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Then why can't I see it? Do I have a condition? Like "God Blindness"? Or are you a chosen one??? Some believe in those "chosen" ones you know.
It probably is possible for a person to have God(swt) blindness. But it may be closer to Not seeing what they expect God(swt) to look like.
Not seeing God(swt) is similar, one sees the effects of God(swt) with your eyes, you have to look at the results. Sort of like no one has ever seen electricity. We can only see the results. An electric spark or lightening are not electricity they are the effects of it.
One does not "see" God(swt) directly, they see the effects and From there arrive at a conclusion and eventually realize all things are an effect of God(swt).
Sort of like when you put a shirt on, You don't see the person who designed it, but eventually you might come to the conclusion somebody did.
You are referring to Persinger's "God Helmet" experiments where the subjects reported sensing a 'presence'. Unfortunately for you, no-one has been able to successfully replicate those experiments using methodologically sound double blind studies. No effect has been shown on the brain by the very weak EM fields he used. It seems to be more to do with suggestibility of the subjects (ie wishful thinking).
I do love the quibblers who present a lack of replication of findings (which is not true) for science they do not agree with by charging they are NOT methodologically sound. You know there are replications . . . you just wanted to mischaracterize the situation. If priming effects work for the appearance of the phenomenon . . . they can also work against it.
I don't know. I guess reality being responsible for your existence, mine and everybody else's along with absolutely everything that exists . . . is not sufficiently Godly for you to acknowledge. You would rather simply say "We don't know what reality is or why . . . it just is" . . . rather than acknowledge it as God. My friend GldnRule would call it God-o-phobia . . . but I don't know what it is.
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Originally Posted by PoppySead
Stop the presses!! Did you really just say "I don't know" !!!!
I know, right?? Weird how that works!
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Well, then, again you have my answer as an atheist. An atheist doesn't know God, has never seen God, heard God or experienced God. We lack God as a basis for our reality. Who's fault is that? Should I believe in something I can't? How do you suppose I go about that?
Absolutely not. I wouldn't have it for a minute!
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Since you've been given no way to share God and only rely on someone to belief what you say then I guess some of us are just going to be "Godless." You can't ask me to believe in something that isn't Tangible, you can only hope I do, or wish for me to. Big difference. This is why Theists have many colors, many books, many beliefs. No tangible way to share God has been given to you. So you try the best you can as humans to convince others to believe. This has been a failed attempt. This is why there is no unity amongst religions. Hear say isn't evidence of anything but other human beings, surely not a God.
I know this all seems like an effort to convince . . . but then how would we differentiate an effort to explain and defend from an effort to convince???
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To be God-o-phobic, I'd have to be in fear of God. Only Theists fear God, so I guess my dear friend Goldie Rule would have to come up with a new catch phrase for us.
That is not true. All we have as proof of the existence of consciousness is indirect . . . from our interactions with it. How is that any different than the indirect interactions we see for dark energy and dark matter?
The difference is the ability to objectively observe and quantify. In the case of dark matter and energy, we can do this...we can observe their effects and we can measure them. The "consciousness field" cannot be measured objectively (using something aside from a live subject) and certainly cannot be quantified.
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When you can explain how a composite form of energy/mass that is produced by our brain can reside in physical matter . . . you will go a long way to refuting my field claims. As it stand the only locus for such an energy composite (analogous to"fire") is the unified field that establishes our reality.
I don't have to refute your claims, I am merely pointing out that there is no objective evidence for them. To my knowledge there is no scientifically accepted theory that posits the existence of energy/mass produced by our brains, so why would I be concerned about where such hypothetical matter/energy would reside? Again, if you want to believe that out brains generate an unmeasurable matter/energy/field, that's your business. It just doesn't make a compelling argument in my eyes, and it certainly doesn't make a scientific one.
That is not true. All we have as proof of the existence of consciousness is indirect . . . from our interactions with it. How is that any different than the indirect interactions we see for dark energy and dark matter? When you can explain how a composite form of energy/mass that is produced by our brain can reside in physical matter . . . you will go a long way to refuting my field claims. As it stand the only locus for such an energy composite (analogous to"fire") is the unified field that establishes our reality.
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Originally Posted by Hyker
Hello again MysticPhD.
The difference is the ability to objectively observe and quantify. In the case of dark matter and energy, we can do this...we can observe their effects and we can measure them. The "consciousness field" cannot be measured objectively (using something aside from a live subject) and certainly cannot be quantified.
I don't have to refute your claims, I am merely pointing out that there is no objective evidence for them. To my knowledge there is no scientifically accepted theory that posits the existence of energy/mass produced by our brains, so why would I be concerned about where such hypothetical matter/energy would reside? Again, if you want to believe that out brains generate an unmeasurable matter/energy/field, that's your business. It just doesn't make a compelling argument in my eyes, and it certainly doesn't make a scientific one.
Thanks.
What ARE you, Hyker. The entity that I am conversing with? You are real and you have definite ideas and arguments that distinguish you from me and everyone else. As a real component of this reality you MUST be comprised of energy/mass in some form? So where are you and what are you made of? Just for clarification . . . I am NOT conversing with your body wherever it is. I am conversing with YOU.
I do love the quibblers who present a lack of replication of findings (which is not true) for science they do not agree with by charging they are NOT methodologically sound. You know there are replications . . . you just wanted to mischaracterize the situation. If priming effects work for the appearance of the phenomenon . . . they can also work against it.
That's a blatant lie. Persinger's "God Helmet" findings have NOT been replicated by anyone else. I'm calling your bluff. Please present the authors and titles of Journal research articles and I'll download them right now.
I'm also not at all swayed by your claims of "studying the science". All I'm seeing is vague "sciency sounding" waffle and giant illogical leaps from you on this topic. Or as one cognitive neuroscientist puts it: "intellectually bastardised ideas permeating the unregulated internet."
What is ironic is that if anyone was able to reproduce Persinger's findings in such a way as to rule out suggestibility, bias etc, it wouldn't actually be an argument in favour of your claims anyway.
"....the only published attempt at replication (of Persinger's God Helmet experiment) failed to evoke a ‘sensed presence’ (Granqvist et al., 2005). Using kit and code borrowed from Persinger himself, Granqvist and colleagues could not reproduce his effects. They did, however, show that subjects’ scores correlated with their suggestibility. In a biting critique they argue that Persinger’s experiments weren’t properly double-blinded, subjects’ expectations were biased before the experiments and that the items on Persinger’s questionnaire were arbitrary and idiosyncratic (Granqvist et al., 2005).
Crucially, Granqvist and colleagues argue, entirely correctly, that the magnetic fields generated by the God helmet are far too weak to penetrate the cranium and influence neurons within. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) uses field strengths of around 1.5 tesla in order to induce currents strong enough to depolarise neurons through the skull and cause them to fire. Persinger’s apparatus, on the other hand has a strength of around 1 millitesla. To give you some context, that’s 5000 times weaker than a typical fridge magnet. Granqvist argues that there is simply no way that this apparatus is having any meaningful effect on the brain...."
What ARE you, Hyker. The entity that I am conversing with? You are real and you have definite ideas and arguments that distinguish you from me and everyone else. As a real component of this reality you MUST be comprised of energy/mass in some form? So where are you and what are you made of? Just for clarification . . . I am NOT conversing with your body wherever it is. I am conversing with YOU.
Hello again MysticPhD.
I fear that at this point we reach an impass, because we are working under a different set of assumptions. I do not hold to your gnostic argument that I am not my body...indeed, as far as I know I am my body as much as I am anything. My thoughts are the result of a unique pattern of neural connections that are not exactly replicated in any other human brain (and almost certainly will never be replicated).
Nonetheless I am not defined by my brain any more than I am my liver or my pancreas. But the entire apparatus must work together to generate my experience of consciousness. After all, if my liver shuts down I will not be conversing with you very long.
I do not believe that my consciousness is something magical...it is just the sum of my brain activity. The same is true of my dog as well. The dog feels emotions: excitement, fear, contentment. When she sleeps, she dreams. Does she also have a mystical consciousness apart from her body, and if not what distinguishes the dog from me, that I should have such a thing and she does not?
There is no question whatsoever that reality exists and that is God . . . since it is responsible for us and everything else that exists. Hard to be more Godly than that. So the issue is not comparing things that have questionable existence with God . . . because God IS reality and that definitely exists.
Horse Pucky!
There is a questions, in fact you have never made a cohererent argument as to why this is the case, merely semantic quibblings that rely on you using the word "God" as a meaningless label. You have been called on this countless times, and given the opportunity to use the feedback to strengthen your argument, and yet we are back to this.
Reality is what exists and to declare it a God you need to explain what the minimum requirements are to be a God and how they apply. A good starting point would be to assume two otherwise identical realities, one divine, one not. What would be the difference? How would you know?
The fact that all you have is assertion. You strip the word of any meaning becasue that is a belief about God) then assign it to reality, and proceed to fill in the definition arbitrarily. It is a fundamentally dishonest and deceptive argument. Before you go and get your paranoid fantasies in a twist, I am not a sock puppet, I am not insulting you, but I am criticizing your method of "explaining" yourself.
Now that being said, this thread is about consciousness fields, not God, so if you would like to have this discussion again, we can start another thread, I will be happy to point out where you are skipping steps or glossing over logical difficulties. The fact that you still throw out the same tired assertions without bothering to examine your own arguments tells me that it is beyond reson or logic for you, this is a point of dogma, and any attempt to question is blasphemey against the prophet Mystic, the one true knower of God...
Suffice to say, this has not been demonstrated. There is a question, a great many in fact. Reality = God is certainly not a demonstrable fact.
The irony of this is not lost on me because of their constant rebuke that I am just responding to my subjective experiences!
There is nothing wrong with responding to subjective experience. You suggest this is a "constant rebuke" but I have not seen anyone making it. Could you link perhaps to a number of these "constant" rebukes?
The issue is not responding to it - but _how_ one responds to them. The conclusions one reaches off the back of them.
When the conclusions are not supported by any evidence - and do not match up with or parse with reality - then there is an issue. And this is the case with many of the threads you have started of late.
As I said to you once before - I have had all the experiences and more that you have thus far described in meditation. And even assuming you had such experiences at all and are not simply making them up for effect - which I do not assume at all but just for the sake of this - I see nothing in my experiences that even begins to validate the conclusions you make off the back of them.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
Fundamentalists and strong atheists are on opposite ends of the same spectrum . . . and equally blinded, IMO.
The simple realization that our material "stuff" comprises less than 5% of our reality should give pause to those so totally invested in it. But it doesn't.
Yes it does. There are some large and baffling questions still open which our sciences are attempting to answer. But that does not give basis to you to simply play "god of the gaps" and make up anything you like and support it nothing but vague references to human ignorance.
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Originally Posted by MysticPhD
The myriad absurd and self-contradictory attributes added to God in the extant religions certainly complicates and makes any specific selection and commitment problematic.
Such as the attribute of even existing in the first place - which you have failed to evidence in any way in your 1000s of posts on the subject.
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) then assign it to reality, and proceed to fill in the definition arbitrarily. It is a fundamentally dishonest and deceptive argument. Before you go and get your paranoid fantasies in a twist, I am not a sock puppet, I am not insulting you, but I am criticizing your method of "explaining" yourself. 
