Into the mystic (an experience).
by El blanko 207 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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ballistic
ok, heads up for everyone though, worms also search other files on your PC for email addresses and tags. For instance,
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El blanko
Regarding the heart of the information on this thread ballistic, where do you stand?
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ballistic
Regarding the heart of the information on this thread ballistic, where do you stand?
Hmmm, well I don't know. I am open minded to the possibility of mystic experiences. But you would also have to ask yourself questions like: was there any difference in the outcome as to if you had simply dropped it through his letter box? what if you had the experience and then did not meet him, what would it have meant to you? did you feel slightly detached from reality because you viewed the situation as emotionally charged in some way? if there was some kind of "other force" present, why was this necessary in order to simply walk up to someone and give them a letter? did you ask where he was going? Maybe if you knew that, you would see a whole chain of events leading to an appointment time (or whatever) which would have taken astroniomical intervention to arrange... purely to save you using the letterbox? By the way, I had a "white-out" once where my brain was scanned by something. Serious. But it happened in the night, and to this day, I am open minded as to whether it was just a very real dream or not. You have to look at these things from a totally objective stand point.
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LittleToe
Ballistic:
By the way, I had a "white-out" once where my brain was scanned by something.
Did it find anything?
Seriously.
LOLHey, dude, are you coming to Scotland at the end of next month?
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sleepy
A little something to remember for or you paranormal believing types is that over entire consicous experience is produced by the brain in reaction to outside stimulas and internal stimulas.
For example or vision ,hearing and taste are produced by the brain when it recieves the appropriate stimuli form light waves , sound waves or chemicals.When you taste a bitter food , chemicals in the food stimulate your taste bubs which then tell the appropriate area of your brain to make a bitter tatse.The taste is not in the food.The taste is in the brain, only the stimulas is in the food.
Our brain can cause the sensation of a sense or qualia without this ouside stimulas on occation.It does so each night to some degree when we sleep and outside stimulas is at a minimum.
In order to have evidence of a paranormal experience you would first have to prove that this what not created by your brain.
Can you do this? -
LittleToe
Sleepy, it's been conclusively proved that that is only the case for Welsh brains...
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LittleToe
That could account for it, too
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logansrun
rem
That's convenient. Define the phenomenon as non-testable. Now we are in the region of philosophy - not science. The purely rational standpoint is usually to withold judgement on such things, yet not hold them credible. i.e. allow for the minute possibility that they exist - but don't believe in it. God's and fairies fall into this camp as well.
Where in the world did you get that idea? There are things which are not testable yet I'm sure you believe in them. Your subjective sense of self, your thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc., are all not testable, yet they are real. Of course, you could argue that we could measure the effects of these internalizations, but we would never be sure if there was really any correspondence or what it feels like to be you.
Your mental state is non-testable, therefore it is not credible -- I don't believe in you!
The methods of the physical sciences work very well for the physical sciences. Unfortunately, when applied to human beings or more metaphysical matters, they are wholly inadequate. Scientism.
B.
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logansrun
rem,
I was being conservative. It's obvious that there are far more wrong ideas that right ones. Just because someone is going against contemporary thinking doesn't give him any more chance of being correct. As Sagan was fond of saying, they laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
True. But, the fact remains, they did laugh at Galileo. And Wegener, and Freud, and Margulis, and...the list goes on. Since science has been dismissive, at times, of both good and bad ideas I think this point is moot.
As far as paradigm shifts in scientific thinking - that's all part of the process. That's why the scientific method works. Pseudoscientists don't change their theories in the face of facts.
Again, I was just curious, have you read or heard about Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolution"? It's basically a sociological analysis of science. You might check it out.
Surely you must be suspicious that not a *shred* of high-quality evidence has surfaced in all of these decades of intense study? I can see it being elusive... but all-together invisible? I doubt it. Like I said before - nobody is looking for huge phenomenon - they gave that up a long time ago. They have been looking for the slightest blip on the statistical radar for years now. The problem is that when you start looking to that level of signal to noise ratio, your procedures have to be pretty much perfect so as to rule out non-psi factors.
Well, I don't agree that there hasn't been a "shred" of evidence for psi. Your language is utterly totalizing : "all-together invisible", "slightest lip." That's simply not true. If you would read Kuhn's book you would find that anomolous data often gets ignored, or even repressed, by the scientific community. I hate to sound like a creationist, but this does happen, either consciously or unconsciously. One of the problems with the extreme skeptical community is that they have almost turned science into a God of sorts, believeing that it is almost without error.
Keep in mind I am NOT saying that God, psi or any other idea outside orthodox science is true. I'm only saying that the skeptical community, and it's followers, which include yourself , are just as biased and have their own, quite dogmatic, philosophical agenda. Not enough attention is placed on the limits of science and how things really work in the scientific community. But, most skeptics and atheists do not want to do that or dismiss other views a priori. Comfort zone?
B.
