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.

 

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 ) 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.

 

]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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.

 

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  

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  

 

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.

 Define your Terms.

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).

 

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.

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.

 

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.

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  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

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