The Immaterial of the Immaterial

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The Immaterial of the Immaterial

 

The master of the universe, we are told, is an immaterial being, who cannot be sensed or known except inside our peewee minds. It's giddy stuff. But not as silly as the need for the holy ghost as a sidekick. How is it possible for an immaterial, supernatural being to have a ghost as an integrated, associated superhero? Why would an immaterial thing require the services of...another immaterial thing?

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck


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Thats what I was always

Thats what I was always thinking. What does it mean for god to have 3 personalties or have a legion of angels. God would be all their is if there are other things about its character or person that would mean god was contingent on other things to exist which sorta goes against what christians believe. Not to mention if god didnt create himself why does it think it has the right to do what ever it wants and why would it even have what we call desire from a biological perspective we understand what desire is and how it may have evolved. But just there at the beggining is just weird. Where did god get its ideas to make humans and pleasure and pain. Thats one of the main reasons why I couldnt agree with it growing up.


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I've always been fascinated

I've always been fascinated as to how, exactly, the immaterial can interact with the material.

 

Honestly, 'immaterial' as a concept doesn't even make sense.  If you accept that immaterial things 'exist' and interact with material things then you'll accept anything...that is the problem with this kind of dialog.

 

It has come up a couple times recently...monism/dualism, physicalism/immaterialism, basic foundation for acceptable evidence...religion isn't the real disagreement, those things are the real disagreement and from there atheism and religion grow.

 

It is all about axioms.  From my standpoint the trick is to attempt to show that the axioms on the theist side lead to a world view that cannot be coherent, where fact and fiction cannot be separated in an objective way.  If you can get someone to accept a real standard for evidence, the religion is going to disappear eventually.

 

Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.


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mellestad wrote:I've always

mellestad wrote:

I've always been fascinated as to how, exactly, the immaterial can interact with the material.

That's always been a non sequitur.

It's just that back then, people thought their shadows were 'spirits'....

mellestad wrote:
Honestly, 'immaterial' as a concept doesn't even make sense.  

Of course not.

It's mumbo jumbo.

Ask them what it is they'd like to talk about. If they say 'immaterial', then you have to inform them that it's immaterial to reality, and that it'll have to wait...

mellestad wrote:
If you accept that immaterial things 'exist' and interact with material things then you'll accept anything...that is the problem with this kind of dialog.

It's a huge problem, of course.

But, religion is really no different than astrology.

It's hocus pocus.

It might have an appeal, but, it's really a preoccupation. Nothing more.

It's not anymore real than astrology, or tarot cards, or whatever..

Till I came across this site, I had nooooooooooo idea, how rampant this Christian insanity is, in America. I thought it was just down in the South.

I never paid much attention to the sheeple I used to see on Sunday TV, growing up.

Sundays seemed to be for stupidity, and sports and wildlife. Football and fishing, and religion and wrestling.

 

These theists obviously live and breathe this stuff.

I can't relate whatsoever. I mean, when they look at the sun in the morning, they think a god made that and put it there?

I don't know how they do that. It's like having 2 brains, with no connection between the two brains, but they're both connected to a single mouth.

Seriously.

How do they read a science book, and then believe that some immaterial nothing, made that out of nothing, and put it there?

WTF?

I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."

"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks

" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris


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mellestad wrote:I've always

mellestad wrote:

I've always been fascinated as to how, exactly, the immaterial can interact with the material.

 

Honestly, 'immaterial' as a concept doesn't even make sense.  If you accept that immaterial things 'exist' and interact with material things then you'll accept anything...that is the problem with this kind of dialog.

 

It has come up a couple times recently...monism/dualism, physicalism/immaterialism, basic foundation for acceptable evidence...religion isn't the real disagreement, those things are the real disagreement and from there atheism and religion grow.

 

It is all about axioms.  From my standpoint the trick is to attempt to show that the axioms on the theist side lead to a world view that cannot be coherent, where fact and fiction cannot be separated in an objective way.  If you can get someone to accept a real standard for evidence, the religion is going to disappear eventually.

 

As for as an immaterial god having an immaterial spirit and an immaterial mind it is a long development. God was not originally thought of as immaterial.  Look at all the old myths and place the primitive version of yahweh as a tribal god among such ideas as Zeus, Athena and Mt Olympus.  Yahweh gives the 10 don't on a Mountian.... high place close to heaven.   Originally if you saw god you died in the Old Testament. Moses was allowed to see  the backside of God (the way the Hebrew reads)  With early philosophy around 600 BCE you had competing "sciences" where fire condsenses into air and air into water and water into earth... the four elements.  Other competetors liked air as the biggy... because you can't see it but you know its there... Pneuma in Greek means breath, wind, air and Spirit...  By Plato you had the ideas of form s that were real and the material world pour actualizations.  Numbers became transcendent.  Logos or reason and word were non-physical.  Two competing philosophies materialists and per Cartesian dualists!!!!

In logic today we still even apart from theism wrestle with the question. A=B, B=c so A=C is conceptual.  But it speaks of reality. Is reality ultimately conceptual or does this refer as a language to an aspect of reality.  If it is conceptual if so an absolute mind? Or is it physical. If so how?  If it is not physical anymore than numbers are then is it outside of existence and transcendent? If not then how does it remain as an absolute conditioner of existence?  We could cop out and say that the logic is conceptual that is comes from our mind as the formula or language and therefore what it points to or its referent is not conceptual and therefore where their is no language we can not speak. But we have already do so with the conceptualization. We have an epistemological offering but we seek an ontological meaning. The statement exampled is true but truth has to do with proposition and therefore conceptual subjects.  We want the factual. Fact is a non-ethical property of an object. Truth in turn is an ethical and correct  presentation of the conceptual statement. The ethics which is often hidden is that we when we say that the concept corresponds to reality we intend it to be so (true). If we state it and believe it not to be the case that is lying. Lying for example does not deal with fact it deals with presentation of fact. So all of our conceptual constructs deal with truth. We intend them to refer to factual and real ontics. Imagine a world where there is no minds so no conceptual statements as A=B B=C therefore A=C  the claim about reality is that what ever our concept refers to is still in that same world without minds.  In a world without minds the earth would still revolve around the sun. It would not be true because there are no minds to make truth claims but it would still be factual and part of that reality.  We can see that things like the earth and sun are abstractions. That is we abstract sensory information and make truth claims. But we can state that those abstractions are attributes which  correspond to properties entailed by the situation or complex.  Attributes are conceptual whereas properties are those things to which the attributes point or correspond. We loose sight of all this dynamics for natural brevity and simplicity's  sake. Usually that is fine. The nature of logic and reality is such however that when I ask about two oranges you can show me two separate fruit that share sufficient attributes to be the same type. But if I ask you to show me two you can only point to symbols or objects that entail that property.  Either "two" limits and conditions the world whereby we derive meaning through conception or we create it through conceiving!!!!! If we believe that the world is rational and real apart from our creating it then we are left with meaning and structure such as numbers as being the ground of reality which is transcendent and/or non-physical ( non-existent for that matter but real)  or that they are conditional and not absolute in that that reside within a relative world that is existent.  This debate goes on and on.

It would seem to me that if we look at quantum states where we are dealing with potentiality we have a non-actualized field of possibilities. The collapse of the wave function either results in one of all the potentialities or you wind up with a multiworld of all the possibilities occurring with the wave collapse. If we carry this idea into an absolute state we could speculate such a situation as the source of the big bang or inflationary scenario.  Some speculate that the precursor to existence was number itself where within the infinity of numbers finite infinities structured into infinite regresses generating logic , physical law and ultimately existence.

In the world of qunatum physics there is good hard science and then the theoretical.  You are hard pressed not to find some type of philosophical presupposition such as the above or variations. Some as boo wacky as consciousness collapses the wave function by observation (Penrose, Wheeler, Bohm).  Welcome back my friend to the show that never ends.

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends
We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside
There behind a glass stands a real blade of grass
Be careful as you pass, move along, move along

/ G7 - - - / / GGsus4 GGsus4 GGsus4 GGsus4 /
/ GGsus4 GGsus4 GC G /

Come inside, the show's about to start
Guaranteed to blow your head apart
Rest assured you'll get your money's worth
The greatest show in Heaven, Hell or Earth
You've got to see the show, it's a dynamo
You've got to see the show, it's rock and roll, oh

/ G C D G / / A Asus4 A - / A Asus4 A7 - /
/ Dsus4D Dsus4 Csus4C Csus4 / /

Right before your eyes see the laughter from the skies
And he laughs until he cries, then he dies, then he dies

Come inside, the show's about to start
Guaranteed to blow your head apart
You've got to see the show, it's a dynamo
You've got to see the show, it's rock and roll, oh

Soon the Gypsy Queen in a glaze of vaseline
Will perform on guillotine, what a scene, what a scene
Next upon the stand will you please extend a hand
To Alexander's Ragtime Band, Dixieland, Dixieland

Roll up, roll up, roll up
See the show

/ A - G - A7 - / D F C G /

Performing on a stool we've a sight to make you drool
Seven virgins and a mule, keep it cool, keep it cool
We would like it to be known the exhibits that were shown
Were exclusively our own, all our own, all our own

Come and see the show, come and see the show
Come and see the show
See the show

 

"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa

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I'm sorry to disturb your

I'm sorry to disturb your theist-bashing happy hour, but isn't that just too much cliché? I do have my arguments and ideas. But you know them, (perhaps not in this extra-short form Smiling ) and I'd like to read something new. 

Have any of you confronted a theist about this? What is God made of? What is that immaterial or spiritual stuff, which they are so fond of? How did they react, did they understand, that they don't know shit? I guess they were OK with that, belief without evidence is more virtuous.

mellestad wrote:
 I've always been fascinated as to how, exactly, the immaterial can interact with the material. 
These are esoteric concepts that theists can not understand, only repeat as a dogma. Phenomena behind these concepts can be only experienced by trained senses or understood through the science of physics. Yes, I mean the elusive stuff that the universe is made of. Dark matter and very probably other string dimensions. From our point of view, they are not tangible. And yet, some theists claim that they interact with our matter, this is what our livingness, vitality, spirit, emotions, consciousness and soul are made of. They claim, that people are multi-dimensional and much of phenomena denied by material science can be ascribed to the parallel worlds, composed of alternative states of matter. 

Lots of things can be derived from that. Not everything, but about a half of woo should be reconsidered. I have to say, it is quite a liberating idea. Suddenly, the question is not whether the world is materialistic or dualistic, but whether the small and obvious side and the unseen majority side of the universe interact together, creating mystical traditions in the process. 

mellestad wrote:
 Honestly, 'immaterial' as a concept doesn't even make sense.  If you accept that immaterial things 'exist' and interact with material things then you'll accept anything...that is the problem with this kind of dialog.
AFAIK, there is no such thing as immaterial, only many gradual degrees of materiality, IOW, the ability of one particle to interact with another. It is a property of matter itself, whether it is relatively 'material' or not and how much. 

Of course, the confused quasi-literal theology of religions is neither accurate nor verifiable. There must be a system, otherwise as you say, theists will accept anything. They're used to it, religion has no system anyway. In religion black is or isn't black, white is or isn't white, yes is and isn't no. Three is and isn't one. It only matters whether you're "saved" or not, 

redneF wrote:

mellestad wrote:

I've always been fascinated as to how, exactly, the immaterial can interact with the material.

That's always been a non sequitur.

It's just that back then, people thought their shadows were 'spirits'....

mellestad wrote:
Honestly, 'immaterial' as a concept doesn't even make sense.  

Of course not.

It's mumbo jumbo.

Ask them what it is they'd like to talk about. If they say 'immaterial', then you have to inform them that it's immaterial to reality, and that it'll have to wait...

 Obviously, there never were appropriate words to describe this aspect of existence. People tried to describe it, by what it is not, pretty much like the word "atheist" was created. It doesn't seem solid like that which we call matter, so they call it "immaterial." Or they call it "spirit," as opposed to matter, and yet capable of forming objects, persons, etc. These folks never cared about semantics, even when it was already invented. 

So if you want to try to understand, not just make fun, (nothing wrong with that) you'd have to go an extra semantic mile by yourself. You can't just take a figurative word with esoteric meaning and then declare it non-sequitur. Except of the cases when theists seriously mean "immaterial" as truly immaterial and yet somehow relevant in our daily lives.

 

Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.


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Luminon wrote:I'm sorry to

Luminon wrote:

I'm sorry to disturb your theist-bashing happy hour, but isn't that just too much cliché? I do have my arguments and ideas. But you know them, (perhaps not in this extra-short form Smiling ) and I'd like to read something new. 

Have any of you confronted a theist about this? What is God made of? What is that immaterial or spiritual stuff, which they are so fond of? How did they react, did they understand, that they don't know shit? I guess they were OK with that, belief without evidence is more virtuous.

mellestad wrote:
 I've always been fascinated as to how, exactly, the immaterial can interact with the material. 
These are esoteric concepts that theists can not understand, only repeat as a dogma. Phenomena behind these concepts can be only experienced by trained senses or understood through the science of physics. Yes, I mean the elusive stuff that the universe is made of. Dark matter and very probably other string dimensions. From our point of view, they are not tangible. And yet, some theists claim that they interact with our matter, this is what our livingness, vitality, spirit, emotions, consciousness and soul are made of. They claim, that people are multi-dimensional and much of phenomena denied by material science can be ascribed to the parallel worlds, composed of alternative states of matter. 

Lots of things can be derived from that. Not everything, but about a half of woo should be reconsidered. I have to say, it is quite a liberating idea. Suddenly, the question is not whether the world is materialistic or dualistic, but whether the small and obvious side and the unseen majority side of the universe interact together, creating mystical traditions in the process. 

mellestad wrote:
 Honestly, 'immaterial' as a concept doesn't even make sense.  If you accept that immaterial things 'exist' and interact with material things then you'll accept anything...that is the problem with this kind of dialog.
AFAIK, there is no such thing as immaterial, only many gradual degrees of materiality, IOW, the ability of one particle to interact with another. It is a property of matter itself, whether it is relatively 'material' or not and how much. 

Of course, the confused quasi-literal theology of religions is neither accurate nor verifiable. There must be a system, otherwise as you say, theists will accept anything. They're used to it, religion has no system anyway. In religion black is or isn't black, white is or isn't white, yes is and isn't no. Three is and isn't one. It only matters whether you're "saved" or not, 

redneF wrote:

mellestad wrote:

I've always been fascinated as to how, exactly, the immaterial can interact with the material.

That's always been a non sequitur.

It's just that back then, people thought their shadows were 'spirits'....

mellestad wrote:
Honestly, 'immaterial' as a concept doesn't even make sense.  

Of course not.

It's mumbo jumbo.

Ask them what it is they'd like to talk about. If they say 'immaterial', then you have to inform them that it's immaterial to reality, and that it'll have to wait...

 Obviously, there never were appropriate words to describe this aspect of existence. People tried to describe it, by what it is not, pretty much like the word "atheist" was created. It doesn't seem solid like that which we call matter, so they call it "immaterial." Or they call it "spirit," as opposed to matter, and yet capable of forming objects, persons, etc. These folks never cared about semantics, even when it was already invented. 

So if you want to try to understand, not just make fun, (nothing wrong with that) you'd have to go an extra semantic mile by yourself. You can't just take a figurative word with esoteric meaning and then declare it non-sequitur. Except of the cases when theists seriously mean "immaterial" as truly immaterial and yet somehow relevant in our daily lives.

 

I am not the best writer in the world but if you re-read my previous post I think you do see an objective questioning as to whether "non-material" is not an appropriate category of meaningful discussion. That there does seem to be absolute logical and mathematical structure to which our conceptual logical and mathematical statements refer means that it is rational to speak of transcendent. AS to what we mean by that is worthy further discussion.  Obviously in a classical mystical approach that which is Absolute or the source of the conceptual  or that which conception supervenes would be either non-conceptual or beyond conception though in some since paradoxically conceptualized. I think this still gives no geounds to theism. It certainly entertains a pantheism or panentheism.  I prefer the term physical as opposed to material. I think that many have moved in the philosophical community to calling themselves physicalists as opposed to materialists.  That is one speaks of substance as opposed to object. As to how the physical (rather than immaterial) can interact with the non-physical need not be a problem either with a dualism or a monism. We can speak of a qualitative aspect of the transcendent supervening or actualizing as a quantitative event.  Our conceptual logic points to an absolute logic( nature, quality) which manifests or conditions actual relative examples. Mathematically number conditions existence and its ontics.  This is analogous to the concept of a wave function, potentiality field in quantum physics of a non-actualized state. The significance of this is in the conflict of interpretation within the physics community itself. Does the rational (or mathematical) multiplicity inherent the subject (quantum state [physical]) actualize based upon measurement, conscious observation, or a decoherence that in some sense is causally related to the conscious objectification of the event as object (material)? TO look at this fundemental structure of existence begs the question as to whether this is also an absolute structure of the universe, i.e.; that a boundless precursor of qualitative properties (potentiality) objectifies (actualizes ) into a relativized regress called existence (spacetime).  A classical mystical panentheisitic presentation is of the boundless as Being and being as potentiality ( that is non-existent but real). It is then the self-reference of the boundless that is th regress itself into existence. It is a type of Hegelian diaelctic of Being and Nothingness being the same. I think we can rationally speak of non-material and perhaps even non-physical entities I just don't think it is a given.


 

"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa

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Luminon wrote:mellestad

Luminon wrote:

mellestad wrote:
 Honestly, 'immaterial' as a concept doesn't even make sense.  If you accept that immaterial things 'exist' and interact with material things then you'll accept anything...that is the problem with this kind of dialog.
AFAIK, there is no such thing as immaterial, only many gradual degrees of materiality, IOW, the ability of one particle to interact with another. It is a property of matter itself, whether it is relatively 'material' or not and how much.  

See, I agree that this is a possibility,  I see no problem with admitting that our current knowledge of the material world is incomplete.  From what I can tell, your understanding and our understanding of the universe are identical up to a point.  There comes a point in our comprehension where we realize that we have incomplete data, or our current theories are wrong or incomplete; you on the other hand keep going on wishful thinking alone.  That's the part that I don't 'get' about your perception.  If you understand the steps to arrive at concepts such as dark matter and dark energy, and other poorly understood contemporary 'unknowns', how can you have so little regard for scientific method moving forward?  You base every premise on scientific method, and then you draw from guessing to formulate a conclusion that you accept as a FACT.  I can suppose about one hundred different scenarios that have our current science paradigm as a premise but every one of them would be just wishful thinking, or a scientific theory at best, but never would I claim it to be FACT.

To me it looks as though you are being intellectually dishonest.  

"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc


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TGBaker wrote:]As for as an

TGBaker wrote:

]As for as an immaterial god having an immaterial spirit and an immaterial mind it is a long development. God was not originally thought of as immaterial.  Look at all the old myths and place the primitive version of yahweh as a tribal god among such ideas as Zeus, Athena and Mt Olympus.  Yahweh gives the 10 don't on a Mountian.... high place close to heaven.   Originally if you saw god you died in the Old Testament. Moses was allowed to see  the backside of God (the way the Hebrew reads)  With early philosophy around 600 BCE you had competing "sciences" where fire condsenses into air and air into water and water into earth... the four elements.  Other competetors liked air as the biggy... because you can't see it but you know its there... Pneuma in Greek means breath, wind, air and Spirit...  By Plato you had the ideas of form s that were real and the material world pour actualizations.  Numbers became transcendent.  Logos or reason and word were non-physical.  Two competing philosophies materialists and per Cartesian dualists!!!!

In logic today we still even apart from theism wrestle with the question. A=B, B=c so A=C is conceptual.  But it speaks of reality. Is reality ultimately conceptual or does this refer as a language to an aspect of reality.  If it is conceptual if so an absolute mind? Or is it physical. If so how?  If it is not physical anymore than numbers are then is it outside of existence and transcendent? If not then how does it remain as an absolute conditioner of existence?  We could cop out and say that the logic is conceptual that is comes from our mind as the formula or language and therefore what it points to or its referent is not conceptual and therefore where their is no language we can not speak. But we have already do so with the conceptualization. We have an epistemological offering but we seek an ontological meaning. The statement exampled is true but truth has to do with proposition and therefore conceptual subjects.  We want the factual. Fact is a non-ethical property of an object. Truth in turn is an ethical and correct  presentation of the conceptual statement. The ethics which is often hidden is that we when we say that the concept corresponds to reality we intend it to be so (true). If we state it and believe it not to be the case that is lying. Lying for example does not deal with fact it deals with presentation of fact. So all of our conceptual constructs deal with truth. We intend them to refer to factual and real ontics. Imagine a world where there is no minds so no conceptual statements as A=B B=C therefore A=C  the claim about reality is that what ever our concept refers to is still in that same world without minds.  In a world without minds the earth would still revolve around the sun. It would not be true because there are no minds to make truth claims but it would still be factual and part of that reality.  We can see that things like the earth and sun are abstractions. That is we abstract sensory information and make truth claims. But we can state that those abstractions are attributes which  correspond to properties entailed by the situation or complex.  Attributes are conceptual whereas properties are those things to which the attributes point or correspond. We loose sight of all this dynamics for natural brevity and simplicity's  sake. Usually that is fine. The nature of logic and reality is such however that when I ask about two oranges you can show me two separate fruit that share sufficient attributes to be the same type. But if I ask you to show me two you can only point to symbols or objects that entail that property.  Either "two" limits and conditions the world whereby we derive meaning through conception or we create it through conceiving!!!!! If we believe that the world is rational and real apart from our creating it then we are left with meaning and structure such as numbers as being the ground of reality which is transcendent and/or non-physical ( non-existent for that matter but real)  or that they are conditional and not absolute in that that reside within a relative world that is existent.  This debate goes on and on.

It would seem to me that if we look at quantum states where we are dealing with potentiality we have a non-actualized field of possibilities. The collapse of the wave function either results in one of all the potentialities or you wind up with a multiworld of all the possibilities occurring with the wave collapse. If we carry this idea into an absolute state we could speculate such a situation as the source of the big bang or inflationary scenario.  Some speculate that the precursor to existence was number itself where within the infinity of numbers finite infinities structured into infinite regresses generating logic , physical law and ultimately existence.

In the world of qunatum physics there is good hard science and then the theoretical.  You are hard pressed not to find some type of philosophical presupposition such as the above or variations. Some as boo wacky as consciousness collapses the wave function by observation (Penrose, Wheeler, Bohm).  Welcome back my friend to the show that never ends.

That's a very intellectually impressive way of saying that we agree to disagree, informative as always TG Smiling.  The fact still stands that our perception of the immaterial is just a byproduct of our ability to speak.  As far as I can understand the whole thing is a semantics side-effect.  Concepts such as numbers have no meaning or 'nature' outside of our minds.  We need those concepts to communicate, but if we could lets say, draw instead of speak, then we wouldn't need numbers at all.  I find it very egocentrical of us to derive that our imaginations are somehow outside of nature.  I see absolutely no reason for this to be so.  There's no need to assume that we're anything other then a completely physiological construct, and that being so, things contained in our imagination are just as natural as bits of information ridding an electrical current down a CAT5 wire.  Duality is an archaic concept as you have pointed out, originating back when our understanding of the physical came down to four elements.  Same goes for most of the concepts Lummion is proposing. 

"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc


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I suppose I could accept the

I suppose I could accept the use of the word immaterial as long as we understood that word to be a label for a gap in our knowledge rather than being used to refer to 'things' that are 'immaterial'.

 

That seems to carry a lot of baggage though.

 

I'd rather have some other word that refers to the ultimate nature of reality, like logical absolutes.  Calling them immaterial...who knows, maybe they are material somehow, or maybe (this seems more likely to me) they are so far outside of our perspective it isn't possible to understand.

 

It's a neat discussion, obviously, but I don't know if there is any way to analyze or learn anything about the ultimate nature of reality.  Due to our perspective though I wouldn't be surprised if we never figure out anything meaningful.

What gets my goat is when theists talk about 'immaterial' like they know what the heck it means, then anthropomorphize it and give it personal motivation, powers of intercession, etc.  That is such a huge leap I find it hard to even have a discussion.  If someone wants to have some sort of deistic or pantheistic notions, fine, I don't think it is justified but I can understand the need to label, but that is as far as I can go if someone is claiming to have a logical basis for theism.

 

Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.


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What I object to in this

What I object to in this whole 'meme' is the use of 'transcendent', which explicitly implies 'above' or 'beyond', ie that the 'immaterial', or 'forms', etc are in some sense superior to the 'merely' material, which is thought to be intrinsically 'limited'.

Bullshit.

An immaterial 'realm', or 'being' is far more limited than the material. You cannot have persistent form or structure without at least some analogue of matter, and without that, no mind that we can conceive of. The immaterial cannot ACT.

The immaterial is dependent on, derived from, descriptive of, the world of the material, dependent on exactly what aspect of reality you are discussing. Plato had it backwards here, as in many of his dumb ideas.

Just use something like 'outside', although that still can imply 'independent of'.

It is a category error, IMHO.

/rant

BTW, it has been explicitly demonstrated that 'consciousness' is NOT required to 'collapse the wave function', merely something that translates the quantum state into the macro world, such as a device which records the quantum state.

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TGBaker wrote:The nature of

TGBaker wrote:

The nature of logic and reality is such however that when I ask about two oranges you can show me two separate fruit that share sufficient attributes to be the same type. But if I ask you to show me two you can only point to symbols or objects that entail that property.  Either "two" limits and conditions the world whereby we derive meaning through conception or we create it through conceiving!!!!! If we believe that the world is rational and real apart from our creating it then we are left with meaning and structure such as numbers as being the ground of reality which is transcendent and/or non-physical ( non-existent for that matter but real)  or that they are conditional and not absolute in that that reside within a relative world that is existent.  This debate goes on and on.

The more I think about this, in this example 'two' is a property that we attribute to a set of one object besides another object.  So when we think of two oranges on a table, the property two comes to mind the same as the property orange comes to mind.  Asking to show two, without using a physical object, is the same as asking to show beautiful, or orange, or hard, without using a physical object.  And all those properties are just oversimplifications of the reality useful to communicate, hence the semantics derivation ( you have already pointed this out earlier ).  But in a universe without a mind, two oranges would still have the same properties, of Orange, and Two, or rather, those attributes would be completely meaningless.  I still don't see how this is supposed to lead us to dualism or transcendence.  Am I oversimplifying this concepts? That's an honest question, if I am someone help me out.

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BobSpence1 wrote:What I

BobSpence1 wrote:

What I object to in this whole 'meme' is the use of 'transcendent', which explicitly implies 'above' or 'beyond', ie that the 'immaterial', or 'forms', etc are in some sense superior to the 'merely' material, which is thought to be intrinsically 'limited'.

Bullshit.

An immaterial 'realm', or 'being' is far more limited than the material. You cannot have persistent form or structure without at least some analogue of matter, and without that, no mind that we can conceive of. The immaterial cannot ACT.

The immaterial is dependent on, derived from, descriptive of, the world of the material, dependent on exactly what aspect of reality you are discussing. Plato had it backwards here, as in many of his dumb ideas.

Just use something like 'outside', although that still can imply 'independent of'.

It is a category error, IMHO.

/rant

BTW, it has been explicitly demonstrated that 'consciousness' is NOT required to 'collapse the wave function', merely something that translates the quantum state into the macro world, such as a device which records the quantum state.

I can understand your distaste for the use of transcendent but it has had a meaningful use in mathematics and logic. And I think the idea of beyond and above are metaphorical adjectivals that have cultural and not factual meaning. I can show you a tribe that points to the future behind them and over their shoulder. These are semantic creations to express perceived otherness, the past the future. Our whole language is built up of such. As I have mentioned in my posts the question is to whether our conceptual constructs refer to an ontologically meaingful and absolute quality or property that is imposed upon nature or whether those referred states or properties are merely abstractions from our expereince of the universe. If they are not then they do have origniation from a number of scenarios. The idea of a multiverse for example indiactes a source from which various big bangs occur. Each of these quasi-universes are disctinct and isolated from each other as well as their source apart from what causal of formal conditions that are placed by that "generator".  I would disagree that an "immaterial world" is for more limited thana material. The idea of a grand unified field theory is that not of matter but of fields from which matter originate. This is immaterial but certainly still physical. And I think that your mention of Plato is a very good one. We are still arguing Plato's forms verses Aristotle's. I think that one could certainly can argue that our conceptual constructs are all abstractions of properties inherent in complex interaction rather than correspondence to  "transcendent" laws or properties with  the idea of supervenience than inform the universe. I think that both are up for grabs.  I think some research at Cern as to the validity of the holographic principle in string theory will give us a little more information as to information itself,  I can understand your dislike for outside but it tends to capture the questioning of issues as mentioned above regarding a multiverse, Wienberg's specualtion of the first  three minites and before.  Finally as to consciousness and wave funtion. Decoherence has not made much progress in the physics community as for as I can tell as an alternative to Copenhagen or whacky Wheeler ideas.  The statement that "such a device which records the quantum state" begs Schrodinger's Cat. A recent and ongoing study tends (at least as presented) to show just as has been argued with the cat. The device is in a quantum wave state such that the device remains  in potential until it itself is read. The classic argument with the cat the cat is dead as observed but is still 50/50 until you aske the guy who observed the cat. Until you tell me it is still 50/50 with you extended into the probability state.  I have I think this speaks more about our language and the presuppositions that we project into our science.


 

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Ktulu wrote:TGBaker

Ktulu wrote:

TGBaker wrote:

The nature of logic and reality is such however that when I ask about two oranges you can show me two separate fruit that share sufficient attributes to be the same type. But if I ask you to show me two you can only point to symbols or objects that entail that property.  Either "two" limits and conditions the world whereby we derive meaning through conception or we create it through conceiving!!!!! If we believe that the world is rational and real apart from our creating it then we are left with meaning and structure such as numbers as being the ground of reality which is transcendent and/or non-physical ( non-existent for that matter but real)  or that they are conditional and not absolute in that that reside within a relative world that is existent.  This debate goes on and on.

The more I think about this, in this example 'two' is a property that we attribute to a set of one object besides another object.  So when we think of two oranges on a table, the property two comes to mind the same as the property orange comes to mind.  Asking to show two, without using a physical object, is the same as asking to show beautiful, or orange, or hard, without using a physical object.  And all those properties are just oversimplifications of the reality useful to communicate, hence the semantics derivation ( you have already pointed this out earlier ).  But in a universe without a mind, two oranges would still have the same properties, of Orange, and Two, or rather, those attributes would be completely meaningless.  I still don't see how this is supposed to lead us to dualism or transcendence.  Am I oversimplifying this concepts? That's an honest question, if I am someone help me out.

None of these arguments can remotely support dualism or transcendence.

'Orange' or 'apple', or 'teacup', etc are labels for categories of objects.

Number is different, it is a little trickier to define in purely abstract logical terms.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set-theoretic_definition_of_natural_numbers, for example.

I think the distinction between 0, 1, and  >1, can be made relatively easily - none, one, many.

I think I have heard that some 'primitive' tribes have been found which don't go beyond that, but that could be Urban Legend. Or maybe some that go to two, then 'many'.

It is when you want to logically distinguish between any two numbers greater than 1, and consistently define labels for them,  it gets subtly trickier, but certainly not impossible.

The capability to count has been demonstrated in several species:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-animals-have-the-ability-to-count

 

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It's surely fair to say

 

that an undiscovered material realm - let's say it exists somehow in dark energy - remains a material thing. I'd be struggling to give much credence to Plato or Aristotle over the results of a collider session. The whole idea of immaterial is an idea rather than a knowable, detectable immaterial state. Aristotle might have been more a materialist than Plato but he certainly believed 'mind' was not part of the material world which puts him squarely in the land of woo. 

 

 

 

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BobSpence1 wrote:Ktulu

BobSpence1 wrote:

Ktulu wrote:

The more I think about this, in this example 'two' is a property that we attribute to a set of one object besides another object.  So when we think of two oranges on a table, the property two comes to mind the same as the property orange comes to mind.  Asking to show two, without using a physical object, is the same as asking to show beautiful, or orange, or hard, without using a physical object.  And all those properties are just oversimplifications of the reality useful to communicate, hence the semantics derivation ( you have already pointed this out earlier ).  But in a universe without a mind, two oranges would still have the same properties, of Orange, and Two, or rather, those attributes would be completely meaningless.  I still don't see how this is supposed to lead us to dualism or transcendence.  Am I oversimplifying this concepts? That's an honest question, if I am someone help me out.

None of these arguments can remotely support dualism or transcendence.

'Orange' or 'apple', or 'teacup', etc are labels for categories of objects.

Number is different, it is a little trickier to define in purely abstract logical terms.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set-theoretic_definition_of_natural_numbers, for example.

I think the distinction between 0, 1, and  >1, can be made relatively easily - none, one, many.

I think I have heard that some 'primitive' tribes have been found which don't go beyond that, but that could be Urban Legend. Or maybe some that go to two, then 'many'.

It is when you want to logically distinguish between any two numbers greater than 1, and consistently define labels for them,  it gets subtly trickier, but certainly not impossible.

The capability to count has been demonstrated in several species:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-animals-have-the-ability-to-count

 

I'll get to those links later when I have more time (working now), I thought dualism was based on the very definition of immaterial, and I'm not sure such a thing truly exists IMHO.  Aren't platonic absolutes one of the logical justification for the immaterial?, I've never pursued this topic in detail so I could use some education.  

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I would argue that until a

I would argue that until a field actually 'condenses' into matter particles, it cannot have detailed persistent structure.

EDIT: Static electric fields go from a positive matter particle to a negative matter particle. The only electromagnetic fields that can exist without direct connection with charged particles are associated with photons, which cannot be part of persistent structures unconnected with matter. Gravity is intimately associated with matter. Matter Rulez!

About decoherence, from this reference,

Quote:

My general strategy for dispensing with the above alleged connection rests on two basic ideas from modern quantum theory:

  • State vector reduction need not be considered a real physical process; calculational results empirically indistinguishable from it can be derived solely through mechanisms of interactive decoherence. Thus, quantum measurement does not rely on the presence of a conscious observer in any way whatsoever.
  • The phenomenon of interactive decoherence means that most items larger than medium-sized molecules do not exist in persistent states of linear superposition. Thus, the kinds of substrates of typical concern for cognitive scientists, such as neuron-size and room-temperature biological cells, offer no opportunity for hypothesising about special properties due to quantum effects.

I think that the measurement device cannot remain in that state once it interacts with anything that is connected with the wider reality, conscious or not.

What I regard as an unnecessary and distracting aspect of the Schrödinger's cat scenario is that it is actually just as applicable to a non-conscious recording device, exactly as you say. It is the interaction with objects which are interacting with others, etc, that causes effective collapse. It is the isolation that allows the quantum state to theoretically persist.

I also personally regard SC as an insult to cats, implying they are not conscious. He should have portrayed a human being in the box.

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BobSpence1 wrote:I think the

BobSpence1 wrote:

I think the distinction between 0, 1, and  >1, can be made relatively easily - none, one, many.

I think I have heard that some 'primitive' tribes have been found which don't go beyond that, but that could be Urban Legend. Or maybe some that go to two, then 'many'.

 

I have been informed by professional members of the  group - seriously more than two - that is how biologists count.  One, two, many.  I think we can apply "tribe" to the group but "primitive" is probably not applicable.

 

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Ktulu wrote:TGBaker

Ktulu wrote:

TGBaker wrote:

The nature of logic and reality is such however that when I ask about two oranges you can show me two separate fruit that share sufficient attributes to be the same type. But if I ask you to show me two you can only point to symbols or objects that entail that property.  Either "two" limits and conditions the world whereby we derive meaning through conception or we create it through conceiving!!!!! If we believe that the world is rational and real apart from our creating it then we are left with meaning and structure such as numbers as being the ground of reality which is transcendent and/or non-physical ( non-existent for that matter but real)  or that they are conditional and not absolute in that that reside within a relative world that is existent.  This debate goes on and on.

The more I think about this, in this example 'two' is a property that we attribute to a set of one object besides another object.  So when we think of two oranges on a table, the property two comes to mind the same as the property orange comes to mind.  Asking to show two, without using a physical object, is the same as asking to show beautiful, or orange, or hard, without using a physical object.  And all those properties are just oversimplifications of the reality useful to communicate, hence the semantics derivation ( you have already pointed this out earlier ).  But in a universe without a mind, two oranges would still have the same properties, of Orange, and Two, or rather, those attributes would be completely meaningless.  I still don't see how this is supposed to lead us to dualism or transcendence.  Am I oversimplifying this concepts? That's an honest question, if I am someone help me out.

I certainly do not see a need for a dualism personally. And I think these issues come to bear on monism.  And I think what you point out is an important aspect of the question.  Is two meaningless without minds or is an absolute property of the universe or multiverse. I think attribute goes to the conceptual aspect of abstracting and positing properties that may or may not be there (attribute ...verbal). Our truth justification is to demonstrate that our attibute corresponds to a property or not. The question still goes to whether these attributes such as "two" corresponds to a real property and whether that property is absolute or contingent. It is almost like opening the old classical existential argument as to whether essence precedes existence. This comes to mind about what you bring up with "orangeness". It seems pretty easy to argue there is not absolute transcendent form (platonic) or law that speaks to "orangeness".  It makes sense to speak of it as a contingent complex that originates through a long term process of chemical and evolutionary circumstance. The question of physical and logical laws seem more difficult. As with "two' is it such that it is merely a contingent matter in our universe that 2+2=4? Could the initial conditions of our universe been such that it would have been or could have been otherwise? Or or we isolated from other big bangs because of alternative physical and logical laws?  The question of non-mystical transcendence obtains as to whether these types of things, physical law, absolutes of mathematics and logic were necessary precursors to the big bang or as the previous speculating posits merely contingencies within the continuum of the universe and its boundary conditions. AS a digress and aside Attributes could and would well be meaningless without minds but are the properties such that we derive meaning from their absoluteness.


 

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Atheistextremist

Atheistextremist wrote:

 

that an undiscovered material realm - let's say it exists somehow in dark energy - remains a material thing. I'd be struggling to give much credence to Plato or Aristotle over the results of a collider session. The whole idea of immaterial is an idea rather than a knowable, detectable immaterial state. Aristotle might have been more a materialist than Plato but he certainly believed 'mind' was not part of the material world which puts him squarely in the land of woo. 

 

 

 

I think the question of immaterial or potentiality is resolvable only through physics. Let me ask you what is the final state of the universe given entropy and the idea that energy can not be created or destroyed....only unusable.  Do electron wind down as well as the sub atomic particles as well?  Is that final state non-material but nontheless physical or real?Some wiki stuff... many Stoic were even more materialistic. Their ideas of matter were primitive:

 

The term "matter" is used throughout physics in a bewildering variety of contexts: for example, one refers to "condensed matter physics", "elementary matter", "partonic" matter, "dark" matter, "anti"-matter, "strange" matter, and "nuclear" matter. In discussions of matter and antimatter, normal matter has been referred to by Alfvén as koinomatter. It is fair to say that in physics, there is no broad consensus as to an exact definition of matter, and the term "matter" usually is used in conjunction with some modifier.



On the Soul (Greek Περὶ Ψυχῆς (Perì Psūchês), Latin De Anima) is a major treatise by Aristotle on the nature of living things. His discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different operations. Thus plants have the capacity for nourishment and reproduction, the minimum that must be possessed by any kind of living organism. Lower animals have, in addition, the powers of sense-perception and self-motion (action). Humans have all these as well as intellect.



The notion of soul used by Aristotle is only distantly related to the usual modern conception. He holds that the soul is the form, or essence of any living thing; that it is not a distinct substance from the body that it is in; that it is the possession of soul (of a specific kind) that makes an organism an organism at all, and thus that the notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body, is simply unintelligible. (He argues that some parts of the soul—the intellect—can exist without the body, but most cannot.) It is difficult to reconcile these points with the popular picture of a soul as a sort of spiritual substance "inhabiting" a body. Some commentators have suggested that Aristotle's term soul is better translated as lifeforce[1][2].



Aristotle refutes Plato's belief that Ideas are perfect entities unto themselves, independent of subjective human experience. Ideas, Aristotle claims, are not abstractions on a proverbial pedestal but mere duplicates of things witnessed in ordinary daily life. The Ideas of things, he says, are not inherent to the objects in particular but created separately and placed apart from the objects themselves. Thus, Aristotle says, Plato's idea that Ideas are perfect entities, intangible to subjective human experience, is meaningless, for all standards are based somewhere in ordinary human activity and perception. Thirdly, Aristotle assails Plato's efforts to find something common to several similar objects at once, a perfect exemplar of the quality those things share. Beauty is a perfect example; Plato considered Beauty both a notion and an ideal, isolated by abstractions and fixed permanently while its representatives fade away. Aristotle claims that abstractions like Beauty cannot be cast as absolutes, independent of temporal human experience; the Idea of Beauty changes with time and individual perceptions and cannot (as Plato felt) exist forever as a concrete standard.


 

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BobSpence1 wrote:I would

BobSpence1 wrote:

I would argue that until a field actually 'condenses' into matter particles, it cannot have detailed persistent structure.

EDIT: Static electric fields go from a positive matter particle to a negative matter particle. The only electromagnetic fields that can exist without direct connection with charged particles are associated with photons, which cannot be part of persistent structures unconnected with matter. Gravity is intimately associated with matter. Matter Rulez!

About decoherence, from this reference,

Quote:

My general strategy for dispensing with the above alleged connection rests on two basic ideas from modern quantum theory:

  • State vector reduction need not be considered a real physical process; calculational results empirically indistinguishable from it can be derived solely through mechanisms of interactive decoherence. Thus, quantum measurement does not rely on the presence of a conscious observer in any way whatsoever.
  • The phenomenon of interactive decoherence means that most items larger than medium-sized molecules do not exist in persistent states of linear superposition. Thus, the kinds of substrates of typical concern for cognitive scientists, such as neuron-size and room-temperature biological cells, offer no opportunity for hypothesising about special properties due to quantum effects.

I think that the measurement device cannot remain in that state once it interacts with anything that is connected with the wider reality, conscious or not.

What I regard as an unnecessary and distracting aspect of the Schrödinger's cat scenario is that it is actually just as applicable to a non-conscious recording device, exactly as you say. It is the interaction with objects which are interacting with others, etc, that causes effective collapse. It is the isolation that allows the quantum state to theoretically persist.

I also personally regard SC as an insult to cats, implying they are not conscious. He should have portrayed a human being in the box.

I like what you have to say about fields. We are still left at a loss about initial conditions at Plank time/length or obviously less. We could under old theories ( Hawkings) posit a singularity. But that seems to no longer carry weight. The idea of a false vaccum state and a quantum tunnelling I think goes for  a multiverse  and a qlimpse at a potentiality field from whence big bangs bang..  I think we are looking at potential particles in a vacuum state but is the looking (mathematically positing simply virtual particles or highlighting the potentiality of the robust field ) I remind you of the Zeno junk. We posit a nonextended point in a process that creates the paradox in that the logical world and the physical world are not synonomous . The logical and mathematical are abstractions and attributes rather than the actual properties themselves. In other words language corresponds but does not reproduce reality. The dilemmas we have with quantum mechanics is trying to equivocate our language as full correspondence rather than representative. What is interesting about what you point out about  isolation allowing the state to persist has its antithetical in the Quantum Zeno Effect where the particle simply won't decay as it should while you observe it.  Perhaps it is the source of Ponce de Leon's fountain.  As to observation devices I can't say that I truly disagree . However there seems to be much effort and funding to carry it fully to consciousness rather than measurement. I had an article by a DJ Bierman of some ongoing attempts on my Nook that I finished. I dleted it but it is probably still ascessable some where. My point obviously is not that the hypotheses are valid but that they are still ongoing and so these areas are apparently in various levels still up for grabs.  I whole heartedly agree with you about cats.  The idea was presented once with Schrodinger in the box. It was the first physics proof of the psychological practice of self-actualization.  It however was pointed out that Schrodinger would have been in a probability state until Maslow analysed him.  Bierman's articles are worth a read.


 

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cj wrote:BobSpence1 wrote:I

cj wrote:

BobSpence1 wrote:

I think the distinction between 0, 1, and  >1, can be made relatively easily - none, one, many.

I think I have heard that some 'primitive' tribes have been found which don't go beyond that, but that could be Urban Legend. Or maybe some that go to two, then 'many'.

 I have been informed by professional members of the  group - seriously more than two - that is how biologists count.  One, two, many.  I think we can apply "tribe" to the group but "primitive" is probably not applicable.

It's not just biologists. It's also many people in science and technologies. It's an Occam's Razor type reflex, that, apparently some people don't have. The 'reflex' to not complicate things beyond necessity. It's a very 'clean' way to analyze problems, and mitigate the potential for 'false positives'.

I'm not sure it's a 'nature vs nurture' thing.

Which, as a sidenote, is what I think that people like Sam Harris are trying to isolate in studies of how human minds work, and why, at a neuro level, there are distinctinctly different chemistries going on between individual humans.

I listen to these theists talk, and I simply cannot relate to how they think. It's really alien to me, and is very different from the people I deal with in my work.

I'm not even trying to be funny when I think they have a 'mental block', or some kind of 'bypass filter' in their stream of consciousness.

 

On the topic of 0,1,>1, I remember reading somewhere that it's suspected that some animals actually do not count past 1. The example given was of birds (or certain species of birds), who would not notice the difference if one of the 'birdies' in the nest disappeared while the bird was hunting for food, and did not witness the disappearance of 1 'birdie'. Even when they started with 3, or 2 birdies in the nest.

It did not appear to make the distinction that 1 disappeared from the 'litter'. It seemed completely unaware, and demonstrated no difference in behaviour.

I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."

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Luminon wrote:Have any of

Luminon wrote:

Have any of you confronted a theist about this? What is God made of? What is that immaterial or spiritual stuff, which they are so fond of? How did they react, did they understand, that they don't know shit? I guess they were OK with that, belief without evidence is more virtuous.

Yes I have confronted them, they don't really know or care to know how all this spiritual stuff works. They just know that man is really sinful and lost and only faith in Jesus can us. Beyond that they don't really know anything but the talking points of why one must believe.

The discussion then evolves into the Ontological Argument."How can you look at nature and believe this wasn't designed, it all supposed to be an accident".

Then when I try to refute it, they trot out Pascal's wager in some form, with really knowing what is Pascal's wager.

When I argue against Pascal's wager, they just say I hate God and they'll pray for me but they don't really want to think about refuting my arguments.

Religion is just their opiate(for the fear religion creates) and they don't want to loose it by having to think about it too hard. What else it there to say?

 

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EXC wrote:Religion is just

EXC wrote:

Religion is just their opiate(for the fear religion creates) and they don't want to loose it by having to think about it too hard. What else it there to say?

 

Oh crap, I need to steal that term; 'opiate', to describe the phenomenon.

It's so incredibly succinct.

 

I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."

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Ktulu wrote:See, I agree

Ktulu wrote:

See, I agree that this is a possibility,  I see no problem with admitting that our current knowledge of the material world is incomplete.  From what I can tell, your understanding and our understanding of the universe are identical up to a point.  There comes a point in our comprehension where we realize that we have incomplete data, or our current theories are wrong or incomplete; you on the other hand keep going on wishful thinking alone.  That's the part that I don't 'get' about your perception.  If you understand the steps to arrive at concepts such as dark matter and dark energy, and other poorly understood contemporary 'unknowns', how can you have so little regard for scientific method moving forward?  You base every premise on scientific method, and then you draw from guessing to formulate a conclusion that you accept as a FACT.  I can suppose about one hundred different scenarios that have our current science paradigm as a premise but every one of them would be just wishful thinking, or a scientific theory at best, but never would I claim it to be FACT.

To me it looks as though you are being intellectually dishonest.  

Yes, our understanding of the universe are identical up to a point. The problem with scientific method is, that we limited it to the lowest common denominator of reality. Which means material instruments for detecting material part reality. That made most of the reality unreachable, because it is based on a different form of materiality, that is not included in our instruments. We call it "dark" matter and energy, because it doesn't light up our sensors. The matter of our instruments is incapable of colliding with dark matter, it just passes through almost indetectably. What kind of instrument could detect that? An instrument, which includes the dark matter itself in its structure.

Where can we find such an instrument? The hypothesis is, that the life evolved alongside with this highly exotic majority aspect of universe. Intellect, consciousness and so on, all these things that give neurologists so many questions, may be the result of multiple levels of material existence interacting in a human being. Therefore, humans should be able to detect the otherwise unseen, at least sporadically. If you look at the history and culture, you'll find it full of examples. So we are our own instruments, albeint imperfect, impure, untrained, unfocused, non-specialized and extremely concerned with material life. We are not standardized, specialized and debugged instruments. So how can the scientific method work here? It can't. 

On a small scale yes, it is possible to get evidence of "spiritual existence" and so on. But nobody will reproduce the tests with entirely different participants elsewhere in the world. This is why the evidence does not spread besides a close circle of people lucky enough to see it or perceive by other senses. What we get here is a broad sub-culture of people who had seen it, but have nothing to show, therefore they get dismissed by scientific community. Scientific community is used to the lowest common denominator of reality, showed by standardized instruments that anyone can reproduce, and by phenomena, that anyone can detect by these instruments. 

So let's say I'm one of the living and walking instruments who can detect, but can't show, unless on brain scan. What I see is compatible with string theory and certain other compatible paradigms. I speak on the basis of a long, private investigation. For me it is a fact that does not go away even if I'd disbelieve, I have to deal with in daily life. Other can, at best, consider my logic. I believe the process of discovering will take decades. We trust our instruments and distrust ourselves so much, that many will find it hard to realize, that our instruments are deeply flawed and inadequate due to their one-sided material structure, in comparison to complex living human being. When the different forms of matter will be recognized, we may build specialized tools to detect them, but until then the living and trained people are needed to show that these new tools and new concepts of matter are really necessary. Or scientists could just take my word and perform some tests according to what I describe. 

Please ask questions if anything is unclear. Hopefully I inserted enough maybes to make it sound less definite Smiling

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Luminon wrote:Ktulu

Luminon wrote:

Ktulu wrote:

See, I agree that this is a possibility,  I see no problem with admitting that our current knowledge of the material world is incomplete.  From what I can tell, your understanding and our understanding of the universe are identical up to a point.  There comes a point in our comprehension where we realize that we have incomplete data, or our current theories are wrong or incomplete; you on the other hand keep going on wishful thinking alone.  That's the part that I don't 'get' about your perception.  If you understand the steps to arrive at concepts such as dark matter and dark energy, and other poorly understood contemporary 'unknowns', how can you have so little regard for scientific method moving forward?  You base every premise on scientific method, and then you draw from guessing to formulate a conclusion that you accept as a FACT.  I can suppose about one hundred different scenarios that have our current science paradigm as a premise but every one of them would be just wishful thinking, or a scientific theory at best, but never would I claim it to be FACT.

To me it looks as though you are being intellectually dishonest.  

Yes, our understanding of the universe are identical up to a point. The problem with scientific method is, that we limited it to the lowest common denominator of reality. Which means material instruments for detecting material part reality. That made most of the reality unreachable, because it is based on a different form of materiality, that is not included in our instruments. We call it "dark" matter and energy, because it doesn't light up our sensors. The matter of our instruments is incapable of colliding with dark matter, it just passes through almost indetectably. What kind of instrument could detect that? An instrument, which includes the dark matter itself in its structure.

Where can we find such an instrument? The hypothesis is, that the life evolved alongside with this highly exotic majority aspect of universe. Intellect, consciousness and so on, all these things that give neurologists so many questions, may be the result of multiple levels of material existence interacting in a human being. Therefore, humans should be able to detect the otherwise unseen, at least sporadically. If you look at the history and culture, you'll find it full of examples. So we are our own instruments, albeint imperfect, impure, untrained, unfocused, non-specialized and extremely concerned with material life. We are not standardized, specialized and debugged instruments. So how can the scientific method work here? It can't. 

On a small scale yes, it is possible to get evidence of "spiritual existence" and so on. But nobody will reproduce the tests with entirely different participants elsewhere in the world. This is why the evidence does not spread besides a close circle of people lucky enough to see it or perceive by other senses. What we get here is a broad sub-culture of people who had seen it, but have nothing to show, therefore they get dismissed by scientific community. Scientific community is used to the lowest common denominator of reality, showed by standardized instruments that anyone can reproduce, and by phenomena, that anyone can detect by these instruments. 

So let's say I'm one of the living and walking instruments who can detect, but can't show, unless on brain scan. What I see is compatible with string theory and certain other compatible paradigms. I speak on the basis of a long, private investigation. For me it is a fact that does not go away even if I'd disbelieve, I have to deal with in daily life. Other can, at best, consider my logic. I believe the process of discovering will take decades. We trust our instruments and distrust ourselves so much, that many will find it hard to realize, that our instruments are deeply flawed and inadequate due to their one-sided material structure, in comparison to complex living human being. When the different forms of matter will be recognized, we may build specialized tools to detect them, but until then the living and trained people are needed to show that these new tools and new concepts of matter are really necessary. Or scientists could just take my word and perform some tests according to what I describe. 

Please ask questions if anything is unclear. Hopefully I inserted enough maybes to make it sound less definite Smiling

I think that dark energy is the most accepted theory that explains the expansion of the universe and it accounts for 73% mass-energy of the universe.  Dark matter accounts for 23% of the mass-energy density of the observable universe. Science is limited by the lowest common denominator but it is the methodology that keeps setting that standard and gets further and further to the ground of existence itself. As to the sub-set of people who have seen but cannot show the proof I have been amongst them for 43 years and found nothing that is not in the long run energized by wish fulfillment. When you analyse what people like Greg Braden, Deepok Chopra are doing it is wide ass speculation based upon religious traditions cherry picked and synthesized into some New Age or New Though 'science".  I have nothing against true mysticism and practice meditation myself but to make claims without any substantial basis is detrimental to legitimate research in whatever field.  But I guess my question is what is that we need to detect and what basis do we think it is there????


 

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Luminon wrote:Yes, our

Luminon wrote:

Yes, our understanding of the universe are identical up to a point. The problem with scientific method is, that we limited it to the lowest common denominator of reality. Which means material instruments for detecting material part reality. That made most of the reality unreachable, because it is based on a different form of materiality, that is not included in our instruments. We call it "dark" matter and energy, because it doesn't light up our sensors. The matter of our instruments is incapable of colliding with dark matter, it just passes through almost indetectably. What kind of instrument could detect that? An instrument, which includes the dark matter itself in its structure.

Ok... our brains and ourselves are made from the same basic particles as our instruments.  If we assume (it's just an assumption ) that our instruments cannot interact with dark matter/energy, then why would our brains?  And what evidence do you have that our brain has dark matter in it's structure?

Luminon wrote:

Where can we find such an instrument? The hypothesis is, that the life evolved alongside with this highly exotic majority aspect of universe.

Life ( as we understand it, and for the reason of this argument life as on planet earth ) is a relatively recent phenomenon in the universe, due to the type of matter necessary to sustain life.  Supernovae needed to produce more complex elements in order for us to exist the way we do.  Dark matter and regular matter coexisted this whole time, why would a relatively newer arrangement of matter interact better with dark matter then the existing arrangement of matter?  And why would this new arrangement, Life, contain both types of matter when nothing has changed to improve the interactivity between the two types?

Luminon wrote:

Intellect, consciousness and so on, all these things that give neurologists so many questions, may be the result of multiple levels of material existence interacting in a human being. Therefore, humans should be able to detect the otherwise unseen, at least sporadically. If you look at the history and culture, you'll find it full of examples. So we are our own instruments, albeint imperfect, impure, untrained, unfocused, non-specialized and extremely concerned with material life. We are not standardized, specialized and debugged instruments. So how can the scientific method work here? It can't. 

Yes, the key word here is MAY BE the result of such things, but the proof that you offer for such a statement is nil.  They may also be the result of GoB, they may also be the intentionality (or predetermination) of subatomic particles to produce consciousness (that last made no sense to emphasize the nonsense).  But it's just an assertion.  I'm willing to give you the fact that it would make for a pretty cool Anime movie plot, but short of that...  Would you accept as proof the fact that I control all the consciousness currently in the world, I can most likely find some people to back that up anecdotally.  If not, why wouldn't you?  I can use the same reasoning you are using to back up my absurd claim.

Luminon wrote:

On a small scale yes, it is possible to get evidence of "spiritual existence" and so on. But nobody will reproduce the tests with entirely different participants elsewhere in the world. This is why the evidence does not spread besides a close circle of people lucky enough to see it or perceive by other senses. What we get here is a broad sub-culture of people who had seen it, but have nothing to show, therefore they get dismissed by scientific community. Scientific community is used to the lowest common denominator of reality, showed by standardized instruments that anyone can reproduce, and by phenomena, that anyone can detect by these instruments. 

Scientific community doesn't use the lowest common denominator of reality, it uses the common denominator.  It only uses the lowest common denominator as a premise, and then uses that to demonstrate the common denominator... As for the rest of the stuff... see the above claim I made, or insert any other absurd claim a small group of people could make, and apply the same reasoning.

Luminon wrote:

So let's say I'm one of the living and walking instruments who can detect, but can't show, unless on brain scan. What I see is compatible with string theory and certain other compatible paradigms. I speak on the basis of a long, private investigation. For me it is a fact that does not go away even if I'd disbelieve, I have to deal with in daily life. Other can, at best, consider my logic. I believe the process of discovering will take decades. We trust our instruments and distrust ourselves so much, that many will find it hard to realize, that our instruments are deeply flawed and inadequate due to their one-sided material structure, in comparison to complex living human being. When the different forms of matter will be recognized, we may build specialized tools to detect them, but until then the living and trained people are needed to show that these new tools and new concepts of matter are really necessary. Or scientists could just take my word and perform some tests according to what I describe. 

Please ask questions if anything is unclear. Hopefully I inserted enough maybes to make it sound less definite Smiling

So what you're saying is that we cannot reproduce the experiment because we're a flawed or imperfect instrument.  But I'm not asking you to reproduce the experiment exactly, I'm just asking to get ANY result.  For example a tree branch is an imperfect and flawed instrument for measuring wind speed, but it will indicate if there is wind.  If it moves, there is airflow, if it doesn't there isn't... that's a good proof to base more scientific investigation upon before arriving at some sort of theory.  If you can't at least be sensitive to this stuff all the time, how would you even begin investigating it?  As for taking your word for it, see above absurd claim that I've made, yet again.

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Hi TG

TGBaker wrote:

Atheistextremist wrote:

 

that an undiscovered material realm - let's say it exists somehow in dark energy - remains a material thing. I'd be struggling to give much credence to Plato or Aristotle over the results of a collider session. The whole idea of immaterial is an idea rather than a knowable, detectable immaterial state. Aristotle might have been more a materialist than Plato but he certainly believed 'mind' was not part of the material world which puts him squarely in the land of woo. 

 

 

 

I think the question of immaterial or potentiality is resolvable only through physics. Let me ask you what is the final state of the universe given entropy and the idea that energy can not be created or destroyed....only unusable.  Do electron wind down as well as the sub atomic particles as well?  Is that final state non-material but nontheless physical or real?Some wiki stuff... many Stoic were even more materialistic. Their ideas of matter were primitive:

 

The term "matter" is used throughout physics in a bewildering variety of contexts: for example, one refers to "condensed matter physics", "elementary matter", "partonic" matter, "dark" matter, "anti"-matter, "strange" matter, and "nuclear" matter. In discussions of matter and antimatter, normal matter has been referred to by Alfvén as koinomatter. It is fair to say that in physics, there is no broad consensus as to an exact definition of matter, and the term "matter" usually is used in conjunction with some modifier.

 

On the Soul (Greek Περὶ Ψυχῆς (Perì Psūchês), Latin De Anima) is a major treatise by Aristotle on the nature of living things. His discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different operations. Thus plants have the capacity for nourishment and reproduction, the minimum that must be possessed by any kind of living organism. Lower animals have, in addition, the powers of sense-perception and self-motion (action). Humans have all these as well as intellect.

 

The notion of soul used by Aristotle is only distantly related to the usual modern conception. He holds that the soul is the form, or essence of any living thing; that it is not a distinct substance from the body that it is in; that it is the possession of soul (of a specific kind) that makes an organism an organism at all, and thus that the notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body, is simply unintelligible. (He argues that some parts of the soul—the intellect—can exist without the body, but most cannot.) It is difficult to reconcile these points with the popular picture of a soul as a sort of spiritual substance "inhabiting" a body. Some commentators have suggested that Aristotle's term soul is better translated as lifeforce[1][2].

 

Aristotle refutes Plato's belief that Ideas are perfect entities unto themselves, independent of subjective human experience. Ideas, Aristotle claims, are not abstractions on a proverbial pedestal but mere duplicates of things witnessed in ordinary daily life. The Ideas of things, he says, are not inherent to the objects in particular but created separately and placed apart from the objects themselves. Thus, Aristotle says, Plato's idea that Ideas are perfect entities, intangible to subjective human experience, is meaningless, for all standards are based somewhere in ordinary human activity and perception. Thirdly, Aristotle assails Plato's efforts to find something common to several similar objects at once, a perfect exemplar of the quality those things share. Beauty is a perfect example; Plato considered Beauty both a notion and an ideal, isolated by abstractions and fixed permanently while its representatives fade away. Aristotle claims that abstractions like Beauty cannot be cast as absolutes, independent of temporal human experience; the Idea of Beauty changes with time and individual perceptions and cannot (as Plato felt) exist forever as a concrete standard.

 

 

I'd have to think the final state of the universe as being material in some way or another - a reversion to quantum foam? - and I agree that physics is the only way to understand how or what this might be. It's an intriguing area. Yeah - Aristotle's soul-mind concept is different from the modern spirit-thing concept. I can never read the ideas of these Greek guys without thinking that their philosophy is the product of guesswork demanded by a complete lack of tools for material comprehension. The same applies to the dark energy Lumi detector is talking about, in my opinion, tho' this dark stuff is rather a mystery.

 

"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck


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Atheistextremist

Atheistextremist wrote:

TGBaker wrote:

Atheistextremist wrote:

 

that an undiscovered material realm - let's say it exists somehow in dark energy - remains a material thing. I'd be struggling to give much credence to Plato or Aristotle over the results of a collider session. The whole idea of immaterial is an idea rather than a knowable, detectable immaterial state. Aristotle might have been more a materialist than Plato but he certainly believed 'mind' was not part of the material world which puts him squarely in the land of woo. 

 

 

 

I think the question of immaterial or potentiality is resolvable only through physics. Let me ask you what is the final state of the universe given entropy and the idea that energy can not be created or destroyed....only unusable.  Do electron wind down as well as the sub atomic particles as well?  Is that final state non-material but nontheless physical or real?Some wiki stuff... many Stoic were even more materialistic. Their ideas of matter were primitive:

 

The term "matter" is used throughout physics in a bewildering variety of contexts: for example, one refers to "condensed matter physics", "elementary matter", "partonic" matter, "dark" matter, "anti"-matter, "strange" matter, and "nuclear" matter. In discussions of matter and antimatter, normal matter has been referred to by Alfvén as koinomatter. It is fair to say that in physics, there is no broad consensus as to an exact definition of matter, and the term "matter" usually is used in conjunction with some modifier.

 

On the Soul (Greek Περὶ Ψυχῆς (Perì Psūchês), Latin De Anima) is a major treatise by Aristotle on the nature of living things. His discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different operations. Thus plants have the capacity for nourishment and reproduction, the minimum that must be possessed by any kind of living organism. Lower animals have, in addition, the powers of sense-perception and self-motion (action). Humans have all these as well as intellect.

 

The notion of soul used by Aristotle is only distantly related to the usual modern conception. He holds that the soul is the form, or essence of any living thing; that it is not a distinct substance from the body that it is in; that it is the possession of soul (of a specific kind) that makes an organism an organism at all, and thus that the notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body, is simply unintelligible. (He argues that some parts of the soul—the intellect—can exist without the body, but most cannot.) It is difficult to reconcile these points with the popular picture of a soul as a sort of spiritual substance "inhabiting" a body. Some commentators have suggested that Aristotle's term soul is better translated as lifeforce[1][2].

 

Aristotle refutes Plato's belief that Ideas are perfect entities unto themselves, independent of subjective human experience. Ideas, Aristotle claims, are not abstractions on a proverbial pedestal but mere duplicates of things witnessed in ordinary daily life. The Ideas of things, he says, are not inherent to the objects in particular but created separately and placed apart from the objects themselves. Thus, Aristotle says, Plato's idea that Ideas are perfect entities, intangible to subjective human experience, is meaningless, for all standards are based somewhere in ordinary human activity and perception. Thirdly, Aristotle assails Plato's efforts to find something common to several similar objects at once, a perfect exemplar of the quality those things share. Beauty is a perfect example; Plato considered Beauty both a notion and an ideal, isolated by abstractions and fixed permanently while its representatives fade away. Aristotle claims that abstractions like Beauty cannot be cast as absolutes, independent of temporal human experience; the Idea of Beauty changes with time and individual perceptions and cannot (as Plato felt) exist forever as a concrete standard.

 

 

I'd have to think the final state of the universe as being material in some way or another - a reversion to quantum foam? - and I agree that physics is the only way to understand how or what this might be. It's an intriguing area. Yeah - Aristotle's soul-mind concept is different from the modern spirit-thing concept. I can never read the ideas of these Greek guys without thinking that their philosophy is the product of guesswork demanded by a complete lack of tools for material comprehension. The same applies to the dark energy Lumi detector is talking about, in my opinion, tho' this dark stuff is rather a mystery.

 

Yea I think that quantum foam is virtual particles. So I real comfortable talking physical but not virtual material. But it is all conceptual ya know???? I find it amazing that the Greeks did have some profound thoughts purely from reason even though their lakc of science and understanding of the world sullied it a good bit.


 

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TGBaker wrote:I think that

TGBaker wrote:

I think that dark energy is the most accepted theory that explains the expansion of the universe and it accounts for 73% mass-energy of the universe.  Dark matter accounts for 23% of the mass-energy density of the observable universe.

Yes. I'm not sure what dark energy is, could be anything, AFAIK. But I have a lot of info on dark matter. It is a matter equivalent to ours, only bigger particles (greater string amplitude) and therefore greater mass, because it includes more vacuum. (reminds me of WIMP theory) This goes hand in hand with different radioactive decay rate of super-heavy elements. Ever heard of "island of stability?" The more massive an element is, the more unstable it gets. But after some point, like atomic number 120, artificial elements get still more stable again.
Theoretically, greater mass should pull the island of stability down to lower atomic numbers. Dark matter should be natively full of very heavy rare elements, that we only know in artificial form. These elements should be quite stable in that state. I'm not sure what happens there to lighter elements, that would require to run some simulations of estimated WIMP mass, apply it on the "island of stability" effect and see if dark matter carbon isn't explosive equivalently to our plutonium Smiling 

TGBaker wrote:
 Science is limited by the lowest common denominator but it is the methodology that keeps setting that standard and gets further and further to the ground of existence itself. As to the sub-set of people who have seen but cannot show the proof I have been amongst them for 43 years and found nothing that is not in the long run energized by wish fulfillment. When you analyse what people like Greg Braden, Deepok Chopra are doing it is wide ass speculation based upon religious traditions cherry picked and synthesized into some New Age or New Though 'science".  I have nothing against true mysticism and practice meditation myself but to make claims without any substantial basis is detrimental to legitimate research in whatever field.  But I guess my question is what is that we need to detect and what basis do we think it is there???

Deepak Chopra and Greg Braden look like full of... warm & fuzzy emotional vagueness. It's good when people need to relax, but I wonder how can they relax paying the bills for Transcendental Meditation courses. A rule of the thumb in the jungle of Chopras and Oprahs is to see, whether someone tries to influence you emotionally or not. If they try it, they probably have nothing better to offer. 

I suggest something, that goes down to technical and neurological solutions. Let's take someone who perceives something esoteric, and then check the brain and areas of nerve system that are most likely to light up. I have never seen a good study (a real scientific study) ever done like that. There are some good attempts, but without public testing. I'm one of the best candidates for such a study, because I have a good idea what to search for. We can't test vague emotional feelings, because there is nothing special about them, in the first place. We need something definite and anomalous, my specialty is the touch sense. There should be lots of readings showing, that there is something otherwise immaterial to untrained people.
I'd like to popularize the theory, that dark matter is THE etheric matter, which greatly participates on living organisms, specially on nerve system, can be measured on people trained to work with it. 
 

Ktulu wrote:

Ok... our brains and ourselves are made from the same basic particles as our instruments.  If we assume (it's just an assumption ) that our instruments cannot interact with dark matter/energy, then why would our brains?  And what evidence do you have that our brain has dark matter in it's structure?

Well, have you ever heard of etheric body, chakras, nadis, etc? The basic idea is, that we are surrounded and permeated by multiple "bodies" made of finer matter than solid, liquid or gaseous. For example, it's called etheric. Based on my study and experiments, etheric matter is THE dark matter, as every good esotericist will tell you. Etheric body is described in great detail in esoteric literature. Then we need to find somebody, who is aware of the etheric body. Most of people are completely oblivious of it, except of highly emotional situations, when they feel the flow of vital etheric substances in the area of heart, solar plexus and so on. When we get someone, who is routinely aware of etheric body, we can study how it communicates with the brain and the rest of nerve system. I have recently read about some good candidates. I mean graduatees of Russian course DEIR, founded by Dmitri Veriscagin and his colleagues. As a school they should have a pool of most suitable candidates with equivalent training. That could give us some standards. 

Ktulu wrote:
 Life ( as we understand it, and for the reason of this argument life as on planet earth ) is a relatively recent phenomenon in the universe, due to the type of matter necessary to sustain life.  Supernovae needed to produce more complex elements in order for us to exist the way we do.  Dark matter and regular matter coexisted this whole time, why would a relatively newer arrangement of matter interact better with dark matter then the existing arrangement of matter?  And why would this new arrangement, Life, contain both types of matter when nothing has changed to improve the interactivity between the two types?
You answered yourself. If dark matter is capable of forming atoms, molecules and therefore life, a life in there would have potentially much more space to live. Dark matter planetary layers may be much more habitable on otherwise deadly planets. Even such a wasteland as Venus or Mars may be very possibly teeming with life on the level of dark, or etheric matter. After all, there is much more material for it.

On the other hand, our classical matter is relatively rare in the universe, it was available only relatively recently in needed elements and it is usable in only small area around a sun, where there's not too much heat nor cold. Furthermore, according to esotericism, living cells build organisms along an etheric template, when they are allowed to do so. 

Ktulu wrote:
 Yes, the key word here is MAY BE the result of such things, but the proof that you offer for such a statement is nil.  They may also be the result of GoB, they may also be the intentionality (or predetermination) of subatomic particles to produce consciousness (that last made no sense to emphasize the nonsense).  But it's just an assertion.  I'm willing to give you the fact that it would make for a pretty cool Anime movie plot, but short of that...  Would you accept as proof the fact that I control all the consciousness currently in the world, I can most likely find some people to back that up anecdotally.  If not, why wouldn't you?  I can use the same reasoning you are using to back up my absurd claim.
A nonsensical "explanation" is superfluous. But theoretizing that the "immaterial" dark matter participates on living organisms and therefore is the cause of some people's paranormal perception, and therefore it sort of gives sense to study them, that sort of gives sense, right? Of course, behind my every claim is a fat chapter from theosophic esoteric textbook. I'm not making these things up, there's a lot to study, which you didn't study, so it must seem to you like very unfamiliar absurd claim.

As for evidence, you know very well that there must be several double-blind peer-reviewed studies, before evidence will be called evidence. In the light of new scientific possibilities, old theories must be re-examined, because before that nobody bothered or had the technology. Therefore, everything must begin with an absurd claim. Which is not so absurd, once you get to know it better than through internet forum.

Ktulu wrote:
 Scientific community doesn't use the lowest common denominator of reality, it uses the common denominator.  It only uses the lowest common denominator as a premise, and then uses that to demonstrate the common denominator... As for the rest of the stuff... see the above claim I made, or insert any other absurd claim a small group of people could make, and apply the same reasoning.
Yeah, right, the common denominator, that's the word. As for your claim, apply Occam's razor on it.

Ktulu wrote:
 So what you're saying is that we cannot reproduce the experiment because we're a flawed or imperfect instrument.  But I'm not asking you to reproduce the experiment exactly, I'm just asking to get ANY result.  For example a tree branch is an imperfect and flawed instrument for measuring wind speed, but it will indicate if there is wind.  If it moves, there is airflow, if it doesn't there isn't... that's a good proof to base more scientific investigation upon before arriving at some sort of theory.  If you can't at least be sensitive to this stuff all the time, how would you even begin investigating it?  As for taking your word for it, see above absurd claim that I've made, yet again.

Well, I AM sensitive to the stuff all the time, that's my great hope that makes the evidence possible. But I don't know, who else is. Clients of the russian DEIR course are good candidates for my peers and therefore good subjects for research. But when it comes to practical realization, it's not that simple. We actually need to contact the people and gather them together in some suitable research facilities, where they can undergo MRI, fMRI, PET, CAT, EEG, and so on. The scientific method says nothing about where to begin searching for sponsors and hosting neurologic facilities. 

There is some evidence, but as I said, it's not a good evidence. The popularity is low, controversy high, therefore peer reviewers don't really knock on the door. This needs some enthusiastic scientific pioneers, who are not afraid to get their hands and reputations dirty. You know, if things get controversial, they can always say it was a in fact a medical research of delusion. The posh name was there to attract delusional participants Smiling 

 

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Luminon wrote:TGBaker

Luminon wrote:

TGBaker wrote:

I think that dark energy is the most accepted theory that explains the expansion of the universe and it accounts for 73% mass-energy of the universe.  Dark matter accounts for 23% of the mass-energy density of the observable universe.

Yes. I'm not sure what dark energy is, could be anything, AFAIK. But I have a lot of info on dark matter. It is a matter equivalent to ours, only bigger particles (greater string amplitude) and therefore greater mass, because it includes more vacuum. (reminds me of WIMP theory) This goes hand in hand with different radioactive decay rate of super-heavy elements. Ever heard of "island of stability?" The more massive an element is, the more unstable it gets. But after some point, like atomic number 120, artificial elements get still more stable again.
Theoretically, greater mass should pull the island of stability down to lower atomic numbers. Dark matter should be natively full of very heavy rare elements, that we only know in artificial form. These elements should be quite stable in that state. I'm not sure what happens there to lighter elements, that would require to run some simulations of estimated WIMP mass, apply it on the "island of stability" effect and see if dark matter carbon isn't explosive equivalently to our plutonium Smiling 

TGBaker wrote:
 Science is limited by the lowest common denominator but it is the methodology that keeps setting that standard and gets further and further to the ground of existence itself. As to the sub-set of people who have seen but cannot show the proof I have been amongst them for 43 years and found nothing that is not in the long run energized by wish fulfillment. When you analyse what people like Greg Braden, Deepok Chopra are doing it is wide ass speculation based upon religious traditions cherry picked and synthesized into some New Age or New Though 'science".  I have nothing against true mysticism and practice meditation myself but to make claims without any substantial basis is detrimental to legitimate research in whatever field.  But I guess my question is what is that we need to detect and what basis do we think it is there???

Deepak Chopra and Greg Braden look like full of... warm & fuzzy emotional vagueness. It's good when people need to relax, but I wonder how can they relax paying the bills for Transcendental Meditation courses. A rule of the thumb in the jungle of Chopras and Oprahs is to see, whether someone tries to influence you emotionally or not. If they try it, they probably have nothing better to offer. 

I suggest something, that goes down to technical and neurological solutions. Let's take someone who perceives something esoteric, and then check the brain and areas of nerve system that are most likely to light up. I have never seen a good study (a real scientific study) ever done like that. There are some good attempts, but without public testing. I'm one of the best candidates for such a study, because I have a good idea what to search for. We can't test vague emotional feelings, because there is nothing special about them, in the first place. We need something definite and anomalous, my specialty is the touch sense. There should be lots of readings showing, that there is something otherwise immaterial to untrained people.
I'd like to popularize the theory, that dark matter is THE etheric matter, which greatly participates on living organisms, specially on nerve system, can be measured on people trained to work with it. 
 

Ktulu wrote:

Ok... our brains and ourselves are made from the same basic particles as our instruments.  If we assume (it's just an assumption ) that our instruments cannot interact with dark matter/energy, then why would our brains?  And what evidence do you have that our brain has dark matter in it's structure?

Well, have you ever heard of etheric body, chakras, nadis, etc? The basic idea is, that we are surrounded and permeated by multiple "bodies" made of finer matter than solid, liquid or gaseous. For example, it's called etheric. Based on my study and experiments, etheric matter is THE dark matter, as every good esotericist will tell you. Etheric body is described in great detail in esoteric literature. Then we need to find somebody, who is aware of the etheric body. Most of people are completely oblivious of it, except of highly emotional situations, when they feel the flow of vital etheric substances in the area of heart, solar plexus and so on. When we get someone, who is routinely aware of etheric body, we can study how it communicates with the brain and the rest of nerve system. I have recently read about some good candidates. I mean graduatees of Russian course DEIR, founded by Dmitri Veriscagin and his colleagues. As a school they should have a pool of most suitable candidates with equivalent training. That could give us some standards. 

Ktulu wrote:
 Life ( as we understand it, and for the reason of this argument life as on planet earth ) is a relatively recent phenomenon in the universe, due to the type of matter necessary to sustain life.  Supernovae needed to produce more complex elements in order for us to exist the way we do.  Dark matter and regular matter coexisted this whole time, why would a relatively newer arrangement of matter interact better with dark matter then the existing arrangement of matter?  And why would this new arrangement, Life, contain both types of matter when nothing has changed to improve the interactivity between the two types?
You answered yourself. If dark matter is capable of forming atoms, molecules and therefore life, a life in there would have potentially much more space to live. Dark matter planetary layers may be much more habitable on otherwise deadly planets. Even such a wasteland as Venus or Mars may be very possibly teeming with life on the level of dark, or etheric matter. After all, there is much more material for it.

On the other hand, our classical matter is relatively rare in the universe, it was available only relatively recently in needed elements and it is usable in only small area around a sun, where there's not too much heat nor cold. Furthermore, according to esotericism, living cells build organisms along an etheric template, when they are allowed to do so. 

Ktulu wrote:
 Yes, the key word here is MAY BE the result of such things, but the proof that you offer for such a statement is nil.  They may also be the result of GoB, they may also be the intentionality (or predetermination) of subatomic particles to produce consciousness (that last made no sense to emphasize the nonsense).  But it's just an assertion.  I'm willing to give you the fact that it would make for a pretty cool Anime movie plot, but short of that...  Would you accept as proof the fact that I control all the consciousness currently in the world, I can most likely find some people to back that up anecdotally.  If not, why wouldn't you?  I can use the same reasoning you are using to back up my absurd claim.
A nonsensical "explanation" is superfluous. But theoretizing that the "immaterial" dark matter participates on living organisms and therefore is the cause of some people's paranormal perception, and therefore it sort of gives sense to study them, that sort of gives sense, right? Of course, behind my every claim is a fat chapter from theosophic esoteric textbook. I'm not making these things up, there's a lot to study, which you didn't study, so it must seem to you like very unfamiliar absurd claim.

As for evidence, you know very well that there must be several double-blind peer-reviewed studies, before evidence will be called evidence. In the light of new scientific possibilities, old theories must be re-examined, because before that nobody bothered or had the technology. Therefore, everything must begin with an absurd claim. Which is not so absurd, once you get to know it better than through internet forum.

Ktulu wrote:
 Scientific community doesn't use the lowest common denominator of reality, it uses the common denominator.  It only uses the lowest common denominator as a premise, and then uses that to demonstrate the common denominator... As for the rest of the stuff... see the above claim I made, or insert any other absurd claim a small group of people could make, and apply the same reasoning.
Yeah, right, the common denominator, that's the word. As for your claim, apply Occam's razor on it.

Ktulu wrote:
 So what you're saying is that we cannot reproduce the experiment because we're a flawed or imperfect instrument.  But I'm not asking you to reproduce the experiment exactly, I'm just asking to get ANY result.  For example a tree branch is an imperfect and flawed instrument for measuring wind speed, but it will indicate if there is wind.  If it moves, there is airflow, if it doesn't there isn't... that's a good proof to base more scientific investigation upon before arriving at some sort of theory.  If you can't at least be sensitive to this stuff all the time, how would you even begin investigating it?  As for taking your word for it, see above absurd claim that I've made, yet again.

Well, I AM sensitive to the stuff all the time, that's my great hope that makes the evidence possible. But I don't know, who else is. Clients of the russian DEIR course are good candidates for my peers and therefore good subjects for research. But when it comes to practical realization, it's not that simple. We actually need to contact the people and gather them together in some suitable research facilities, where they can undergo MRI, fMRI, PET, CAT, EEG, and so on. The scientific method says nothing about where to begin searching for sponsors and hosting neurologic facilities. 

There is some evidence, but as I said, it's not a good evidence. The popularity is low, controversy high, therefore peer reviewers don't really knock on the door. This needs some enthusiastic scientific pioneers, who are not afraid to get their hands and reputations dirty. You know, if things get controversial, they can always say it was a in fact a medical research of delusion. The posh name was there to attract delusional participants Smiling 

 

I think the largest clump of dark matter that can exist is about the 10th of the mass of the earth.  My view is that the dark matter/ dark energy ratio are simply mathematical constructs of particles that really speak to a flat vacuum state. They are two poles that account for gravity in attraction and the dark energy in expansion.  Appart from baryon matter dark matter that consists of three quarks the majority of dark matter is non-baryon and may or may not consist of neutrinos, neutralinos and heaven knows,  They are not effective with electromagnetic fields. My best speculation is that they ( dark energy / matter) are constructs to maintain Einstein's theory of gravity and may simply be represented as neutrino anti neutrino pairs. If so then the attributes of our universe is not from the big bang but a flat vacuum field that pre-existed the big bang and is apt to be the final entropic state of the universe's expansion. If ya wanna get mystical call dark matter love and dark energy growth.


Cold darl matter is bottoms-up and Hot dark matter is top down. Warm dark matter depends ( either gravitinos or sterile neutrinos) on its free streaming scale. I would not expect to find anything additionally causative to our macro-world.

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The Greeks did not come up

The Greeks did not come up with their better ideas 'purely by Reason' - they also had their instincts and intuitions, and their experience of the world which inevitably became part of the framework and background of their reasoning, whether they explicitly realized that or not.

It is logically impossible to conclude anything about actual reality from logic alone, other than the implications of the Laws of Logic, ie the theorems of Logic.

The expressed dichotomy between Logic and Empiricism I keep hearing, most recently by a Theist caller into the Atheist Experience program, is annoying me more all the time. Jean Chauvin was the most prominent recent proponent of this PoV that comes to mind.

Of course, they are both essential for gaining any even approximate modelling of Reality.

Logic and Reason are necessary but not remotely sufficient for knowledge of anything about reality outside of our own thoughts.

Neuroscience and Psychology, and other related sciences continue to show that Logic + Introspection/Intuition are very limited in really understanding how our own minds work.

Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality

"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris

The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me

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BobSpence1 wrote:The Greeks

BobSpence1 wrote:

The Greeks did not come up with their better ideas 'purely by Reason' - they also had their instincts and intuitions, and their experience of the world which inevitably became part of the framework and background of their reasoning, whether they explicitly realized that or not.

It is logically impossible to conclude anything about actual reality from logic alone, other than the implications of the Laws of Logic, ie the theorems of Logic.

The expressed dichotomy between Logic and Empiricism I keep hearing, most recently by a Theist caller into the Atheist Experience program, is annoying me more all the time. Jean Chauvin was the most prominent recent proponent of this PoV that comes to mind.

Of course, they are both essential for gaining any even approximate modelling of Reality.

Logic and Reason are necessary but not remotely sufficient for knowledge of anything about reality outside of our own thoughts.

Neuroscience and Psychology, and other related sciences continue to show that Logic + Introspection/Intuition are very limited in really understanding how our own minds work.

I agree. You may have noticed I have started using plausibility in my handling of such things. While I think that logic can at most produce a rational framework ( possible worlds) the atual world is one of those possible worlds and empirically limits necessity. Thus other logical and possibly contradicting arguments can ground the premises in empirical judgment (plausibility).  Your imput in this process is greatly appreciated as well as redneF's.  So I would say the dichotomy between empiricism is false given ML opening to possible worlds in effects gives the actual world some limiting capacity as to possibility, probability and necessity.  If it is necessary for example in the actual world that 2+2=4 then it is so in all possible worlds and not the other way round.  If there is a possible world where2+2=5 then we certainly may question necessity but then we are in the field of probability (how many possible world =5 verses those =4 and so on.  This goes to the nature of OA question begging.  My necessity thingy of theodicy was admittedly a quicky and could be simplified but it goes to the very heart of what you say about logic vs empiricism. One can not absolve the theistic god with necessity when you have actual JTB logically entailing the actual world. One is forced in choosing a logical necessity that does not obtain with a logical explication that does.


Your thoughts and refinements are welcomed and wanted.

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BobSpence1 wrote:The Greeks

BobSpence1 wrote:

The Greeks did not come up with their better ideas 'purely by Reason' - they also had their instincts and intuitions, and their experience of the world which inevitably became part of the framework and background of their reasoning, whether they explicitly realized that or not.

It is logically impossible to conclude anything about actual reality from logic alone, other than the implications of the Laws of Logic, ie the theorems of Logic.

The expressed dichotomy between Logic and Empiricism I keep hearing, most recently by a Theist caller into the Atheist Experience program, is annoying me more all the time. Jean Chauvin was the most prominent recent proponent of this PoV that comes to mind.

Of course, they are both essential for gaining any even approximate modelling of Reality.

Like I said earlier, the 'values' (sic) that they place in their equations are 'narratives'. They are NOT 'solid' attributes.

The best illustration of how 'logic' can be completely, and utterly useless, is "Garbage in=Garbage Out".

 

The logic of these clowns is a classic misdirection.

Here is a simple analogy :

If we know the premises to be true, then we know they are necessarily true.

Which is complete fucking filibustering.

What they illustrate about God, is the same stream of logic that says "If the numbers and combinations of numbers are 'true', then the lock will necessarily open".

Which is logical, of course.

But you cannot open the lock without opening it, using the 'right' numbers, in the 'right' combination.

So, where did they get the numbers, and the combination??????????????????????

BobSpence1 wrote:
Logic and Reason are necessary but not remotely sufficient for knowledge of anything about reality outside of our own thoughts.

Logic and reason are simply 'narratives' to describe 'guesswork' by humans.

 

Knowledge only becomes absolutely true, (among the minds of humans) when it can only be verified, and no longer be falsified.

Then it becomes a Universal Law, of our universe.

 

BobSpence1 wrote:
Neuroscience and Psychology, and other related sciences continue to show that Logic + Introspection/Intuition are very limited in really understanding how our own minds work.

More importantly, it clearly shows how some humans are susceptible to 'suggestion', and 'placebo', ie: Snake Oil.

I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."

"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks

" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris


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Possible world vs Actual world

Possible world vs actual world

1) There is a possible world of only well-being (p). 

2) A capable limitless good being (x) knowing of this world (p) would actualize (necessarily) it over  possible worlds with evil and suffering (q).

3)x necessarily would not allow  q

4)p--> not q

5) It is possible that god is x

6)q --> not p

7) Our world=q therefore not p

8)not p

9)not p--->not x

10)not x

11)god= not x

 Our world entails there is no capable limitless good being. If there is a god he is not that being.

Justified true belief is one definition of knowledge that states for someone to have knowledge of something, it must be true, it must be believed to be true, and the belief must be justified. In more formal terms, a subject S knows that a proposition P is true if, and only if:

  1. P is true
  2. S believes that P is true, and
  3. S is justified in believing that P is true

The justified true belief theory of knowledge suffered a significant setback with the discovery of Gettier problems, situations in which the above conditions were met but that many philosophers disagree that anything is known.[1] Robert Nozick suggested a clarification of "justification" which he believed eliminates the problem: the justification has to be such that were the justification false, the knowledge would be false.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problems

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Hello My Terrorist Friend

Now Extremeist, aren't you being extreme? I assumed that you've been paying attention to my educational posts. If you had, you would not make such a blantant logical blunder. My grandma is also agnostic and she can argue better then you did even though she's dead.

First Error - Define your Terms.

I've told you this more times then you have caused babies to cry looking at your scary mask. What are you, a bank robber? Anyway, define your terms and return the money back to the bank and turn yourself in.

Second Error - Begging the Question

When you reference "ghost" I assume you mean Holy Spirit. The term "ghost" was meideval. You describe the Holy Spirit like He was catching the bus to go shopping in Downtown Detroit, and God drove up in his corvette and asked Him to hop in.

The Holy Spirit and God the Father and God the Son are of the same nature since eternity. And since eternity they have all done specific things in perfect harmony.

For example in Creation:

God the Father made the matter

God the Son created the matter to form

God the Holy Spirit brought life

Third Error - Thus your question was philosophically a very unsound question. You're like a soldier with no weapons. You're like a grandma with no kitchen. And you're like a fish with no water.

Your argument has been measured, your argument has been weighed, and your argument has been found wanted.

Respectfully,

Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).

 

A Rational Christian of Intelligence (rare)with a valid and sound justification for my epistemology and a logical refutation for those with logical fallacies and false worldviews upon their normative of thinking in retrospect to objective normative(s). This is only understood via the imago dei in which we all are.

Respectfully,

Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).


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Jean Chauvin wrote: Define

Jean Chauvin wrote:

 Define your Terms.

Do you want to debate 1 on 1, with me?


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Jean Chauvin wrote:The Holy

Jean Chauvin wrote:

The Holy Spirit and God the Father and God the Son are of the same nature since eternity. And since eternity they have all done specific things in perfect harmony.

For example in Creation:

God the Father made the matter

God the Son created the matter to form

God the Holy Spirit brought life

 

So, they're not the same, they're of the same nature? You and I are of the same nature, but we're hardly the same person.  Define nature.  

Since you're implying the trinity as one entity, much like personalities of the same character I assume, why would god need to switch personalities to perform different tasks, I mean, this is god... is he less perfect?

Define Harmony.  How are those three things in harmony? how is life in harmony with matter? life is just another arrangement of matter.

Why do you claim to have been trained in logic, if that's the case,  you obviously choose to ignore it.

Respectfully, 

Ktulu (Necronomicon 1:25)

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Jean Chauvin wrote:Now

Jean Chauvin wrote:

Now Extremeist, aren't you being extreme? I assumed that you've been paying attention to my educational posts. If you had, you would not make such a blantant logical blunder. My grandma is also agnostic and she can argue better then you did even though she's dead.

First Error - Define your Terms.

I've told you this more times then you have caused babies to cry looking at your scary mask. What are you, a bank robber? Anyway, define your terms and return the money back to the bank and turn yourself in.

Second Error - Begging the Question

When you reference "ghost" I assume you mean Holy Spirit. The term "ghost" was meideval. You describe the Holy Spirit like He was catching the bus to go shopping in Downtown Detroit, and God drove up in his corvette and asked Him to hop in.

The Holy Spirit and God the Father and God the Son are of the same nature since eternity. And since eternity they have all done specific things in perfect harmony.

For example in Creation:

God the Father made the matter

God the Son created the matter to form

God the Holy Spirit brought life

Third Error - Thus your question was philosophically a very unsound question. You're like a soldier with no weapons. You're like a grandma with no kitchen. And you're like a fish with no water.

Your argument has been measured, your argument has been weighed, and your argument has been found wanted.

Respectfully,

Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).

 

Sounds like something you bought at a fourth century rummage sale in Nicaea. Earlier version had the Logos as the only begotten god qua instrument through which God made things. There was hardly any agency on the Logos part in the Prolegomena of John. And he certainly had not been made up during the writing of Genesis.  Your conception of the Holy Spirit is a revision of an idea that developed about 200 BCE. Your melodrama has been measured as cute, your argument has been weighed as plagiarised from archaic doctrine and the whole presupposition found wanting some uninformed convert.


 

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Hi KTULA

Hi KUTLA,

God doesn't Switch Personalites. D.I.D. is the meaning where personalities are fragmented according to the DSM manual. Thus MPD is technically not accurate.

Different persons do different things. They have different roles.

Nature is defined as Being or ontology. They are of the same being but have 3 centers of consciousness.

Harmony means peace

It is understandable that you don't understand since your mind is in the realm of stupid (I Corinthians 1:14). Matter is the material to create. It's like the clay. Jesus formed the clay, while God the Father made the matter. We have a hint of this in I Corinthians 8:6.

God breathed into man and He had life. That was the Holy Spirit.

You other objections are mere argumentum ad hominem abusive. You're simply throwing rocks at a tank.

_____________________________

Hey RED,

I wasn't thinking about debating you, but if you want to that would be fun. Are you sure you want your bruised butt handed to you on a pitchfork?

It's kind of late where I'm at. If you would like to start it go ahead. Otherwise, I will be Thursday.

Would you like me to keep my gloves on so as not to utterly destroy you? I am willing to show compassion. Or shall I take you out punch after punch?

Respectfully,

Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).

UnDeafeted Champion of Logic

 

A Rational Christian of Intelligence (rare)with a valid and sound justification for my epistemology and a logical refutation for those with logical fallacies and false worldviews upon their normative of thinking in retrospect to objective normative(s). This is only understood via the imago dei in which we all are.

Respectfully,

Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).


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Jean Chauvin wrote:Hi

Jean Chauvin wrote:

Hi KUTLA,

God doesn't Switch Personalites. D.I.D. is the meaning where personalities are fragmented according to the DSM manual. Thus MPD is technically not accurate.

Different persons do different things. They have different roles.

Nature is defined as Being or ontology. They are of the same being but have 3 centers of consciousness.

Harmony means peace

It is understandable that you don't understand since your mind is in the realm of stupid (I Corinthians 1:14). Matter is the material to create. It's like the clay. Jesus formed the clay, while God the Father made the matter. We have a hint of this in I Corinthians 8:6.

God breathed into man and He had life. That was the Holy Spirit.

You other objections are mere argumentum ad hominem abusive. You're simply throwing rocks at a tank.

So how is having 3 centers of consciousness different from having 3 different personalities? And harmony being peace... is life at peace with matter? wtf does that even mean? 

peace as opposed to not peace? 

Let me rephrase what you've said, since I'm obviously stupid as per your opinion.  You're saying that god does not suffer from multiple personality disorder, but he is the same entity that has 3 different centers of consciousness. Also life is at peace with matter because it is not at war with matter?

How is this logical or intellectual at any level? You are the epitome of fractal wrongness.

I'm sorry I've bruised your ego, I meant for the ad hominem attacks to be a form of levity.  I thought you could take it Smiling

Respectfully 

KTULA (sic)

Smiling

"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc


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Hi KTULA

Hi KTULA,

Why would a man in a tank be bruised with a man throwing little rocks at the tank. Or was that an attempt at comedy?

MPD/DID is where there is ONE personality Fragmented. MPD or multiple personality is no longer accurate. So MPD doesn't exist.

Centers of consciousness and persons are just ways to express what the Greek text says. Each personage has a different role.

Within the Trinity there is an ontological aspect and an economical aspect. The ontological aspect denotes equality of Being, while the Economical aspect denotes Rank. The Father is of a higher "Rank then the Son, and the Son a higher Rank then the Holy Spirit.

But ontologically speaking, they are equal. This is why in the gospels, Jesus prayed to the Father and not the Holy Spirit. And this is why Christians direct prayer to God the father. This is in line with the economical aspect.

I am not simply calling you names and your stupidity is not my opinion. The Bible calls pagans like yourself stupid and foolish throughout the Bible. Thus it is not opinion, but reality.

Though we can still be friendly.

Harmony opposed to what? Weird question. Harmony simply means peace. Econmically speaking they have been at peace with eachother since eternity.

If you still don't understand, and if you still don't know the differences between DID/MPD and think that it is the same then email me and I will slow it down and educate you more systematically.

Respectfully,

Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).

[email protected]

A Rational Christian of Intelligence (rare)with a valid and sound justification for my epistemology and a logical refutation for those with logical fallacies and false worldviews upon their normative of thinking in retrospect to objective normative(s). This is only understood via the imago dei in which we all are.

Respectfully,

Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).


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Jean Chauvin wrote:Hi

Jean Chauvin wrote:

Hi KTULA,

Why would a man in a tank be bruised with a man throwing little rocks at the tank. Or was that an attempt at comedy?

MPD/DID is where there is ONE personality Fragmented. MPD or multiple personality is no longer accurate. So MPD doesn't exist.

Centers of consciousness and persons are just ways to express what the Greek text says. Each personage has a different role.

Within the Trinity there is an ontological aspect and an economical aspect. The ontological aspect denotes equality of Being, while the Economical aspect denotes Rank. The Father is of a higher "Rank then the Son, and the Son a higher Rank then the Holy Spirit.

But ontologically speaking, they are equal. This is why in the gospels, Jesus prayed to the Father and not the Holy Spirit. And this is why Christians direct prayer to God the father. This is in line with the economical aspect.

I am not simply calling you names and your stupidity is not my opinion. The Bible calls pagans like yourself stupid and foolish throughout the Bible. Thus it is not opinion, but reality.

Though we can still be friendly.

Harmony opposed to what? Weird question. Harmony simply means peace. Econmically speaking they have been at peace with eachother since eternity.

If you still don't understand, and if you still don't know the differences between DID/MPD and think that it is the same then email me and I will slow it down and educate you more systematically.

Respectfully,

Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).

[email protected]

There is NO GREEK text that says such things, WTF quote them. I had 4 years of Koine Greek and a degree in it.  Put up or shut up. You can at best juggle the texts into some esoteric reading. The Holy Spirit in the Greek is compared by Paul:  God has a Spirit like a man has a Spirit. That does not make a man with two centers of consciousness. Logos was orignally a property of God's mind (word, reason) in the text and contemporary literature that became personified in an incarnation. Metaphor to literal.

 

 

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Jean Chauvin wrote:Hi

Jean Chauvin wrote:

Hi KTULA,

Why would a man in a tank be bruised with a man throwing little rocks at the tank. Or was that an attempt at comedy?

MPD/DID is where there is ONE personality Fragmented. MPD or multiple personality is no longer accurate. So MPD doesn't exist.

Centers of consciousness and persons are just ways to express what the Greek text says. Each personage has a different role.

Within the Trinity there is an ontological aspect and an economical aspect. The ontological aspect denotes equality of Being, while the Economical aspect denotes Rank. The Father is of a higher "Rank then the Son, and the Son a higher Rank then the Holy Spirit.

But ontologically speaking, they are equal. This is why in the gospels, Jesus prayed to the Father and not the Holy Spirit. And this is why Christians direct prayer to God the father. This is in line with the economical aspect.

I am not simply calling you names and your stupidity is not my opinion. The Bible calls pagans like yourself stupid and foolish throughout the Bible. Thus it is not opinion, but reality.

Though we can still be friendly.

Harmony opposed to what? Weird question. Harmony simply means peace. Econmically speaking they have been at peace with eachother since eternity.

If you still don't understand, and if you still don't know the differences between DID/MPD and think that it is the same then email me and I will slow it down and educate you more systematically.

Respectfully,

Jean Chauvin (Jude 3).

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Of course we can be civil Smiling I find your posts to be some of the most amusing, and thank you for taking the time to chat with me.

You said:

Quote:

The Holy Spirit and God the Father and God the Son are of the same nature since eternity. And since eternity they have all done specific things in perfect harmony.

For example in Creation:

God the Father made the matter

God the Son created the matter to form

God the Holy Spirit brought life

Now, myself being a layman, I ask, what do you mean by harmony? You've answered peace... I have to say that makes no sense what so ever.  Why are those three things, matter, form and life harmonious? or peaceful? 

Do you mean harmonious as in beautiful? I'm grasping at straws here, as in life the absolute beauty of form (or arrangement of matter)? I really am trying to understand your point of view, so perhaps you can educate me, but do so on this forum, and please stay away from biblical quotes, I get a rash every time I touch the bible.  

So as far as your ranking of the three entities that are equal, I guess based on paygrade in prayer dollars.  How is this any different in actualization then a classical display of MPD? If I were to have MPD (which I very well may have, I would never know ) I would of course form a hierarchy of my personality fragmentation.  As for claiming absolute knowledge of MPD... you can hardly be considered a noteworthy authority.

Respectfully 

KTULA Smiling

 

"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc


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TGBaker wrote:There is NO

TGBaker wrote:

There is NO GREEK text that says such things, WTF quote them. I had 4 years of Koine Greek and a degree in it.  Put up or shut up. You can at best juggle the texts into some esoteric reading. The Holy Spirit in the Greek is compared by Paul:  God has a Spirit like a man has a Spirit. That does not make a man with two centers of consciousness. Logos was orignally a property of God's mind (word, reason) in the text and contemporary literature that became personified in an incarnation. Metaphor to literal.

 

Thank you for your input TG, he would never reply to you directly because you carry too much intellectual 'punch' when it comes to his primary source of premiseSmiling

 

"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc


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Ktulu wrote:TGBaker

Ktulu wrote:

TGBaker wrote:

There is NO GREEK text that says such things, WTF quote them. I had 4 years of Koine Greek and a degree in it.  Put up or shut up. You can at best juggle the texts into some esoteric reading. The Holy Spirit in the Greek is compared by Paul:  God has a Spirit like a man has a Spirit. That does not make a man with two centers of consciousness. Logos was orignally a property of God's mind (word, reason) in the text and contemporary literature that became personified in an incarnation. Metaphor to literal.

 

Thank you for your input TG, he would never reply to you directly because you carry too much intellectual 'punch' when it comes to his primary source of premiseSmiling

 

Your welcome I think we all have different areas of learning and should pool our resources when theists are shot gunning  manure answers rather than answering disrectly. With a shot gun you can shoot in some general direction and likely hit the target a little. I love splatter theology don't you.  That really is the difference theists have shotguns because of their poor aim and we are archers with one obvious target. By the way is that his picture as avatar? If so what is he doing to that wall. Hopefully they are at least engaged.

 

 

"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa

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TGBaker wrote:Your welcome I

TGBaker wrote:

Your welcome I think we all have different areas of learning and should pool our resources when theists are shot gunning  manure answers rather than answering disrectly. With a shot gun you can shoot in some general direction and likely hit the target a little. I love splatter theology don't you.  That really is the difference theists have shotguns because of their poor aim and we are archers with one obvious target. By the way is that his picture as avatar? If so what is he doing to that wall. Hopefully they are at least engaged.

LMAO, man, I've discovered one good thing about religion tonight... a wine that came from 'mission hill'.  I'm on my second glass and that last comment almost made me spill it...  I personally think Jean is Poe, but I can't help but find him highly entertaining.  And I agree with you, we should pool our resources.  The most powerful weapon that we have is to ask 'why?'.  My 2 year old taught me that Smiling  Also if there's one thing that we have in common, is that we're intellectual snobs, and at least have the self perception that we can stand up on our own.  Which may or may not be true.  

I love this wine but it's making me all giddy and killing my IQ,  I'm buying a shit load of this stuff Smiling

"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc


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Jean Chauvin wrote:Harmony

Jean Chauvin wrote:

Harmony means peace

In the overwhelming majority of formal and colloquial usages, the term 'harmonious' refers to a group (poly) working in 'concert' together, or 'accompaniment', in a harmonious nature.

Gregorian chants are 'mono' phony. They sing in 'unison', or in 'octaves' (doubling, or halving of pitch).

Choirs are 'polyphonic'. They sing in 'concert' , and in 'harmony'.

 

Learn the english language, before you run your mouth...

 

Jean Chauvin wrote:
Hey RED,

I wasn't thinking about debating you, but if you want to that would be fun. Are you sure you want your bruised butt handed to you on a pitchfork?

It's kind of late where I'm at. If you would like to start it go ahead. Otherwise, I will be Thursday.

Would you like me to keep my gloves on so as not to utterly destroy you? I am willing to show compassion. Or shall I take you out punch after punch?

Don't waste your time talking smack to me, limp dick.

 

I'll take my chances.

I've set up the thread between you and I, in the atheist vs theist forum.

Better bring your 'A' game.

 

I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."

"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks

" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris


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Ktulu wrote:TGBaker

Ktulu wrote:

TGBaker wrote:

Your welcome I think we all have different areas of learning and should pool our resources when theists are shot gunning  manure answers rather than answering disrectly. With a shot gun you can shoot in some general direction and likely hit the target a little. I love splatter theology don't you.  That really is the difference theists have shotguns because of their poor aim and we are archers with one obvious target. By the way is that his picture as avatar? If so what is he doing to that wall. Hopefully they are at least engaged.

LMAO, man, I've discovered one good thing about religion tonight... a wine that came from 'mission hill'.  I'm on my second glass and that last comment almost made me spill it...  I personally think Jean is Poe, but I can't help but find him highly entertaining.  And I agree with you, we should pool our resources.  The most powerful weapon that we have is to ask 'why?'.  My 2 year old taught me that Smiling  Also if there's one thing that we have in common, is that we're intellectual snobs, and at least have the self perception that we can stand up on our own.  Which may or may not be true.  

I love this wine but it's making me all giddy and killing my IQ,  I'm buying a shit load of this stuff Smiling

Enjoy and have a little for me. What type of vino? They don't call it spirits for nutthun' I do like the Jean's monk hairdo. He must have the religion bug bad( meme?) I gotta two year old as well. I'm 56 so its a bit hard for me to keep up with him sometimes. He exploits it to his advantage.  Hopefully we are not real snobs just right about being smart and right. Later man.


 

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redneF wrote:Jean Chauvin

redneF wrote:

Jean Chauvin wrote:

Harmony means peace

In the overwhelming majority of formal and colloquial usages, the term 'harmonious' refers to a group (poly) working in 'concert' together, or 'accompaniment', in a harmonious nature.

Gregorian chants are 'mono' phony. They sing in 'unison', or in 'octaves' (doubling, or halving of pitch).

Choirs are 'polyphonic'. They sing in 'concert' , and in 'harmony'.

 

Learn the english language, before you run your mouth...

 

Jean Chauvin wrote:
Hey RED,

I wasn't thinking about debating you, but if you want to that would be fun. Are you sure you want your bruised butt handed to you on a pitchfork?

It's kind of late where I'm at. If you would like to start it go ahead. Otherwise, I will be Thursday.

Would you like me to keep my gloves on so as not to utterly destroy you? I am willing to show compassion. Or shall I take you out punch after punch?

Don't waste your time talking smack to me, limp dick.

 

I'll take my chances.

I've set up the thread between you and I, in the atheist vs theist forum.

Better bring your 'A' game.

 

He has a game but not an A game. I hate to see you wste energy unless you like the sport.  Remember , one can not determine the Deer Slayers prowess while he slaughters swine. You are gonna wind up debating every freakin' theist out there. You should just do an open invitation... wow go get em

 

 

"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa

http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism


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TGBaker wrote: You are gonna

TGBaker wrote:
You are gonna wind up debating every freakin' theist out there. You should just do an open invitation... wow go get em
 

 

Not really.

They're automatons, with ADD.

It's the same 2000 yr old arguments, being paraphrased.

 

This way, I corner them, and they cannot derail. They have to answer me 'directly'.

They can't monologue, because it won't touch my questions, or answers, and it will illustrate what I intend to prove.

That they really are being stoopid, in the strongest sense of the word...

 

They can't actually 'think'. They can only 'spew' sermons and proselytize.

They cannot 'reason'.

Like all fundies...

 

They all run around thumping 'Allah, Allah, Allah', or 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus' is gonna get you!!

Ya, really intelligent...

 

I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."

"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks

" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris