Science vs. Religion: (Chapter 6) (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, August 09, 2011, 11:37 (4650 days ago) @ David Turell

David,
> > Once, when I was... about 14 or 15, I wrote the lyrics to the song "Closer," from "Nine Inch Nails," a full two years before I ever heard the song... when I first heard the song and felt the amazing "deja vu," I attributed it to grabbing radio waves that morning when the song first played. The song was first released May 1994, and I recall hearing it (without listening to the radio) for the first time sometime that summer. I hated the band when it first appeared... it wasn't until I heard THIS song for the first time that I realized there was a connection here... Maybe the youth of the country had an unconscious event then...?
> 
> Yours is a great example of a psychic event. Believe it. I know it when I hear about it. My wife has had several that I have observed-I'm still not fully convinced... the year this happened I had a mouth FULL of metal. (Braces, headgear... the whole scary lot!) The only thing that keeps me skeptical is that I never had this happen more than once. (If it purely a wiring issue you would think I could tune into my mental radio at will.) And I pretty vividly remember that when it happened I was in a sleep-like trance... I believe I was partially awake, meaning that the normal filter to the unconscious was NOT running. Then there's my lucid dreams where I get to witness completely inane events in my own life. (Almost as if my unconscious mind has an incredible sense of irony.)-
> > 
> > The only other negative from this chapter involves your idea of the collective unconscious...
> 
> Rupert Sheldrake has done some interesting stuff, you can't deny that. Just keep your mind open. One day we may know a great deal about such phenomena. I don't really 'know'. I wonder, however.-Agreed. Your book has at least done a better job of pulling my attention into these areas that I typically have ignored due to their necessarily subjective nature. -> > 
> > At what point can you deride dualism and advocate its existence as you do on pages 160, 167, 170, 172, and 173? 
> 
> I don't know that these examples support dualism. They are just psychic events.-In nearly all of these cases you make some comment regarding consciousness being separate from the body. The idea I like best is the consideration that consciousness is NOT limited to the brain alone--something I would agree with as one meditation exercise I have done concentrates on whole-body awareness. -> > 
> > If you claim that mind and body are separate as you seem to do in all but in one portion where you attribute the entire body as conscience--as I subscribe to--how do you defeat the arguments against Cartesian dualism?
> 
> My view of consciousness is that it is an emergent phenomenon from a brain, the most complex item in the universe, and is related to the UI indirectly or directly.-Disembodied consciousness necessitates that there are two fundamental substances in the universe, mind and matter. I'm not discounting you here, but presenting you with the most direct challenge to your thought that you should consider in order to refine it. In what way can your thinking answer the challenges posed to Cartesian Dualism? I don't think it would be a fruitless exercise for either of us. -> > 
> > Finally, on page 173 you argue that "science is silent theologically..." How can you you possibly argue this without a discussion of what science is, what it does, and its implicit assumption of methodological materialism? 
> > 
> > Before I print one word to the positive of this chapter, I require you to respond to at least THAT QUESTION...
> 
> I thought I covered the methodological materialism in chapter one. Should I have repeated it?-I guess it has been enough months since I read the first chapter that I did not recall this, but remember a discussion we had where I was imploring that you devote some time to discussing science, how it works, and its underlying philosophical underpinnings... I think that any reader in your intended audience would appreciate a firm, scholarly treatment that tells them that science doesn't force naturalism down their throats in any way but that of methodology. I'll reread chapter one.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"