Oh I see.You must have theory.
Something presented in the form of a balance sheet maybe.
I take it that the last sentence is yours tech (??) - certainly a very technocratic study of that article[ OK... What he's referring to is the `Aether'. It was concocted during early work on electromagnetism as an explanation of HOW electromagnetic waves (like your radio and TV signals) propagate through apparently empty space............
Reading on, the arguments just get more and more turgid and confused, jumping from fundamental physics to the supernatural to love and hatred to god knows what else.
Thanks for the email, nonthelessI really enjoy discussing these kinds of things with people. It really makes you exercise your own rationale. Look forward to more questions discussions, etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHqoSuu_0sU
This is creepy !!
Elvis (singing in 1968) on stage with Celine Dion in 2007
Lol, not sure where you're going here retro, but sounds like CS Lewis (Narnia, and others kids books - made into a movie I'm reliably told - about a year ago), anyway hardly likely to be too serious on the topic of the devil.I bow to CS Lewis on this one.
.... Our policy, for the moment, is to conceal ourselves. Of course this has not always been so. [ presumably devils chatting here? ]
...a belief in us (though not under that name) will creep in while the human mind remains closed to belief in the enemy. The “Life Force,” the worship of sex, and some aspects of Psychoanalysis may here prove useful.
If once we can produce our perfect work—the Materialist Magician, the man, not using, but veritably worshipping, what he vaguely calls “Forces” while denying the existence of “spirits”—then the end of the war will be in sight.
.... If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that (it is an old textbook method of confusing them) he therefore cannot believe in you.
The Screwtape Letters -CS Lewis
Your "something" is the reality of the existance of your parents whom you can see and interact with---they are not a belief.
Ask any child who has never met their parent/s wether they believe that they were/are loved by them.
You're thinking only in the physical.There's a spiritual realm that can only really be measured in experiences.Those experiences become just as real to us as those that happen in the physical.
I'm closer to my spirtual father than I am to my physical father.
QUESTION
Anyone who is 100% sure there is a God care to explain how they are this way?---Other than Faith.
Even though you said you wouldnt justify your beliefs, I think you have partly answered techs question.... Highlighted in my quote above!i for one, am not going to write my personal experiences which have resulted in my faith being supremely strenthed simply becuase i cannot, on this forum
Even though you said you wouldnt justify your beliefs, I think you have partly answered techs question.... Highlighted in my quote above!
and as for the rest of your rant, ditto what tech said following it.
Cheers
The more I think about why some of us believe in a God and/or a spiritual level of existence, the more I feel it has to do with being comforted.
Ok, I think what I was trying to say was... tell us what you are actually trying to say instead of talking in riddles, I find this method of debate to be common amoung religious people. Thats all I was saying, it was not ment to be a direct attack on you, it just happend to remind me of certain people I have come accross over the years.I'm not competing to win any arguments, nor did I say that's what I felt. It's just another option. The problem is that people don't question things enough. Or, people like yourself, ignore everything because it sounds stupid to you.
Well said.So, I think what I'm attempting to say here is that we will put our own constructs on anything depending on our need at the time.
SUMMARY: This is where the "what" gives way to a "who". A mere object could not possibly have such power over both things of the mind and things of the heart. This power, this higher being, has gotta be something capable of relational powers. This has to be GOD...
This power, this higher being, has gotta be something capable of relational powers.
Well I'm afraid evolution which doesnt have the restraints of time nor the restraints of man---which by the way has only been around to manifest God and religion for a mear 60,000 yrs or so out of the 100s of millions of years in which the cosmos has developed to where it is today and will in 100s of millions of years still be evolving with or without man religion or our gods.
Evolution can and does explain not only this existance but every other existance known or un known.
Why cannot it be that Dinosaures became extinct and man simply evolved.
From cave dwelling existance to the modern man of today and tommorow.
our evolution has been and will be inspite of any God not because of it.
What did God create the first Dinosaure in his own image?
Man was no where to be seen for Millions of years.
Very good post Tech, makes you wonder what will happen to God when man is becomes extinct.
If horses could draw, they would draw their gods as horsesWhat did God create the first Dinosaure in his own image?
Man was no where to be seen for Millions of years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophanes Xenophanes of Colophon (Greek Ξενοφάνης ὁ Κολοφώνιος, Xenophánes; 570 – 480 BC) was a Greek philosopher, poet, and social and religious critic. Our knowledge of his views comes from his surviving poetry, all of which are fragments passed down as quotations by later Greek writers. His poetry criticized and satirized a wide range of ideas, including the belief in the pantheon of anthropomorphic gods and the Greeks' veneration of athleticism. He is the earliest Greek poet who claims explicitly to be writing for future generations, creating "fame that will reach all of Greece, and never die while the Greek kind of songs survives."[1]
Xenophanes rejected the idea that the gods resembled humans in form. One famous passage ridiculed the idea by claiming that, if oxen were able to imagine gods, then those gods would be in the image of oxen:
“ The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,
While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,
And could sculpture like men, then the horses would draw their gods
Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape
Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.[2] ”
Because of his development of the concept of a "one god greatest among gods and men" that is abstract, universal, unchanging, immobile and always present, Xenophanes is often seen as one of the first monotheists, in the Western philosophy of religion. This vision is not undisputed; while it seems clear that Xenophanes differed markedly from the commonly held cosmology of his contemporaries, it is less clear that his ideas were congruent with monotheism per se, as he seemed to admit the existence of other gods ("among gods and men"), albeit different gods than the ones represented in the works of Homer and Hesiod.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/x/x-phanes.htm
..... Xenophanes found the weapons he required for his attack on polytheism in the science of the time. Here are traces of Anaximander's cosmology in the fragments, and Xenophanes may easily have been his disciple before he left Ionia. He seems to have taken the gods of mythology one by one and reduced them to meteorological phenomena, and especially to clouds. And he maintained there was only one god -- namely, the world. God is one incorporeal eternal being, and, like the universe, spherical in form; that he is of the same nature with the universe, comprehending all things within himself; is intelligent, and pervades all things, but bears no resemblance to human nature either in body or mind.
He taught that if there had ever been a time when nothing existed, nothing could ever have existed. Whatever is, always has been from eternity, without deriving its existence from any prior principles. Nature, he believed, is one and without limit; that what is one is similar in all its parts, else it would be many; that the one infinite, eternal, and homogeneous universe is immutable and incapable of change. His position is often classified as pantheistic, although his use of the term 'god' simply follows the use characteristic of the early cosmologists generally. There is no evidence that Xenophanes regarded this 'god' with any religious feeling, and all we are told about him (or rather about it) is purely negative. He is quite unlike a man, and has no special organs of sense, but 'sees all over, thinks all over, hears all over' (fr. 24). Further, he does not go about from place to place (fr. 26), but does everything 'without toil (fr. 25). It is not safe to go beyond this; for Xenophanes himself tells us no more. It is pretty certain that if he had said anything more positive or more definitely religious in its bearing it would have been quoted by later writers.
Well I'm afraid evolution which doesnt have the restraints of time nor the restraints of man---which by the way has only been around to manifest God and religion for a mear 60,000 yrs or so out of the 100s of millions of years in which the cosmos has developed to where it is today and will in 100s of millions of years still be evolving with or without man religion or our gods.
Evolution can and does explain not only this existance but every other existance known or un known.
Why cannot it be that Dinosaures became extinct and man simply evolved.
From cave dwelling existance to the modern man of today and tommorow.
our evolution has been and will be inspite of any God not because of it.
What did God create the first Dinosaure in his own image?
Man was no where to be seen for Millions of years.
Hi Tech,Kris ("The Physist's reply") to Wayne's papers.
Which I sent over by email this morning.
Hi Dad,
I'll just comment on the `paper' as I read it...
The part of the title `SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH' makes me laugh; an oxymoron if ever I've seen one. Not really advancing the cause of circumventing skepticism...
Firstly, whoever wrote this has taken the typical paranormal stance and is defensive right off the bat. Also, typical of most crackpots, they are developing conspiracy theories from the beginning (suppression of free thought by the media etc.). Why must they need the media anyway. If it's a real phenomenon, then what does television and radio have to do with it? Strange...
What's up with the quote taken from: Michael Scott BSc. Graduate in Astrophysics, Edinburgh University. I mean, the guy graduated only with a BSc.
There are so many of these guys that there has to be at least one willing to spout baseless flawed `logic' like this. I HATE it when people don't give correct, albeit surprising, theories like quantum the respect they deserve. i.e.
they don't go to the effort to actually learn them.
Oh dear... I can see where this is going: `This is the reason why we are forced to work with a human medium in order to prove survival after death. No machine invented so far is as sophisticated as the human mind and brain.' Sure, the latter comment is true, but come on... I'm pretty sure the `medium' would be a willing participant. It's remarkable how even the presence of a skeptic can alter the results of these tests
OK... Now I'm laughing! This guy's a loon. Once again he proves how little he knows about physics (the logical study of fundamental reality). I can't believe I'm reading this: `Lodge said the people from the "next world" who are appearing at the experiments must possess bodies that are made of the same invisible matter as our radio and television signals. He called it an etheric substance.' OK... What he's referring to is the `Aether'. It was concocted during early work on electromagnetism as an explanation of HOW electromagnetic waves (like your radio and TV signals) propagate through apparently empty space.
However, essentially every physicist nowadays agrees that the Aether is an absurd concept (there are extremely good reasons for this). These arguments were settled over a century ago! But even if it DID exist, how the hell does one jump to the conclusion that `ethereal' being are made of the same stuff? The lack of logic abounds.
Also, as soon as he talk of the neutrino he somehow jumps to an explanation of ghosts walking through walls. Neutrinos are the most weakly interacting particles known to man; that is why they can pass through so much matter without interaction. They're also almost massless (hence travel VERY close to the speed of light). So how then can the humble neutrino manage to collude with its friends to create a slow moving visible spectre? Uuuugh...
OH DEAR LORD!!! Now I'm just getting mad!: `If only our contemporary physicists had shared Einstein's scepticism (sic) then we would not have wasted so much time and money trying to match up Niels Bohr's quantum mechanics with relativity.' WTF!?! OK, to begin with, Neils Bohr was certainly a big player in the construction of quantum theory, but he was only a part of it. Indeed, Einstein himself is often considered as one of the grandfathers of quantum theory, thanks to his work on the photoelectric effect (which incidentally won him the Nobel prize in physics, not relativity). EVEN SO, quantum theory and SPECIAL relativity HAVE been reconciled; they form what is known as `relativistic quantum mechanics' . This theory then leads on to the infinitely successful quantum electrodynamics (QED) which this moron actually references as a good point later on. And that's only the beginning. It's only GENERAL relativity that has so far proven irreconcilable with the quantum. This is the pursuit of a `quantum theory of gravity'. And it's no big secret, either!
I'm stopping the commentary now. This is an insult to work of thousands of good scientists. There really is no logic to the thinking and it's all borne from the usual conspiracy theorist perspective of crackpot fringe `thinkers'. Another dead give-away is the pick-and-choose technique they're employing, mostly from quotes of famous and respected scientists.
Also, while it's true that there are issues with the peer-review process, illogical ranting is certainly no substitute.
Reading on, the arguments just get more and more turgid and confused, jumping from fundamental physics to the supernatural to love and hatred to god knows what else.
Thanks for the email, nonthelessI really enjoy discussing these kinds of things with people. It really makes you exercise your own rationale. Look forward to more questions discussions, etc.
Kris
> Getting into Dawkins book.
> He is definitely passionate.
>
> Here is some "Scientific Proof" of the Existance of something after
> death.
>
> Interested in your learned comments.
>
> DAD.
> The message is ready to be sent with the following file or link attachments:
>
> cfpf-scientific-proof.pdf
>
>
> Note: To protect against computer viruses, e-mail programs may prevent
> sending or receiving certain types of file attachments. Check your
> e-mail security settings to determine how attachments are handled.
>
@-----------------------------@
| |
| Kris |
| |
| Photonics Ph.D. Student |
|School of Chemistry & Physics|
| University of Adelaide |
| Adelaide SA 5005 |
| Australia |
| Tel: +61 (0)8 8303 5357 |
@-----------------------------@
There is never going to be a definitive answer and even if there is i doubt its going to pop its head up first on ASF!
Hi Tech,
Kris's comments are remarkably Dawkins-like, as per my previous comments. Take from that what you will, but lets say it is not surprising.
My own comments: Trying to "prove" anything "paranormal" is going to be problematic in the extreme in the scientific sense. This paper based on my own experiences remains interesting, however not rigourous enough to satisfy the "learned".
I have some friends of similar education which makes for interesting discussions on this topic. My observation is that their opinions remain fairly rigid along their lines of teaching... natural I suppose. I notice similar satirical responses to each other when there are discussions of big-bang, electric universe and string theory for example. They play the man not the ball, spending more time denigrating each others education rather than discussing possibilities. We have seen that right throughout the ages, with many concepts initially ridiculed. In other words, we should not take one students views as necessarily authoritative, particularly when the modus operandi is ridicule.
Scientists seem to become remarkably close minded IMO.
That said, I have no idea whether the science is even valid, not my field, and I must admit I have only skimmed briefly through it.
God of some sort---define some sort.In the continuing discussion, I note people defaulting to the judeo/christian meme and accompanying man-created religion in their references to God concepts.
Therefore I personally cannot take the ensuing logic to disparage the possibilty of "a God of some sort" seriously as it fails to regard alternative concepts.
Religion is a fair target however; in my experience, religion is less about the spiritual and more about control. Apologies to those of a particular faith, but I think that is readily demonstrable.
Regarding evolution, as stated before there is no question that there is some gradual unfolding of life on this planet. So evolution is a fact? Well yes. However the biological mechanism can only be postulated. That life could have happened as a random accident would appear to be absolutely absurd to a great many.
If you look at the mechanisms and complexities for even a single cell organism to survive (eg respiration, photosynthesis/consumption of sustainance, elimination, procreation etc) it would seem rather absurd that an organism with such capabilities could spontaneously spring forth from some primordial cocktail of muck.
But what I can see is that nature is the purest form of life itself; no one can claim to have manipulated nature (save genetic modification) and its seasons, and the way it makes you feel toward everything else nature since the day you're born to present you their beliefs and worldview. And that is how I know God exists; as simple, as pure and as unadulterated as that.
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