immortal

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 has the fundamental reality. Absolute idealism cannot be realised without first realising the reality of God. Neither Subjective idealism nor naturalism and objective idealsim have been proved beyond doubt and therefore the idea of God existing independent of mind and matter cannot be ruled out as a possibility. Ofcourse naturalism doesn't find God necessary now but when it has reached a state where it has to answer those big philosophical questions that's where its real test relies. Therefore I doesn't want to take any side nor I feel it is right to take a deafult position when anything could be possible. I am with Feyerabend. Science stands on its own and even all other schools of philosophical thought stands on its own.

Yes it does, we can see it working in a black hole, the space and time is curved so much that even light cannot escape from the black hole.

Mass and energy are idealistic concepts. I think a lot has to do with how science is being taught in schools, we think and believe that the descriptions and analogies used in scientific models are the way things actually are in the physical world. This is not entirely correct untill Physicalism is proved beyond any doubt. So "anything" doesn't just imply mass and energy, it fully imply "anything". This is the kind of spirit in which Science should work and I am with Bohr and no better interpretation has been achieved to dismiss his view.

I don't think its microscopic, I think there is a human behind that picture, I can see his/her hand which can clearly be seen at the lower part of the picture. Oh sorry I think its probably you and I have got no idea what that picture is.

The coulomb potential confines the electrons into a set of allowed possible energy levels and the electrons won't orbit around the nucleus instead they form a negative cloud around the nuclues which may have spehrical or non-spherical shapes. Its a direct consequence of the nucleus system or the quantum system, so what is special about that. Free neutrons are vulnerable to weak interaction. a force carried by its bosons respectively and therefore it decay into other low stable quarks. So what is the special knowledge you have that science doesn't have. What do you mean? Do you think scientists made it up so that it accounts for the limitations of the classical view of the Bohr atom model. The calculations of the quantum wavefunction are in agreement with the energy levels in atoms and their spectrums. Holy spirit? Dark energy? I expected a more intelligent answer considering that we thought you were an enlightened man. The question is why is that the explanation of the Bible have to be consistent with the explanation given by science? If that is the main goal of Bible then that must be the will of God. So why does God wants to reveal himself through the Bible, he could have easily revealed himself while science is attempting to explain the cosmos. So what I need to do to get qualified to have this new knowledge.

There is nothing special about it, science has already explained why atoms have a net neutral charge. Again quantum mechanics and quantum states perfectly explain why atoms of an element have identical properties. The equations of general relativity predict that a gravitonal field should exist which is carried by gravitons and experiments have been conducted to detect those particles and if we can't detect then we need to fix something in our scientific models, you need to explain why those scientific models will not be fixed without invoking God into it. The equations of general relativity shows how matter curves space and time and how space and time drives matter and the it has been tested to precision upto decimal places. So what special about that. Define Holy spirit? Why the hell the holy spirit or the Bible have to be consistent with the scientific models, bible doesn't claim to fill the gaps in the scientific models, Bible claims to describe the supernatural realm, it stands on its own. It is not factual untill it is tested. Its an honor to see your validation, please kindly provide it. Those people put their belief systems to test and that's how factual statements and real knowledge are accumulated. Perhaps you didn't understand his latter statement. "Religion without science is blind" - We should respect only those beliefs which has been tested and found to be real. You cannot request respect for your belief from others before putting your belief systems to test. Einstein never requested others to respect his beliefs. That's the difference between you and Einstein and the reason why we see him with high respect.

What makes you think that matter exists in the physical world, science doesn't answer that, what science gives is an accurate model to describe the elements or entities in the physical world, it doesn't mean that the concepts or elements used in the scientific models are the ultimate reality, no greater reality should be attributed to those scientific models, we don't know what the physical world is made up of and science is not concerned to answer those questions, what science claims to explain or give is an accurate model to describe or model the events appearing to our observations. Therefore the actual physical world might be made up of anything, it could even be a deity dust, who knows, science doesn't say that the physical world should be made up of matter, it doesn't say that. So you cannot say that God should be made up of matter just because science gives a model which is represented based on elements of matter. Remember it is just a model not reality itself. Hence your argument doesn't follow logically. The physical world could be made up of anything. To the OP- The scientific speculation of the existence of extraterrestrial beings is something which can be falsified using the scientific method and therefore it is within the scope of science and even though multiverses contain a lot of metaphysical baggage in it, it is none the less a prediction arrived from the scientific models. Now what predictions does a theory of God makes, where do we look him, is there a reasonable evidence that we will find him somewhere in our visible universe, if we cannot make predictions about God which can be falsifiable then it is not within the scope of science and therefore the conclusion is that we don't know God exists or not. There is nothing in science showing evidence that he doesn't exist and hence a honest answer should be 'we don't know' and not pretend 'God is dead'.

You cannot come to such a conclusion. Alaistair I.M Rae in his book A beginner's guide for QM takes both the analogies i.e a particle in a box analogy as well as the standing waves analogy that can be formed in a pool to arrive at the accurate predictions made by quantum theory. We need those two analogies because of the dual nature of matter, the position of the physical entity like an electron is defined by the particle concept where as the momentum which is associated with the wavelength of the matter waves is defined using the standing wave concept. Both particle -->position and standing waves--> momentum can have a set of possible values. This is where uncertainty creeps in so that we can only predict the possible outcomes or values of a quantum system and we cannot simultaneously know both the values of position and momentum precisely as it will always have an uncertainty equal to (Dirac's constant(h/2pi))/2. Therefore HUP is a direct consequence of standing waves of matter. One advice the postivist approach of Bohr gives is that we should not attempt to attribute some reality to the nature of the quantum system itself, we don't know what those elements are and the aim of QM is just to predict the possible outcomes of the system and not to predict the nature of the physical quantum system itself.

No, not so soon. You missed the latter part of the quote, this is what they said. "but, they note that "this still doesn’t explain why these particular events are qualia laden and others are not (Chalmers’ ‘hard problem’) but at least it narrows the scope of the problem" . Perhaps I thought you would first look at this post #22 in this thread http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/63165-where-did-god-come-from/page__pid__657198__st__20#entry657198 where I have addressed your question. I just didn't want to post the samething here too. Physicalism is not proved untill it can be shown that qualia can be copied and studied. Those color cells doesn't explain anything about qualia, they just indicate that one experiences qualia when those cells are stimulated, the basic mechanisms of how qualia works is the real hard problem. Dualism still stands out as a possibility. What they might give me is matter whose thermodynamic entropy is highly reduced and shanon's entropy gives us a way to measure the information in the form of bits and bytes. Shanon's entropy is not connected to thermodynamic entropy both are different things therefore information itself is different from the matter which represents it. They don't give me genome, what they give me is a representation of it, not exactly what I wanted. The practical impossibility is not something due to the constraints of time, space and recreating the pre-historic conditions of the earth, the practical impossibility is due to the positivist approach of science which fails to give knowledge about the nature of things so that we could know what information "IS". Not all scientists and philosophers are satisfied with such a consensus, many think we need new science, as a layman I can see the concerns and arguments of these unsatisfied scientists who think that our knowledge about the world is incomplete, ofcourse there will always be few loopholes or gaps in the theory but the main problem lies in the positivist approach which is not concerned with the nature of the physical system which is being measured by physicists. To me that seems a absolute limitation in the method of investigating the nature rather than knowledge gaps in the scientific theories which will be filled out with further investigation. If this is true then science will never come up with a single fundamental model to describe the universe. Therefore we should look for new schools of philosophical thought which can achieve the perfection that natural sciences has achieved over the years. Those codes and machinery had to be in place before evolution kicks in. The problem is there was no natural selection to act to implement the Grover's algorithm which is being used to form triplet codes which represent amino acids. So how can nature implement natural algorithms in the absence of natural selection? We're missing a key physical component in nature which is the source of abstract information, I don't think information is an abstract thing. These things are enough for me to give some space for irrationality in my mind so that I can investigate on new ways of looking at nature since I clearly know that there is something wrong with the positivist approach used in mainstream physical sciences.

A glycogen polymer acts as a substrate for the enzymes to act on. There are processes which are spontaneous i.e they don't require any activation energy from outside the system to transform the substrate which is the input to produce byproducts which is the output of that process. There are non-spontaneous process too which require a kick start or an activation energy from outside to transform the substrate in a desired particluar pathway so that the desired byproducts are obtained after completion of this non-spontaneous process. It is in this non-spontaneous processes that the role of enzymes come into play and it is they that give the substrates the necessary activation energy to make a non-feasible reaction feasible. Therefore the role of the substrates or glycogen polymer or their functions is that they can be transformed into different chemical pathways so that energy can be extracted from those chemical pathways to do some useful work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary's_room If Mary was a synesthetic then she would have had knowledge about redness, blueness and other colors other than black and white by looking at those black and white numbers on her television screen. Therefore in this case she very well know what it is like to experience redness and sweetness while she is still inside the room and she will not be surprised to see redness when she is sent out of the room to experience the real world. She doesn't even have to undergo that surgery. By putting her in a closed room you haven't put her outside the universal room. She is in an uinversal room on both circumstances i.e while she is inside the room as well as once she is outisde the room and she will always be in an universal room as long as her non-physical mind is coupled to the sense organs. Therefore her access to the qualia of redness is not denied just by putting her in a closed room. The knowledge argument by Jackson was not strict in its intended sense. Therefore it all boils down to whether these things are physical or non-physical. If they are physical then physicalism is right but if they are non-physical then that means the mind is non-physical which means that there are mechanisms through which it can decouple itself from the sense organs there by coming out of the universal room and there by accessing new qualia. Yes the big question is can qualia be studied, copied, manipulated, experienced in a machine, if they are just patterns then it shouldn't be a problem to upload them into machines. The question is not that the techonology is available or not. Other sources indicate that it is unachievable. The huge body of literature along with practical knowledge from the eastern school of philosophical thought implies that its not true i.e they are not patterns in the brain and some have enough self-evidence to bet that they cannot be studied and copied. If that's the case then the scientific community will never succeed in solving the hard-problem of consciousness and if it doesn't investigate on other ways of looking at nature then the knowledge given by science will always be incomplete. http://www.hubertpyockey.com/hpyblog/about/ Science cannot solve the problem of origin of life. Genome and genetic code is an abstract thing, which cannot be found physically, natural selection can account for the generation of new information once it exists but it cannot account for the origin of prescriptive or meaningful information itself, are there any natural mechanisms which can produce natural algorithms along with a set of codes and machinerys to process those codes? Science can only measure information and who decides whether the things described by mathematics are abstract concepts or they actually describe something existing in the physical world which evades from being seen as we are confined to our universal phenomenal room? Therefore the knowledge given by science about evolution by natural selection and the origin of life will always be incomplete with out knowing the exact nature of the things.

Indeed!!

If the problem was a piece of cake then the U.S didn't had to go through this kind of shit. http://truthxchange.com/articles/2011/04/12/confronting-neopaganism-in-the-culture-and-the-church/ Unfortunately whatever event happens or whatever the consequences that nation faces it affects everyone around the world. These kinds of extremism is displayed by people because science doesn't give them answers to those big metaphysical questions and they rely towards misinformed people who are themselves deluded and manipulate them and make them as their followers and its all because of the default position held by the scientific community saying that they're not going to waste their time by investigating on metaphysics and trans-personal psychology coming out of their positivist reductionist approach, if there was an organization or a standard a part within the scientific community which gave directions to people and educate them about what the truth is then it will prevent these extremists from gaining human resource and money power. People are smart enough they're not going to hold on to the default position held by the scientific community because it doesn't satisfy them and therefore they seek truth in mysticism. All the above problems are linked to this problem of qualia - the hard problem of consciousness and I seriously think that it should be investigated and people should be made aware of what the truth is or else we might have to live in a dangerous society which holds some highly disturbing ideas which drives people insane. This the reason I say it is a matter of responsibility or a wake up call. I am not playing around here.

The theory is that mind is non-physical and these qualia of our universal room are confined within the mind and these neurological pathways that exist in the brain are mere amplifiers which help in the amplification of these qualia experience in the non-physical mind and therefore the neurological pathways and the non-physical mind are coupled and therefore the brain firing is obviously connected to qualia experience. This is the theory or the hypothesis. If physicalism is true i.e if these qualia are mere patterns in the brain then they can be copied to neural networks just like how we copy other patterns like behavior, voice recognition etc. So if you have to disprove the above hypothesis then you have to implement the following in a neural network. 1. you have to copy these patterns into a neural network. 2. you also need to come up with a module to simulate self awareness in a neural network because according to physicalism even self awareness is a complex pattern in the human brain. 3. so that I, you or anyone can run ourselves or run our mental states in that neural network and experience what it is like to be a neural network. 4. If I and you experience redness, sweetness and other qualia and have knowledge of what it is like to be a neural network then the above hypothesis will be proved wrong. As you realize the problem of qualia is intertwined with the hard problem of consciousness. This is the reason science should investigate in other methods of investigating these qualia or solve the hard-problem of consciousness with in its positivist reductionist approach.

There is nothing in physics which indicates that time flows forwards either, time neither flows forwards nor does it flow backwards and we really don't know whether there is an arrow of time physically or not. When you asked this question it reminded me of an article which I gave to my college magazine where I had mentioned about the possibility of time flowing backwards and I read that article again and I was very embarrassed for the wrong conclusions that I had made in that article merging the mystical view of precognition and the scientific speculation of time flowing backwards made by few physicists. I was young and didn't knew how most of the science works at that time and therefore I am very disappointed that I pushed such a non-scientific issue in my article. However I think it was this link which made me to speculate on such a thing. Future Influence: The Quantum Physics Of Precognition Or Pseudoscience? Read the comments too, it has some interesting information. Whether our brains can use the weird aspects of quantum physics is a side issue, its not important now. There is a possibility that the future might influence the past, it doesn't mean time flows backwards, nothing flows here. John Wheeler's delayed-choice double-slit thought experiment reveals that an observer today can be partially responsible for generating the reality of the remote past. The past history of the photon is decided now, basing upon how the participator chooses to make a measurement. So there can be a future influence on the past and Roger Penrose has proposed such an idea. But do know that this is still at the speculation stage and not accepted in the mainstream science. As said earlier General theory of relativity doesn't see gravity as a force, an object or an apple falls to the ground not due to some attraction force, it falls to the ground due to the curvature of space and time. However the equations of general relativity predicts that there should be particles called as gravitons which carries the gravitational force and many experiments have been conducted in search of this particle but it has not been detected yet but it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, more powerful experiments are being conducted. Its a question which science cannot answer, all science can know is the physiological changes in plants and animals but we cannot know whether they have any real inner feelings in them like we do. To know whether plants have inner feelings or not you have to know what it is like to be a plant which something science cannot provide right now. It is because of lack of information to our brains and humans have the ability to imagine things and if you had saw a scary movie in the morning then its likely that you are going to imagine them when things go dark and think that those things may be actually there behind you and obviously get afraid. There is no single magical potion that saves us, we need all the nutrients or chemicals for our body just as we need water.

The genes that are always expressed in all the cells of the body are called as Housekeeping genes and they are necessary for the cell to perform the basic functions to sustain itself like ribosomes, Krebs cycle enzymes, oxidative phosphorylation enzymes, cytochrome, ATP synthase etc. There are other genes which are expressed only in some cells like hemoglobin in erythrocytes, actin and myosin in muscle fibres etc. It is determined by gene regulation. There are cytoplasm determinants(co-factors and repressors) which induce stable permanent changes in cell types by controlled gene expression. The cells undergo programmed cell death called as Apoptosis to maintain the structure and number of cells that is required to form tissues and organs. The Homeo box genes are expressed during differentiation of body parts. Also there are small interference RNA's which control gene regulation. Meristem cells have a capacity called as cellular totipotency that they can didifferentiate again into a form of callus and regenerate a whole plant from a part of a plant which is highly differentiated. Redifferentiation can be induced by cytokinins, auxins, gibberellins and other sugar molecules to differentiate the vascular tissues of xylem and phloem and also the differentiation of buds and other organs.

In fixed length records one should use padding for empty or non-filled spaces. For example :- 18|Alice|21|F|Student*******************$ 19|John|26|M|Professor*****************$ In variable length records padding is not required. Alice|21|F|Student# John|26|M|Professor# Variable records are used when you're not aware of the size of the individual data fields or variables or if you want dynamic allocation of memory at run time so that it allocates as much memory as it is required avoiding unnecessary allocation of memory resources and for fixed length records it is used when you very well know the size of the individual fields or variables.

I am not saying Buddhism is false, the nondual advaita by Sankara says Buddhism is false, I just have to speak the truth, if it sounds bitter to you what can I do. I am not in favour of any mystical views nor do I adhere to them, logic is not the way to know which school of philosophical thought is correct or incorrect, it is known through experiential knowledge by sitting in a cave or under a tree and bringing some real testable knowledge. I can't let wrong information to be spread over here, I can't say anything just to please someone. Then according to your biased defintion of mysticism, nondual advaita by Sankara doesn't support your metaphysical theory which you have used as a support for your metaphysical theory in "From Metaphysics to Mysticism" article, you haven't surveyed all the literature sources properly. Now as I have said in the other thread http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/57295-metaphysics-and-science/page__pid__656616#entry656616 theistic mysticism do not hold a neutral metaphysical position, they hold a positive metaphysical position, according to Advaita Mind, the objective world and personal God exists and personal god is the basis for mind as well as matter, finally personal God himself dissolves in you, You're Unity, you're the ultimate truth, you're God. This is the advaita school of philosophical thought. Therefore it holds a positive metaphysical position which is defensible by experiential knowledge and it doesn't go by logic, this is the opinion of theistic mysticism or Advaita. I don't hold any low or high opinion towards any mystical school of thought as concluded by PeterJ

I never said that, after a very long quarrel for months or so, you disclosed that you're arguing from a metaphysical point of view and after so much of misunderstanding you have revealed your point of view. How am I supposed to know what your view is if you are not willing to tell it. From Metaphysics to mysticism by Peter Jones. I guess you're Peter Jones. However my objections to your view is understandable because of the following reasons. Firstly the non-dualistic Advaita by Sankara doesn't hold a neutral metaphysical position, advaita holds a positive nondual metaphysical position. God gives positive answers to all metaphysical questions. Advaita doesn't say that the psychophysiological phenomena of mind and matter exist and do not exist like the middle way approach in Nagarjuna. It says mind and matter exists and also unity exists but mind and matter is not eternal and therefore not fundamental. Both Mind and matter are products of a personal God and therefore mind and matter dissolves into the personal God and finally personal God himself will say that you and I are one and he will dissolve in you. You are unity, you are existence, you are Brahman, you are fundamental and you exist eternally. It doesn't take a neutral position as to what the universe "IS", it says positively that universe is Unity but the middle way approach of Nagarjuna believe in emptiness or sunya and it is not the same as unity of advaita. Sankara clearly says that something exists and the universe is made of that something on the contrary Nagarjuna neither says that unity exist nor he says that unity doesn't exist, he takes a neutral position which reduces to emptiness or nihilism. Advaita is not nihilism, Sankara positively says Brahman or unity exists and it is real. Advaita is Monotheism which finally reduces to non-dualism, advaita clearly says this "IS" space, this "IS" time, this "IS" matter, this "IS" God and from god finally it reduces to this "IS" universe or unity which is the ultimate non-dual reality. It holds a positive metaphysical position which is defensible by experiential knowledge if not defensible by logic. It has a single truth, it doesn't have two truths and that truth is Brahman or unity is real and fundamental and it exists and it is "something" and not emptiness. Therefore the doctrine of theistic mysticism doesn't take a neutral metaphysical position and hence not all doctrines of mystical traditions and their results are consistent with your metaphysical theory. Einstein was not wrong when he said that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. There can be a scientific or a metaphysical theory which can describe and comprehend the universe with a positive metaphysical position through empiricism or through experiential knowledge. Human beings are not mere axiomatic systems, they are beyond that, they can realise the truth of Godel's senetences and Roger Penrose thinks that the human mind is non-computable. Godel's incompleteness theorem simply states that mathematics is incomplete, if the human mind is non -computable then the universe is non-computable and therefore the universe can be described in a non-computable and reasonable way. It is in this hope I stick with the positive metaphysical position for a fundamental scientific or metaphysical or mystical theory hoping that the universe is reasonable and describable.

What makes you think that the only remaining theory which states that the universe is a unity is logically defensible, you didn't addressed my contradictions to it which shows that even such a theory is logically inconsistent. It is because mysticism is irrational, it doesn't go by logic.

No we don't agree, we falsify theories by the use of empiricism, we don't verify it, there is a lot of difference between verifying and falsifying, care to read this link --> Falsifiability. A theory will be ruled out as metaphysics as long as it cannot be falsifiable, once a theory provides us a method and makes a series of predictions then we can experiment and testify the theory then it is within the boundaries of science. Such a theory is called as a scientific theory. Mysticism doesn't fall neither under science nor does it fall under metaphysics. Mysticism is experiential knowledge not empiricism, empiricism means acquiring knowledge through the sense organs, experiential knowledge means acquiring knowledge through the knowledge of qualia. The religious scriptures gives us a method and it predicts that one will experience this qualia if one follows this method, the master learns the method from his master and the students learns the method from the master and everytime the method should produce identical experience in subjects if the method is performed correctly. So mysticism works by falsification, if the method doesn't come up with positive evidence then the scripture is wrong or incorrect and it shouldn't be given any further credence and it can be dismissed as rubbish. So the question is do metaphysical theories gives us a method or a prediction to dismiss them or falsify them. In most cases it doesn't and therefore everyone's point of view appears to be logically correct, so how does metaphysics accumulate real knowledge? I doesn't want to do any bias towards any theistic mystcism or non-theisitic mysticism like you do so often which clearly displays your double standards and a bias towards non-theistic mysticism. So what value it adds to the knowledge database of humanity if metaphysics doesn't give us any true knowledge, if you cannot falsify a metaphysical theory then it adds no value to the already existing huge body of knowledge in humanity. Whether it is a metaphysical theory or whether a model coming from a book, true knowledge is something which comes from falsifying or putting the models to test in reality to see whether it represents any real knowledge or not. I don't have any bias towards metaphysics because Karl popper clearly indicates a metaphysical theory which cannot be falisified in this century could be falsified in the next century and the theory might turn out to be a very good scientific theory. You seem to miss this point showing that you really don't understand how science works. Who or on what basis one puts the demarcation line as to what is mysticism and what it isn't, to me all methods have equal footing, I don't have any bias towards or against any methods, a method is a valid one if it represents some real knowledge, it is dismissed if it doesn't produce any positive results, its as simple as that, you're one who is displaying double standards and dismissing methods based on your personal prejudices rather than based on facts and reality. Again you're the one who is saying this shouldn't be called as mysticism or that should not fall under mysticism, you're the one who have a bias on methods, not me, again you are either not aware of how mysticism works in various traditions or you have a bias against theistic mysticism. Advaita by Sankara is theistic mysticism, you go and say to the orthodox mystics of advaita that personal God doesn't exist seperate and distinct from us, they'll laugh at you. The whole Vedas and Upanishads consist only of mantras and yet you say that this shouldn't be on behalf of mysticism, then please don't spread wrong information to people, you're misinformed and you have a bias towards non-theistic mysticism. An advaiti cannot also be an atheist, its logically inconsistent. Which ever religious book or religion it might be it should be falsified through revealation not through physics or metaphysics. All religions have equal footing and they stand on their own, its wrong to have a bias towards one religion and dismissing other religion, there are many christian mystics how do you say that Bible has no truth in it. If it doesn't prove anything then how can I be certain that I am being led to the water which is edible, I might very well be led to a poisonous well or there might be a better well containing the fountain of youth to immortality, why do I have to stick to this one path given by metaphysics when it hasn't proved anything, I clearly doesn't want to take this blind path, if you want then All the best to you!!!. A theory whether metaphysical or scientific irrespective of whether it is sound or not it should map reality or model reality, there should be a one-to-one correspondance with the entities in the model to the entities in reality or to real world objects. The point is metaphysics is not in one-to-one correspondance with mysticism, metaphysics doesn't model mysticism, it is the religious scriptures which model mysticism and it will be given more credence than metaphysical theories because what is important is not the final result, what is important is a map which models phenomena in reality.

So Metaphysics can't even prove that the universe is a unity because even such a logic can be refuted and has inconsistencies or contradictions with in itself as shown in my post #154. So where does it take me.

First you need to understand how science works, science works by falsification not by verification. That's where it strength lies and that's how it answers questions removing uncertainty in its theory and observations little by little. Metaphysics won't take the mystics to the rather more profound revealations and realizations, it is religious scriptures which takes them there. A mystic understands and repeats the phrase(mantra) in his religious scripture and his experiences should be identical to what the semantic of the phrase says and he shouldn't experience anything other than that. The experience had by the student should be identical to the one had by his master, that's how mysticism works. I can put the religious scripture for falsification and give a method to testify it and that's how my faith in that scripture will be strengthened the more the religious scripture stood the tests of its time. You can only verify its conclusion but you cannot remove the skepticism as to whether the thing which is described through the logic of metaphysics is same as the thing described through the experiential knowledge of mysticism. This is where metaphyics fails. One cannot be certain about what it is describing in reality. This is where a one-to-one correspondance between theory and the reality which it claims to map becomes essential.

What predictions does Metaphysics makes? and What method does it give to test its predictions? Without answering the above two questions its too far away from answering "the why's of everything". I think its more sensible to regard that Religion as the seeker of the ultimate answer to "the why's of everything" because it works in the same way as science does, it has theoretical knowledge in the form of scriptures and methodical knowledge in the form of revealation, its an evolving thing and it can achieve perfection, if we really study them and also have some practical knowledge. All religion leads to the truth of God, So indirectly God answers the "why's of everything" to some extent. Mystics don't read the texts of metaphysicians to have experiential knowledge, they read the scriptures of religion and pray to God for revealation. There is no one-to-one correspondance between mysticism and metaphysics.

It means the body doesn't need an energy source what it needs is an information source. Your body is surviving because you are extracting energy from an outside source and there by reducing the thermodynamic entropy with in your body sub-system but your body is different from other machines because it has a genome which is an information source and it is this information source which guides you to access the energy source in the first place and therefore your body is surviving solely because of this information source. Dna is not genome, Dna is just a material, it is not information itself. Hubert Yockey - Information theory, Evolution and origin of life Science can only measure information in the form of bits and bytes, it cannot know what information "IS", i.e its true nature and hence it cannot solve the origin of life problem. Religion can solve the problem because it has methods to access and know the quale of information, its true nature and therefore you can manipulate the actual information source physically, it exists, it is not an abstract concept. Therefore the information source will take care of your body, you don't have to be aware of your body and keep feeding it often. May be that's one of the reason why the perfect being created plurality in this world and made us appear imperfect so that we are no longer lonely, there can be only one perfect being, there can not be more than one perfect beings because only one thing can be ultimately perfect and not this is more perfect or lesss perfect than the other. Perfect beings don't think, they are not interested to know anything because they know everything that is there to know. This world is a test to know whether you are ready enough to have access to God's abilities residing in you, you need to earn it first. Do you really know what the universe is made up of, what time, space and matter is made up of, you don't know, the properties which you assign to the universe are ideological concepts used to better understand our nature around us no greater reality should be attributed to it, you cannot know what the universe is made up of physically. Therefore he can exist without your phenomenal universe. however he can't exist without the noumenal universe. If you're imagining a God then it is not God, God is not created by human imagination. God is found by revealation not by imagination. Man was made in the image of God. What would prevent God from making his own image. You don't understand unless you have revealation of it.