"Wibble"A conversation between MegaLoon Rupert Sheldrake and Bruce Lipton...
WARNING!!: The following video contains traces of West Coast American New Age Hippies - which may be harmful to people with an allergy
The conversation continues in Youtube friendly bite-sized lumps here (Segment #3's my favourite)
If you're interested in out of the box thinking about the Science of Life, Rupert is certifiably out of his box. Whilst I personally don't buy everything Sheldrake comes up with I share his suspicion that there is some organising principle or force missing from the mainstream life science narrative. Sheldrake is a source of more interesting and challenging ideas, and warm humour, than Dawkins could even dream of...
"...The previous week I had sent Richard copies of some of my papers, published in peer-reviewed journals, so that he could look at the data.
Richard seemed uneasy and said, “I don’t want to discuss evidence”. “Why not?” I asked. “There isn’t time. It’s too complicated. And that’s not what this programme is about.” The camera stopped.
The Director, Russell Barnes, confirmed that he too was not interested in evidence. The film he was making was another Dawkins polemic.
I said to Russell, “If you’re treating telepathy as an irrational belief, surely evidence about whether it exists or not is essential for the discussion. If telepathy occurs, it’s not irrational to believe in it. I thought that’s what we were going to talk about. I made it clear from the outset that I wasn’t interested in taking part in another low grade debunking exercise.”
Richard said, “It’s not a low grade debunking exercise; it’s a high grade debunking exercise.”
In that case, I replied, there had been a serious misunderstanding, because I had been led to believe that this was to be a balanced scientific discussion about evidence. Russell Barnes asked to see the emails I had received from his assistant. He read them with obvious dismay, and said the assurances she had given me were wrong. The team packed up and left..."
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76 comments:
Having many years ago lost some hours to the selfish gene codswallop to its spluttering, splenetic end, I came away with the impression that there is a fair amount of projection involved in this warrior against the preacher folk.
Every time I see him, which is as little as possible, brings back the memory of his unpleasant, hectoring style.
The 'wonderful metaphors' he conjures, and which so delight fellow thinkers (such as the ex northern rocker Matt Ridley) are really the epitome of pseudoscience.
He makes me want to believe in the big fire, which is where he should end up, the fucking cunt.
Bait and switch?
It's not DNA that's responsible for life, silly! it's the environment and fields!
Are we witnessing a coronation of succession?
Channel that disillusionment baby!
Still well within the box methinks.
Would be interesting to pose a few cellular biology yorkers at those two.
Thanks for the videos Stef,
Fascinating stuff.One of the things that attracts me to this blog is that one you learn and dicover new stuff.
@lwtc247
Sheldrake's trying to work within a conventional scientific framework.
Even so, his hypothesis allows for plenty of interface between the spiritual and the material. He's not trying to impose dominion over everything in the way certain other characters are prone to do
I remember when the editor of Nature, John Maddox reviewed one of Sheldrake's books by writing,
"A book for burning?"
I wouldn't have read it otherwise.
ps wikipedia link has the above information in it.
What saddens me about the world view promoted most notably by Dawkins is that it is essentially a declaration of religious war. My Absence of Faith vs Your Faith
And a lot of people on the Secular Left fall for it
Which means that they don't actually disagree with the world view promoted by warmongering neocon types.
They just disagree on the methods that should be used in waging it.
They are surrendering ground to those who would pillage the world in the name of a clash of civilisations, without even a struggle
The Devil plays all the best tunes and his followers seem to be more capable of strategic thought than those who claim to oppose them
The recent mislabeled 'Israeli atrocity' video which was pushed around the web is another example
Would anyone opposed to the assault on Gaza have been sneaky enough to knock up a video allegedly depicting a Hamas atrocity only to discredit it later as really being Israeli wrongdoing?
I don't think so
I'm not arguing that anyone should. I'm just saying that's how it is
@gyg3s
yeah, that's when I became aware of Sheldrake's existence as well
funny that
"I was so offended by it, that I said that while it's wrong that books should be burned, in practice, if book burning were allowed, this book would be a candidate (...) I think it's dangerous that people should be allowed by our liberal societies to put that kind of nonsense into currency. It's unnecessary to introduce magic into the explanation from[sic] physical and biological phenomenon when in fact there is every likelihood that the continuation of research as it is now practiced will indeed fill all the gaps that Sheldrake draws attention to. You see, Sheldrake's is not a scientific theory. Sheldrake is putting forward magic instead of science, and that can be condemned, in exactly the language that the popes used to condemn Galileo, and for the same reasons: it is heresy"."
Just last night I was thinking about very similar ideas.
I recently started a course on Stellar Physics after a hiatus of 15 years from studying the subject. The Prof. was researcher in Cosmology and so I asked him about the current state of Cosmology and this Dark Matter & Dark Energy malarky. After talking at length, he basically said that we don't know sweet F.A. what is going on and that it may require a fundamentally revision of our current understanding of how the universe works. I decided to follow up what he told me via google and came across this neat solution (Holographic Principle) to the 'Black Hole information paradox' relating to Hawkings Radiation. It is based on a viewpoint that the universe has a much more complex reality.
Being a 'loon' with a scientific background subjects like this and work like Sheldrakes, I find very interesting.
Another fellow you probably heard of is Micheal Talbot, who wrote The Holographic Universe which evidently (have yet to read it) covers the work of scientists like David Bohm and Karl Pribram as well as similar subjects which Sheldrake gets into and furthermore into 'boundary' incidents like what Howard Keel gets into.
Guess my point is, that I don't necessarily believe that these people have all the answers, but I do think that there is a lot more to the universe and reality than what people like Dawkins arrogantly espouses.
Also I did like Ben Stein's interview of Dawkins. It gets real interesting around 2:45 onwards, where he admits he doesn't know how life first started, and that there could be intelligent design responsible due to extraterrestrials(!! Talk about a man trapped in materialism).
Mind you, I'm no fan of Ben Stein, but this cracked me up.
Okay, enough waffling for me. Cheers for the videos of Sheldrake, will check them out.
ack, meant say 'that we know sweet F.A. what is going on'
I agree that Sheldrake sure blows the lid on Dorkins, but as a theist, it's immensely frustrating to see the same, frankly silly ride come full circle where faith in placed in things undiscovered or uncharacterised to the exclusion of faith in a non-physical God.
Icke does something similar. He rejects religion yet pinches all it's conceptualisations. Cheeky blighter.
Anyway, the Dorkinites are have massively overinflated ability to kindly "tell" us what science is or should be about, and as you reveal Sheldrake uncovered, when things get sticky playing under the rules that Dorkins and his priests supposedly uphold, then it reveals them for the fraudsters they are.
It reminds of some comments Karen Armstrong got when 'appearing on TED (http://www.ted.com/) The same faith based atheists tried to hijack TED too, protesting TED shouldn't have even a weak association with matters religion.
the Dorkins video posted by Anon 13 January 2009 16:24, shows the same thing. Dicky is willing to believe in the possibility of an alien life form seeding life on earth.
The shortest distance between two points is straight line, but woe be the atheists that head down a loop of hysteresis, doing the most ridiculous things to explain God attributes of creation without God.
Credit to Dorky though, he didn't TOTALLY dimsiss the possibility of God.
I guess the Holographic Principle isn't strictly related to the Holographic Universe as proposed by Bohm & Talbot, but has similar ideas.
If Dawkins is so keen on science, why doesn't he do it?
He hardly seems to have set the academic world on fire with his own research.
Dawkins isn't a real scientist. As Stef said in one of his earlier postings, things like Evolution and GW are largely theory because they aren't testable in the same way that gravity is, for example.
Dawkins isn't a real scientist. As Stef said in one of his earlier postings, things like Evolution and GW are largely theory because they aren't testable in the same way that gravity is, for example.
of course, Darwinists would dispute that but I've *never* had a straight answer whenever I've asked one to sketch a few practical, falsifiable tests out
ditto for answers to the simple question 'where does life come from and has any scientist got round to creating any in a lab yet?'
they simply haven't a fucking clue
not that that stops twonk like this being reported in the papers...
Artificial Life Likely in 3 to 10 Years
@lwtc247
Credit to Dorky though, he didn't TOTALLY dimsiss the possibility of God.
Dawkins was apparently pissed off with that interview and claims that it was given under false pretences. Which, given Sheldrake's story about Dawkins, is pretty funny
as for your irritation as a theist, as an agnostic, with slight theist tendencies, I'm happy with the possibility that life science might one day be able to move beyond the limitations of Darwinism and gain a better understanding of that which binds and shapes our universe
I could even imagine a time when science's definition of that force merges with the human understanding of what God might be
it might even become incorporated into the plot line of a major, and highly profitable, sci-fi motion picture franchise
@anon 16.24
no, I'm not up to speed with Talbot, thanks for the pointers
This video makes some valid points.Watch to the end!ALLAH!!!
Holographic Universe (Part 1 of 2 ) its all illusion.
Thank you for posting the link to this wonderful conversation between Sheldrake and Lipton!
No problem. There is also Robert Jahn, a distinguished prof and Dean Emeritus at princeton who to quote his wiki article:
"With Brenda Dunne, Robert Jahn established the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab in 1979 following an undergraduate project to study the low-level psychokinetic effects on electronic random event generators. Over the last 25 years and more, Jahn and Dunne have created a wealth of small-scale, statistically significant results that suggest direct causal relationships between subjects' intention and otherwise random results. Statistical flaws were discovered in these results by others in the parapsychological community"
Relatedly there is Princeton's Global Consciousness Project using electronic random event generators, and how their output is influenced by polarising events like 911.
Jahn's group was covered back in the early 90s or late 80s by a BBC or channel4 science programme and they indeed had statistically significant results of subjects affecting the outcomes of certain events via thinking, like the repeated dropping of a ball onto a matrix of pegs and how the Guassian distribution is skewed, based on the will of the test subject viewing. Wierd stuff, and not very popular obviously.
haha, well of course, shame on me to quite wikipedia, but oh well, you can look into it yourself if you are interested, to see if a Prof Emeritus at a distinguished uni can handle (for some experiments relatively simple) statistical analysis or not.
It reminds what a wonderful thing life is and how mysterious it is. Something I seem to have forgotten.
Jesus, that holographic video was shite, but at least I now know god is male.
The guy should explain these illusions to gazan children picking flechettes out their bodies.
Dawkins is a pseudo skeptic and a would-be scientist, and Sheldrake is a pseudo scientist and a would-be skeptic. Sorry guys, but fck them.
Both are untalented trolls who rehash old shit but make money pandering to their own niche markets.
Real scientists with a real imagination do not need to be cult leaders. Francis Crick comes to mind.
As to The Holographic Universe, the first chapter is cool, but the rest is so full of bullshit I still can't decide whether the author did very bad research or was intentionally deceptive. Sai Baba Anyone? (about 3:30 minutes in)
Jesus, that holographic video was shite
lol
haven't seen it yet
but I'm looking forward to it
@P
It is and we shouldn't
@anon 22:41
Crick was way smarter than Dawkins but cut from the same cloth imho
I watched the clip on the holographic universe and I don't agree with the perception theory. Of course taste is an electrical impulse but if you don't eat you die. does that make it holographic?
aaaaaaah, it's that holographic universe video
yes, I've seen that one
hasn't that idea already been incorporated into the plot line of a major, and highly profitable, sci-fi motion picture franchise
I think the great thing is that even though differing opinions have been expressed in these comments no-one has yet, to my knowledge, felt the need to evict any other commentators from their homes or steal their fresh water supply
i think it made an earler appearance in plato's cave and bishop berkely had his take on it.
Yes, Crick was indeed a badass mofo atheist, but he didn't just refute, he proposed.
Although I personally think there is more than chance in Life and in the universe, I prefer to stick to materialist explanations until something rational is discovered. Using god or intelligent design is cheating. Too convenient. Too easy. And truths are generally counter-intuitive and depressing.
If you think differently you will go to hell.
There is also the quantum hologram
You can always try things at home, though the first is a little guantanamo
Quantum consciousness theories are afre really fascinating too.
@22:41
I gave up on trying to figure out God's existence / non existence a long time ago
If there is such an entity and it intended us to be unequivocally certain of its existence we would be
What my poxy human brain is capable of grappling with is that I believe that current scientific explanations for the genesis of life and its development are lacking something. A something which shapes and organises. Call it what you want - a field, a force...
It doesn't necessarily have to be intelligent in the way we would commonly use the term and if and when such a force was identified there's no reason why it should lie outside of the bounds of science
is it possible, I wonder, to be a badass mofo agnostic?
probably not
Call it what you want - a field, a force...
'Use The Field Luke!!!
hmmm, doesn't have quite the right ring to it
I'm disposed to your old pal chomsky's mysterian position, that there might be things beyond our comprehension.
Chomsky, of course, stole all his best ideas from Anderson
I'm sorry, I couldn't help myself
Thanks for that 'How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls and a radio' link. I'll be trying some of those later
He should be in the dock with raj persaud now that i have seen the scientific evidence!
is it just me or does the last part of that Captain Scarlet link sound awfully like the original template for all those al-Zawahiri videos?
of course, Darwinists would dispute that but I've *never* had a straight answer whenever I've asked one to sketch a few practical, falsifiable tests out
ditto for answers to the simple question 'where does life come from and has any scientist got round to creating any in a lab yet?'
they simply haven't a fucking clue
not that that stops twonk like this being reported in the papers...
Indeed, the closest they've gotten is using tissue\DNA extracts from existing beings (cloning or selective breeding).
is it just me or does the last part of that Captain Scarlet link sound awfully like the original template for all those al-Zawahiri videos?
bit scarier and far more realistic
They always mess up on those fake tapes. If you're not too dumbed down\poisoned to look closely that is...
Stef I respect agnostics because IMO, theism is essentially agnostic.
Here's how...
As an instantly proveable "limited being" - one who doesn't know wveryting nothing about even the 'simplest' thing - I fully acknowledge it is impossible to understand God or apply tests of human logic to God.
(P.S. Kurt Godel is said to have proved mathematics was fundamentally flawed, and the mathematical techniques to formulate atomic characterisation in system with more than one electron simply don't exist!)
The question "what is God?" can therefore only satisfactorally (if not frustratingly) be answered by "I don't know." Even the 99 characteristics of God e.g. the most merciful, the best judge, cannot be fully understood, either can the title "The Creator" because we cannot probe or comprehend the whole of creation itself.
Why we have the choice to 'accept' God or reject 'God'? like virtually all other questions about what God is, is futile to try and answer it, which reminds me, Carlin's 'but he loves you' jibe, seemingly quirky at base level - initially, but idiotic on contemplation, the way he sat in judgement of God.
The more I come across my own limitedness, the greater I see the Power of God, and vice-versa.
So there you have it. Theism and for me is essentially agnosticism.
One person who really hated what I believed in and disliked me a lot once said "God resides in the ignorance of man". In a way(!), that line was right, but not quite in the
way he meant it.
So when it comes to Dorkins-like athiests who express faith but reject faith in God, it appears quite ugly indeed.
No offence but, It is sad to hear "fields and forces which shape processes" as being 'the answer', of course they exert influence, but it's a reinvention of the wheel! And it's falls face down into exactly the same arguement as the Darwinian creation of life does - It fails to address how the initial self replicating molecule came about or how the field or force came about. It's the chicken chasing it's tail time; using physical aspects of the universe to explain how the physical universe came about.
P.S. Distinguished academics proposing different spposedly out of the box ideas (and seemingly having what is regarded as being 'proof' to back up those claims. isn't that unusual. Regina's http://www.consciousmedianetwork.com/ has a number of distinguised academics and intelligent people who espouse things that we are told "are not accepted by the maintream scientific community" (A euphamism for a small bunch of people saying what the 'community' has come to believe by repeated statements from that small community telling them what 'is' and what 'isnt')
Thanks for tolerating my pricklyness Stef et al. I really cherish this blog as a centre for honest and intelligent discussion.
"Jesus, that holographic video was shite"
I´m not vouching for it´s 100% accuracy guv honest.
It´s nothing new claiming the world is an illusion the Sages of India have been doing so for 1000´sss of years.Read some of the Upanishads for example.
Whoever sees all beings in the soul and the soul in all beings... What delusion or sorrow is there for one who sees unity? It has filled all. It is radiant, incorporeal, invulnerable... Wise, intelligent, encompassing, self-existent, It organizes objects throughout eternity. The Upanishads also contain the first and most definitive explications of the divine syllable Aum or OM, the cosmic vibration that underlies all existence. The mantra "Aum Shanti Shanti Shanti" (the soundless sound, peace, peace, peace)is often found in the Upanishads. Devotion to God is foreshadowed in Upanishadic literature, and was later realized by texts such as the Bhagavad Gita.[9]
Quantum physics reveals that things aint quite as they seem.
Bells theorem.
This theorem has even been called "the most profound in science."[3] Bell's seminal 1964 paper was entitled "On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox."[4] The Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox (EPR paradox) proves, on basis of the assumption of "locality" (physical effects have a finite propagation speed) and "reality" (physical states exist before they are measured) that particle attributes have definite values independent of the act of observation. Bell showed that local realism leads to a requirement for certain types of phenomena that are not present in quantum mechanics. This requirement is called Bell's inequality.
How is it we can dream with senses fully functioning yet we are lying in bed?
Bishop Berkley was close.But Plotinus was the closest by far.
Plotinus taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent "One", containing no division, multiplicity or distinction; likewise it is beyond all categories of being and non-being. The concept of "being" is derived by us from the objects of human experience called the dyad, and is an attribute of such objects, but the infinite, transcendent One is beyond all such objects, and therefore is beyond the concepts that we derive from them. The One "cannot be any existing thing", and cannot be merely the sum of all such things (compare the Stoic doctrine of disbelief in non-material existence), but "is prior to all existents". Thus, no attributes can be assigned to the One. We can only identify it with the Good and the principle of Beauty. [I.6.9]
saying something is shite is a useless reply.
oh and one more!!!!
Reality is what we take to be true
What we take to be true is what we believe
What we believe is based on our perceptions
What we perceive depends on what we look for
What we look for depends on what we think
\What we think depends on what we perceive
What we perceive depends on what we believe
What we believe depends on what we take to be true
What we take to be true is our reality
David Bohm
Like I've seen a 1000000 times before, it's simply playing around the houses: Call it by it's proper name: God.
God The Unfathomable.
All philosophers/Sages who largely manage to leave their bias behind ALWAYS come to the same conclusion... There 'is' A Creator.
Even those peoples for whom the phophetic teachings became distorted over eons, acknowledge an initial Creator.
-lwtc247-
saying something is shite is a useless reply.
Maybe, but it is an honest one. Saying that reality is the product of our perceptions is not the same as demonstrating that there is no exterior environment beyond our perceptions.
The examples given are odd:
The light from a candle cannot be received by the brain encased in darkness within our skull. It is merely an interpretation.
a) How do we know our brain is in darkness, how do we know our skulls aren't transparent
b)Presenting the brain, or what happens there, as distinct from the rest of our nervous system (somatic/autonomic) is a rather reductive view of ourselves. Separating it is rather like the mechanical division between ourselves and the material world.
I don't think its wrong to see the eye, or ear or skin as part of the brain or even their sum being the whole of our consciousness, and don't exclude them being modulated by other phenomena.
However our mundane material existence is generally consistent with that communicated by others, so who knows, it might even exist.
We experience the dream state when we are not interacting with the material world, it might be another state but it does not invalidate our everyday consciousness/perceptions.
Indeed we recognise them as distinct from 'normal' experiences. They did happen, but was that us just playing with ourselves?
I am quite happy to rely on the sun rising in the east each day, it reassures me.
If I weren't so debilitatingly agnostic (and this extends to the madness I observe around me), I would be a pantheist (maybe I am deep down(in what?)). Which would be agreeable to all these sorts of things.
Anyway, could go on forever, must fuck off now.
And when it came down in the end,
The men dress like women,
And the women as men,
And the sun sun shall rise in the west,
And set down in the East.
Last Poets - Mean Machine
@Paul,
There sure were some odd examples in the video!!Like I say That video was less than perfect.
This is how I see it however.All there really is is Mind.Life is very much like a dream,an extended dream.You can never get outside your own mind.The Mind projects and perceives its own projections.It sound s out there.
Try this simple experiment.
Where is your entire life up until this present moment??it´s in your Mind as a memory.The future dreams are also in your head so to speak.
Here is another interesting approach,,one of many.
THE HEADLESS WAY
Maybe it's because I haven't thought about it enough but I can't see where this holographic hypothesis would take you anyway
It's bit like suggesting that the entire universe is only five seconds old and was created in its current state, including all our memories, five seconds ago when I started typing this comment
well yes, could be
but so what?
and if we are created entities, and if there is more to our world than meets the eye, that doesn't absolve us from dealing with the reality that meets our eyes, treating that perception of reality as real and trying to live a decent, purposeful existence
if you are living a fucker's life in the Matrix you are still a real fucker, even if the Matrix is virtual
"and if we are created entities, and if there is more to our world than meets the eye, that doesn't absolve us from dealing with the reality that meets our eyes, treating that perception of reality as real and trying to live a decent, purposeful existence
if you are living a fucker's life in the Matrix you are still a real fucker, even if the Matrix is virtual"
exactly Stef!
a lot of mystics of old fucked off to caves and remote places to enjoy their bliss.They had found God but gave the finger to the rest of us.
Buddha means "Awakened"Buddha never fucked off however.He lived amongst men and attempted to "awaken" them also.
Life may be a dream of sorts but that does not make it any less real paradoxically!
The atrocities going on in Palestine are no less real just because events take place within your own consciousness.
If I weren't so debilitatingly agnostic...
Have just reserved badassmofoagnostic.blogspot.com
will figure out what to do with it, if anything, another time
PS From the Talk section of Francis Crick's wikipedia entry...
"He is listed under both the English atheists and English agnostics categories. Did he change his position from one to the other at some point? CopaceticThought (talk) 09:01, 23 June 2008 (UTC)
In his autobiography, Crick described himself as agnostic. It would nice to have additional data points. --JWSchmidt (talk) 02:21, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
Religious stance: This is an example of one of the past attempts to characterize Crick's position with respect to religion. More commonly, Crick is labeled as an atheist (example). The article (in a footnote) quotes what Crick wrote in his autobiography, What Mad Pursuit (see Chapter 1): after having told his mother that he no longer wished to attend church services: "...from then on I was a skeptic, an agnostic with a strong inclination toward atheism." In my view, this statement by Crick indicates that he leaned towards atheism, but did not adopt atheism as his stance. Wikipedia lists multiple types of agnosticism, but I'm not sure that Crick would have adopted any of them. I have the tendency to object to the use of a template that has a field for "religion", so I have been filling that field with the word none (etc). What is the best thing to do here? --JWSurf (talk) 20:51, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
Perhaps Agnostic atheism is the best descriptor: "An agnostic atheist […] does not believe any deities exist, and […] does not claim to know that they don't". — Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 21:07, 25 August 2008 (UTC)"
Stef -"I gave up on trying to figure out God's existence / non existence a long time ago"
What's called 'Ignosticism' seems like a fairly sensible position to me wrt these questions.
"An ignostic cannot even say whether he/she is a theist or a nontheist until a better definition of theism is put forth."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignosticism
M
Where is your entire life up until this present moment??it´s in your Mind as a memory.
Which is exactly where I would expect it to be, the past is retained as memories. You wouldn't have much time for 'the moment' if you had to learn everything over and over again.
Mind you, if we were simply receivers of the force, the universe would presumably have accumulated enough wisdom to prevent us making the same mistakes all over again.
That's why I'm so fucked off that reincarnation and past lives aren't universal.
It takes your best years trying to work out why and how deliberately fucked up things are.
If you ever do, its probably too late.
It takes your best years trying to work out why and how deliberately fucked up things are.
and that's the Truth
of course, going through that process might be the entire point of our existence in the first place
a bit hard on those who never see their best years though
How can you talk 'bout god and reality, and not talk 'bout TV?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBm9ZyIg3I0
Where is your entire life up until this present moment??it´s in your Mind as a memory.
Which is exactly where I would expect it to be, the past is retained as memories. You wouldn't have much time for 'the moment' if you had to learn everything over and over again.
you missed the point I think.There is no "outside" per say.Everything past,present and furure are ALL in your head or a better word would be .Mind
This point is subtle and takes a lot of pondering before you get it.
Look up Non Dualism for further info on the matter.
There is no "outside" per say.Everything past,present and furure are ALL in your head or a better word would be .Mind
Much as I would like that, I perceive definite limits to my self.
My memory is like a sieve, I frequently can't make head nor tail of the present and my less than perfect vision of the future is pretty much driven by unfashionable induction (which so far has beaten the orthodox economists'/journalists'/politicians' view that 'it'll will be different this time').
...And my ability to affect the material world is negligible.
What role do other human type dream things play in all of this? Is the same pp&f in your head as mine?
@Paul,
Non Dualism is well worth having a look at.There is a guy called Mooji from Brixton has a very good reputation as a teacher.
I find the subject interesting,,infact I wouldn´t be sitting here talking to you guys if it were not for the fact that this subject has been on my mind for nearly 30 years now.
Three sages I can highly recommend are 1.Paul Brunton.2Nisargadatta Maharaj and Ramana Maharshi.
more here.
Nondualism implies that things appear distinct while not being separate
A 50 minutes interview with / documentary of Richard Feynman
Even if he bashes mysticism, ESP, and
so forth quite badly in his 'Cargo Cult' text, this interview resonates a bit with the conversation you linked to.
thx
it's been added to my 'will watch' list
I did just play the first couple of minutes and heard Feynman talk about how flowers have 'evolved' their coloration to attract insects
hmnm, except when they don't
this is a nice example of evolution 'explaining' everything and therefore explaining nothing
if a creature is brightly coloured it is said that it evolved the coloration to attract attention, or as warning
if a creature has dull colours it is said to have evolved them as a form of camoflauge
if a creature is not particularly coloured one way or another it is said that colouration gives that creature no particular evolutionary advantage
it all sound very plausible but none of it proves evolution was involved at all
all of these explanations are retrospective, have no predictive power whatsoever and are completely untestable
here's a simple question...
how do we know what colour dinosaurs were?
Well, Feynman said that he can live with not knowing something, that he can live with this kind of 'mystery'. And when he says that the flowers 'evolved' their colours but that he has not got the slightest clue how they did it, the question is what other word he should have used instead of 'evolved'.
But it comes close to pretending to know something about, when one does not actually know anything about - cue in cargo cult science.
How do we know what colour dinosaurs were?
Probably the wrong one.
In the Feyman interview, he describes, very very shortly, his participation in the Manhattan Project. There you can see a man trying very hard to admit that what he did was probably wrong - and while noticeable struggling failing to do so.
It is easy to say 'you are wrong', but so much harder to admit 'I am wrong'. I'm afraid I see it in me from time to time that I am wrong - and I am afraid of how many times I don't see it that I am wrong...
Personally, because I have little faith in evolution, I just say that they have a particular colour which serves a particular function.
Just because I don't understand how something is made doesn't mean that I can't describe it or its apparent function
I haven't played the film through. I will
I ask the dinosaur question because palaeontologists have simply guessed, based on the colours of living reptiles
Without being able to look at the answers first, evolution theory offers absolutely fuck all in insight to a question like this
But I absolutely guarantee you, if we ever find what the colour/ patterning of a particular dinosaur was, evolutionists would then talk about how evolution 'explains' how that came to be
some dinosaurs might even have been furry
no way of being sure...
Admitting your own ignorance can be very liberating IMHO
For many of us, 'I don't know' is as hard to say as 'I was wrong'
There is an interesting overlap here between scepticism about Darwinism and doubts about 'Official Narratives'
When I express doubts about Darwinism or, say, the 7/7 bombings to people their response is almost always to ask me what I think really happened
Sometimes people even tell me that I have to come up with an answer, as 'sitting on the fence' is an indefensible, intellectually cowardly position
As if the act of rejecting an explanation creates some kind of responsibility to replace it with a competing narrative
Our culture has supposedly evolved into an open-minded, non dogmatic, investigative, secular culture. The pressure to close down any questions with definitive answers, however stupid, suggests otherwise IMHO
Come to think of it, Darwinism is THE Cargo Cult Science. It describes what happened, without really telling you what happened.
Embrace the unknown!
The problem with 'you sitting on the fence' is *not* that people worry about *you*, they suddenly have an unexplained void (which you created, I'd say) and *they* feel uncomfortable with this void. If you overthrow their gods, they will demand new ones.
I don't think it is your duty to 'fill people's voids', but preparing people for the void and teaching them how to handle the void comes to my mind (however this might be possible).
Yeah, it is hard: You break up people's ignorance and suddenly you are faced with another layer of ignorance. A colleague of mine: You can tell him a thousand times that what the media tells you might be a piece of truth covered in all kinds of shit (I point him to his areas of expertise, there he can see it clearly), but he goes and takess the 'official narrative' at face value almost any time. Sigh.
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