If science discover the existence of God, it could violate the free-will?

Discussion in 'Comparative Religion' started by entelecheia, Jul 27, 2012.

  1. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    When scientists find out where heaven is,
    then we can make God do what we want.
    Otherwise heaven gets nuked.

    Watch out God!
    We're going to find out where you live.
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2012
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  3. Jan Ardena OM!!! Valued Senior Member

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    I'm sure God will look forward to that.

    jan.
     
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  5. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    I'm glad of your support Jan.
     
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  7. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    Go to hell.
     
  8. arauca Banned Banned

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    It have taken over 36 for voyager to get out of the solar system and you talk to carry a nuclear payload . I know your are joking . I think our knowledge in space is in sheet dipers.
     
  9. Captain Kremmen All aboard, me Hearties! Valued Senior Member

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    I agree. I'm glad you are with me too.
    Hell may well be the safest place.

    God almost certainly lives in our solar system, and we will find him.
    He must count our eight planet system as the most important spot in the universe.
    Despite it being nearly infinite, he chose to send his only son here.
    What does that say?
    I think it says that we are infinitely special.

    A lot of people here are very angry with God.
    I would advise him to be much more conciliatory from now on, if he knows what's good for him.

    I don't want to be too severe, because he did create the universe,
    and we are grateful for that.
    But we've come a long way, and he needs to back off a bit.
    We have our talents, and he has his.
    Stop being so bossy!
     
    Last edited: Dec 14, 2012
  10. kwhilborn Banned Banned

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    I think I am beginning to understand why so many Atheists exist.

    They all seem to think God is some Big guy with a white beard and a cane.

    Let's change our thinking for the sake of argument for a few seconds.

    I believe we are all connected by some psychic force and that essentially we are all one thing. I don't think we are separate. I know we have unique consciousnesses, but that is necessary to live out our purpose which is to create experiences. I think that God knows about every sparrow that falls in the forest because God is every Sparrow that falls in the forest. I think God the sum of all things and perhaps a little bit more.

    - Psychic experiments worldwide show astounding probabilities that telepathy does exist. Skeptics can deny it all they like with firm ground based on the scientific method, as the scientific method is flawed as it too easily dismisses probabilities.

    Sigmund Freud. A man known as the father of modern day psychoanalyses spent thousands of hours analysing patients and their dreams and pondering how their brains worked, and it was repressed that he held highly evolved opinions about our abilities to communicate psychically.
    A;though he made numerous claims about psychic powers he made conscious choices to distance himself from those papers as his other theories were making him famous.

    His friend Carl Jung may have been equally famous for his work, but Carl Jung refused to back down from his ideals and maintained throughout his career that psychic events do take place. He also spent much of his life analysing dreams, brains, and pondered how the brain operated.

    Have you ever heard the word "Synchronicity". This was a word Coined by Carl Jung to describe coincidences that likely had psychic cause. If you spend a day thinking of a childhood friend and then attend a restaurant where they show up by coincidence that is synchronicity according to Carl Jung.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwyxbM2JrR4

    I realize pointing at smart people who believe in psychic powers is hardly proof of it, but I think many skeptics do not allow this type of thinking as they are conditioned only to accept the scientific method and not probabilities. The only way psychic testing will EVER be successful with the scientific method is when a tool is developed that can both measure and interpret psychic energy. I don't see that happening very soon.
    Until then it is sad to see so many skeptics, I think it is like watching a bunch of silly children that cannot quite grasp something simple like speech. I do wish people would look at the experiments that have been done and don't stop at the first "confirmation of fraud" you find on youtube. There are fraudulent accountants out there as well, it does not make all accountants frauds.

    I have seen telepathy work. I have seen precognition work.
    I recently had a dream I was a teenager again and driving my old Pinto. I was with my high school gf and we were trying to find parking at the local hospital. This dream was interupted by a neighbor woman calling us in distress. I ended up getting dressed and driving her to the local hospital in her small Honda Civic.

    I awoke from a dream about finding parking in a small car at the local hospital, and within an hour I was finding parking at a local hospital in an equally small car. I also had previously owned a honda civic as a teenager. Many skeptics write this off as simple chance, and with good enough reasonings, but this sort of thing is "synchronicity" according to Jung.

    I can influence people psychically, and have done so on many occasions. Don't ask me to do it here again as we have been down that road and the other party strung me along for some time before admitting heavy bias and wanted to see me fail etc. I have outlined experiments where anyone here can do it themselves. It is sooooo simple to send a message to someone. one hour effort at night would suffice.

    Anyways......

    - If we live in a psychic world
    - If we are all connected
    - If we are all one thing

    Then why can't god simply be the sum of all parts. If psychic powers exist, then it is a short realization that there is likely a universal consciousness containing and sorting the thoughts of all based on some sort of vibrational frequencies. Maybe a bit more than the sum of all parts.

    I think there was a consciousness floating around that was really bored after countless millennia and decided to split himself up into various souls and matter in order to create experiences. God did not experience race car driving at its best until he experienced NASCAR. God did not experience fine dining at its best until he had mac/cheese. I think we all have free will and must operate under scientific laws, however I think scientific laws will eventually include psychic phenomenon, Universal consciousness, and yes; even god.

    I feel sorry for the childlike skeptics. They are so cute though. (wave to them)

    God seems more plausible as a wave function
     
  11. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    The human mind is one of the last frontiers. To explore the mind, you have to depart somewhat from the normal philosophy of science, since this philosophy does not have all the provisions needed for the way the mind needs to be investigated. The most data is collected if the mind is investigated from the inside, not the outside. You have to become the scientist and the experiment at the same time.

    For example, if I had a dream with various details, there is no way for someone to fully investigate this from the outside. There are instruments that can tell if I am dreaming; REM and brain waves. But there are no machines that can see the details. According to science, since I cannot prove these details, via a secondary investigator or machine, there is no proof, even if was true. There is a loophole in the philosophy which allows it to deny inner reality. Of all the dreams people ever had, we can prove they dreamed, with brain waves, but there is no hard proof anybody ever saw any details. Nobody can provide external proof. However, most people would say that details in dreams are possible, due to their own first hand experience viewing a dream from the inside. We can all share this inner data but with an element of faith since we really can't prove each other dreams.

    If I was asked to reproduce a dream, so other investigators can reproduce my results, we can't do that either since dreams don't work that way. They come and go in different forms. We can't fully approach even this simple mind phenomena, with the current rules of science, since these rules were designed for things outside the mind. This is why psychology is still considered a soft science. The rules of firm science were designed for things outside the sensory systems, not for things behind the sensory systems.

    Many people look outside of God, because this is how firm science is designed. However, how many people have looked inside? Maybe not many since there is no way to prove this, anymore than a dream detail to outside science. I think Christianity and other religions uses terms like inner voice and inner man since they figured out you won't see God outside.
     
  12. Saturnine Pariah Hell is other people Valued Senior Member

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  13. The Marquis Only want the best for Nigel Valued Senior Member

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    Hah!

    The rampaging mob... flaming torches and baseball bats. love it.

    Can we take out KX000 first as a warm up?
    Nothing quite like the "God is what I say he is!" type. That's "I" in bold italics and a really, really big red font.

    Reckon It's time for Tendulkar to retire?
     
  14. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    I doubt that. Atheism is the default position, which (in part) rejects beliefs that are based on superstition, myth, legend and fable. The word "God", as known to the root cultures of English heritage, is nearly entirely linked to the history of Roman incursion into England and the Christianization of the native "pagans". Obviously the word is borrowed from pre-existing Nordic meanings, but Romanization infused it specifically with the concept of Deus, which had earlier roots in the Greek Theos, a word that took on special meaning during the Hellenization of Palestine. At that time, gods were more likely to characterize anything that inspired wonder, such as the personification of love and beauty in Aphrodite, certainly a far cry from an old man with a beard and a cane.

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    It's not clear if ancient people had the Old Man in mind when they invented YHWH, but he was married to an earlier version of Aphrodite, the Canaanite fertility goddess Asherah, recovered from Canaanite homes in figurines that curiously resemble a meld between the Ankh and a uterus.

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    Certainly the Elohim (Godhead) that created the heavens and the earth in Genesis was Old, though not clearly an exclusive subset of Old Men, having been absorbed from the Older Ugaritic pantheon (as was Asherah). Elohim probably was a reference to the union of Ba'al and El, which seems to represent Ba'al holding a thunderbolt. If the Ugarit people processed their mythology symbolically, then this may have represented the union of "the one who owns all things" and "power" to form something closer to a literary symbol for "omnipotence" than a person, much less an Old Man. Both Ugarits and the Sumerians, who spun their fables long before the authors of the Bible, seem to have believed the world arose out of the sea or was preceded by an eternal sea. In both cases this was probably a female reference, as in the waters of childbirth.

    The more common depictions of the Hebrew God as an Old Man can be ascribed to art. To depict God in a picture as the probable creator of everything else shown, it helps to cast him as an Old Man, setting him apart as the character who came first. Among the better known examples of God as an Old Man is Michelangelo's rendering on the Sistine chapel, and although he needs no cane, it's a much more recent depiction than the Ugaritic, Canaanite or GrecoRoman views which spanned about a thousand years.

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    More than likely, the organization of modern religions under societal norms and taboos is probably the main case for God settling in as an Old Man. For example, the Victorian era would not be a time that was known for empowering women, despite the fact that a considerable stake in world power was then held by a female. And she was most often heralded in her youth.

    When an Atheist says "God does not exist" it's generally a historical tag, not necessarily a metaphysical one. In other words, the absurdity from which the metaphysical causes of religion originated--that is: the application of superstition, myth, legend and fable, to explain phenomena for which ancient cultures had no science--is simply recognized as obsolete by the Atheist. That leaves the question of God's existence moot, and the reliance on all explanations of God as purely non-sequitur.

    Atheists have severed that link to ancient cultures, and in the process, God ceased to exist. Or, to be more precise, God has been buried with his story-tellers.
     
  15. The Marquis Only want the best for Nigel Valued Senior Member

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    Not yet.

    Not a bad post, otherwise.
     
  16. kwhilborn Banned Banned

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    @ Aqueous Id,
    Actually, I used God/Old man reference simply to postulate a more scientifically agreeable form of God. If Telepathy did prove possible then a Universal consciousness may also be possible that is accessible and controlled and operates within our collective subconsciousnesses, and perhaps what we consider souls may live and make decisions within this substance. This is described in more detail in my last post, but I find this likelihood probable.

    Going into history and digging out ancient views on god, or even representing how the church portrays it may be misleading to a scientific crowd who wants scientific understanding. I think god is everything plus maybe a bit more. I also think god has limitations and the earth must abide by natural laws as well. God conceived of material worlds and was able to imagine it and reverse engineer using vibration and aether of our universe and following evolution in many galaxies.

    According to religion "In the beginning there was word" indicating a sound vibration only or something comparable.

    @ Aqueous ID cont'd
    ABSURDITY IS THE POINT. Ancient/religious views can be absurd. Notice Jesus and Mohammed, Buddha were human so as to help humanize god. If we look from a scientific perspective though there is possibilities.

    I understand that viewpoint of how skeptics view creation of religion, and I also think storms, tsunamis, solar eclipses, etc,. were viewed as disapproving gods, but that may not be entirely the case.

    Perhaps rain dances did yield rain, or group prayers did bring about timely rescues, or a reverse in a dying condition. Miraculous events may have all been by chance, but perhaps collective mind power can influence environments. There is NOT ENOUGH INFORMATION to decide absolutely that telepathy and a collective consciousness does not exist except in the FANTASIES OF SKEPTICS.

    In my last post I said,
    because I have seen telepathy work, and it even works well. I gave examples in my last post. It is simple.

    We are all one. Everything you see, hear, touch is not real. Our mindscreate our environments based constant "telepathic" communication with each other. If there are 4 different people eating dinner together, each person has their own unique perspective of the turkey. It exists in everyones mind based on how they expect it to look collectively and also tinted from their own expectations. Some say Coppenhagen says consciousness causes collapse, I say Expectation causes collapse.

    The overall and bottom line is

    - Nobody can prove telepathy does not exist, and earnest psychic experiments will always yield better than chance (prove me wrong) so there is continuous probability that telepathy does exist. This means that some unknown Aether may exist that we cannot yet measure where thoughts can "live", transfer, and make collective decisions unbeknownst to our physical selves. This collective consciousness might be the God we speak of but on a Universal scale and perhaps a bit more than the sum of all parts.

    Anybody wishing to write off telepathy or god is being unscientific as there is not enough information at this point in time. Just because people cannot yet prove telepathy exists does not mean it is not a possible future science. Occam's razor tells us the explanation that makes the fewest assumptions is likely the correct choice, and in the case of explaining continuous and worldwide religions throughout the world the one choice free of assumptions is that God does exist.

    "We are all the exact same thing and God is simply the sum of all parts plus a bit more.". I think that says it as succinctly and elegantly as it can be put and comes from Seth.

    Try asking god for something small like a Parking space, coffee, blue feather, or anything and then forget about it. Don't be afraid to think small or large or guilty for using gods time as you are also a part of god (in his image), and you can help will these items into existence with your own intuitive divine creation powers we all possess.

    My version of god is more in tune with beliefs in Prana, Chi (qi), Ka, Orone, cosmoc, Yin/Yang. The public by large does not really recognize Universal consciousness as their one god. This may be because of Ancient views. However all religions fit my belief systems.
    All religions require
    a) Prayer or asking for something.
    b) Faith/Expectancy the outcome will be as you want.
    c) Karma. Sometimes self sacrifice (time lighting a candle, killing a chicken) helps for serious matters.
    D) Be thankful. Most religions endorse thankfullness (saying grace,du'a, etc.)
    e) repetition. The key to daily affirmations is repetition. Many religions use "prayer beads for this purpose".

    Lately people have been discussing "The Secret" movie, and law of attraction. This operates on all of the above principles as well.

    How does this lady get her goal accomplished simply by obsessing on the thought?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0wYxh-akZs

    If you want something like a certain job visualize yourself working there and do affirmations like "I work at suchnsuch", for an hour plus everyday. Do this for any goal. I have seen it work miracles. Serious.

    You poor skeptics

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  17. Rhaedas Valued Senior Member

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    Of course you realize that religions don't share the same god, just the idea of some higher power. You can certainly argue that people share the tendency to be religious, but that is not proof of a god, just evidence of our common psychology. And of course that viewpoint has changed through history.
     
  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    As far as I know there is no scientific evidence for the physical application of telepathy. THIS IS A FANTASY OF SPIRITUALISTS.

    What discipline is involved in mentally altering weather patterns just so to create atmospheric conditions for rain?
     
  19. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Yes I went off in another direction, interested by the phenomenon of religion, in that it so easily penetrates the vulnerable mind, and seems to overwhelm the natural division between thoughts and feelings.

    Big if. Atheists wouldn't entertain the last half of that at all, since we consider it antiquated fables. Atheists with an interest in biology might be more likely to take that middle part (consciousness / subconsciousness) and relate it to natural processes related to sensory input and processing in the brain, the autonomic responses, etc., as well as the layering of the brain into lobes that resemble differentiated functions from earlier evolutionary forms. For example, we might note that Cnidaria have the most primitive of nervous systems, only capable of local reflex reactions, worms have primitive ganglia, centralizing the collection and distribution of signals, and from there the brain is seen to evolve from a set of structures that have localized functionality. The spinal cord itself is a highly complex network, highly specialized for transmission and routing, and so on. Eventually we will get to the evolution of the brain in conjunction with the development of specialized behaviors suitable to survival. These behaviors would require specialized processing of sensory stimulus, from which sentience emerges. In other words, it may seem real, but it's probably nothing more (physically) than inordinately complex chemical reactions, functioning primarily as metabolism and signaling.

    As for telepathy, it's very strange to me that anyone would actually believe in it, just as many beliefs seem foreign to me.
    To me the history is one of the best scientific explanations for religion I can think of.

    That's a belief that accentuates the link between mystical ideation and paranormal aspects of religion. It has the quality of fable moving toward myth.

    OK that's the second reference to a beginning, in the Greek scripts, but here "word" may not be the correct translation. The word actually used was "Logos", a term having a philosophical meaning to the Stoics, closer to "essence". However, this sentence could be taken to mean the following:

    A long time ago, (we believed in) essence, that essence was contemporary with Theos. And (now we say) that God is the same thing as essence. (know this so you will join us as we explain how we have discovered more about God, even though we speak parabolically about essence.)

    ...and then they launch into the story of John bathing in the wilderness, an idea that makes no sense, so the archaic term "baptizing" is used, and from there it hovers around the story of Jesus.

    A preamble like this would be a fitting introduction for the Hellenized Gentiles, who had already been introduced to Stoicism, but were only now about to hear an incredible tale of martyred magician from a foreign conflict (Jews vs Romans). If this is what the author intended, it might be offered to break them in gently, to the idea that they are going to be asked to prostrate themselves to this foreign deity.

    Probably, though Jesus was either a war martyr, a son of God, or the sun itself (Mithraism) with twelve followers (the Zodiac). But Jesus of the Gnostic version is a flat character, without any persona. Jesus is steeped in Greek references, akin to Socrates -- a teacher with devoted followers who tried in vain to prevent his suicide -- death by drinking from a cup -- wrongly accused of causing disorder and disrespect of customs, but particularly for disbelieving in the conventional gods, opining that there is only one God, etc. I think Alexander's fame gave way to that of Socrates during the Jewish rebellion against Rome, in which many freedom fighters were martyred, and Jesus became a fusion of their tragedy, the suicidal "atheist" Stoic (belief in one god was then atheism) and the confused emerging legend of a king who would liberate Judea from continual occupation and oppression by foreign armies.

    Mohammad seems to be a variation on Jesus, again flat, with local influences of the Arabian lore thrown in, more revered than pitied, and not nearly as magical in powers, an idea which probably was not as appealing to them as some of their own alchemy. Siddhartha is enigmatic, of human birth yet gaining ascendancy that is either Godhead or nothingness, or both. From another perspective, Buddha is merely a model of the human mind, as it interacts with supernal forces of good and evil, seen in the symbology of this in the mandala that hangs behind the Dalai Lama's chair. But there is a clear perception of Buddha arising from humble (albeit wealthy) human origins. Most likely the Greek incursion beyond Parthia brought this idea to Palestine on their trek back to Macedonia. Jesus's human origins may have simply evolved from tales of Greek soldiers in Palestine who had encountered Buddhists, relating the story, told east of Parthia, that a mere mortal achieved perfection simply by controlling his own mind.

    When I think of humanism I think of the Renaissance more than these icons. I also think that the anthropomorphism of a legendary Super Being is more like animism, giving human aspects to natural objects, than it is in direct relation to the idea of a Personal God. I think that idea was evolving in the 1st-2nd c. in Judea, converging in a central school of thought that carried it like a banner, by a process closer to confirmation bias (God must love me, otherwise I don't believe in myself). Islam seems closer to Gnosticism in the flat character of Mohammad, with considerable xenophobia and ill will, probably inherited from the Nestorians (Christian heretics banished to places where Islam took root) who would be more likely to drag along some Gnostic ideas (God is by default cruel, appeal to him, and win mercy and benevolence) into the mix.

    I think science repudiates beliefs in paranormal causality, in the sensible universe. Beyond that, it would still appear that laws and properties are still at work, rather than thoughts and feelings, as the paranormal view would tend to infer.

    Wherever superstition trails off, myth allows ideology creep. Someone had a nightmare or ate a slightly toxic plant, dreamed up a spectacular story, and it got thrown into the mix. Another person simply couldn't repeat it accurately and made up more pieces. In Beowulf, the monster, Grendel, seems to only show up when everyone's drunk. Morning in the mead-hall meant waking up and finding half of the army dismembered. And our champion is indirectly referred to as Jesus. His pursuit of the monster to her lair was suicidal, but necessary to save all men. This is how oral tradition works, leading to ritual, and law, fusing the aggregate into doctrine.

    That would be magic, the hallmark of religion.

    There's abundant evidence that none of that will happen any more than the sun will refuse to shine upon command, or that I can tele-transmit to you a cool new guitar chord I'm using, or that we can self-levitate to relieve back ailments. This is probably the level of scrutiny that would apply to questions of epistemology with regard to telepathy.

    The difficulty this poses for me in responding to you is that hearing voices is well known in science to have a discernible cause.

    Until we're not. Homicide is a striking example. I do agree that we are all metazoans at the core, suffering from every kind of psychic ideation, from fantasy to delusion. Still, I would prefer to fantasize about the perfect guitar sound than to experience voices or the severe delusions of schizophrenia. Saying we are one appeals to the social nature of the beast, a pack of (where are you--Australia?) --how about dingos-- a pack of dingos somehow feels united, some kind of sense of oneness. But so it seems with the monocytes in the Volvox colony (a spherical cluster of cells that live cooperatively, giving the appearance of an integrated individual). Oneness can be purely a physical phenomenon, biologically realized by chemical releases. At our core we are nothing more than dense colonies of cooperative cells, organized functionally into tissues, organs and systems, with a hierarchy of mental and autonomic functions riding on top. My millionth hair follicle cares not one whit about your billionth neuron. This is all pure ideation, built on top of language, culture and artifacts of cooperative society. It need not have anything at a to do with physical reality because we dream it, we imagine it, and exists exclusively in our minds as our personal virtual reality. I suppose we are the same in that regard.

    That would require a new dictionary, or another branch into epistemology.

    You mean you imagine this is how things work. Whatever is created in the mind is virtual. I can imagine an ice cream truck, but the real deal is full of good stuff to eat. I can imagine savoring it, but the sense experience is quite another thing. Then there's sexual ideation vs the real deal. That's also indisputably distinct.

    You went from turkey to stoner thoughts in 0.3 seconds. You just merged the sensible world, the quantum world and the psyche in a way that's hard to handle. I guess I can safely say I kind of wish things to be connected in some explainable fashion, but I doubt that they are. I'm pretty sure all of this would have been discovered before I took my first science class, since so much knowledge and investigation has preceded me. Also, since I had to work so hard just to learn a few atoms about the world, I would like to believe that my work was not in vain, that I attach meaning to the world. That, however eludes me. Living in the world can be as mechanical as bees buzzing in a hive.

    I would agree that it appears to exist only in the minds of those who believe it.

    I think the more accurate interpretation is that some people believe in metaphysical happenings because the events and the rationale for the events exist in their minds, but this evidently has nothing to do with the extrinsic reality. The transfer of thoughts within the brain, at least at the atomic level, is recognized as action potentials (biological electromagnetic pulses). The propagation of brain waves to the outside world doesn't correlate with natural law, because the waves are too weak to affect anything. Besides, the brain doesn't appear to be affected by externally produced waves at all.

    That would sound a little more palatable if the connection to superstition, myth, fable and legend could be extracted. They leave a bad taste in the mouths of atheists, while science relegates religious ideas to pseudoscience at best, and to hoaxes. The idea of a collective consciousness doesn't have a basis in fact that could attract scientific inquiry. It actually falls better in the realm of science fiction than science.

    If being scientific depended on having enough information, the pursuit of science would be in a state of perpetual paralysis. Don't forget science is also highly experimental, also inhabited by eccentrics, independent thinkers, risk takers and artisans. People haul off and do things because it came to them in a dream that carbon granules vibrating by speech would make an modulated electric current that could transmit voice down a wire; they just didn't know at first that they needed to scream to develop enough amplitude to transmit a detectable signal. Discovery can be both awe-inspiring, giving a sense of oneness and connection to nature, as well as sobering. It tends to make us shy away from ideas that were already proved wrong. In the case of the literal interpretation of the Bible, it has long been proven false. All other ideas that proceeds from that false premise need to be swept aside if we are to move on to the next discovery. Move on, Science says.

    Again, the problem is that the unbiased observer reads confirmation bias and/or hearing voices into this. Both are well known pitfalls.

    Occam's Razor may may be helpful in process-of-elimination scenarios, like looking for the lowest complexity in an organizational scenario, or finding the least path of resistance to a given outcome, but it's not going to help the unbiased observer, particularly the Atheist, who views religion as an ancient invention founded in superstition, myth, legend and fables, to explain phenomena for which no science then existed, now obsoleted by existing science and rendered moot. The "religious experience" would then be deemed as a fantasy or dream-like state, and telepathy would appear to lie somewhere between that condition and the more severe condition of hearing voices. More than Occam's Razor is the inability of unbiased observers to replicate the experiment. This has more to do with science than anything else. If tests are not repeatable, there's little or no foundation for pursuing the idea. We push on, onward towards more stable theories that would fill our days even if we were all working collectively toward a common goal.

    As soon as you say that name, I can't help but reflect on the clay tablets containing the Epic of Gilgamesh.

    So far the only repeatable creative powers are confined to the sensible world. Mozart can create in your mind some vague sense of a theme being hounded by a curious variation, and it will intrigue you if you have the ear for it. But without discounting the brilliance of his creative energy, I can say with certainty that he never caused the sun to actually stop shining. Even if his Requiem invokes such an image, I will never lose contact with the heat and light of the sun as long as I am awake and sane. I can intuit the imagery of sound, or the emotional message of an oil painting by a Dutch Master, or any of many impressions conveyed by artists, just as words of a poet convey very complex ideas, far removed from the complexity of a mundane newspaper article. All of these things stimulate ideas in us, recollections, empathy -- a whole suite of thoughts and feelings. But so does sleeping, dreaming. So does smoking a Doobie. The question then, is what do we do with the useless thoughts and feelings, that are spontaneous or induced out of a chemical imbalance or even an actual disorder of some kind? The unbiased observer would generally say: chunk 'em and move on. There's huge wonderful world out there, and it's real, and waiting to be discovered.

    Most of what you listed sounds ancient to me. I wonder how any of the founders of those ideologies might respond to a grand tour of the Hubble archives, or a synopsis of work at places like LHC and CERNE, or (for God's sake; and I mean that literally) a full unedited manuscript of Darwin's Origin of the Species. The methods by which things are believed to be true and found to be true are quite pragmatic, so many an ancient philosopher ought to have enjoyed stumbling onto science and moving on, as it were, to that higher plane of consciousness associated with discovery.

    I wouldn't agree with that per se but I get your point. My take is that today religious people want to flee from that kind of model, and, above all, not to be pigeonholed into rote ritual. To me it's immaterial. The only question I would ask is how that person might apply their mind if not dissuaded from the discipline to move on and dig deeper. If I were a worry wart I might spend my days bothered by the fact that every minute a person dies somewhere who might have discovered the cure for whatever will eventually kill me; that they were deterred from a huge contribution of some kind, merely because they were persuaded (by some kind of ideology) to apply their talents to some other cause than saving me when my time comes.

    I was taken aback that you linked me to Oprah. I vaguely remember this. While she was going on about her theory, myeye fell on this:

    alexmichael01 1 month ago
    Don't be fooled by this. The New Age spirituality movement is just a clever way of capturing and controlling people who are 'too smart' to believe in the old religions. Mix in a little truth with the lies and people will make mental allowances for the inconsistencies. All mental constructs restrict your mind and limit your potential. They are control mechanisms. Abandon them all and live free


    Then I noticed you had said How does this lady get her goal accomplished simply by obsessing on the thought? and the answer is: that no causal nexus has been established, you just assumed it to be so by the mere proximity and peculiarity of the stated events. You can revisit this scenario by removing some of the bias. For example, instead of Oprah, let's take poor Joe the Plumber, and instead of the romantic scenario of getting a lead role in great film of political and social import, suppose poor Joe is wishing every day that the kids will stop cramming paper towels down into the toilets, in hopes to flood the school and get a day off to go to the ball game. Suppose Joe believes exactly as you do, in divine powers and telepathy, etc. and wishes and wishes for this to come true, and one day he gets called into the principal's office to learn that paper towels have been banned and from now on the kids will use electric hand dryers. Joe may have a religious experience, a dual to the one Oprah had. Does it mean his prayers are in the causal nexus of the consequence? This might be easier to ascertain, if we could see the superintendent's ledger, under the heading "Reason For Inventory Change", the words "50% cost reduction with hand dryers." Similarly, suppose you were a fly on the wall in Spielberg's office the day his talent scout calls Oprah to audition for the role. Suppose five minutes before the call the scout gets a call from Michael Jackson, informing him that Oprah really, really loved the book and is obsessed with playing in its dramatic rendition, and oh, by the way, she's a budding star who you've just have to see to believe. This is the problem with ascertaining causality. Science won't let us make leaps of faith to the same extent you will make them in your ideology--especially when it comes to supernatural powers that are not repeatable, which overturn the laws of nature. That level of deviation is buffeted by the mountains of evidence that say it's specious. There's where you want to apply scrutiny and be consistent in your application of testing facts. But the neutral observer would quickly dismiss Joe's conclusion as fallacious. It may be harder for you to do the same with Oprah's conclusion, because it's surrounded by the magic of being rich and famous and getting a gig in a landmark film. But the physical world doesn't process that. It's purely psychological in nature.

    No one doubts the importance of determination and working hard to get what you want. But no game is being played with people's desires, that correlates to the sensible world in any measurable or repeatable fashion. However, every day people do report things that they are certain of which exist only in their minds. By the preponderance of evidence, science has no choice but to relegate that to human error rather than to concede to it as a violation of natural law. I wouldn't characterize such scientists as poor skeptics. I would certainly say that science requires a healthy amount of skepticism, Oprah's determination-- but only to get the bottom of facts, and a lot of help, in the form of education and access to the vast works by discoverers that preceded us, and from their inspiration that we are better off by chunking some of the old ideas that never panned out, and by moving on to the discoveries that lay ahead of us.
     
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  22. kwhilborn Banned Banned

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    @ Aqueous ID,

    Wow. I have been a regular with Sciforums for over a decade and that was one of the more elegant, lengthy, and thought out responses I have seen. It is a shame it comes from the skeptic standpoint, but I understand your viewpoints.

    You mention that "hearing voices" is a psychological accepted known that could easily be viewed as an ESP transmission of sorts. I do agree that the PSI forums is filled with many lunatics who can do that as well as speak to aliens and whatnot. This is the nature of having a topic strewn amongst every other topic unsupported (yet) by The Scientific Method.

    When I was 17 years old I knew a girl who had vanished from our group of friends without a trace. Her adoptive parents had no idea where she went, and she left no telephone numbers or addresses with anyone. Many months passed. I was reading a book called "How to make ESP work for you" by Harold Sherman at the time, and had read about a method he used to contact his friend while his friend was sleeping. It sounded worth an attempt.

    I waited until 2am and began to repeat a message out loud to an imaginary picture of her with my eyes closed. I said "Debby S____", kwhilborn misses you very much get in touch" for a full recommended hour. After about 40 minutes however a nervousness type energy left my voice and I felt as if the message was received.

    Within 5 days I received a letter that was almost written in code. The entire first page was "You probably don't know who this is from, etc"'We have attended a Toga party together", etc. It was just things meant to remind me who she was.

    I have since lost that letter but saved it for many years as she wrote this following sentence that has altered my life, "LAST NIGHT I HAD A DREAM THAT PROMPTED ME TO WRITE". She was living in Rochester NY, USA, and I had sent the message from Canada. I WOULD NOT COMPARE THIS AND MANY SIMILAR INSTANCES AS "HEARING VOICES". This was my very first attempt at sending a telepathic message and it worked. I swear on my life this is close to being exactly true. I did not say kwhilborn but used our real names, and am unsure if it was 4 days, etc., but the just of it is 100% true. It was not more than 5 days to my best recollection.

    That is just one of many similar true stories that are equally astonishing in my opinion, but that will always be my first and favourite.

    I also used this true story several posts before in reference to a neighbour who phoned us for help getting to a hospital.

    I recently had a dream I was a teenager again and driving my old Pinto. I was with my high school gf and we were trying to find parking at the local hospital. This dream was interupted by a neighbor woman calling us in distress. I ended up getting dressed and driving her to the local hospital in her small Honda Civic.
    I awoke from a dream about finding parking in a small car at the local hospital, and within an hour I was finding parking at a local hospital in an equally small car. I also had previously owned a honda civic as a teenager. Many skeptics write this off as simple chance, and with good enough reasoning's, but this sort of thing is "synchronicity" according to Jung. I had no idea I would be going to a hospital until after I had completed the dream and answered her telephone call, yet my dream is as good a dream premonition as any I have heard of. Again I swear this story is fairly accurate. I am slightly doubting the make of that car atm, as she bought a Honda Civic around that time and it could have been a Toyota (unsure).

    This also has little to do with "HEARING VOICES". I understand how I must demonstrate the same characteristics as everyone claiming to have participated in telepathy, but I know my reasoning to be quite sound, and I look at telepathy experiments very critically.

    This dream could be related to "VOICES IN HEAD", however the dream had me driving a small car to the local hospital at night, and I was awoken by a neighbour who (without any prior hints/warnings) needed an emergency ride to the hospital. She was otherwise in perfect health and the condition she was suffering from was a severe allergic reaction to bedbugs, which she had recently gotten from one of her friends who had an infestation as well.

    Please note: That story (if you believe me) not only has telepathy, but also precognition. This adds an important dimension to telepathy.

    You quoted this,


    I said as much. I agree The Secret and "Law of Attraction" hold the same principles as most major religions which I listed as,
    a) Prayer or asking for something.
    b) Faith/Expectancy the outcome will be as you want.
    c) Karma. Sometimes self sacrifice (time lighting a candle, killing a chicken) helps for serious matters.
    D) Be thankful. Most religions endorse thankfullness (saying grace,du'a, etc.)
    e) repetition. The key to daily affirmations is repetition. Many religions use "prayer beads for this purpose".

    My ideas also do away with "old man and cane god". I portray him more as a possibility wave than any being as most religions would. I don't endorse any known religion (maybe pagan witchcraft or close to buddhism). I don't think belief in god can control people? That statement puzzles me.

    I expanded the idea of a collective/universal consciousness and you said "Big if", but if we are looking at possibilities that reincarnation and god and spirits exist, then we would need to include "big ifs".

    I am now middle aged and have devoted my life to science as a retired Soil Engineer (Also Printing Manager at parents shop), and have also always been involved in "woo" research and experiments with organizations or in the privacy of my bathroom/library. I have read about, experimented with, heard of, and seen much more "woo" than most people will ever see. I have been involved with Telepathy experiments as both a sender and receiver, learned Tarot Cards, Astrology, Palmistry, and I am also a real life street magician/comedian from my teenage years and often get my busking license for fun.
    I have tried the JREF reward (J. Randi Foundation) while it existed, but they wanted a concise 20 minute video they could poke fun at, and nothing real. I have been involved in experiments with precognition, etc as well.

    One thing skeptics say a lot is "Well why don't you go and win the lottery if you can see the future?".

    I actually agreed with this, and have spent much time trying. I know it is one "sport/pastime" that is heavily guarded and if you could be a psychic that sees lottery numbers then skeptics would shrink in number. I can always hit one or more numbers on a 6/49 type lottery which defies the odds. I can defy the odds of probabilities is my only claim to fame so far.

    Notice this post I started on predicting Lottery numbers. I surprised myself and got 3 out of 6 numbers correct on my first post. This "Timing" is very convenient. Many skeptics will get 3 out of 6 numbers correct once a year ( odds 1 in 56 ) but somehow I managed to get 3 out of 6 numbers on my first try in an online post. I was not able to delete the Thread either as this was not my website so thinking I started 56 threads before I got this result is proveably wrong.

    http://www.lotterypost.com/thread/207163

    I was advertising my newly created website of my design at the time, and someone noticed it, and my thread got ruined a bit and stopped. I realize as a "reader" only you must have doubts about everything I have claimed as true.

    In the same website I Inspired someone "An Atheist" to try to become a psychic based on my successes in another forum. I swear on my life I have never met this man (to my knowledge), nor have I ever been to California (in this life/to my knowledge).

    from
    http://www.lotterypost.com/blogentry/404

    http://www.lotterypost.com/thread/99216

    This Thread made the website manager develop a Woo SUB FORUM, as the majority of the website deals with mathematical systems and wheels, etc. designed to increase your odds.
    http://www.lotterypost.com/thread/89553

    This was long ago, and contains more information than I wanted to give, but I really have lived a life that has seen above averages in Telepathy and Precognition on too many occasions to discount.

    I am currently still involved in Telepathic/Precognitive research, however it is rarely lottery oriented, and please do not ask me to experiment with people here. I have tried that before and I have a to-do list very large in size.

    @ Aqueous ID still,
    You do speak well about religions however and your comparison of Mohammed as a variation of Jesus and Jesus is steeped in Greek references, akin to Socrates is a nice read. I do agree that many Religions took parts from Sumer and other various cultures preceding Year One. Well Said. I might even believe Jesus had attended a mystery school in Egypt, and was teaching "The secret/law of attraction".
    a) "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed you can tell this mountain to move and it will move"
    b) "Ask and you shall receive"

    Jesus emphasized having faith in God's power to bring about a particular result. He never told people that his faith had healed them, but rather that their own faith had made them whole. The power of their own minds was key. The Law of Attraction teaches that a clear vision of what you desire to manifest aligned in harmony with the Source, coupled with faith and magnetized by thought, attracts the result.

    I could also fill this post with stories about "Law of Attraction", and how in my youth I wanted a gf that was Gorgeous, smart, funny, and wild enough to have sex inside city hall. I made that sentence into part of my daily affirmation, and 3 weeks later I started dating a girl who turned out to work at an Art Gallery inside City Hall. I had never known anyone who worked at city hall except various officials I had met. This is simply a true example.

    I meditate daily, and consider myself to be very intuitive.

    I REALIZE THIS MUST SOUND LIKE HORSE CRAP! I know this is simply my word. I know I benefit financially from woo so must endorse it. I know.

    I have also known that it is easy to try.
    a) Imagine something weird you might see before going to a new place?
    b) ask for items that would not normally come to you.
    c) experiment with dream telepathy with a willing friend at night.
    d) notice if an animal can sense his owner coming at unscheduled times.
    (There is books about this phenomenon)
    e) Make predictions about everything and see if you can get it right. Practice.

    Now just getting one right won't prove anything more than a fluke, but I think anyone attempting this will see many more positives than negatives over time. Then do experiments and see if you can defeat probabilities on coin tosses or something similar.

    I am sorry if I cannot be swayed. I have seen too much to even think a skeptic stance sounds rational. In my eyes it is the skeptics who are deluded, as it seems so obvious now.

    I claim magic does exist. I claim precognition and telepathy are real. I claim we are all living the majority of our lives as possibility waves (smaller version of MWI), and that expectation causes collapse, but Wigners friend has friends who have friends so final collapse may not take place very often. This might be why "miracles/magic" occur when there is less expectations around (one person instead of hundreds).

    My version of quantum physics needs to allow history to alter, as someone praying for a miracle boat rescue today may need to rely on a boat altering course the day before. So by "Faith/Expectation" causing collapse we would allow for historical changes. Schrodingers cat may live or die depending on expectation and not observation. I do not expect anyone here to understand what I am saying unless they are very familiar with The double slit interpretations, nor would I expect those who understand what I have said to endorse it as it would seem like woo to skeptics. Most skeptics get ill if you suggest consciousness causes collapse (as many people believe despite sciforums), and I am taking it a step further and saying Faith/expectation/belief is what causes collapse. This is my own concept and feel it must be true, as it would explain many "synchronicities" as Carl Jung would put it. Expectation is key.

    I do recognize that it would be absurd to take my word for it that things I claim to have seen and witnessed are real. I do not think any skeptic can view my standpoint as sane, as it would defy your beliefs to do so. So for the sake of argument on the subject I think we should simply agree to disagree, but none of my logic or experiments ever dealt with "Hearing Voices".
     
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