Those of faith lack the use of the analytical mind: study (spirits, Christian)
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correction:
the fact is all you can accurately state is that in your experience you do not perceive that which is beyond the physical.
however the fact is that many folks do on a regular routine part of daily life perceive that which is beyond the physical
just what we were talking about! you have your experience.
other people have a different experience. all you can accurately speak to is your own experience.
to insist that others can not have an experience different than yours...is not accurate or correct.
we all have the equipment to perceive beyond the physical
some use it, some don't use it, some devalue it, some deny it exists, some ignore it, some shut it down
free will, free choice
Except that inherently anything a physical being can experience IS physical, and claims about the non-physical are therefore just that ... claims.
I acknowledge that some claim to have the ability to sense "beyond the physical". I find the claim absurd on its face for the reason stated above.
So yes, people have experiences that they regard as spiritual. These experiences are real (surprised you, I suspect, by saying that!). The open question is how they can be legitimately interpreted ... and whether the fact that subjective personal experiences exist for, say, you, should mean anything at all to, say, me. In my view, personal subjective experiences have no value other than to the experiencer. They are accessible only to the experiencer. No one else can validate that experience.
Others can seek similar experiences and there are ways to make oneself receptive to them because the subconscious is far more amenable to control than most people realize. But if I have some sort of transcendent, expansive personal experience, I have no right to impose an interpretation on what it means to anyone but myself. And I cannot expect anyone else to accept it or my interpretation. And I cannot really legitimately be sure of my own personal beliefs about the experience. Because the mind is prone to see agency where it doesn't exist, to see patterns where they don't exist, to see significance for oneself where it doesn't exist. These are all well-known and well understood perceptual quirks shared by pretty much all human beings.
So I have never understood why people are impressed with these things. They exist, they are interesting, but they are personal, subjective, and in my view are satisfyingly explicable entirely naturalistically.
I don't think you understand the concept of faith, versus understanding repetitive results based on real, repeatable experiments or actions.
We know why brakes work. If your break pads are good, and no hydraulic leaks, they will work every time, and we can test why. Every time. No faith needed, as the science can explain it.
Faith in the unseen and unheard is based on feelings, not experiments. Any feelings are base on your own perceptions, as even others of faith will never have the same perceptions.
Atheist are skeptics by definition. Show us why something exists, works or why we can have a repeatable, expected outcome, we will gladly endorse that.
BTW, we don't "believe" in science, we understand it. No airy, fairy belief needed, ever.
You totally misunderstood my example of the brakes. You do actually have faith in those brakes. If you did not you would have to take them apart and inspect them every time you used the car. I could sabotage your brakes and you would still have faith in them although you were just about to go off the thousand foot cliff because they were not trustworthy.
Your science example is just totally conceited claptrap. You should know full well that many or even most of the scientists on the Manhattan project had no idea what so ever that the bomb would work. The entire project was based on faith in the atomic theories of Einstein. Speaking of atomic matters, please tell me since their is only certainty in science, what does an alpha particle look like? Have you seen any buzzing around today. Airy fairy belief is essential in science. All scientific advances come from theoretical science that is as often incorrect as it is correct. Much of science is only understood because of observable effects of a theoretical cause. I used to stand and watch particles giving off a blue glow as they surpassed the speed of light and scintillated as they passed light particles, "if you believe in the particle theory of light". Anyway it was a nice blue glow. Science sees a result and create a cause which in so many cases is proven incorrect as knowledge advances.
The "Natural man" is the man that is in the normal condition that all people are born with. This man can not understand anything at all spiritually.
You really have been seriously indoctrinated into thinking limited brainwashing nonsense.
Everyone born is just a human. They do not have to have any acts by this god (that you won't define), to be "born again".
There are more spiritually advanced souls born into this world that you have no clue about that have never been indoctrinated nor will ever be indoctrinated by any religion.
this is exciting. that's what I like about your posts mordant. because you make correlations and connections that are expansive and insightful. I can see the sparks flying, the synapses firing. I mean that. You are absolutely spot on: there is nature and there is "beyond" nature. We perceive nature with one set of equipment that gathers and reports data. We perceive "beyond nature" with another set of equipment that gathers and reports data to us.
That is entirely correct, concise, elegant, and well put. Thank you. Using both sets of equipment gives us the most data with which to navigate reality and our daily life.
There is nothing magical or miraculous about it, it is simply accessing a different set of data. That which is beyond nature is not bound by the laws of nature. Hence what some call "miracles."
Thanks for the kind words, but this is a perfect example of seeing what you want and need to see, but you miss my point. We are physical beings. It is inherently illogical to talk about things outside the physical because we can inherently know zip, zilch, nada about such things, even if they exist -- which we have no sound reason to think they do. Any discussion of the supernatural are inherently empty assertions that lack the ability to be falsified / verified / proven.
It is also inherently wrong in my view to take things we don't understand and try to render them explicable by any means other than observation and experiment that can be observed and measured and verified by others -- not just something that happens exclusively in between one's ears. I have experienced things I don't have explanations for ... but I have not leapt to conclusions about them either. Nor do I feel any need to. If a thing is not verifiable than it's not actionable and it is therefore irrelevant until such time, if ever, that the situation changes.
Others can seek similar experiences and there are ways to make oneself receptive to them because the subconscious is far more amenable to control than most people realize.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by lucknow
You totally misunderstood my example of the brakes. You do actually have faith in those brakes. If you did not you would have to take them apart and inspect them every time you used the car. I could sabotage your brakes and you would still have faith in them although you were just about to go off the thousand foot cliff because they were not trustworthy.
Your science example is just totally conceited claptrap. You should know full well that many or even most of the scientists on the Manhattan project had no idea what so ever that the bomb would work. The entire project was based on faith in the atomic theories of Einstein. Speaking of atomic matters, please tell me since their is only certainty in science, what does an alpha particle look like? Have you seen any buzzing around today. Airy fairy belief is essential in science. All scientific advances come from theoretical science that is as often incorrect as it is correct. Much of science is only understood because of observable effects of a theoretical cause. I used to stand and watch particles giving off a blue glow as they surpassed the speed of light and scintillated as they passed light particles, "if you believe in the particle theory of light". Anyway it was a nice blue glow. Science sees a result and create a cause which in so many cases is proven incorrect as knowledge advances.
If we are going to have a debate, perhaps it would help if we understood the words we are using accurately.
Please explain what you think of when you use the word 'theory'. By what you wrote here, it would appear you have little to no understanding of science, but I could be misreading it. Maybe.
So, please, explain what you know about what a scientific theory is.
You totally misunderstood my example of the brakes. You do actually have faith in those brakes.
No, you are totally ignoring the simple fact that faith has multiple meanings. I will explain it again: faith in the sense you use it with brakes is a justified expectation based on empirical evidence. Faith in the religious sense is believing something despite a LACK of empirical evidence.
You are doing religious faith and justified expectations a disservice by conflating the two. But I predict that you will continue to do so because you are desperate to justify the demonstrably failed epistemology of religious faith and you think you have found a clever analogy simply because, as is often the case, the English language uses the same word for two different things.
You appear not to understand your own holy book. Here is ITS definition of religious faith: "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." It is believing in an invisible personal interventionist god despite that he is invisible, I cannot witness you conversing with him (other than your side of the imagined conversation) and I see zero evidence that he intervenes.
Guys like Jesus had a grasp of quantum mechanics. That time is measurable and yet unmeasurable - biblical quotes - to para phrase "To God a second is a thousand years and a thousand years but a second" - How far can we go into the infinitely small? How far can we go into the infinitely large? What is beyond eternity....certainly there must be something...that a physics that is not physical may exist.
We all imagine that people who lived 3000 years ago were stupid and we are perfectly smart...that the movement forward in time guarantees evolution - progress. That going back in time guarantees a de-evolution. In some cases we see a degrading of human intelligence as we move forward. As far as I understand the original doctrines set down by Christ were not put in place to create a religion. They were an attempt to bring mankind into a higher mindedness.
I have faith...in the idea that the universe is conscious - that it think...that there is a God...but my faith does not mean I am a religious person. Faith may be something separate of religion.
We are physical beings. It is inherently illogical to talk about things outside the physical because we can inherently know zip, zilch, nada about such things, even if they exist -- which we have no sound reason to think they do. Any discussion of the supernatural are inherently empty assertions that lack the ability to be falsified / verified / proven.
It is also inherently wrong in my view to take things we don't understand and try to render them explicable by any means other than observation and experiment that can be observed and measured and verified by others -- not just something that happens exclusively in between one's ears. I have experienced things I don't have explanations for ... but I have not leapt to conclusions about them either. Nor do I feel any need to. If a thing is not verifiable than it's not actionable and it is therefore irrelevant until such time, if ever, that the situation changes.
you are correct again, spot on again
physical worlds - explored and verified by using physical senses
non-physical realms - explored and verified by using other senses that we have
nothing supernatural about it, nothing magical about it, just another realm to access and gather data.
and yes, they are observed, verified, explored, and proven by individual participation. No one can do it for you. You are absolutely correct that it is entirely personal and individual.
it is the way to access the wisdom of your own soul. Each of us has 4 essential parts: physical body (we can all see that), emotions (we can't see them but we can feel them), intellect (our thoughts, we can't see them but we can hear them and generate the in our head as thoughts), and soul.
The only one of those 4 parts that is physical that can be "verified by others" as you put it is the physical body. Our thoughts and feelings are not visible. You can't prove to anyone what you are thinking or feeling, but your thoughts and feelings are very real nonetheless, and you receive the data they provide by listening to your thoughts, and feeling your feelings. Same with the soul. Not physical, but real. It communicates through both thought and feeling, but is distinctly different in the realms that it accesses and the data it provides.
So the questions you raise are spot on. Why bother with accessing the wisdom of your own soul? Well it's like the internet. A single person knows only so much, a small amount of knowledge. On the internet there are huge amounts of knowledge. When a person knows how to access the internet, they have access to a much larger body of knowledge than just what they as an individual know.
The wisdom of your own soul is like that. It knows more than you do in your brain. It can access a wider, broader, vista of knowledge, wisdom, guidance, answers. It can be measured, verified, observed, and proven by you and only you.
I had a buddy when we were talking about this decades ago, and she is as skeptical as they come, extremely practical and no-nonsense. She stated that it was a bunch of malarkey and if there was such a thing as wisdom of her soul, then it needed to be practical and useful and (yes mordant, just like you) verifiable. We were quilting buddies at the time, home with little kids, we liked to sew and make quilts and go to quilt shows. She called me up and said the very first message she got told her to check the blocks on the next two rows because she was just about to sew them in backwards. Sure enough, pinned backwards. She said "OK, i can do this."
So yes, measure, verify, observe, and prove. Not by others. Only by you. You don't insist that others verify your thoughts. You don't look to others to verify your feelings. Thoughts and feelings happen (in your words) "only between your ears" and only in your heart. You know they are real without insisting others verify them. You're already doing this. Same with your soul, no different.
Last edited by Tzaphkiel; 04-03-2016 at 10:05 PM..
My ideas are based on what we know about our physical make up. It's a fact that we are made of the elements that were formed in Supernova's from across this very old Universe.
This means we are made up of atoms that are Billions of years old. The atoms involved in shaping the path toward consciousness have Billions of years Universal Consciousness if you believe that atoms contain consciousness as theoretical physicist and mathematician, Freeman Dyson believed.
Quote:
This was written by Freeman Dyson: My personal theology is described in the Gifford lectures that I gave at Aberdeen in Scotland in 1985, published under the title, Infinite In All Directions.
Here is a brief summary of my thinking. The universe shows evidence of the operations of mind on three levels. The first level is elementary physical processes, as we see them when we study atoms in the laboratory. The second level is our direct human experience of our own consciousness. The third level is the universe as a whole.
Atoms in the laboratory are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom.
The universe as a whole is also weird, with laws of nature that make it hospitable to the growth of mind. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension. God may be either a world-soul or a collection of world-souls. So I am thinking that atoms and humans and God may have minds that differ in degree but not in kind. We stand, in a manner of speaking, midway between the unpredictability of atoms and the unpredictability of God. Atoms are small pieces of our mental apparatus, and we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus. Our minds may receive inputs equally from atoms and from God.
This view of our place in the cosmos may not be true, but it is compatible with the active nature of atoms as revealed in the experiments of modern physics. I don't say that this personal theology is supported or proved by scientific evidence. I only say that it is consistent with scientific evidence.
I personally don't like his use of the word god due to the damage and bizarre twisted associations given to this word by humans and religions.
The term Universal Consciousness works for me.
Perhaps all of this mystical god thinking would cease if people would learn how to quiet their human consciousness and learn through deep mediation how to connect to this Universal Consciousness. I know when I deeply meditate I find my answers. People would realize that they are not some special little god favorite and that this Universal Consciousness is available to everyone...you just have to be able to tap into it.
Meditation is one way to tap into it, DMT is another, some claim LSD does it for them, communing with nature works for some...you just have to find what works for you.
There is clearly something powerful about meditation. Unfortunately the West has always been slow at realizing this.
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People would realize that they are not some special little god favorite and that this Universal Consciousness is available to everyone...you just have to be able to tap into it. 
