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Old 10-20-2009, 04:15 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas R. View Post
I think with a Gnostic it's different. They're more saying "God is within" or "We're all God." It's a bit more like a pantheist maybe. A pantheist could say "Therefore I am God" but they're not saying they have any unique or special quality as they believe you're God, I'm also God, that tree over there is God, etc. God is everything or everything is part of God or what have you. (Although I think Gnostics focus more on people being part-God, not sure they necessarily believe trees and rocks are also part-God)

Gnosticism teaches that GOD exists in multiple definition: I am GOD, GOD is in me, GOD does not exist, GOD certaintly does exists, GOD is one, GOD is many, I am the only GOD and yet GOD is above existince.

Confusing? Suppose to be. GOD is, ultimately, as far removed from us as we are removed from our white blood cells. Can a white blood cell ever understand your motivation for getting a second mortage? No, but a white blood cell is a part of you and you, therefore, are the white blood cell. Take that same difference between you and the white blood cell and multiply it by about 100,000*10^80 and you might come close to the difference between the human ability to understand, and the true understanding of GOD.

However, just as even a cockroach can experience the refrigerator by living in it, touching it etc (i.e., experiencing it) without ever understanding, or ever hoping to have the ability of understanding what exactly it is, human beings can experience GOD without understanding it. That is what those of us who have studied religion come to know as Mysticism. Mysticism is a diferent experience with divinity, that goes outside of any intellectual thought....hence, it cannot be approached while looking for "empirical data", because this is another realm of being other then that which can be measured, added, subtracted, etc.

The human condition has many things that other then just hard facts, figures etc. Just as a golfer does not need to provide empiricial evidence as to the existince of the personal joy of playing golf and can, instead, just go ahead and enjoy the damn game, a mystic does not need to provide empirical evidence of the personal joys of a mystic experience, because joy goes beyond the empirical.
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Old 10-20-2009, 04:28 PM
 
Location: Nowhere'sville
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I'm disapointed. I thought I was arguing with a Christian!
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Old 10-20-2009, 04:35 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DaniMae1 View Post
I'm disapointed. I thought I was arguing with a Christian!

I am a Christian: A Gnostic Christian.

I believe in the teachings of Christ...not in a iron age Republican who died nailed to a big wooden "T" so that I could get the pie-in-the-sky-when-I-die.
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Old 10-20-2009, 06:34 PM
 
Location: Earth. For now.
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Victorianpunk, I Jjust wanted to say how much I do enjoy your posts. I may not agree with you on some things, but I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

I was trained as a scientist. My first degrees were toward Mathematics and Astrophysics. Suffice it to say that I really think the empiricism of the scientific method is an extremely powerful tool in discovering "truths" about the natural world. As such, I think it's hazardous to disregard its advances toward understanding the physical world. I do agree with you that it has its limits.

What science does not recognize - yet - is the reality of the non-physical. Even that phrase is an oxymoron for some! Brain researchers attempt to analogously compare human consciousness with mere software. (Of course, that then begs the question "who wrote the program?") And the general consensus among most scientists is that the physical brain somehow generates human consciousness.

This is contrary to many ancient teachings that consciousness generates (or at the least, partakes in) physicality. HOWEVER, I think, with the advent of the philosophical implications of Quantum theory we are at the brink of a sea change in science. Experiments that definitively prove that a conscious expectation can change the result of an objective experiment forces science into an area of human experience that it was uncomfortable with since the beginning of the Renaissance.

(A rather breathless explanation of one of those experiments can be found here.)

(A Wikipedia summary of this can be found here.)



So I would have to disagree with your dualistic premise that Faith = Success and Science = Failure. We may discover that a new science is in the offing. And a new faith.

Last edited by Astron1000; 10-20-2009 at 06:43 PM..
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Old 10-20-2009, 07:53 PM
 
6,351 posts, read 9,962,665 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Astron1000 View Post
Victorianpunk, I Jjust wanted to say how much I do enjoy your posts. I may not agree with you on some things, but I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

I was trained as a scientist. My first degrees were toward Mathematics and Astrophysics. Suffice it to say that I really think the empiricism of the scientific method is an extremely powerful tool in discovering "truths" about the natural world. As such, I think it's hazardous to disregard its advances toward understanding the physical world. I do agree with you that it has its limits.
Agreed. To say that either science or faith are both limitless in their efforts to enhance human life is failed on both fronts. There are things faith alone cannot do (faith alone cannot repair a ruptured Aortic artery) and there are things science alone cannot do (not equation will provide comfort to someone who's wife just died)



Quote:
What science does not recognize - yet - is the reality of the non-physical. Even that phrase is an oxymoron for some! Brain researchers attempt to analogously compare human consciousness with mere software. (Of course, that then begs the question "who wrote the program?") And the general consensus among most scientists is that the physical brain somehow generates human consciousness.
While I agree for the most part that human consciousness is all in the brain, at least on a surface level, to compare the compelexity of the human brain to computer soft wear, which breaks down to nothing more then a system of "00100010100001111000" is nuts. One cluster of brain cells alone is significantly more complex then even the most complex super computer.

Quote:
This is contrary to many ancient teachings that consciousness generates (or at the least, partakes in) physicality. HOWEVER, I think, with the advent of the philosophical implications of Quantum theory we are at the brink of a sea change in science. Experiments that definitively prove that a conscious expectation can change the result of an objective experiment forces science into an area of human experience that it was uncomfortable with since the beginning of the Renaissance.

(A rather breathless explanation of one of those experiments can be found here.)

(A Wikipedia summary of this can be found here.)
I personally think that the reason so many spiritual people, who are often, farely or not, called "new age", are so drawn to Quantam theory is not because of anything it says it knows, but because of what it says it does not know.

Much the same way the Taoist "Tao Te Ching" starts by saying "The Tao which can be talked about is not the eternal Tao. The name which can be spoken is not the eternal name," Quantam theory begins by saying that there are certain things out there that we as humans will never be able to really study, precieve, or understand.

Take dark energy, for example: Quantam Theorists believe it exist based on certain observations, but agree that there is most likely no way to ever be able to measure or precieve of it: Dark energy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now, I am not going to go ahead with some "Quantam mysticists" and claim that this is proof of magick, divinity etc, HOWEVER, I will say that in the way Quantam theory looks approaches the natural world, it PHILOSOPHICALLY is VERY similar to the way the mystics approach GOD/divinity/ultimate reality, in that it can never be truly understood, but only experienced.

It is more a philosophical implication thing then a hard-fact thing, i.e., Quantam Theory =/= The magick of Crystals works

Quote:
So I would have to disagree with your dualistic premise that Faith = Success and Science = Failure. We may discover that a new science is in the offing. And a new faith.
All I am saying is that, for the most part, we can not live off of either Empiricism or Faith alone. I have yet to meet any person of faith who claimed that they did not need any science. Even the most stubborn Young Earth Creationist will admit that math is necessary and that gravity is in fact a law, HOWEVER, I have met allot of people who, beyond just a disbelief in GOD, which I can understand, and a lack of religion, which I can also understand, claim that beyond Empiricism, there is nothing at all in the width and breath of human existince worth thinking about

As I have said, one cannot measure the joy of a summers afternoon on the beach, one cannot multiply the beauty of poetry and subtract the flow of words, and one cannot create an equation to explain why "yo mamma" jokes are so damn funny ("you're mamma so fat, she weights 32^9 kilos, even on Venus!"... no, it doesn't work, now does it?)

There are many things within the human condition for which empiricism, the basis of the sciences, falls short.
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Old 10-21-2009, 02:27 PM
 
Location: Somewhere out there
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Astron1000 View Post
Victorianpunk, I Jjust wanted to say how much I do enjoy your posts. I may not agree with you on some things, but I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

I was trained as a scientist. My first degrees were toward Mathematics and Astrophysics. Suffice it to say that I really think the empiricism of the scientific method is an extremely powerful tool in discovering "truths" about the natural world. As such, I think it's hazardous to disregard its advances toward understanding the physical world. I do agree with you that it has its limits.

What science does not recognize - yet - is the reality of the non-physical. Even that phrase is an oxymoron for some! Brain researchers attempt to analogously compare human consciousness with mere software. (Of course, that then begs the question "who wrote the program?") And the general consensus among most scientists is that the physical brain somehow generates human consciousness.

So I would have to disagree with your dualistic premise that Faith = Success and Science = Failure. We may discover that a new science is in the offing. And a new faith.
Astron, don't you then agree that there must be some physical/biochemical/logic circuit explanation for how we animals think, but that it just has not been clearly illucidated yet? I mean, in computers, we're sort of limited to a binary system in computer design, it being a 0/1, on-off, yes-no system because we can turn little solid-state devices on and off rapidly, while our own minds may be based on a system that is based on whatever: a logic base of 5.6, rather than 2, or a system that alternates between five different logic states. Just speculating. We're currently limited in how we can emulate or mimic our brain's intelligence, but still, we're making progress.

Or do you believe, alternately, that there is some vast inexplicable (i.e.: forever illogical and undiscoverable) and thus supernatural system out there, having it's happy way with our minds, and toying with our emotions?

I believe some folks really want and need that option. They want it to never be explained, because then they can count on inexplicable things, and they can grant impossible and implausible powers to other-worldly beings. and then perhaps their prayers will be answered, even though statistics now tells us, quite reliably, that prayer has no effect on anything. Except one's self-deluded state of mind.

Personally, I don't need to assign such powers out there, and I'm happy with the huge progress the scientific toolset has achieved so far, in such a relatively short time (200 years versus man's time here on Earth, several billion years...), in managing how we ask and answer questions. Others, I can plainly see, do not like that rational approach. Probably because it's completely blown out of the water so many of the things once thought to be "spiritual" and "inexplicable".

Life, and knowlege, marches inexoribly onwards.
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Old 10-21-2009, 05:18 PM
 
Location: Earth. For now.
1,289 posts, read 2,120,213 times
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Rifleman,

Yes, there is clear evidence that the brain does have that circuitry. I'm just pointing out that the consensus is that the physical brain produces what we think of as "consciousness." This is usually assumed to be the same as "thought." And while we're not nearly advanced enough in the research to know whether this is really true, it is taken as an assumption in science.

But if Eugene Wigner's (and similarly, Werner Heisenberg & others) interpretation of how the collapse of the waveform occurs in quantum mechanics ("conscious" observation causes the probability to resolve itself into a determined state) is correct it means that consciousness itself causes a physical change in the universe. It seems to support the idea that consciousness is not bound by the physical brain, which is certainly what the esoteric masters have been saying for thousands of years.

Another interpretation is given by physicist David Bohm and neuroscientist Karl Pribram, who argue quite convincingly that the brain is essentially a holographically-based generator and receiver of information, which opens another door to a re-interpretation of objective reality.

Memories are stored as an interference pattern across the brain, not in isolated locations. The interesting corollary to this is that the universe itself may be holographic. (Seems like a big jump, but it's too involved to go into here.) Again, what this does is open the door to a scientific investigation - for the first time in history - of the idea of an "unmanifested" reality, that comes into focus only through the observation of a mind.

That last sentence sounds like a whopper, but there are plenty of manuscripts out there about the philosophical implications. Some are waaaay to quickto jump onto the "universe-is-illusion" band wagon. But it is a very intriguing development in science.

I am not in that camp that needs a supernatural answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. (Besides, we already know the answer is 42 ) But what I think is fascinating is that we may discover that the supernatural is simply an as-yet-uncovered part of the natural, a part that stretches or even undermines our idea that the only valid reality is concrete and physical. We're partway there already. It can be easily demonstrated that a magnetic field affects physical objects, but we really haven't the faintest idea of what it actually is.

Sorry about the long post

Last edited by Astron1000; 10-21-2009 at 05:36 PM..
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Old 10-21-2009, 05:35 PM
 
19,045 posts, read 25,151,745 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Astron1000 View Post
Rifleman,
But if Eugene Wigner's (and similarly, Werner Heisenberg & others) interpretation of how the collapse of the waveform occurs in quantum mechanics ("conscious" observation causes the probability to resolve itself into a determined state) is correct it means that consciousness itself causes a physical change in the universe. It seems to support the idea that consciousness is not bound by the physical brain, which is certainly what the esoteric masters have been saying for thousands of years.
Can you explain this a bit more. What's the application in the day-to-day? Something easy to understand, if you don't mind.

Quote:
Another interpretation is given by physicist David Bohm and neuroscientist Karl Pribram, who argue quite convincingly that the brain is essentially a holographically-based generator and receiver of information, which opens another door to a re-interpretation of objective reality.
I had Bohm's book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, many moons ago. I didn't finish it, but what I remember is that it was lovely. I'm inspired to give it another go.
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Old 10-21-2009, 06:29 PM
 
Location: Earth. For now.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Braunwyn View Post
Can you explain this a bit more. What's the application in the day-to-day? Something easy to understand, if you don't mind.
Well, there's the rub. There is a huge disconnect right now between "reality" on the quantum level, and "reality" on the human-scaled level.

Quantum experiments prove that the expectation of the outcome actually influences the outcome. Does this translate into the "human" scale? We don't know.

While it is certainly true that you, me and the keyboards between us are 99.999999% empty space, we still perceive them as solid objects. At what scale where our perception of physicality occurs is still an open question. It's even convincingly argued that there is no such thing as physical objects on the quantum/sub-atomic scale. An electron is not an "object" at all. It's a probability. But what the hell does that mean?

Somehow, someway, our brains resolve these quadrillions of probabilities into something we call "physical." And we do it nearly instantaneously. How it's done is still a mystery. That brings me to your other comment:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Braunwyn View Post
I had Bohm's book, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, many moons ago. I didn't finish it, but what I remember is that it was lovely. I'm inspired to give it another go.
It really is an amazing book! Bohm's theory postulates an implicate order to basic reality. It's really too complex to summarize in a few words, and I think I've hijacked the thread too much already, but basically it's a way to reconcile two "absolutely true" theories in physics.

That is, Quantum Mechanics is the most heavily tested and arguably the most successful theory in the history of physics. If quantum mechanics wasn't true, your television shouldn't work. A TV is a device that uses quantum mechanical effects.

But General Relativity is also demonstrably true. We use it every day through our GPS devices, which utilize relativity calculations to ensure you are really driving down 3rd Avenue and not Central Avenue.

And the problem is that general relativity and quantum mechanics are contradictory.

Bohm argues (and we should really take his theories seriously - I mean, this was a guy who contributed significantly to the Manhattan Project, working with Oppenheimer and later with Einstein at Princeton) that both theories are manifestations of an underlying reality he calls the "implicate order."

Whew! I'm not going to go into depth about that, but I just wanted to point it out in case anyone really wants to research it for themselves. I do have to thank Victorianpunk again for opening up this can of worms. I think it's really fun to discuss these things, though I think I hear a lot of snoring out there!!

Last edited by Astron1000; 10-21-2009 at 07:23 PM..
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Old 10-21-2009, 06:57 PM
 
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I had his book maybe 15 years ago, before college. Not that I'll be able to understand much, but I was stumped when I came across the first page of equations. I've had a bit of physics since then, so I'm hoping it will be a bit easier of a read. Either way, I remember that it was exciting.
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