview of science is rather chilling. Not only do we not find any point to life laid out for us in nature, no objective basis for our moral principles, no correspondence between what we think is the moral law and the laws of nature, of the sort imagined by philosophers from Anaximander and Plato to Emerson. We even learn that the emotions that we most treasure, our love for our wives and husbands and children, are made possible by chemical processes in our brains that are what they are as a result of natural selection acting on chance mutations over millions of years. And yet we must not sink into nihilism or stifle our emotions. At our best we live on a knife-edge, between wishful thinking on one hand and, on the other, despair.
What, then, can we do? One thing that helps is humor, a quality not abundant in Emerson. Just as we laugh with sympathy but not scorn when we see a one-year-old struggling to stay erect when she takes her first steps, we can feel a sympathetic merriment at ourselves, trying to live balanced on a knife-edge. In some of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies, just when the action is about to reach an unbearable climax, the tragic heroes are confronted with some “rude mechanical” offering comic observations: a gravedigger, or a doorkeeper, or a pair of gardeners, or a man with a basket of figs. The tragedy is not lessened, but the humor puts it in perspective.
Then there are the ordinary pleasures of life, which have been despised by religious zealots, from Christian anchorites in the Egyptian deserts to today’s Taliban and Mahdi Army. Visiting New England in early June, when the rhododendrons and azaleas are blazing away, reminds one how beautiful spring can be. And let’s not dismiss the pleasures of the flesh. We who are not zealots can rejoice that when bread and wine are no longer sacraments, they will still be bread and wine.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/sep/25/without-god/?page=3
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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jstan-
It has been found that Taoist temples which are cited on places which are thought to contain strong chi energy, so called acupuncture points on the earth, are all mountains with strong magnetic properties where compasses don't work.
If Taoists could locate magnetic mountains, then the interesting question is whether some people are genetically more sensitive to magnetic energy or whether this is something that can be achieved through meditation, or possibly both. Indeed, some Tibetan temples had meditators sit under large magnets surrounded by copper walls.
It is a common experience of intense meditators that their senses do become more finely atuned and that is why those serious about it go on retreats or seek solitude in isolated places.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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Jan...
Magnetism (a form of electromagnetic radiation) is a pretty well understood force. It is understood that magnetism can deflect electrons... And since elctrical impulses in our brains work in conjunction with chemical changes to produce sensations, it is no far stretch to see that an intense magnetic field can alter someone's perception of somehting.
The exact "how" is what would be looked at.
We can navigate with our vision, which relies on light (another form of electromagnetic radiation), many insects can see into the UV spectrum of light, and many repiles lower into the IR. Why would it be so hard to understand that other animals, birds and whales, can sense magnetism (still eletromagnetic radiation) in a way that we cannot?
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
Full Silos of Iowa
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re: "the worldview of science is rather chilling."
Certainly aspects of it. Agreed.
So I say we NOW need a new discipline (of belief and practice, apart from religion with its reliance and central focus on supernaturalist belief) to help us cope with this. With an emphasis on life guidance, life strategies, and best practices in the practice of living. And, best of all, I'm confident before this century is over, we will have it.
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Thanks Crodog. Bears repeating:
"Worse, the worldview of science is rather chilling. Not only do we not find any point to life laid out for us in nature, no objective basis for our moral principles, no correspondence between what we think is the moral law and the laws of nature, of the sort imagined by philosophers from Anaximander and Plato to Emerson. We even learn that the emotions that we most treasure, our love for our wives and husbands and children, are made possible by chemical processes in our brains that are what they are as a result of natural selection acting on chance mutations over millions of years. And yet we must not sink into nihilism or stifle our emotions. At our best we live on a knife-edge, between wishful thinking on one hand and, on the other, despair."
His next two paragraphs, too.
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EDIT
The Cosmic Governance (that I sometimes call "God") knows that I do try my best to not "sink into nihilism" -
...as I contemplate things (e.g., the human condition, American culture and American politics, the appalling science illiteracy in America and the world, the end of the American Dream, calls to end industrial civilization, etc. -So far I haven't. But I have come to grips with death and (ecological) succession as natural dynamics. This helps.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Okinawa, Japan
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rrrAdam-
Agreed. Another interesting thing I read recently is that some Japanese scientists set out to try to understand if there was any truth to some so called Japanese superstitions. The one that interested me the most was the phenomenon of "Buddha's Lights". It has been reported for many centuries that the candles on Buddhist alters turn blue and bow toward the ground just before a big earthquake, giving warning to the inhabitants to run out of the house.
The scientists noted that lightning strikes, typhoons, and earthquakes all release enormous amounts of electromagnetic energy so they placed candles within a chamber that was subjected to levels of such energy as occur during an earthquake. Sure enough, the candle flames turned blue and bent downward for a few seconds.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government keeps herds of deer in various parts of China as they are thought to act strangely for three days before an earthquake and thus predict them in advance. Whole cities of hundreds of thousands have been evacuated before quakes occured. Japanese noted and filmed the same phenomenon with laboratory mice a day or two before the Kobe earthquake.
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jstan
climber
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Many years ago at an APS meeting I listened to a paper claiming animal sensory capabilities are quantum limited. We even hear via a heterodyne process and, visually, single photon detection is achievable.
Whales possess a large semi-liquid reservoir at their head end that apparently is active in navigation. Investigators are rather stumped however by birds that have no way to devote any substantial mass to navigation. Recent studies showing birds stay in the air for weeks at a time while travelling 10,000 miles has put into contention the thought that they navigate using the sun. They don't get off course at night, even in storms.
Frankly, it is what we do not know that makes life fascinating. Just as it is the climbs one has not done, occupy the imagination.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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re: Buddha's Lights
Can you give me some materail on this? I tried to google it, and all I got were some returns about an association, but nothing about what you speak of.
I got a couple hits for "Earthquake Lights", but that has nothing to do with candles.
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rrrADAM
Trad climber
LBMF
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re: Taosist temples - compasses not working, etc...
Can You please provide me with some info on this as well?
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