Sure, Snoop. I'd go along with that, as well as the converse: "non-materialism" being a legitmate owrldview but not the full picture.
earl
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An excerpt from Lives of the Psychics - The Shared Worlds of Science and Mysticism
Fred M. Frohock
[James] Randi has remained fascinated and repulsed by the capacity of individuals to resist what he considers decisive evidence that explodes a belief or phenomenon. Once he was on a panel in Casper, Wyoming, with Charles Tart, a psychologist and parapsychologist (which to Randi's mind is like being a Baptist who plays cards). Tart explained at the opening of the discussion that he first became convinced of parapsychology when a female colleague in Berkeley, California, had a pre-seeing experience in the last days of World War II. She had been sleeping soundly after a long day of work. At 1:30 A.M. she suddenly sat bolt upright in bed and knew that something terrible had happened, though what exactly had occurred she did not know. She got out of bed, turned on the light, and went to the window. The street outside was still. Nothing seemed amiss. Suddenly the glass in the window shook violently. She thought it was an earthquake, except that the reverberations subsided quickly. Her feeling of dread continued as she returned to bed and sleep.
The next morning she learned that the city of Port Chicago, twenty-five miles from Berkeley, had literally been blown off the map in an explosion of a ship at 1:30 in the morning, killing 130 people. Tart had accepted this as a paranormal event because his friend had actually gotten out of bed and gone over to the window with the feeling of dread before the explosion shook her window.
Randi looked around the room, expecting that people would be breaking out in smiles as they solved the mystery. But there was no reaction whatsoever. So he wrote a question on the back of one of his business cards and handed it a couple of seats over to a geologist he had met before the conference began. The man nodded his head and left the room. He came back a few minutes later and handed Randi a card with a single phrase on it, "eight seconds." The question Randi had asked him was, "What is the difference in time in the arrival of a shock wave through rock and air over a thirty-five-mile distance?"
At breakfast the next day Randi went over to Tart's table. Tart, Randi recalls, was sitting there with a plate of scrambled eggs and a cup of coffee. He reached up and shook Randi's hand and invited him to sit down. Randi then delivered the story of the eight-second delay and the observation that his friend had felt the vibration of the shock wave in rock first, which then had alerted her to the fact that something had occurred. Randi remembers Tart smiling broadly, his mouth full of scrambled eggs, and saying, "Mr. Randi, I expect that is the kind of solution you would rather accept." Randi looked at Tart and admitted, "Yes, I certainly would rather accept that," which to Randi meant and means accepting evidence and the physical laws that the evidence supports.
Fred M. Frohock
[James] Randi has remained fascinated and repulsed by the capacity of individuals to resist what he considers decisive evidence that explodes a belief or phenomenon. Once he was on a panel in Casper, Wyoming, with Charles Tart, a psychologist and parapsychologist (which to Randi's mind is like being a Baptist who plays cards). Tart explained at the opening of the discussion that he first became convinced of parapsychology when a female colleague in Berkeley, California, had a pre-seeing experience in the last days of World War II. She had been sleeping soundly after a long day of work. At 1:30 A.M. she suddenly sat bolt upright in bed and knew that something terrible had happened, though what exactly had occurred she did not know. She got out of bed, turned on the light, and went to the window. The street outside was still. Nothing seemed amiss. Suddenly the glass in the window shook violently. She thought it was an earthquake, except that the reverberations subsided quickly. Her feeling of dread continued as she returned to bed and sleep.
The next morning she learned that the city of Port Chicago, twenty-five miles from Berkeley, had literally been blown off the map in an explosion of a ship at 1:30 in the morning, killing 130 people. Tart had accepted this as a paranormal event because his friend had actually gotten out of bed and gone over to the window with the feeling of dread before the explosion shook her window.
Randi looked around the room, expecting that people would be breaking out in smiles as they solved the mystery. But there was no reaction whatsoever. So he wrote a question on the back of one of his business cards and handed it a couple of seats over to a geologist he had met before the conference began. The man nodded his head and left the room. He came back a few minutes later and handed Randi a card with a single phrase on it, "eight seconds." The question Randi had asked him was, "What is the difference in time in the arrival of a shock wave through rock and air over a thirty-five-mile distance?"
At breakfast the next day Randi went over to Tart's table. Tart, Randi recalls, was sitting there with a plate of scrambled eggs and a cup of coffee. He reached up and shook Randi's hand and invited him to sit down. Randi then delivered the story of the eight-second delay and the observation that his friend had felt the vibration of the shock wave in rock first, which then had alerted her to the fact that something had occurred. Randi remembers Tart smiling broadly, his mouth full of scrambled eggs, and saying, "Mr. Randi, I expect that is the kind of solution you would rather accept." Randi looked at Tart and admitted, "Yes, I certainly would rather accept that," which to Randi meant and means accepting evidence and the physical laws that the evidence supports.
Oh! There I go again, falling prey to my materialistic ways... always looking for a plausible explanation before reaching for inexplicable one.
T
Tao_Equus
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Sure, Snoop. I'd go along with that, as well as the converse: "non-materialism" being a legitmate owrldview but not the full picture.
If it is not material then surely it is immaterial?
Before I have even replied to the Chaotic Brain function thread I am going to pull it into this discussion, I warned you I would be using it a lot
Belief is a function of brain. When you believe something you look at all information through the lens of that belief. Physically for the brain this is akin to a body-builder building muscle. Your brain accepts information as relevant and will fit it into your belief, or simply rejects it without processing, recognising quickly it is incompatible in the well developed belief. Only by persistently using an independent and subjective materialist methodology for information processing can you hope to provide any counter to the brains propensity to channel information and accept/reject it based solely on what amounts to training. (Again I will thump my bongo stating that religions have long known this and it is why they strive to indoctrinate children).
Subjective materialist thinking is science. It is so useful because it is a model or frame of reference that evolves with each bit of research like a collective neural network. It is the nature of this pooling of neural processing, (which has exactly the same emergent properties of individual neural network construction), that no single voice is heard unless it fits in with many many others. Science is the thinking brain of humanity as a whole and as such is a chaos theory driven emergent property in complete harmony with evolution theory.
What I think those who choose belief do is choose themselves, their own neural training, over the collective. The goal of a scientist is to publish papers that stand up to the scrutiny of all comers. Belief does not invite critical scrutiny, indeed it abhors it, but instead filters all information through itself creating an artificial bias that pollutes everything. Of course individual scientists must use their own neural constructs before passing it to the collective, and as such tie themselves to 'seed nodes' (extant theories). Scientists are people too and have biases and ego's but unlike with belief they have to stand up to scrutiny and be consistent within a bigger picture not of their making and, crucially, without any pre-conceived conclusion to filter everything through.
If I had been posting here through my 20's you would have seen someone a lot more like PoO, Andrew/Taijasi, or, yes!, even you Earl
But as my database of information gleaned from science journals and books increased in volume and I applied the methodology of critical evaluation into more areas of my thinking these fragile beliefs I once had were all shown to be self-indulgences, and clearly painted through the filter of my own trained neural bias.And so, as some of you will remember, I state that I have no beliefs. Each and every explanation of supernatural cause and effect painted here has not been confirmed by our collective superbrain. They have all been studied by science, not one has produced a single unambiguous result. The position I set out earlier, that all experiences of communication with non-human life are already explainable using absolutely conventional cause and effect of familiarity/education and bursts of neural activity that give us a little high as a reward for recognition of a neural success. It is not a special connection it is a self-congratulation. And the filters of belief love them!
seattlegal
Mercuræn Buddhist
Um...I think that is called enabling one's magnetosphere. Kind of like tossing iron filings into the air and watching as they are attracted to and reveal the lines of the magnetic influence of the individual. Quite startling to suddenly perceive.
By the way, this is a real picture, taken from one of the US Apollo missions, of the earth's magnetosphere...not an artist's rendition.
New data on Earth's magnetosphere reveals the invisible
[SIZE=-1]Right[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]: An artist's "cartoon" hints at the complexity and vastness of the magnetosphere. The structures present are shaped by the Solar wind, and magnetospheric "storms" can affect communications, power grids, and other important aspects of modern life on Earth.[/SIZE]
Oh, I quite agree - if there's a plausible explanation that fits, it would be foolish to ignore it. I also got the shockwave explanation before Randi mentioned it, as it was obvious as well.
*The trouble is - which I believe is a core point on this thread - is that sometimes there are experiences that defy easy explanation.
That means avoiding falling for easy answers, which are similarly lacking either theory or proof, whether through "New Age" or reductionist bias.
If I had been posting here through my 20's you would have seen someone a lot more like PoO, Andrew/Taijasi, or, yes!, even you Earl
Interesting, because I think both Path and myself at least have some degree of scientific background/training, and our spiritual explorations are explored within this context, rather than in spite of it. **
* Interestingly enough, on the subject of earthquakes, it is widely reported anecdotally that before a quake strikes, various species of animal will start to act erratically or in a panicked manner. Some have suggested the animals may be precognitive or have some otherwise hidden "psychic" talent. However, we already know that a number of animals both use the earth's magnetic field for navigation, and a large number can perceive ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum outside of our own visible range. I would therefore argue that electromagnetic changes in the affected zone that proceed an earthquake are therefore quite visible - directly or indirectly - to a number of species, which therefore leads to their change in behaviour. After all, if you were paddling in the sea, and suddenly the area around you began to bubble and thrash for no apparent reason, you'd figure to get the hell out of that immediate area. I'm sure I've seen scientific reports from quake measurements showing a surge of radio waves can proceed the sharp release of energy in least some types of earthquake. Hence the potential answer to such changes of animal behaviour has already been provided. Whether this forms any part of any recognised scientific theory is unknown to me.
** I firmly believe that a large degree of spiritual experiences, so-called psychic phenomena, and a range of other unexplained events can be at least partially described by the actions of electro-magnetism (see above). In that regard, I am not simply trying to validate the spiritual experience, but feel there is a clear scientifically testable set of mechanisms in play. The problem is, I don't think research has particularly focused on these areas, because there is no obvious commercial or military benefit in doing so. Unfortunately, there are clear commercial benefits to exaggerating and sensationalising certain topic areas, so any potential kernel of useful information gets wrapped around in lots of gunk, making it harder to make a valid appraisal because there is too little real information to appraise. Hence the reliance on the personal experience as a formative source as a more valuable and less corrupted source of information, especially if you can challenge your perceptual set and existing biases.
T
Tao_Equus
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Gaia is an invisible space octopus!! Hmmmm.... maybe time to start that business, erm I mean religion. "Gaian Temple of the Magnetic Space Octopus"...Um...
New data on Earth's magnetosphere reveals the invisibleBut heck, the title of the article is Seeing the Invisible
[SIZE=-1]Right[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]: An artist's "cartoon" hints at the complexity and vastness of the magnetosphere. The structures present are shaped by the Solar wind, and magnetospheric "storms" can affect communications, power grids, and other important aspects of modern life on Earth.[/SIZE]
Pre order the DVD of my first sermon now!! Only $45.00 (+ $9.99 sales tax and postage)
seattlegal
Mercuræn Buddhist
T
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Naw, it's the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Damn.....I missed the boat
I should have known there is nothing fasta than pasta. 
![203796main_FTE_400[1].jpg](/community/data/attachments/0/672-e3c99b32dcce6c9f44fbec44da7156f1.jpg)
HP Lovecraft, a writer at the turn of the 20th century, who envisioned a universe ruled by tentacled beings blind to the interests of humans...
Cephalopods are seriously interesting as a group as well - communication via colour and patterns, with some species being highly intelligent...
Seriously, how fluffy would people get about spiritual issues if they felt that angels looked more like giant squid then beautiful people with feathers?
Hence the joys of blind anthropomorphism. We can't handle the truth!
This is part and parcel of my belief of 'it is all a miracle and there are no miracles', and 'there is no supernatural, it is all natural'
Like the pictures of old of giant squid attacking a ship which we thought to be mythological creatures...we now know those ship that were what 10-15m and the giant squid we found tentacles of are 20-25m...seems plausible...as is hands on healing, and many forms of 'psychic powers', crystals, smudging, etc. We just don't have the knowledge/science to explain it all yet so it is hokum/BS etc.
Like when NIH decided accupuncture was proven to be good for back pain at the same time they still couldn't figure out what life force is or the meridians. Now they have sensors that have tracked the meridians low and behold right along the lines of what the ancients drew...
'scuse me while I go talk to the statue and his friends in the fern garden.
Then in the spirit of cordiality I shall agree with your agreement.
Materialism, which is the perspective in which causality belongs, is an eminently useful tool. The more lights that are shone on an object from different angles, the more complete our understanding is likely to be of said object, I think (nearly said believe there
).s.
What would you call your relationship to materialism?
What would you call your relationship to existentialism?
s.
For further consideration, Snoopy-an essay against the materialist view of mind by a Buddhist in the Western Buddhist Review:Then in the spirit of cordiality I shall agree with your agreement.
Materialism, which is the perspective in which causality belongs, is an eminently useful tool. The more lights that are shone on an object from different angles, the more complete our understanding is likely to be of said object, I think (nearly said believe there
s.
Minding Pinocchio
And Tao holds no belief? Yeah, like that old chestnut is going to fly.
earl
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And Tao holds no belief? Yeah, like that old chestnut is going to fly.
What I find interesting earl, is the desire to label Tao (and I perhaps) as "materialists" and then to present an essay that supposedly describes what we think and shoots down the basis for our mistaken perceptions and concepts.
Until I'd taken part in these posts I had never heard of materialism, never attended a materialist meeting, subscribed to a materialist newsletter or had my car washed at a materialist fund-raiser. I have now only an inkling of what a materialist is supposed to believe. I even had to look it up to get a definition...
Materialism
The philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter, and is considered a form of physicalism. Fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions; therefore, matter is the only substance. As a theory, materialism belongs to the class of monist ontology. As such, it is different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism and to spiritualism.
The philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter, and is considered a form of physicalism. Fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions; therefore, matter is the only substance. As a theory, materialism belongs to the class of monist ontology. As such, it is different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism and to spiritualism.
The only thing that exists is matter? Does that include energy? I suppose it does if E=MC2. So matter must also include anti-matter, electromagnetism, stong force, weak force, gravity, dark matter, dark energy, quantum particles, Higgs Boson particles, neutrinos, quarks, strings and space-time itself. Matter would also include any number of phenomena that we haven't measured or discovered yet. Twenty years ago, dark matter was not a widely known component of the universe. What new discoveries will we make in the next twenty?
So do I believe that the only thing that exists is matter? Yes! The fact that it exists makes it matter or energy. If string theory is true (that's a big if) a string is theorized to be 10^20 times smaller than the diameter of the proton*. But that is still matter. You don't have to dream up magical energies of states of matter, they already exist and we have only begun the process of discovering what is out there. Show me something that does not contain mass or energy and I'll be happy to change my mind.
Which leads us to physicalism**...
Physicalism is a philosophical position holding that everything which exists is no more extensive than its physical properties;
I not only have no idea what this really means, but it certainly sounds like [bleep] to me. How anybody could claim that everything that exists is no more extensive than its physical properties is beyond me. I don't know the full extent of anything. Anybody claiming to know this is dwelling in the world of speculation. So if that is enough to disqualify me as a materialist, then let the record stand.
My point? You do both Tao and I a disservice by labeling us as something that we are not (sorry to be speaking for you Tao) and then shooting down the philosophical label that we've been assigned, but do not hold. That is known as the straw man fallacy and I for one must call you on it. If you want to know what we believe, ask us. If you wish to argue about a position we hold then debate us. I'd be much happier defending a position that I actually hold instead of one you imagine I do.
*Superstrings, Michael Green, Scientific American Sept 86
*Physicalism, Wikipedia
While, perhaps I have not experienced enough of your posted views CZ to know if you subscribe to a materialist philosophy, many of Tao's have most certainly directly and indirectly suggested he did. So, if I am in error in seeing you as a Tao-ist
, pardon me. I will say relative to the Tao one that I'm seeing a bit of expansion in the philosophical stances he tends to take lately. So, what he is in any given moment may change-in case you're concerned Tao that I've stuck you into a pigeon hole you may be edging out of. But the posting of the essay was in relationship to Snoopy's comments about causality and materialism given he is avowedly of a Buddhist orientation-as you are I believe. earl
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Count me in as an avowed...
• Buddhist
• Atheist
• Liberal
• Science Lover
• Cat Fancier
Duly noted. I however am liberal and allergic to cats. Not "theistic" in the usual sense of the term/not Buddhist in the usual sense of the term.
Science, well not a "hard" science fan as afterall I went through college primarily just studying all that pseudo-scientific "soft" science crap like psychology. earl