immortal

That's the point, why is a metaphysical argument for the existence of God is not equivalent to an argument which says "submission of yourself to a higher authority like God is erroneous". There is no compelling evidence in science so that we can reject a higher authority, science has not yet modeled conscious thought and hence evolutionary psychological theories aren't enough to reject a higher authority. Science rejects God hypothesis or metaphysical explanations not because it has evidence against the existence of God, science rejects God because the scientific method is inappropriate for testing metaphysical statements and it cannot falsify such statements and hence the scientific community has no authority to silence theological arguments. There is nothing in science which contradicts the existence of God and hence all scientific and logical arguments against the existence of God is equivalent to all theological and metaphysical arguments for the existence of God. Neither science nor theology has the authority to silence each other. That's my point.

Science is one school of philosophical thought which accumulates knowledge by falsifying things and gives a honest answer by saying "we don't know" for questions which it cannot address rather than accepting biased faith based assertions as fact.

Yes, If I am right then we should be able to see demonstrations like that given by theologians more often otherwise all of religion will be rubbish and unreal. According to religion, the external world only consists of mind and five elements and the death of a person is interpreted as mind dissociating itself from the body made of five elements and hence I see no reason why anyone can't re-associate his mind to his body(made of five elements) and behave in tact even after being shot to his brain. Brain as such don't exist in the external world in terms of religious perspective.

Again you have to choose one or give up another, you cannot say both those patterns exist and also assert that material things exist, if you are saying that we access those patterns or ideas through our brains then its the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. There is no place in the molecular neurobiology of the brain for an activity like that. The material and the non-material world cannot exist simultaneously, you got to choose one or give up the other.

Subjective Idealism I am arguing for this view. The idea of a personal God existing independent of mind and matter stands on its own. The idea of a God rejects the two extreme views of Subjective Idealism(the view that only mind exists) as well as Naturalism(the view that only the things described by physics exists) and it also rejects Objective Idealism(a kind of dualism) and brings God as the fundamental reality. God doesn't favor subjective idealism because God has an objective world which is made of five elements (i.e Fire, Earth, Water, Air and Space) and hence I am a realist, God doesn't favor naturalism because naturalism is only a state of mind. So only the mind and those five elements exist in the external objective world, both mind and those five elements came from God and they are made of a single entity and hence there is no paradox of mind-matter, this is the noumenon of Kant. Absolute Idealism cannot be realized without first realizing the reality of God.

Of course the brain is a neural network but that doesn't say whether our experience of qualia are due to brain or due to a human mind. If you think that qualia are mere patterns in the brain then develop an artificial neural network and help me to know what it is like to be an artificial neural network, if I find that I am experiencing qualia then I will accept that I was wrong and I will retract from my view. There can be only two possibilities either science will reduce human mind to brain and the reductionist approach wins or theologians reduce human brain and scientific reality to a human mind and the top down approach wins. This debate was being made from the time of millenia and it will be continued for atleast a century in the future.

Its because theists who come over here lack revelations and they just preach. If I was a theist I wouldn't preach things on a science forum or to atheists and start preaching things like "You need to look with in to find God", if you know where to find God then why don't theists go and get some real practical knowledge about God but they take the easy route of preaching because revelation is hard stuff. So everything that a theist says sounds like a creation myth and there are lots of creation myths and if you want get some evidence for your creation myth you need to first have revelations as to how it was done, no one can observe how the big bang happened but that's not true of a creation myth, one can know how the creation happened, mind you it can be done, its just no one takes that route instead they just want to preach things and have blind faith and hence its quite easy for atheists to show the flaws in your arguments.

Can you explain to me how redness and sweetness is processed in the brain and leads to my experiences of qualia. Do you think neural networks have experience of qualia? Those biochemical pathways cannot account for the experience of qualia. Those biochemical neural pathways can only account for which receptors triggers which type of qualia but redness and sweetness don't exist in the physical world so it is purely subjective, so the big question is how the brain processes sweetness, redness and other qualia. For example:- Let me suppose I am a philosophical zombie or a human android and I behave and react in a way normal humans do so if you ask me "How was the cookie, immortal" then I would reply as "Yes, Arete, it was sweet" but you have got no idea whether I really experienced sweetness or not, it is purely subjective, you can't know "what it is like to be me" or "what it is like to be a philosophical zombie" and hence qualia are purely subjective. Its impossible to know whether a neural network has experience of qualia or not, if those were just patterns in the brain then we should be able to simulate those patterns in neural networks but that's not enough we should be able to experience what it is like to be a neural network only then I will accept that qualia are just mere patterns in the brain and that I was wrong about them that they are non-physical. I problem is not with the rules, the problem is with few posters. The problem with this site is that theists don't understand how science works and a few scientists don't understand how religion works. Religion works by faith and revelations, its an evolving thing, its not static, it is dynamic and displays plasticity. This is what some theists don't understand here, they interpret religion based on modern science and they start posting pseudoscience here and their opponents shout for evidence and in this process it is religion which is being ridiculed. Just how some theists are wrong about their misinterpretations of modern science even their opponents are equally wrong in requesting evidence and ridiculing religion because poor theists can't bring evidence of God with in a fore night because theistic endeavour is harder than scientific endeavour if I assert that the idea of an Abrahamic God is equivalent and competative with scientific ideas then theists had to walk on water just like Jesus did only then we can say that both God and science are on common grounds and that knowledge of walking on water cannot be acquired with in a fore night and it takes a life time of practice even then there is no guarantee, I see no point in discussing religion if you want to convince the scientific community you need to be a Jesus Christ and you should walk on water or turn water into wine. Religion is not blind faith, religion relies on revelations, the problem here is that theists who come here won't have any real knowledge of God and hence they cannot provide evidence and before they begin to start their threads they know that they're on the losing side. I see no value in discussing religion here, immaturity is being shown by people on either side. What should be implemented is the non-overlapping magisteria of Stephen Jay Gould so that New Atheists don't ridicule religion and theists don't misrepresent science, what I am saying is that obviously the scientific community won't allow the theists to educate people and explain the teachings of theism since theists have to provide evidence for every assertion that they make and most theists here are not qualified enough to provide that evidence because I don't think we have practicing theists here just like practicing scientists and hence such a discussion is truly worthless and also its completely wrong to use the scientific method to falsify religion just as Daniel Dennet and Richard Dawkins do in their books. So the problem here is that only one view is being spread or allowed to spread here without understanding how religion works and the scientific community doesn't really have the authority to conclude that God doesn't exist and it shouldn't be done. I stated that only by smashing atoms in large particle accelerators is not enough to completely understand the workings of nature, I said its incomplete, I didn't rejected science in toto. Therefore I demanded that since some universities give an introductory course on other schools of philosophical thought we should consider and invest time on other schools of philosophy too and take them seriously. There are a few things which doesn't satisfy my intellect, I'm quite happy if it satisfies you but it doesn't satisfy me, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible". I won't give up and the positivist approach of science is not the end of the story. I really don't care if only this world exist or if there is an another world, all I want to know is the truth, I am quite happy to be a strong atheist if scientific realism is proved beyond any doubt. Oh yes!! there can be compelling reason to look for extraterrestrial intelligence and set up SETI but the same thing cannot be applied to God, isn't it? God would still be an alien person to us. The idea that qualia are non-physical and exist outside of human mind is one of the views of school pf philosophical thought, we don't know if that's true or not, that's the reason I want to investigate it. It is not a fact yet. I agree, ultimately it should stand up to its testings. As I said earlier God hypothesis should be falsified through revelations and not by empirical observation, if revelation works then indeed I have some real knowledge then I can use that knowledge to produce cracks in our reality and those would be the predictions and such predictions can be tested using the scientific method but its inappropriate to directly apply the scientific method to test God. May be perhaps scientists don't want to waste their time by investing it on faith. So I think its the responsibility of theologians to look for revelations but it seems our society don't consider it seriously and if John Maynard Smith hadn't decided that he is going to study Game Theory we wouldn't have had his contribution to the field of evolutionary psychology and for humanity and hence I feel like one should look into metaphysics and not retract from it by saying its irrelevant or its not required. Point taken, I doesn't want to quote from other thread I better leave that here. I think its intriguing. There are methods which can show you your own mind, its called Avastatreya. This is what compels me to investigate them. Brain and scientific reality is only a state of mind and obviously the observed reality is going to follow scientific models and I don't deny that. There's no excuse as to why science has not yet explained self awareness.

It means the brain don't exist in the external world, just as sweetness, redness and other qualia are universals and we experience it all the time based on a set of rules the same is for mass, position, momentum, spin and other physical quantities, they too are universals and they too are qualia and therefore only qualia exists and we don't have to worry about how a non-physical thing interacts with a physical thing, its because physical things don't exist in the external world. A presentation of a school of philosophy is not equivalent to forcing one to accept that philosophy and its not that the one who presents a school of philosophy he himself has to accept that philosophy and have belief in it. I didn't stated these things as a fact, I said these things need to be investigated and much of philosophy is understood through dialectic. Am I not allowed to talk about philosophy in the philosophy section or do I have to only talk about the scientific school of thought with out mentioning or presenting alternate schools of philosophical thought. If this is what the example that you are setting here then I wonder why you have a philosophy sub forum. If science is not interested in metaphysics then its just fine. I won't demand the scientific community to change its method of investigating the nature. I am arguing for the non-overlapping magisteria of Stephen Jay Gould that science and religion are of a different magisteria and that even religion should be honored and not ridiculed like those New Atheists. In the absence of evidence even I don't want anyone to applaud this as science, this is definitely not science and its equally wrong to reject this and assert that God doesn't exist. I didn't demanded that, I never said that we should put all our measurements of scientific reality into the trash bin. I am saying that irrespective of what refinements you make to the already existing accepted theories in physics one thing is certain that the positivist approach of science is never going to give an objective account of reality. As I said I am a realist I believe in the existence of an objective external world independent of the human mind. Modern science gives a hint that there is an underlying metaphysical reality and physicalism is no where near in being the external physical world as it is. That's called intellectual honesty, i,e accepting the fact that the scientific method cannot give answers to all questions and hence we need to look for alternative methods for investigating the nature and not hold on to our belief that scientific reality is the only reality allowing the possibility for other roads to reality. I said that both the scientific method as well as other philosophical methods have to be employed simultaneously in search for the truth. That's giving importance to alternate competing hypotheses to explain the workings of nature and not hold on to your hypothesis even after it is being shown that one of the fundamental assumption of that hypothesis is false. No, I accept evolution by natural selection, kin selection, reciprocal altruism, quantum physics, molecular biology, SR and GR and the whole of science. I am saying that this reality is only a state of mind and not the ultimate reality and I argue strongly that the scientific method should be adopted for investigating the nature when one is perceiving the world in this state of mind. This is how my approach is distinct from both science as well as from pseudoscience. Why do you think that intuition is not possible, if not how do you think that humans can find solutions to answers for which no algorithm exists. This is the argument of Roger Penrose that strong AI is impossible since our conscious thought processes are non-computable and that mathematicians just access already hidden platonic values and discover new mathematics and hence this is not a new idea at all and its not that science is not aware of this. That's for the ones who suppress progress by just stating that "God did it" and run away, not for the ones who really want to know how he did it and why he did it. I never said that I am not going put these ideas to the scientific test. To accept that science and God hypothesis aren't equivalent first we need to test the God hypotheses and that we haven't done it yet and hence God is still a metaphysical concept and hence I would put God in to the realm of metaphysics and I wouldn't state that even this is science but if we investigate it we have all the chance to make it a perfection of a new philosophy just same as the philosophy of naturalism and the natural sciences. Its inappropriate to subject God to the scrutiny of the scientific method, that's a real misunderstanding of how faith and revelation works and that's not the right way to test God and hence I oppose the views of New Atheism who conclude that God doesn't exist by applying the scientific method. If New Atheism was not being preached here then I wouldn't have started posting in the religious forum in the first place. That's the only sweet thing you have said in this thread. Thank you!

You can disagree and defend the current paradigm. According to eastern schools of philosophical thought mind is completely different from the Brain. They won't reduce human mind to Brain, they both are different entities and that's why you are having difficulty to grasp this insight. This is the reason why I assert that if you can reduce human mind to Brain phenomena then revelations wouldn't be possible and hence religion will be disproved. What!!! Would you please stop equating these ideas with the proponents of pseudoscience like Deepak Chopra and Oprah. Deepak Chopra merges modern science with religion and what ever he talks is bullshit!! and rubbish!!. You don't realize that I have argued in favor of you against the proponents of Intelligent design and pseudoscience. I am not here to fix broken relationships and give happiness to ordinary people, I am not a spiritual guru, if I wanted to just preach about these things to become famous or to make money I wouldn't have come here in a science forum to test my ideas first and argue with a scientific rigor and infact I haven't shared or asserted this idea anywhere else except here. Thanks for accusing me that I don't understand how science works and that I accept things based on faith and not on evidence and that I don't value the spirit of science and its scientific method. Where I have argued against evolution by natural selection or denied special relativity or quantum physics. In fact I have not attacked any of the scientific models. My posts speaks for itself and of course this doesn't mean that my ideas are right that the scientific community has to accept it, I am begging for investigation of different schools of philosophical thought and not for acceptation of those schools without any credible evidence. Its because I want to know whether revelations works or not and I want to investigate it. So without investigating on whether revelations works or not you hold a default position and assert that "God doesn't exist" or "God is Dead" and ridicule religion. I am sorry I am not going to hold that default position if everyone is going to hold this default position then who is going to step up to the new paradigm and see whether revelation works or not. I consider myself to be more intellectually honest than those who have opened up a religious forum at this site and shout for evidence of God and expect that somehow God should be subjected to the scrutiny of the scientific method. Yes if revelations works then it does have the potential to provide real useful religious knowledge just in the way empiricism provide useful scientific knowledge. If you are not going to look for evidence even if you wait for centuries you won't get any evidence. There is no instrument to show God, your own mind is the only available instrument and that instrument need to be tweaked a little to know God and that has to be done by practicing a method and if you won't invest your time in practicing that method you are not going to get any evidence, God won't fall from the sky and appear to your eyes. It needs to be investigated and I am not going to make any further posting on the religion forum. I am going to investigate it and not going to spread the message of New Atheism here without investigating it first. Yes, as you stated in your first post its about intellectual honesty but I hope it is first implemented by those who point fingers at others.

There are models which can model reality as it is and not how it appears to us or how it is been given to us. If the scientific community is not interested in those models then its fine but I want to investigate those models. Modern science has shown that the assumption that scientific reality exists in the external physical world is false. The fact that the scientific community is not willing to change or remove that assumption from science shows that it is working on a set of beliefs and bias systems and hence the scientific community deserves the Title "Scientism" and its intolerance towards other schools of philosophical thought and their methodologies is a display of dogmatism and has no authority to do so. I agree with the positivism of Bohr and that's how the current scientific method should work and any statement made on the nature of the physical system is meaningless and metaphysical, I agree but that's not the end of the story and that's a serious restriction imposed by the scientific method to investigate nature and we shouldn't make any conclusions from the inherent randomness and correlations seen at the quantum realm and therefore anyone who asserts that nature is random is incorrect and its a wrong conclusion extrapolated from the correlations observed at the quantum realm. Science cannot give an objective account of reality. This means that the next breakthrough is not going to come from the scientific community who abide by the scientific method, its going to come from individual philosophers because its purely a metaphysical and philosophical problem and not a problem of science and hence science and its scientific method is inefficient at addressing the workings of mother nature. Of course GPS and computing systems works, it works because what we call scientific reality is only a state of mind and as long as your confined with in that state of mind the world appears to follow the rules as laid out or as discovered by science. Of course you talk about progress sure humanity wants to colonize and terraform other planets but what's the point of doing all this if we have not understood our very own physical nature. This is what I am arguing from the past one year at this site that we can know the noumenon. Kant made a philosophical error when he said that the noumenon is unknowable but that's not true and it was obvious from Kant's point of view because he only had knowledge about rationalism and empiricism and therefore he rejected metaphysics completely saying that we cannot make statements about the world as it "IS". The eastern schools of philosophy says that there is a way to know the noumenon by completely rejecting the two giants of epiestomology which are rationalism and empiricism and opening a new way of observation or a new branch of epiestomology i.e we can observe the world with out the sense organs. The scientific community dismisses such assertions saying that they are hallucinations but its more to it than just mere hallucinations and I want to investigate it. The very foundations on which science and scientific realism stands are in question here. The important thing is that if those eastern schools of philosophical thought is correct then scientific realism is false and only the eastern philosophy can give an objective account of reality and only that reality is the Ultimate reality and only that reality is actually out there. This is a serious contradiction and hence both scientifc realsim as well as the God hypotheses cannot be right either one is right or the other is wrong.

Well Anil, even if you repeat the same thing for another five pages no one is going to take you seriously its because you are not making any predictions. If you define space in your own terms then can you give us a few experiments so that we can test and see whether space has your properties or not. You expect science to answer your questions but a scientific theory doesn't claim to answer your questions and hence its irrelevant. If you have so much problem with curvature of space then I should remind you that science doesn't say space curves, curvature of space and time is a ideological concept and no greater reality should be attributed to it. Well Anil, even if you repeat the same thing for another five pages no one is going to take you seriously its because you are not making any predictions. If you define space in your own terms then can you give us a few experiments so that we can test and see whether space has your properties or not. You expect science to answer your questions but a scientific theory doesn't claim to answer your questions and hence its irrelevant. If you have so much problem with curvature of space then I should remind you that science doesn't say space curves, curvature of space and time is a ideological concept and no greater reality should be attributed to it. Well Anil, even if you repeat the same thing for another five pages no one is going to take you seriously its because you are not making any predictions. If you define space in your own terms then can you give us a few experiments so that we can test and see whether space has your properties or not. You expect science to answer your questions but a scientific theory doesn't claim to answer your questions and hence its irrelevant. If you have so much problem with curvature of space then I should remind you that science doesn't say space curves, curvature of space and time is a ideological concept and no greater reality should be attributed to it.

I am not asking to give up the scientific method but why not try other methods and simultaneously investigate other methods along with the scientific method of the exact sciences since it is now found that the scientific method of positivism can not give an objective account of reality, it is the best time to try new methods to investigate nature and open up new ways of epistemology that is how we know and what we know. Why is that the scientific realm is the only realm that exist there is room for other realms too and we will be hindering the progress of humanity by strictly holding on to the scientific method. You neither investigate them nor you allow to even discuss about those concepts, I don't know how you are defending this kind of attitude. Sure, we will go back to that post. I didn't replied to your post as I was busy arguing with John and posting on other threads. No, I never rejected naturalistic explanations of Kin selection/inclusive fitness, Reciprocal Altruism and other types of altruism, I accepted all that explanations, your accusation of me that I didn't accepted such explanations is not true. The problem where I had was with Real Altruism which is still a debatable subject. Human beings are inherently different and display real altruistic behaviours more often than any species and such behaviours in no way increases the reproductive fitness of the individual or his kins and hence evolutionary psychology of the selfish genes cannot account for the complex cultural evolution seen in human beings and hence cannot give a successful theory of the Mind. The origin of language is still a problem, infact it is one of the hardest problem for science. Noam Chomsky thinks that language had to originate in one go and there are no successful theories for the origin of language. Of course there are alternative hypothesis for both the origin of language as well as real altruism and God can be one of the explanations and as I said I gave a direction to the thread and not asserted that God is the only explanation for such phenomena. I really don't see the logic behind stating that there could be other naturalistic explanations which we yet to know of and completely rejecting a God hypothesis for the same phenomena, I see those things as indirect evidence for God and I want to investigate such a hypothesis so what's wrong with it. No, things are not as fine as you make it appear. The observations are in agreement with quantum predictions but there are some correlations in nature and we need to explain why and how such correlations arise in nature. More over these correlations have violated Bell's inequality and there by in violation of local realistic theories. So normally in Science if we find some unusual observed phenomena and confirm such a phenomena by repeated experiments we deduce that something might be wrong with our assumptions and we go back to the drawing room to discuss which assumptions are more likely to turned out to be false. http://www.templeton.org/templeton_report/20090415/ Bernard d'Espagnat, a French theoretical physicist, a winner of Templeton prize for his works in Quantum Physics wrote an article called the "Quantum theory and Reality" where he addresses these issues and his arguments are very much in line or in tone with my arguments. I didn't knew about his article, I read it just few days back. Here is his excellent article on Scientfic American. Please care to read and hear it from himself and in particular page 20 where he discusses about the positivism approach of science. http://www.scientificamerican.com/media/pdf/197911_0158.pdf Anyone with a few knowledge of the scientific method and quantum physics or a layman can easily see that there is something seriously wrong with the positivist approach of science. As Bernard says that the violation of Bell's Inequality implies that one of the three basic assumptions of science must be wrong. 1. The Three premises of Scientific Realism. 2. The free use of Induction. 3. Einstein separability. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/ Scientific Realism is the belief that the objects described by physics exist independently of the mind of the Observer or exists in the external physical world. The accepted consenus by the scientific community is to reject realism and retreat towards positivism and hence physicists do not assert that the external physical world do not exist instead they say that any attempt to understand the physical nature of the quantum system must be rejected as meaningless since it is highly metaphysical. According to this positivist approach science cannot give an objective account of reality and the aim of science is just to make predictions about the possible values of the quantum system and we shouldn't demand an explanation as to why and how such a correlation arises in nature. If science has to explain how entanglement works then it is inevitable that it has to penetrate into the objective account of the quantum system but the positivist approach of science cannot penetrate into such a system. This is not a problem of nature this is more of a problem of the scientific method and its basic assumptions. Therefore I am asserting that the assumption of Scientific realism and its epiestomology is false, physical objects don't exist in the outside world. Does it ring some bells now? Does it? Its obvious that since I am asserting something which is not accepted by the scientific community I am not part of the scientific community and one might consider me as a crackpot, that's fine, but I am not quoting things from the scripture I am arguing about some real science here and not stating it as a fact and I am willing to accept that I was wrong but no one has demonstrated with evidence as to where and how I am wrong untill then I don't have to back off from my view. I am not rejecting scientific observation. Scientific observation is one of the state of mind and it is a sub reality of an underlying ultimate reality. Therefore I am not rejecting scientific models, I do defend evolution by Natural selection, Special and General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Physics and I do want to learn about those models and I am interested in mainstream science too, that's why I am in a science forum, if I had mis-represented any of those well accepted theories and asserted that they are wrong then you could make an accusation on me but I have not done that. The Good news is that we already have methods in other eastern schools of philosophical thought which can investigate that ultimate reality which is not embedded in space and time and these methods help us to percieve nature in a different state of mind, this opens up new observation and new ways of epiestomology and this gives us an objective account of reality. We can know the noumenon, the things in itself and not as they appear to us. So even those who are studying those schools of philosophical thought are working for an objective account of reality and working for the ontological nature of space and time. The way it works in this site here is that you request for evidence and if we don't come up with one you accuse us that we are Intellectually dishonest. There is evidence but you have to step up and practice the methods and achieve that new state of observation because as long as you are in the normal state of observation this world is consistent with scientific models and you won't find any evidence in this state of observation. So its not dishonest on my part if you don't come out of your scientific method and consider spending your time on a different method. If you don't want to waste your time then its just fine, we will go by that method and such a method requires some time to bring some evidence and without understanding it this is being equated to unicorns, batman and other fictitious character as though science can give an objective account of reality comprehending everything about nature without understanding how faith and revelation works. So any God hypothesis whether it is of St. Augustine or of St. Aquinas or of Marcus Aurelius is in equal footing to give an objective account of reality and it should be investigated, criticised, discussed and should not be ridiculed or mocked on such arguments. I have to ask you what use is a scientific method if it leaves most of the nature to be incomprehensible, what have you understood about nature anyway, if you stick with the scientific method you will never have an objective account of reality and hence such a knowledge would be incomplete, if you don't want to investigate then then its fine but don't ridicule about them, you can criticize them with all your intellectual rigor but you cannot mock them. Now don't accuse me if I say that this molecular neurobiological explanation of information processing in the Brain doesn't in any way explain the processing of qualia. You think that it is just an emergent property, if there was no problem then one has to wonder why someone like Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff had to come up with a theory of consciousness which tries to solve the hard-problem of consciousness, if there is no problem then what's the point of solving the poblem, any conscious theory will explain qualia as an emergent property of a complex system, the problem is any complex system derived from physical objects cannot produce the experience of sweetness, redness and other qualia experience. To know about such a system we need to know "what it is like to be" a complex system only then we can know whether we have reproduced the experience of qualia naturally or have we created a philosophical zombie. This is directly linked to the problem of consciousness itself. If the physical objects do not have the attribute of sweetness, redness and other qualia and my brain is made up of just those physical objects then how and why I am experiencing qualia. Why I need to be self aware of my body? what purpose does it serve? The body and brain can work on its own. If a philosophical approach is falsifiable then it is scientific. It may be unscientific according to the scientific method of exact sciences but it is a science according to its own methodologies and on its own right. Therefore just because its not in harmony with what science says doesn't mean that it should be rejected or say its not real. Even such philosophical approaches can add some real value to the knowledge database of humanity. http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/94/hhr94_4.html If I am arguing from the point of paradigm shifts of Thomas Kuhn then no, even if you make those observations for hundreds of centuries and say that the predictions of a theory are in agreement with the observations you cannot say that anything which doesn't go by scientific models is utter bollocks because according to Kuhn a theories predictive accuracy as nothing to do with the actual reality which is out there. Scientific models are just models no greater reality should be attributed to them, those were developed to model reality and not dictate how reality should exist. http://history.hanover.edu/hhr/94/hhr94_4.html If I am arguing from the point of paradigm shifts of Thomas Kuhn then no, even if you make those observations for hundreds of centuries and say that the predictions of a theory are in agreement with the observations you cannot say that anything which doesn't go by scientific models is utter bollocks because according to Kuhn a theories predictive accuracy as nothing to do with the actual reality which is out there. Scientific models are just models no greater reality should be attributed to them, those were developed to model reality and not to dictate how reality should exist.

Sure, Science contradicts Faith and Religion. There can be only one external world, either give up religion or Faith and accept scientific realism or give up scientific realism and assert that only non-material world exist, you can not say both the material as well as the non-material world exist out there. Therefore stop merging modern science with religion or faith it doesn't make any sense, It is ridiculous.

Extra Dimensions if it exist have to be very small. Extra dimensions must be small So its not theoretically possible get on with it..

@Astrocat5 Firstly if you post your thoughts with a embedded quote its highly difficult for others to quote your post and answer it to the point. Where is the evidence from the scripture which indicates that Father was present prior to the God of the Old Testament, can you quote the scripture where it says that the God of Moses rejected the Father and went on to create this world or are you making up this stuff on your own? The trinity concept of Christianity is not mentioned in the Old Testament, why is the heavenly Father not mentioned in the Old Testament? or Did Moses lied to us? God said "I will be his Father and he will be my son". This clearly indicates that the God of Abraham, Jacob, Issaiah, David and Moses is equal to the Father of Jesus in the New Testament. If the Father and Jesus was present from the beginning or prior to The Genesis then why anyone would say like that "I will be his Father". This clearly indicates that the arrival of Jesus was a prophecy which was yet to be fullfilled. Irrespective of whether the God of Moses was the Father of Jesus or not, this statement from Jesus "The Father and I are One" has a deep mystical meaning which is often claimed by christian mystics that "God and I are One" or "I am God" which is also in harmony with Jesus teachings that "You all are Gods, men of the most high". It may be that since Jesus was preaching to ordinary people he said "You can not know the Father" that doesn't mean he is unknowable, it shouldn't be taken literally, infact that would undermine Gnosticism itself because its a view which says we can know everything that is there is to know. As I have repeated many times earlier there is theistic mysticism too, if you assert that only Buddhism can be called as Mysticism then one can easily see your double standards and a bias towards non-theistic mysticism. Mysticism involves both theistic as well as non-theistic doctrines. My view is one of the views of the Isha Upanishad of Yajnavalkya and just because my view is not in line with yours you are asserting that I am not talking about mysticism holding your narrow atheistic view of mysticism. I would be extremely happy if you just stick to that but you link your theory with mysticism that's when the problem kicks in. I am still in non-duality of Advaita as formulated by Shankara. Do you expect me to not call non-duality of Shankara as mysticism or Gnosticism.

My body is a student of computer science, my brain codes programs, it does it in an algorithmic way based on a set of rules, this is enough to make devices work and give us some joy. The problem with this is you don't have to be conscious or self aware of your body to make these devices work, the body and the brain is a machine and machines are indeed capable of designing other machines. But we are something more than machines, we have a conscious thought which is non-computable which doesn't work based on a set of rules, it works by intuition which implies that there is a human mind to implement conscious thought, in this human mind cognition or pre-processing of sensory data takes place and if all that the we know is our cognition from sensory data how can I be sure that the human body as described by molecular biology and the human brain as described by molecular neurobiology indeed exist out there in the physical world. So as long as you are confined to this kind of cognition, a state of mind then obviously everything appears to follow a set of rules and those rules are mathematically formulated by science. So obviously my body and my brain works based on logic and its inevitable that I have to go by logic in this state of Mind. The main doctrine of Mysticism is that we can percieve the world in a different way and in a different state of mind and we can achieve direct realism means we can directly know the noumenon, in this state the mind doesn't processes data coming through the sense organs and only such a state of mind can give an objective account of reality and such an objective account of reality shows us that the mind cannot think on its own, it needs the help of a personal God to make it think, so we don't have free will, we don't have control over our thoughts and it also requires an underlying reality made up of just five elements. So here is my body and my brain and here is my mind and my personal god but the where the hell I am. You are no where in this world picture, You created God and God created the world. You are the basis of this world. So obviously yes just because I rely on revelation doesn't necessarily mean that I have to be illogical in the normal natural world. The natural world is logical but it is not the ultimate reality, so logic is insufficient what we need is revelation to know the ultimate reality and hence I go by revelation when talking about mysticism. As you can see if science gives an objective account of reality then automatically the doctrine of mysticism will be disproved. As I have said earlier my view violates the Law of Contradiction or the Law of Opposites. To me both the Opposites can exist simulataneously and I have no problem in harmonizing the two opposite views that a personal God with a form and having plurality and an absolute unity which is non-dual both simultaneously exist. So I'm arguing that both the personal God as well as the Absolute unity exist simultaneously and it is as fundamental as it is real. This is illogical and hence you are shouting that "Hey, this cannot be possible". Yeah not possible for a logical mind but not for mind which has had revelations. The phenomenal world is created by the mind, this begs the question from where did the mind came from, if absolute unity is non-dual and one then how and from where did the mind originate, the mind has to exist and it should be real because we are being in the world right now. The basis for the mind is the personal god and for the basis for the personal god is the absolute unity. There is nothing to state that qualia must be confined with in the mind, qualia can exist outside the mind too, the mind itself is a qualia and there are schools of philosophical thought which argues for the existence of qualia outside the mind in western philosophy itself which I read it on Wikipedia but I forgot where I read that and hence don't know which philosophy was that. Overall there is nothing which says why qualia cannot exist outside of mind. I take a positive metaphysical position not a neutral metaphysical position. Shankara clearly says that "unity exists and I am that." This is a positive assertion. I am convinced of one thing if quarks, atoms, fermions and bosons actually exist in the outside physical world then I will proclaim myself as a strong atheist denying the existence of a personal god and also of the absolute unity. The metaphysical theories of Hegel or of absolute idealism or the scientific theories of naturalism has nothing to do with the absolute unity of mysticism. It is ridiculous to think that quarks, fermions, bosons came out of that absolute unity. The ancient people following the mystical traditions neither knew anything about modern science or of particle physics nor they knew anything about the metaphysical theories of Hegel or of absolute idealism all they had knowledge about was of the Gods and about revelations and mysticism has nothing to do with the rational theories of metaphysics or the empirical theories of science. There can only be two possibilities atoms, particles, fermions and bosons exist in the outside world which would completely vanish the existence of personal god and absolute unity and I will be a strong atheist or else the brain and the body as described by molecular biology do not exist which means personal god and unity exists and it is the ultimate reality. But you can never ever assert that the brain exists in the outside physical world and also assert that the world is a unity. I hope you have got my point.

Its in harmony with whatever I had said previously. I am a realist, science has not given an objective account of reality and its method has made most of the workings of nature to be incomprehensible and I don't think science can give an objective account of reality and that is an open question. So atoms, quarks, fermions, bosons etc don't exist independently in the external objective world and what we can see are just correlations of an underlying reality so it best to say that scientific models and physical objects are just ideological concepts and do not exist in the outside world. This is just my opinion. So all that is real is our personal conscious experience because because that is what is left of and that's the only thing we know of which implies only the mind is real, but now the question arises from where did the mind came from, that mind came from God and forms the objective basis for the existence of this world and God itself came from the Absolute unity i.e from YOU. "The Universe produced phenomenally in me, is pervaded by me... From me the world is born, in me it exists, in me it dissolves." So yes you created God and God created your mind and body (which is made up of just five elements) and finally when you realize yourself God itself dissolve in you. This is a literal interpretation and therefore God is real, fundamental and he is anthropomorphic. My objection was that there is an objective external world of God and we don't know who is the God, it can very well be the Father of Jesus, the God of the Upanishad, or the Abrahamic God, we don't know what the hell is going on out there but none the less this objective world of God should exist if absolute unity has to exist. Anthropomorphic God means a personal God, God is a person, he is real and fundamental and I have told you I don't go by logic, I go by revelation and I don't see any contradiction in it.

How is exchange symmetry, the exclusion principle and the true indistinguishable nature of elementary particles has anything to do with God. Yes if the exclusion principle didn't exist then this world wouldn't have existed but if scientific realism is proved and if it is found that the external physical world is a material world made up of atoms then it is best to give up the concept of God and say God is dead. Your idea doesn't lead you to something like a God.

No, God is anthropomorphic and objective, God is not a psychological phenomena because the mind itself came from God, its not the other way around where the mind creates the notion of God. God came from the Absolute unity (i.e You), mind and body came from God. I beg to differ and that's how I interpret his teachings, that's what the Holy spirit has revealed to me.

I have not read the text but isn't it that it has nothing to do with the motion of planets and more to do with the Sun God and his chariots i.e the way he moves from Uttarayana and Dakshinayana. It is interesting to note that both the Mayan and the Hindu calendar start with the same starting dates around 3102BCE but the Hindu calendar doesn't end on this year, it continues for 432000.

The length of Kali Yuga is believed to be 432000 years long and just 5000 years have passed on since we entered Kali Yuga, we are no where near the end of Kali Yuga. http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Yuga

Are you talking about this --> The Return of the Nephilim. Chuck Missler would say that Gods were the extraterrestrials and not some kind of aliens from outer space.

God created my body and my mind but that's not me, I am the Absolute from which everything came and that includes God too, so yeah the "you" in both those statements are not the same thing. Jesus spoke about Father and taught that we are all gods, made in the true image of God.

To OP - Just by reading Gnostic books you will not become a Gnostic. You are missing the deep mystical meaning behind the teachings of Jesus when he says "Father and I are One". The "I" refers to the body and the mind. The "Father" refers to an anthropomorphic God whose objective existence is responsible for the existence of body and mind. The Body and the mind cannot exist independent of the Father which means to say that this world cannot exist without the Father. Saying that Father and I are "ONE" means that you are neither your body nor your mind, You are the "ONE" from which "Father" itself originates. It is in this context that Jesus says "Father and I are one". Its not that he means to say that the human form or the body of Jesus is the Father. It shouldn't be understood in that context. God forms the basis for the objective existence of this world and You form the basis for the existence of God.