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12th June 2011, 06:27 AM | #441 |
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Very true, if there was anything to mysticism then all mystics would say more or less the same thing,but they don't. It's so vague and does nothing and explains nothing. I suppose mysticism is more attractive than science to a certain type of person. No bothersome proof or research,anyone can do it.
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12th June 2011, 06:31 AM | #442 |
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"Faith in what?" he asked himself, adrift in limbo. "Faith in faith," he replied. "It isn't necessary to have something to believe in. It's only necessary to believe that somewhere there's something worthy of belief." |
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12th June 2011, 06:43 AM | #443 |
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12th June 2011, 06:51 AM | #444 |
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"Faith in what?" he asked himself, adrift in limbo. "Faith in faith," he replied. "It isn't necessary to have something to believe in. It's only necessary to believe that somewhere there's something worthy of belief." |
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12th June 2011, 09:23 AM | #445 |
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Actually, all the most famous texts claim that forsaking food will make you hungry, and eventually, dead.
You need to find a better grade of most famous texts.
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12th June 2011, 10:04 AM | #446 |
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I belong to the category of people who live on the surface of the Earth.
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12th June 2011, 10:34 AM | #447 |
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A government is a body of people usually - notably - ungoverned. -Shepard Book |
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12th June 2011, 01:23 PM | #448 |
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12th June 2011, 01:27 PM | #449 |
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12th June 2011, 01:34 PM | #450 |
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12th June 2011, 01:36 PM | #451 |
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Science has done lots for mankind. What has mysticism ever done,except make some charlatans rich?
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12th June 2011, 01:42 PM | #452 |
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Funny that no one seems able to explain why.
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12th June 2011, 01:52 PM | #453 |
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Gist is the Dutch word for yeast. Interesting.
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12th June 2011, 02:02 PM | #454 |
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This a laymans definition, perhaps if you had bolded the previous sentence it would be a little closer to the mark.
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12th June 2011, 02:05 PM | #455 |
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12th June 2011, 02:20 PM | #456 |
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12th June 2011, 02:22 PM | #457 |
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12th June 2011, 02:55 PM | #458 |
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Okay.
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To the extent that you find useful meaning and joy and psychological healing and creative expression in mystical experiences they are worthwhile. We have altered states for a reason, they help us solve problems and become better people and start new ways of living and thinking. Why ruin the fun by pretending that it's real? Why take a natural biological event and declare you've had a revelation and start a religion? There's nothing special about them that we can't look at them thoughtfully or scientifically and study their origins like any other phenomenon. Indeed that's what a lot of neuroscientists are doing, Sam Harris seems to think there's a lot they can learn from these mystics. I think know a lot about the architecture of the mind and the human experience from my time as a "mystic", and I daresay I think we all have altered states and parallel experiences to a differing degrees. I can easily slip into those kinds of states, it's just intense daydreaming to me, part of a cornucopia of brain states that are like modules that have evolved in the mind. It's a very human thing that some people, religions and cults are abusing because they are confused about consciousness and what those states are.
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12th June 2011, 03:03 PM | #459 |
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12th June 2011, 04:44 PM | #460 |
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Because imagination and intuition aren't the only components of mysticism. Occasionally, veridical psychic experiences are part of it. Such as precognitive visions and archetypal dreams that come true. Telepathic experiences between loved ones, and out-of-body experiences of what is called turiya or the fourth state of consciousness in the Upanishads, and so forth. Mystical disciplines tend to bring out our psi sooner or later. Eventually, psi surfaces in ways that give the mystic opportunities to prove it to himself as an individual truth-seeker. As for science, it is too clumsy to prove psi. Its a mistake to think that science can handle it. The intuition of a mystic can go from a merely local, personal intuition to a non-local, transpersonal psychic intuition. In other words, instances of Extraordinary Knowing are experienced. Go ahead, tell me parapsychology is nothing but pseudoscience mumbo-jumbo and how there is no evidence yadda yadda. I will just refer you to books like Varieties of Anomalous Experience and Randi's Prize and leave it at that. |
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"Faith in what?" he asked himself, adrift in limbo. "Faith in faith," he replied. "It isn't necessary to have something to believe in. It's only necessary to believe that somewhere there's something worthy of belief." |
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12th June 2011, 05:28 PM | #461 |
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I'm not sure it's selectively ignoring as much as it is misunderstanding the definition and practicality of proof/evidence/fact, accordingly. |
12th June 2011, 06:00 PM | #462 |
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12th June 2011, 09:29 PM | #463 |
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Really? Could you be any more relative and circumventing?
I believe he's talking about the Universal Law of Attraction. Higher truths require blindly believing conjecture to obtain them. Ordinary truths just need proof. As slingblade said in post #6,
Originally Posted by slingblade
I must be missing the point. It seems this is just another thread about asserting the existence of higher powers? |
13th June 2011, 12:16 AM | #464 |
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haha, also Oxford says this about it, a tasty..
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Thanks, a naturalistic viewpoint isn't just the most correct, it's also the healthiest, physically and "spiritually" and that's really all I want people to see. |
13th June 2011, 12:36 AM | #465 |
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13th June 2011, 12:49 AM | #466 |
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Prove it. Your pattern-seeking brain still thinks you saw a pattern until you can really come up with naturalistic reasons you dreamed that. It's telling you mention this apologia for mysticism first. Dreams are amazing, but they evolved for a purpose like the rest of our biology. Their amazingness and seeming ability to get divine details about the future have natural explanations. It's more likely that the brain is adding up details and projecting into the future and occasionally get's it so right you think it divined the future.
Believers have lots of precognitive dream theories, but it's a falsfiable claim, it's a testable claim, and if you prove it you can have Randi's million. The cognitive mistake believers make in dismissing the skeptic's explanation of precognition is thinking there is a significance to whatever coincidence you have dreamed that outweighs a need for proof. There is no precognitive dream that is so detailed, so impossible to imagine, that you could say the phenomenon is proven. The nebulous nature of the phenomenon will keep it unproven and believed by millions forever. But by all means, present your evidence.
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13th June 2011, 01:12 AM | #467 |
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Interesting you've laid out an argument suitable for the seeding of spiritual consciousness there.
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Anyway these altered states, they are merely the tools and alongside other tools its what one crafts the self into which is the goal of mysticism.Like sculpture one person might create a Pieta and another a Duchamp or a Pollack. If and when a sculpture is a receptacle for the development(seeding) of a spiritual awareness, it might happen. What a more accomplished mystic is involved in is not covered in any of the above paragraphs and is more akin to the development of an artistic intuitive style, regarding a personal translation of potential trascendent intellectual structures. Alongside a quest to uncover the real . Oh by the way I noticed you said that there is no divine nature, how do you know this? |
13th June 2011, 01:32 AM | #468 |
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13th June 2011, 01:34 AM | #469 |
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13th June 2011, 01:41 AM | #470 |
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It's untestable; science gets along and understands most of how the Universe works without the idea of a, "Divine Nature," so, naturally, most scientists and skeptics will side with the null hypothesis and claim it's nonexistent.
I'm sure minds will change when you can offer evidence. |
13th June 2011, 02:20 AM | #471 |
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I don't understand. And what does spiritual consciousness mean? Awareness of your imagination? A lot of things put naturalistically sound exactly how some kind of spiritual tradition does things because reality is natural and they have found patterns etc through trial and error. If only they knew the naturalistic reality or science they could have continued to refine and expand but they became trapped in the mystical tradition. I think this has to do with how the reward system of the brain. Many "spiritual" experiences cause you to push all of the reward buttons and you stop looking for answers. Wouldn't it be nice? Natural philosophy demands all of your brain power and more, it is a greater burden to live with partial answers and no answers than to engage in some kind of mysticism. Maybe that's why it evolved. We're full of examples of how tiny lies and distortions are helpful to survival. If you think about it, human beings are remarkably delusional about everyday events, but just enough to maintain a semblance of reality to the conscious mind.
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13th June 2011, 02:28 AM | #472 |
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13th June 2011, 02:44 AM | #473 |
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Strawman.
There are hundreds of different stories of gods from all over the world. None of them are backed by any evidence at all; they are mutually contradictory; and we have significant documentary evidence of the evolution of these stories over time. The only reasonable conclusion is that they are nothing more than what they appear to be. |
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13th June 2011, 03:08 AM | #476 |
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Punshhh used the phrase 'nearly infinite' number. When it was pointed out to him that there was no such thing,he hand waved the answer away and came back with something about a number that he imagined was so close to infinity that it made no difference,coupled with some nonsense about that being a horizon for us,whatever that may mean. He will never admit to a mistake. He uses terms that we are familiar with in ways that shows he does not understand them, and when challenged he says that he is giving different meanings to the accepted etymologies. Have you heard of Graham's number punshhh? It is the largest number known to man. If all of the material in the universe was turned into ink you would still not have enough ink to write the number down. Yet even Graham's number is nowhere near infinity. Hand wave this away,you always do.
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/cyc/g/graham.htm |
13th June 2011, 03:43 AM | #477 |
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13th June 2011, 05:28 AM | #478 |
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13th June 2011, 05:55 AM | #480 |
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