DrmDoc

Actually, you "didn't understand" was not my answers to your first two questions. If you will review those answers, you will find that I questioned your characterization of my comments and restated them almost verbatim from prior posts. Since they are now acceptable to you, it seems I needn't have made my assertions any clearer. Although no slight to your experience intended, it is obvious that you have never investigated PGO waves relative to dreaming because there are studies that do indeed support such a relationship such as this suggested by researchers Andrew et al (2007) in their paper, Characterization of REM-Sleep Associated Ponto-Geniculo-Occipital Waves in the Human Pons : "The activation-synthesis dream hypothesis proposes that dreams result from cortical interpretation of phasic ascending brainstem input.8,9 The finding of P-wave related changes in cortical activity confirms the existence in humans of a key element of this hypothesis and suggests a way to test it by selective assessment of dream recall during periods of P-wave activity, particularly in the pre-REM period, when P-waves and REM sleep are dissociated." I would be happier with some sincere investigation of the available science because it was Hobson and McCarley (1977) who first posed the activation-synthesis hypothesis that studies more recent than Solms (2000) support as evinced by Andrew et al (2007). And my comments were: "The most well known theory of brain evolution is The Triune Brain Theory, which makes no specific reference to a thalamic stage of evolution.The "thalamic stage etc" was not a coining of term but rather a descriptive reference to the evolutional emergence of an important brain structure." However,... As I stated, my perspective is based on what I learned from the research involving "cross-species analysis of decorticate, decerebrate, brain injury, and abnormal brain development studies that suggested the evolutional hierarchy of the brain. Those studies showed that the thalamus is positioned atop other brainstem structures that decrease in functional sophistication contiguously from thalamic base to the spinal brain, which conversely suggest the contiguous evolution of our central nervous system from its most primitive to its most recent structures." That bibliography was presented as a sampling of my research. Whether that evolution involves the "addition of new structures" or the "differentiation and specialization of existing structures through shifts in existing axonal projection patterns", the hierarchy of our central nervous system contiguously follows a primitive to recent functional path from spinal cord to cortex. When we examine the contiguous sequence of functional advances in afferent neural developments from the myelencephalon (MYEL) to the metencephalon (MET), for example, this primitive to recent path is evident. The afferent nerves of the MET are the Vestibulocochlear, the Intermediate Facial, and the Trigeminal. The Vestibulocochlear nerve advances the tactile ear sensory development of MYEL structure with the perception of sound sensory. The Intermediate Facial nerve enhanced the posterior taste distinctions of MYEL function with anterior tongue sensory (2/3) and soft palate distinctions. Finally, the Trigeminal provide sensory enhancements from the face, sinus, and teeth. These afferent nerves arise in MET structure separately and in the order given here. When we evaluate where and when these nerves appear in MET structure and the sensory capability they provide, we can track the functional direction--suggesting primitive to recent--of taste, sound, and facial perception from simplistic posterior developments (MYEL) to refined anterior developments (MET). Although any neuroanatomy text will supports these descriptions, the Atlas of Human Anatomy, Third Edition by Dr. Frank H. Netter provides excellent illustrations of these brainstem neural development.

In conciliation, I reviewed the comments that prompted my response and "no qualified scientific studies for characteristic of dreaming which explains if dream is imagination or meaningful experience" is not what you wrote. Your original comments were that "The characteristic of dreaming has not been a scientific subject yet, despite of what the famous scholars said", which is an unqualified statement since the characteristics of dreaming—perceptual, neural, and otherwise—most certainly have been the subject of scientific investigation, which I have provided thus far. Nevertheless: Taken from this peer reviewed article The Effects of Current-Concern- and Nonconcern-Related Waking Suggestions on Nocturnal Dream Content, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and obtained through the EBSCO Host of an online university, Doctors Nikles, Breckt, Klinger, and Bursell concludes the following from their study of student participants over several nights in their sleep laboratory: "…the evidence from this and other investigations confirms that dreams are meaningfully related to dreamers' current concerns and hence to their real lives. The findings of the present study also confirm the importance of current-concern content in moderating the effectiveness of presleep suggestions. They therefore contribute further evidence that dreams reflect current goal pursuits and that volitional processes continue to be active enough during sleep to influence dream imagery." In this similarly obtain paper titled Dream Content and Psychological Well-Being: A Longitudinal Study of the Continuity Hypothesis and published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, Doctors Pesant and Zadra concludes: "In summary, ours is the first longitudinal study to examine the relationship between people's level of psychological well-being and corresponding dream content characteristics. The findings obtained provide further empirical evidence for the continuity hypothesis and indicate that affect and social interactions represent two psychologically important dimensions in dream content that merit further study." And in this paper, Relation Between Waking Sport Activities, Reading, and Dream Content in Sport Students and Psychology Students, published in the Journal of Psychology, Dr. Schredl's study suggests a relationship between waking-life experience and dreaming with: "To summarize, the results of this study clearly show an effect of time spent in a particular waking-life activity on the rate of incorporating the waking-life activity into dreams. The findings also indicate that factors such as emotional involvement and associated worries might be of importance in explaining the relation between waking and dreaming. Future studies using longitudinal designs would shed more light on this relation and would help researchers to derive a more precise formulation of the continuity hypothesis." The links to these articles do not work outside of the university's library site. However, I was able to find the following links to abstracts confirming these peer reviewed papers conclusions: http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1998-04530-018 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jclp.20212/abstract http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a925359142

It is a waste of my time when I obtain and review requested evidence in a discussion and that evidence is rejected out-of-hand without the slightest courtesy of a similar review. OK. So that there will be no excuses on your part or unqualified evidence provided on my part, what do you consider "qualified scientific studies" and what do you mean by "characteristic" of dreaming?

The tenor of this line of discussion is clearly argumentative and a waste of our time. Your original comments regarded no evidence of scientific studies of dreaming. Although I did not review each link in detail, I did review each for their relevancy to some quantitative scientific study of dreams and dreaming and they are indeed evidence. You have only to say whether they are or are not after a similar review and nothing more. Although you may choose not to do what I have done, which was a overview for relevancy to some quantitative scientific content in response to your comments, these link stand in contradiction to your position and general knowledge on this particular aspect of this subject.

Fine. Here are several links among hundreds more to the quantitative dream state studies that, according to your comments, did not exist: http://www.springerlink.com/content/g253350226366857/ http://www.neurology.org/content/65/7/1010.short http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/summary/11/5/519 http://journals.lww.com/jonmd/Abstract/1987/04000/Do_Dreams_Reflect_a_Biological_State_.2.aspx http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=5006964 http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/missing?orig=%2fsmpp%2fcontent%7edb%3dall%7econtent%3da793424000&triedmissing=true http://www.sciencedi...ca&searchtype=a http://www.springerl...446x7678k16738/ http://www.sciencedi...5d&searchtype=a http://www.nature.co...abs/nrn915.html http://www.springerl...56g5u8w26528rt/ Although I did not review the content of these in detail, these links are provided as evidence of the continuing quantitative investigation of dreams and the dream state that can be found on the Web with just a cursory Google Scholar search for those who have serious interest. Keywords: quantitative dream state.

Although I believe this perspective was more clearly conveyed in earlier comments, what I essentially tried to convey is that dreams are the memories we have after waking from sleep of perceptual experiences we perceive as having occurred while we were sleeping. Although there are papers associating dreaming with memory consolidation, those are not what I believe you are requesting. Your request seems to regard dream images as memories themselves, which is not the perspective I was conveying or supporting. The images we recall as dreams are not themselves memories but are rather interpretations of perceptual experiences believed to have occurred during the sleep process. Therefore, there are no papers to provide on your request unless your interest is memory consolidation and dreaming. However, here's one: http://www.sciencedi...9906831af9c5839 It's called the Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis and was first postulated by J. Allen Hobson back in 1977. Based on experiments he preformed, Hobson observed activations in the pontine brainstem (PGO spikes) that stimulated higher midbrain and forebrain structures and the synthesis and interpretation of these internally generated neural signals. Here is a link to his earliest work: http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/134/12/1335 And more recent links referencing his work: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1978372/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19750916 http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/abstract/138/7/904 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WD0-4D6YVM1-9&_user=10&_coverDate=06%2F30%2F1992&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1718718956&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=82814b654c33e316dd1c7eb287c37ffc&searchtype=a http://74.125.155.132/scholar?q=cache:sq216n-9NYwJ:scholar.google.com/+activation-synthesis&hl=en&as_sdt=0,39 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WD0-45NJR99-D&_user=10&_coverDate=09%2F30%2F1995&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=gateway&_origin=gateway&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1718722004&_rerunOrigin=scholar.google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=eda912de8d514520283fcf01b28f2dde&searchtype=a Although I provide these link as an example of the available science, I do disagree with some aspects of Hobson's theories as it pertains to the specific role of those PGO spikes. My statement here regards what the functional science in total suggests about the nature of dreaming rather than a specifically published work. Hobson's work alone suggests that dreams are a result of internally generated synthesized neural signals. My comments are based on similar works that frame the dream state as a construct of the mind. So, do you really require a specific paper to tell you that your dreams occur within your mind and, therefore, should be characterized as mental expressions? I don't think I need to provide proof that dreams are mental experiences that occur in a mental context when that has been clearly establish by the entirety of human experience. So, I won't waste your time or mine. The most well known theory of brain evolution is The Triune Brain Theory, which makes no specific reference to a thalamic stage of evolution. The "thalamic stage etc" was not a coining of term but rather a descriptive reference to the evolutional emergence of an important brain structure. To clarify, my reference to the thalamus simply stated that ancestral animals appear to have gained the rudiments of mind function when the thalamus emerged in their brain structure. As I stated, that perspective was based on what I learned from the research I gathered and reviewed for a book I wrote about the dreaming brain. That research involved cross-species analysis of decorticate, decerebrate, brain injury, and abnormal brain development studies that suggested the evolutional hierarchy of the brain. Those studies showed that the thalamus is positioned atop other brainstem structures that decrease in functional sophistication contiguously from thalamic base to the spinal brain, which conversely suggest the contiguous evolution of our central nervous system from its most primitive to its most recent structures. The thalamus likely gave ancestral animals the rudiments of mind because it was likely the first and remains the primary structure in the contemporary brain where sensory integration occurs. Among the research I gathered and considered: http://www.ncbi.nlm....0?dopt=Citation http://www.jneurosci...869.full?ck=nck http://www.ncbi.nlm....5?dopt=Citation http://www.ncbi.nlm....4?dopt=Abstract http://www.nal.usda....elfare/Rose.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm....0?dopt=Abstract http://onlinelibrary...370411/abstract Also Inclusive of but not limited to: Siegel A, Brutus M: Neurosubstrates of aggression and rage in the cat. In A.N. Epstein & A.R. Morrison (Eds.): Progress in psychobiology and physiological psychology (pp 135-233), San Diego, 1990, Academic. (citation-hypothalamus) Whishaw, IQ: The decorticate rat. In B. Kolb & R.C. Tees (Eds.): The cerebral cortex of the rat, Cambridge, 1990: MIT Press. (anticipatory) Overmier JB, Hollis KL: Fish in the tank: Learning, memory, and integrated behaviour. In R.P. Kesner & D.S. Olton (Eds.): Neurobiology of comparative cognition (pp 205-236), Hillsdale, 1990: Lawrence Erlbaum. (anticipatory) Gallistel CR: The organization of action: a new synthesis, Hillsdale, 1980: Lawrence, Elbaum (anticipatory fish) Rose JD: The Neurobehavioral Nature of Fishes and the Question of Awareness and Pain. Reviews In Fisheries Science, 2002; 10(1):1-38. (anticipatory fish) Miceli MO, Malsbury CW: Sagittal knife cuts in the near and far lateral preoptic area-hypothalamus disrupt maternal behaviour in female hamsters. Physiol Behav., 1982; 28(5):856-67. (anticipatory habituation hamster/hypothalamus) Oakely DA: Performance of decorticated rats in a two-choice visual discrimination apparatus. Behav Brain Res., 1981; 3(1):55-69. (decorticate rat) Moore JW, Yeo CH, Oakley DA, Russell IS: Conditioned inhibition of the nictitating membrane response in decorticate rabbits. Behav Brain Res., 1980; 1(5):397-409. Büchel C, Dolan RJ, Armony JL, Friston KJ: Amygdala-Hippocampal Involvement in Human Aversive Trace Conditioning Revealed through Event-Related Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The Journal of Neuroscience, 1991; 19(24):10869-10876. Dr. William H. Moorcroft: Heightened arousal in the 2-week-old rat: the importance of starvation. Developmental Psychobiology,14(3):187 – 199, "?" (hyperactivity) Numan M, Morrell JI, Pfaff DW: Anatomical identification of neurons in selected brain regions associated with maternal behavior deficits induced by knife cuts of the lateral hypothalamus in rats. The Journal of Comparative Neurology, 237(4):552 – 564, 1985. (hypothalamus) Villablanca JR: Counterpointing the functional role of the forebrain and of the brainstem in the control of the sleep-waking system. J Sleep Res., 2004; 13(3):179-208. (mesencephalon transaction) Shewmon DA, Holmes GL, Byrne PA: Consciousness in congenitally decorticate children: developmental vegetative state as self-fulfilling prophecy. Dev Med Child Neurol., 1990; 41(6):364-74. Sutherland RJ, McDonald RJ, Hill CR, Rudy JW: Damage to the hippocampal formation in rats selectively impairs the ability to learn cue relationships. Behav Neural Biol., 52(3):331-56, 1989. Erratum in: Behav Neural Biol., 1990; 54(2):211-2. (hippocampus) Skinner DM, Martin GM, Harley C, Kolb B, Pridgar A, Bechara A, van der Kooy D: Acquisition of conditional discriminations in hippocampal lesioned and decorticated rats: evidence for learning that is separate from both simple classical conditioning and configural learning. Behav Neurosci., 1994; 108(5):911-26. (hippocampus lesions) Whishaw IQ, Kolb B: Decortication abolishes place but not cue learning in rats. Behav Brain Res., 1984; 11(2):123-34. (hippocampectomy) Jouvet M, Jouvet D: A Study of the Neurophysiological Mechanisms of Dreaming. Electroenceph Clin Neurophysiol., Suppl. 24 (1963). Jouvet M: Neurophysiology of the States of Sleep. Physiological Reviews, 1967; 47(2):117-177. Jouvet M, Jouvet D: A Study of the Neurophysiological Mechanisms of Dreaming. Electroenceph Clin Neurophysiol., Suppl. 24 (1963). (Pontine transaction) Dement W, Kleitman N: The relation of eye movements during sleep to dream activity: an objective method for the study of dreaming. J Exp Psychol., 1957; 53:339-346. Aserinsky E, Kleitman N: Regularly occurring periods of eye motility, and concomitant phenomena, during sleep. Science, 1953; 118:273-274. Sherrington SC: Decerebrate Rigidity and Reflex Co-ordination of Movements. Journal of Physiology, 1898; 22: 319-332. Jouvet M, Michel F, Courjon J: Sur un stade d'activité é]ectrique cérébrale rapide au cours du sommeil physio]ogique. CR Soc Biol., 1959; 153:1024-1028. Bard P: A diencephalic mechanism for the expression of rage with special reference to the sympathetic nervous system. Am J Physiol., 1928; 84:490-515. Cannon WB, and Britton SW: Studies on the conditions of activity in endocrine glands. XV. Pseudoaffective medulliadrenal secretion. Am J Physiol., 1925; 72: 283-294. Grill HJ, Norgren R: Neurological tests and behavioral deficits in chronic thalamic and chronic decerebrate rats. Brain Res., 1978; 143(2):299-312. Tyler KL, Malessa R: The Goltz–Ferrier debates and the triumph of cerebral localizationalist theory. Neurology, 2000; 55:1015-1024. (Grill & Ferrier) Scoville WB, Milner B: Loss of recent memory after bilateral hippocampal lesions. J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci., 1957; 12(1):103-13. The links and articles I provided, in addition to more recent research, are just a small sampling of the publications I reviewed in preparation for my book and in support of my perspective. As I learned, understanding dreams isn't necessarily about their content but is rather more about a confluence of diverse research suggestive of the various neurolgical components of dreaming.

Either you misuderstood or, perhaps, my reply wasn't clear. That particular site was portal where you may find links to quantitative, peer reviewed dream studies on the Web. That site was one of several that occurred to me as a reply to your comments. Here is another: http://www.asdreams.org/ Regarding the "...characteristic of dreaming has not been a scientific subject yet...", which I perceive as a reference to the functional study of the dreaming state, may I also suggest a Google Scholar search--Keyword: Dream state. With just a little serious interest, you will find that there has been and continue to be numerous scientifically based studies dedicated to the serious investigation of dreams and the dream state in brain function. There are some here who claim to be scientist without respect for religion; however, science is the religion of the individual who takes the position of belief in a general scientific perspective without a serious independent investigation of that perspective, which was likely rendered by those who have not engaged in an earnest and concerted study of the subject. My impression from the comments I've received is that most here have formed opinions based on their subjective experience or cursory study. Belief in a generalized perspective of dreams and dreaming without earnest study is faith and religion rather than science. As I have tried to convey, there isn't any assertion that I've made in my comments defining the nature of dreams and dreaming that is not supported by varifiable scientifically conducted and accepted neural evaluations of the dream state in brain function. Disagreement without clearly referencing what we find disagreable and why is merely agrumentative and an unproductive use of our words and time.

Indeed, some cognitive professionals do consider dreaming a form of psychosis. Whether that assessment is valid is dependent on how those professionals define psychosis and whether dream content actually supports that definition. What convinces you, based on those professional assessments, that dreaming evidences psychosis? Ok, then let us proceed to the peer reviewed science. Which assertions do you consider to be merely opinion and lacking in a scientific basis?

Dreaming is a product of the unconscious rather than a subconscious. Further, as a state of mentation, the subconscious does not exist. The normal and undamaged brain produces two states of brain function suggestive of mentation: conscious and unconscious. Conscious describes the normal state of brain function when we are actively and outwardly engaged in directed wakeful behaviors. The unconscious state of mentation is suggested by the activations in the brain amid REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and the reports of perceptual experiences associated with the observed REM. Unconscious is the preferred description of the REM state because its associated perceptual experiences occur without outwardly visible behaviors, other than REM, that we can associate with conscious or waking-state mentation. Subconscious merely describes either an influence or product of mentation rather than a state of mentation or brain function. Although the random and surreal nature of dreams gives them the appearance of psychosis, that view is merely evidence of the limit level of insight that most individuals, including psychiatrist and cognitive scientist, have about the neurological nature of the dream state and dream production. Although it occurs during a stage of the sleep process, EEG and PET studies of dreaming suggest that it is neither sleep nor a trance-like state. Also, our ability to distinguish an experience as a dream when we awake is a product of the arousing sensory processing functions of our brain as it arouses to consciousness from the sleep state. Dreaming is also not akin to hypnosis, which is an effect of a conscious mind. Dreaming is an effect of unconscious activationsmeaning activations without a direct external or consciously directed cause or influencein the brain amid the sleep process. In addition, the dream memories we recall upon waking from sleep are not false; they are a true reflection of what we believe we experienced amid sleep. The distinction is that these memories form during our arousal from sleep as a result of how our brain evolved memory. In a nutshell, memory evolved as an advantage of true physical/material experience. Because dreaming occurs during a partial sensory disconnect from true physical/material experience, certain brain areas associated with memory formation do not become active amid dreaming. Our memories of having dream forms during arousal form sleep as those brain areas associated memory and physical experience awaken. Our dream memories fade quickly because their experience is not concurrent with the real physical/material sensory experiences that promote memory. Although dreams have been referenced as a source of profound insight throughout recorded human history, the neural evidence suggestive of how the brain evolved to dream further suggests that creativity and insight is not the purpose of or reason why we dream. Have you visited this site, which is devoted to quantitative sources of dream study: http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/ There are theories but none that are cogent. The reason, as I perceive, is that these theories have little to no basis in how the human brain evolved to produce mind function. Mind, as I learned while researching for a book I wrote about the dreaming brain, is the environment of cognitive activity within the brain that arises from brain function. A mind is quantified as existent in a brain, as I also learned, by a brain's functional ability to integrate divergent sources of sensory information through a process that produces behaviors independent of instinct. Essentially, a mind enables proactive over and above reactive behaviors. The human brain gained this capacity during its thalamic stage of evolution. The thalamus, with its right and left hemispheric configuration, inspired cortical development. Its evolution gave our animal ancestor the rudiments of mind and the ability to override their instincts. Dreaming isn't a product of hallucination or imagination and dreams are not products of creative brain processes. Dreaming is an interpretive brain process. During the early stages of sleep, our brain enters increasingly lower stages of activation until the onset of atonia when it arouses to wakeful levels of activation. The effect of this, as I described in prior comments, is akin to the smoldering embers of a fire that reignites after a burst of air. Lowering stages of brain activation amid sleep doesn't suggest total deactivation but do suggest a continuation or persistence of brain processes. Among those processes are those associated with perceiving, interpreting, and responding to sensory or neural stimulation. At the onset of dream-sleep, those processes intensify as though flames aroused from embers. As we awake from sleep and our brain arouses to consciousness, the persistent affects of those inflamed thought processes amid dreaming are given shape and substance by their integration with physical/material sensory information resulting from the arousal in the brain associated with its increased sensitivity to tactile and aural sensory information arriving from our arousing array of physical senses. Actually, it is not sleep; it is a condition of increased brain activation, suggestive of arousal, that occurs amid the sleep process. The content of dreams are indeed meaningful because they are interpretations of experience, albeit a purely mental experience. The incongruent and surreal nature of dreams merely gives them the appearance of irrationality and irrelevance to waking-state experience. That appearance is caused by the conscious way we perceive and interpret experience, which is a linear/literal process. Dreaming, like conscious thought processes, is a non-linear/non-literal process. Like thought, our dreams move quickly from subject to subject and envelop concepts and perceptions of experience. Although we may experience physically and materially descriptive dreams, they are experiences that occur entirely within a mental context. As such, the meaning dream imagery conveys is mental; e.g., imagery of pizza is descriptive of a mental food, dream houses describe mental structures, and running in dreams suggests a mental effort to avoid or arrive at some mental eventuality. When we evaluate our dream experiences in their proper mental context, their meaning and relevance becomes clearer and can be more cogently associated with our conscious cognitive experience.

Relative to the sleep process, a dream is the memory of perceptual experiences amid the sleep process. Dreams are how our conscious, waking-state brain interprets the influences our sleeping brain experiences when it becomes aroused to nearly wakeful levels of activity during sleep. Dreaming occurs when our sleeping brain becomes active, after its deepest stage of sleep, upon the onset of a state of released muscle tone called atonia. When our brain become active in this state, it is essentially wakeful and it begins to do what it was evolved to do and that is to perceive, process, and respond to detectible levels of external and internal sensory or neural information or stimuli. The memories of experience during sleep that we recall as dream upon waking begins to form during the arousal process as our conscious brain reinstate its full sensory link to physical/material reality via our physical sensory systems. That incoming physical/material sensory information stimulates those areas of the brain associated with memory, which leads to an integration of the purely mental experience of dream-sleep with physical/material experience. That integration is what gives our dreams the form and substance that enables our memory of them, which is like converting a liquid into a solid. The reason why we dream is a product of brain evolution. Sleep was likely first adapted as a means to conserved energy during periods of inactivity and rest. As those periods began to lengthen, our animal ancestors evolved a way to sustain the viability of more vital physical systems by reducing energy to systems not in use, which was muscle-readiness. Upon the release of muscle-readiness (atonia) amid sleep, physical systems such as the brain, heart, and lungs experience an uptake in energy devotion and usage. This uptake of energy by the brain amid sleep causes the arousal in the brain that awakens the perceptual processes that inspire our dreams. This process is akin to a smoldering ember that is reignited by a blast of air. With dreams, the smoldering embers of our thought processes are reignited during sleep by the blast of energy uptake amid sleep at the onset of atonia. The persistent affects of our aroused thought processes during sleep are given shape and substance by our awakening brain and become the dream experiences we remember upon our arousal to consciousness. I hope this helps.

Although I agree that the "Big Bang" could be best understood as the creation of space, the lingering cosmic background radiation indicative of the enormous amount of heat and energy released at the inception of this universe is suggestive of some explosive event at its origin. It's interesting to consider that the increasing speed at which our universe is expanding suggests the increasing rate at which new space is being created...or is it merely old space expanding into absolute nothingness from a compressed state?

If you were serious about that "thought/head weight" experiment, the difference in weight could be explained by brain metabolism associated with its thought processes. When the brain is actively engaged in thought, blood flow to the brain increases. This increased blood flow could account for the additional head weight you observed beyond the weight of a brain not actively engaged. Although some may want to believe otherwise, consciousness is a product of brain function. As a product, consciousness does not persist after or outside the cessation of brain function. (April Fools, I know, but...)

Joan of Arc, Queen Victoria, etc...

There is only one universe that is beyond speculation and it is the one in which we exist. Theorhetical universes, if they exist, do not appear to have an affect on the outcome or destiny of this one as its increasing dispersion evinces.

No. Whether a society of men or women there will be wars as long as the competition for land and survival resources exist.

" All matter and energy, including the earth, the galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space, regarded as a whole."-American Heritage Dictionary.

Although I'm no astrophysicist, we have accepted the possibility of a big bang because all the the observable matter (galaxies) in the universe appears to be rushing away from an explosion at a single point in space. In addition to an initial period of inflation, the speed at which the galaxies are rushing away and apart has not decreased but is, in fact, increasing. This increasing speed--a result of something called dark energy--has led many scientist to believe that all matter will eventually disperse or dissolve in the cold continuous expanse of space. I agree with this idea of dissolution because there appears to be nothing beyond the universe slowing it down and there seems to be something in the universe supplying the energy to increase the rate at which it is flying apart.

You and lemur seem to be overlooking an important tenet in the OP, which is "What if it became scientifically proven that God exists?" If I understand correctly, the direction of this "philosophical thought experiment" should proceed from what constitutes scientific proof rather than a presupposed acceptance of faith, irrationality, or illogic. As I understand the OP, if God could be physically/materially proven to exist, how might we respond to his, her or its denial of the edicts we humans attribute to the being's will? In my response I said that I wouldn't be as interested in the validity of the being's edicts as I would be in its origins because a being cannot, in my view, create its own existence in a realm of scientific proof. So I would inquire of its origins rather than how we may have interpreted the being's edicts.

The OP presupposes a proven metaphysical being, which necessarily suggests an entity that conforms to the requirements of proof--meaning logic, reason, and verifiable evidence from our physical perspective--rather than faith. In my example, I provided, if you will, a metadatical being, from his creations' perspective, that may conform to their logic although not to their physics or state of being. In that example, one could conceive the programmer's creations reaching an understanding of their God as a type of data exceeding their state of being that arose from a sucession of antecedent data. If this discussion regards the acceptance of a being that exceeds our physics or state of being (metaphysical), my example provides a perspective of how we might come to understand that beings origins. Accepting the proven existence of a metaphysical being suggests a basis in verifiable evidence which suggests some conformity of that evidence to our physical laws and perceptions. I believe that conformity permits our inquiry and understanding of such a being although it remains outside our realm of experience.

That might apply if I was referencing the existence of God as either a force of good or evil, which I was not. I was referencing the being as primarily a creative and parental force. If I understood correctly, this discussion regarded the hypothetically proven existence of a God, which suggests to me a evidentiary foundation that is hypothetically logical and verifiable. If we are discussing the hypothetics on this basis, there should be no contradictions. For example, a very skilled computer programmer could create a virtual world and populate it with beings of independent minds and adaptive intelligence who acknowledge the programmer as their creator. With this scenario, we have a creator with a human lineage whose programmed beings may one day evolve a curiosity about that lineage. Should the programmer stifle such inquiry or encourage his virtual children's evolving curiosity and, by extention, their growing intelligence?

Essentially, you are suggesting that once the existence of a creator is accepted only the edicts of that creator should be our concern. If true, then such a position is akin to merely acknowledging the existence and edicts of our parents without concern or consideration of their lineage and our ancestry. Is our understanding of whom and what we are complete without such concerns and considerations or should we just be content with what our parent say we are? If we are discussing God as fact and not just faith, should we be content with just the fact of God and not know the likely amazing history that is our spiritual lineage beyond God's edicts? Even the bible emphasizes the significance of knowing the ancestry of its prophets, so why not the ancestry of what many consider the father or mother of us all? Aside, your emphasis of "Him" as "the creative spirit" is contrary to what we find in nature and in ourselves. When we consider the edict "On earth as it is in heaven," should there be this contrdiction? From insect to humanity, it is the female that gives birth (creates) and that is most robust. No doubt, as this world nears its end, the last living being will most likely be female--in my opinion.

I'll take that bet; death hasn't been a fear of mine since I was a child and I'm not one who readily believes in an afterlife as many do. However, I do believe that every effect has a cause, which would include the effect we call God. The ideal that an omnipotent being created itself is nonsense because the idea infers some existence of that being before its creation. How can a being create itself before it ever existed? How insane or uneducated does one have to be to believe in such a silly notion?

The earthly debates about his, her, or its intent for us, the world, or existence seem small and insignificant to me. If I could converse with such a being, I'd want to know who or what created it and then I'd want to know who or what created that who or what and so on ad infinitum. I could never be convinced that an omnipotent being created itself. Everthing, in my opinion, had a beginning including the God entity should it be found to exist. Regardless of the science and math, I will never be convinced that something sprang into being from absolute nothing. God, if existent, would have to be as much a creation as humanity--again, in my opinion.

Cultivating a child's innate talent is not the same as imposing a behavior on an unprepared child and, as ancient Peruvian child sacrifices attest, not every activity adults impose on children serves a later "good" no matter the justification. Spontaneous play among children is not the same as adults inserting themselves into that play. Invariably, adults who have sexual contact with children do so for their own gratification and not for any future "good" of the child. Admittedly, sex between adults can be rather selfish; however, the distinction selfish adults pose by imposing their will upon children is the equivalent of rape given their position of dominance. Fortunately, this era of human experience is not as primitive as it may have been and we do not live in ancient Greece. For all of ancient Greek's cultural accomplishments, they were, in my opinion, a debauched, barbaric society compared to present-day. How did grooming its young males to sexually serve adult males, serve the young males or Greek's society?

And,invariably, I ask again: "...shouldn't that necessarily include anything and everything a child is not mentally, emotionally, and physically prepared to endure?"