What defines religion (split from correlation w/poverty)

[John Cuthber]

But that pointer is part of the reality which you say does not exist.

If you are right then this experiment is a figment of your imagination.

It's a dream.

 

You can't base any conclusions on it.

So, once again, if reality doesn't exist, what experiments can you do to prove it?

[tar]

Immortal,

 

Which of the four quadrants of religion and spirituality do you figure yourself to inhabit.

 

I would guess that you promote first, your own spritual nature (nothing is real except the unreal) and that you have chosen the Gods of the Buddist to be the most descriptive of reality?, so you appear to me to have chosen to be a rather strong inhabitant of the upper left quadrant.

 

My thought on this, or should I say my thought on you, is that you yourself have set yourself up as a perfect strawman. Your views can be so easily taken apart and defeated as contradictory and false, that you, by taking the ultimate non-secular positon, have soundly defeated yourself, and given secularity a solid boost.

 

Another proof of this is your insistence that science and religion are two separate things. Your thesis is that the only real connection, the only solid connection to reality that a human has is his/her ability to completely discount reality, and become one with its "essence" instead. An essence that is supernatural and unreal, by definition. And since YOU know this imaginary thing, better than most, then only folks teaching or recognizing the same delusions as you have witnessed reality at all.

 

In actuallity you have very little claim to knowing reality. You have only claim to knowing the visions of the Vedic masters. These portions of reality are not accessable to me. I do not know these particular secrets. There is no evidence for them. They are themselves illusions. Reality is quite real, on its own, without such imaginary, "supernatural" additions.

 

If you cannot provide evidence that shows where religion and spirituality is actual pertinent to reality, and what their basis might be in reality, then you are dreaming. And your dream is no more real than mine.

 

Regards, TAR2

How a human should be is defined by oneself and by other humans. In this humanism is the only source for inspirations available.

If we are by definition inhabited by the divine, then we "should" be able to take it from here.

 

And not be constrained by the divine inspirations of wisemen of old. We can have similar inspirations, but I think it a definite drawback to lock onto the human judgment of old, as anything more than a guide for the human judgment we must excercise presently.

 

In this, I side with the morality of the others on this thread that have challenged your ability to dictate that which is divinely inspired, and who has fallen from "the way".

 

If sexism is wrong, then Eve was not created from Adam's rib and the Bible is suspect from the start, in terms of whose words they might be, that are written there.

[swansont]

 

Sure, I will.

 

 

They did it like this.

 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0262407907615838

 

 

 

The pointer position of the apparatus will be also in a superposition of macroscopically distinct states and hence it doesn't make any sense to assume that what we cannot measure about a system has an independent reality. In simple terms empirical reality doesn't exist out there, it doesn't exist independent of us.

 

I really wish people would stop trying to extrapolate quantum physics into spirituality issues, which one might term Choprafication. "Reality" in this context (i.e. quantum reality) is not the same as what is being discussed. The physics experiment uses a very specific definition of the word, as one might expect. It has nothing to do with whether observations are merely a state of mind.

[John Cuthber]

I just want Immortal to explain what the equipment is made of if nothing (including that equipment) is real.

[immortal]

Immortal,

 

Which of the four quadrants of religion and spirituality do you figure yourself to inhabit.

 

I would guess that you promote first, your own spritual nature (nothing is real except the unreal) and that you have chosen the Gods of the Buddist to be the most descriptive of reality?, so you appear to me to have chosen to be a rather strong inhabitant of the upper left quadrant.

 

Some where in this thread I have said that there is no such thing as spiritual but not religious, either you are religious or you're not and anything else is complete nonsense. Being religious means knowing thyself, knowing the One(Your soul) from which everything emanated, who here knows the One, only he is religious, I certainly don't know it. Did you got my position?

 

My thought on this, or should I say my thought on you, is that you yourself have set yourself up as a perfect strawman. Your views can be so easily taken apart and defeated as contradictory and false, that you, by taking the ultimate non-secular positon, have soundly defeated yourself, and given secularity a solid boost.

 

I not only argue for the Gods of Buddhism but also for the Aeons of Valentinianism, Devas of Vedism, Taoism and Sefirot of Judaism, I am just going by what scholarly evidence is saying, that's all, whether it is secular or non-secular I really don't care.

 

Another proof of this is your insistence that science and religion are two separate things. Your thesis is that the only real connection, the only solid connection to reality that a human has is his/her ability to completely discount reality, and become one with its "essence" instead. An essence that is supernatural and unreal, by definition. And since YOU know this imaginary thing, better than most, then only folks teaching or recognizing the same delusions as you have witnessed reality at all.

 

Yes empirical things are the things which exists inside our minds and the things that religion deals with is what exists out there in noumenal world. That's our basic view of the world in the east.

 

In actuallity you have very little claim to knowing reality. You have only claim to knowing the visions of the Vedic masters. These portions of reality are not accessable to me. I do not know these particular secrets. There is no evidence for them. They are themselves illusions. Reality is quite real, on its own, without such imaginary, "supernatural" additions.

 

For your kind information scientific realism is dead, your continuous insistence that an objective reality exists independent of us has been falsified numerous times by experiments and yet you continue to blindly argue that this objective reality exists out there, instead of giving up your enshrined beliefs you are in the dream that nature agrees with you, so please change your perspective of things. We need to abandon the notion of an objective reality existing independent of us.

 

If you cannot provide evidence that shows where religion and spirituality is actual pertinent to reality, and what their basis might be in reality, then you are dreaming. And your dream is no more real than mine.

 

Regards, TAR2

 

I have come out of my dream and even you should too.

 

[John Cuthber]

Immortal,

sorry, I missed the bit where you told me what imaginary equipment you used to do an experiment to show me that real things don't exist.

Can you explain it please?

The thing is that you said there were real facts that show that reality isn't real and I'd like to know how that can be true- even in principle.

 

How do you prove this?

"The fact that what we call empirical reality is only a state of mind"

[immortal]

But that pointer is part of the reality which you say does not exist.

If you are right then this experiment is a figment of your imagination.

It's a dream.

 

Exactly, that's why the conclusion What we call reality is only a state of mind. - Bernard D'Espagnat.

 

You can't base any conclusions on it.

So, once again, if reality doesn't exist, what experiments can you do to prove it?

 

We don't have to be embarrassed that this position leads us to solipsism. There is an alternative.

 

 

"However, d’Espagnat seems to believe in the unicity of individual consciousnesses. In Mind and Matter and in My View of the World, Schrodinger had raised the problem of the existence of a plurality of conscious minds, which he refers to as the arithmetical paradox : how to explain the existence of a plurality of conscious minds while the world described by science is only one? In Schrodinger’s view, a consistent solution was to adopt the thesis of the unicity of minds: there is only one mind shining differently in each of us which makes it appear to be many. D’Espagnat faces the same problem as many minds seem to take part in the emergence of the one empirical reality. In many respects, he seems to agree with Schrodinger’s thesis."

- Jonathon Duqette, philosopher of religion.

We have modelled the world for over three thousand years or so that each one of us have a metaphysical mind and metaphysical sense organs and these things are real and it is these things which are responsible for the retrospective creation of this empirical reality, that's why I am a platonic realist.

[John Cuthber]

Nope, that won't do at all.

You said "That's a cop out to escape from the facts of nature."

and when I asked what facts you said

"The fact that what we call empirical reality is only a state of mind" in answer to

You and you said you could prove it.

Do so.

I contend that you can not, and never will be able to, show that your (obviously absurd) belief is true.

 

So, once again, what experiment could you do (and by the way I want an experiment, not the words of some professional windbag) to show that the real world isn't here?

[tar]

"Yes empirical things are the things which exists inside our minds and the things that religion deals with is what exists out there in noumenal world. That's our basic view of the world in the east."

 

Well here I am in the West, which exists quite outside your mind, and I am actually empirically sitting here in my basement in a New Jersey suburb. And you not only do not control my existence with your thoughts, but I could point to a few billion other living souls, that not only are not players in your emination game, but do not even know the rules. If these gods of yours were emirically real, and NOT illusions of yours, everybody would notice them, straight away, with no need for special training, as soon at you pointed to one and said "there".

 

I dislike the crazy backwardness and holier than thou tone of your remarks. Everybody else is stuck in the cave, yet you have escaped? I am rather sure, that if we are stuck in a cave, we are all in here together, and if being human separates us from Brahman, then by golly we are separate for now. We cannot rejoin until we are no longer human. As far as I am concerned, my job at the moment, EVEN IF I am an emination of Brahman, is to be human. Once I am not TAR, then I won't be TAR anymore. I just would have been TAR to the rest of the Earth, during my life on it. All that would remain, for anyone to empirically withness, would be recordings and photos, memories and the works that I did, and the pieces of things I undid. What difference would it make to anyone that survived me, if I melted in with the "force", or rejoined the river of life, or went to heaven, or went to hell, or sat at the feet of Zeus, or was boiled in oil by Allah for the rest of eternity?

 

Thing is, even if the entire universe was once a single point, it is not now. Even if the fate of the entire universe is to rejoin eventually into one black hole and be compressed again to a point where there is no distinctions, it has not done so yet. We, as humans are WELL insulated by time and space from these things being a present concern. And my view is that even imaginarily "stepping out" of the cave, I see a universe that has come a long way, and has not yet done what it is going to do next.

 

From my view, here in the West, empirical things are the things that exist for your "plurality" of minds. That we can together have a collective conscousness, is an emergent property of individual minds. The internet is empirically real, and it did not exist when your masters were sketching out their eminations.

 

In the evolution of life on Earth, and the emergence of man, and the development of language, allowing for the sharing of thoughts, religion developed. It was story telling, and wisdom passed down from generation to generation, and it was not static. Workable stuff was retained and unworkable stuff was tossed. We did not discover religion, we developed it. We did not discover the internet. We developed it. We did not discover peanut butter cups, some one of us, invented them.

 

The Abrahamic religions are base on certain ones of us being talked to directly or through angels, by the creator of the universe. Then Jesus came along, and told us God had been a little rough on us at first, and he really was a kinder sort, and loved us dearly, and if we just loved one another, and held the Savior in our hearts, Jesus himself would guide us through the gates of heaven. Then Mohammed came along, was visited by an angel who told a modified version of the word of god, pointing out the failures of the Jews and Christians to truely understand the message, and Mohammed relayed to the rest of us, that not only was this message (received in a cave) the true message, but it was the LAST message, and no further communication would be forthcoming. We therefore are to accept the last lowly messenger as a proxy for Allah, and anything that was due Allah could be given to Mohammed, and anything Mohammed said or did, could be taken as the way a true believer should attempt to conduct oneself. Then along comes Immortal, who through careful study of empircal evidence and copious amounts of reading of the philosophers, and wisemen through the ages, has determined that the whole story was predetermined, and just some dream of a big, eternal human, who had a brain fart one afternoon and is suffering a tempory bout of "multiple personality" syndrome, which can be easily cured, by waking the old crazy bastard up.

 

From my seat, here in the basement in the West, I think Immortal is demonstrably incorrect. He cannot stop being a human existing within empirical reality, at will. And neither can he himself outlive his life, and become immortal. It is something we can all dream about, but something not a one of us, has yet actually found a way to accomplish, in reality.

 

Regards, TAR2

Other than having kids, and making it possible for them to live and have kids.

Or perhaps by leaving a gift to enhance everybody's kids lives, as many of our forefather's and mother's have done, and many of our contemporaries are working and planning to do. (Reaching Nirvana on your own, is not noteably helpful in this regard. You have to accomplish something empircally useful to the rest of us.)

[Iggy]

No, it has made me wise, I am at rest. I can go to any extent and say that the majority of the so called Christians and Hindus are not really religious people at all.

 

There are 33 Aeons in Christianity and there are 33 devas in the Vedas and the Upanishads. There are many more core agreements like such, for now that's enough.

 

Almost 99% of so called Christians and Hindus of today aren't really aware of these 33 Aeons or do not even take their existence seriously and have deviated from the things which exists with in their own religious scriptures.

 

It takes a lot to make me feel bad for Christians, but you've managed to do it. They've been putting up with your kind of crazy for 2,000 years. They've had to hold ranks against the Jim Jones and David Koresh types -- people who build mountains of insanity on top of christian beliefs. The secularists can dismiss you with the same indifferent trollishness that your writing takes, but sincere and devout Christians unfortunately have to deal with you which makes me feel orders of magnitude more sympathetic towards them.

 

And, you chose to regurgitate it on a science forum? I don't get that at all. You make positive claims about "33 Aeons" on a science forum and you aren't swatted back like a delusional fly?

 

Whatever. I don't have to put up with it. The best of luck to you.

Edited February 11, 2013 by Iggy

[swansont]

Some where in this thread I have said that there is no such thing as spiritual but not religious, either you are religious or you're not and anything else is complete nonsense. Being religious means knowing thyself, knowing the One(Your soul) from which everything emanated, who here knows the One, only he is religious, I certainly don't know it. Did you got my position?

 

Your position, yes. But you are doing rather more than stating that this is your position. You are contending that it's TRUTH™ and that everyone else is wrong.

 

 

Exactly, that's why the conclusion What we call reality is only a state of mind. - Bernard D'Espagnat.

 

 

We don't have to be embarrassed that this position leads us to solipsism. There is an alternative.

 

 

"However, d’Espagnat seems to believe in the unicity of individual consciousnesses. In Mind and Matter and in My View of the World, Schrodinger had raised the problem of the existence of a plurality of conscious minds, which he refers to as the arithmetical paradox : how to explain the existence of a plurality of conscious minds while the world described by science is only one? In Schrodinger’s view, a consistent solution was to adopt the thesis of the unicity of minds: there is only one mind shining differently in each of us which makes it appear to be many. D’Espagnat faces the same problem as many minds seem to take part in the emergence of the one empirical reality. In many respects, he seems to agree with Schrodinger’s thesis."

- Jonathon Duqette, philosopher of religion.

 

So you bring up D'Espagnat because you agree, and that's supposed to mean something. Anyone who disagrees is "ignorant". But even this quote includes the phrase "d’Espagnat seems to believe". That's not evidence, and that's the problem of philosophy and religion. You have your beliefs, but you aren't allowing anyone else to have theirs.

[immortal]

(and by the way I want an experiment, not the words of some professional windbag)

 

Insulting someone who is always way ahead of everyone is not a good idea, instead it makes you sound foolish especially when he is speaking based on evidence.

 

Statements From Scientists On Bernard d’Espagnat Wins 2009 Templeton Prize

 

Nope, that won't do at all.

You said "That's a cop out to escape from the facts of nature."

and when I asked what facts you said

"The fact that what we call empirical reality is only a state of mind" in answer to

You and you said you could prove it.

Do so.

I contend that you can not, and never will be able to, show that your (obviously absurd) belief is true.

 

So, once again, what experiment could you do to show that the real world isn't here?

 

What you contend as possible or impossible has no bearing in reality or in nature. That's the way nature is, accept this basic fact first instead of accusing that my beliefs are absurd, my beliefs are based on facts established from experiments.

 

 

 

Experiments have shown that it is the premise realism which is at stake here and that's an established fact.

 

 

Hence the conclusion,

 

"The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts established by experiment."

 

 

"A dicovery that discredits a basic assumption about the structure of the world, an assumption long held and seldom questioned, is anything but trivial. It is a welcome illumination."

 

 

- Bernard D'Espagnat, Quantum Theory and Reality.

 

 

"Most working scientists hold fast to the concept of 'realism' - a viewpoint according to which an external reality exists independent of observation. But quantum physics has shattered some of our cornerstone beliefs. According to Bell's theorem, any theory that is based on the joint assumption of realism and locality (meaning that local events cannot be affected by actions in spacelike separated regions) is at variance with certain quantum predictions. Experiments with entangled pairs of particles have amply confirmed these quantum predictions, thus rendering local realistic theories untenable. Maintaining realism as a fundamental concept would therefore necessitate the introduction of 'spooky' actions that defy locality. Here we show by both theory and experiment that a broad and rather reasonable class of such non-local realistic theories is incompatible with experimentally observable quantum correlations. In the experiment, we measure previously untested correlations between two entangled photons, and show that these correlations violate an inequality proposed by Leggett for non-local realistic theories. Our result suggests that giving up the concept of locality is not sufficient to be consistent with quantum experiments, unless certain intuitive features of realism are abandoned"

 

- A Test for Non-Local Realism.

 

Your equipment doesn't exist independent of us, empirical reality is not externally out there, our ancients knew what this world is made of.

 

Idealism in Ancient philosophy

 

The oldest reference to Idealism in Hindu texts is in Purusha Sukta of the Rig Veda. This sukta espouses panentheism by presenting cosmic being Purusha as both pervading all universe and yet being transcendent to it.^[1] Absolute idealism can be seen in Chāndogya Upaniṣad, where things of the objective world like the five elements and the subjective world such as will, hope, memory etc. are seen to be emanations from the Self.

 

Its not my problem if majority of people aren't well versed in pagan religions. Science and religion is converging and this is the point where they converge.

[Moontanman]

So... like wow.. I'm totally convinced... sounds like it's time to take the shotgun test...

[immortal]

It takes a lot to make me feel bad for Christians, but you've managed to do it. They've been putting up with your kind of crazy for 2,000 years. They've had to hold ranks against the Jim Jones and David Koresh types -- people who build mountains of insanity on top of christian beliefs. The secularists can dismiss you with the same indifferent trollishness that your writing takes, but sincere and devout Christians unfortunately have to deal with you which makes me feel orders of magnitude more sympathetic towards them.

 

And, you chose to regurgitate it on a science forum? I don't get that at all. You make positive claims about "33 Aeons" on a science forum and you aren't swatted back like a delusional fly?

 

Whatever. I don't have to put up with it. The best of luck to you.

 

Just because a belief is popular it doesn't make it true. Since I criticize Christians and Hindus alike I don't have to be sympathetic to anyone who doesn't go with evidence. Yes, this is a science forum, whether those Aeons exist or not is one thing but the fact remains that 33 Aeons exist in Christianity as well as in Hinduism.

 

"Yes empirical things are the things which exists inside our minds and the things that religion deals with is what exists out there in noumenal world. That's our basic view of the world in the east."

 

Then Jesus came along, and told us God had been a little rough on us at first, and he really was a kinder sort, and loved us dearly, and if we just loved one another, and held the Savior in our hearts, Jesus himself would guide us through the gates of heaven.

 

But humanity has forgotten the Father who sent Christ for us.

 

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0319.htm

 

 

Tertullian in Against All Heresies also discusses Abraxas in the account of Basilides’ system as a higher aeon:

“Basilides affirms that there is a supreme Deity, by name Abraxas, by whom was created Mind, which in Greek he calls Nous; that thence sprang the Word; that of Him issued Providence, Virtue, and Wisdom; that out of these subsequently were made Principalities, powers, and Angels; that there ensued infinite issues and processions of angels; that by these angels 365 heavens were formed, and the world, in honour of Abraxas, whose name, if computed, has in itself this number. Now, among the last of the angels, those who made this world, he places the God of the Jews latest, that is, the God of the Law and of the Prophets, whom he denies to be a God, but affirms to be an angel. To him, he says, was allotted the seed of Abraham, and accordingly he it was who transferred the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt into the land of Canaan; affirming him to be turbulent above the other angels, and accordingly given to the frequent arousing of seditions and wars, yes, and the shedding of human blood.

Christ, moreover, he affirms to have been sent, not by this maker of the world, but by the above-named Abraxas; and to have come in a phantasm, and been destitute of the substance of flesh: that it was not He who suffered among the Jews, but that Simon was crucified in His stead: whence, again, there must be no believing on him who was crucified, lest one confess to having believed on Simon. Martyrdoms, he says, are not to be endured. The resurrection of the flesh he strenuously impugns, affirming that salvation has not been promised to bodies.”

"According to Irenaeus, Basilides taught that the universe began when five Aeons (or Aions, literally "eternities") emanated in succession from the Unbegotten Father. These were: Mind (Nous) or Christ, Word (Logos), Intelligence or Prudence (Phronêsis), Wisdom (Sophia) and Strength or Power (Dynamis). These five Aeons constitute the Plêrôma ("Fullness").

From the last two Aeons, Sophia and Dynamis, issued 365 spirit-realms or "heavens" in an unbroken descending sequence, each with its own set of angelic rulers. These 365 "heavens" or "Aethyrs" are constituted under the name Abrasax. By Greek Gematria, ABRASAX = 365."

Aeons were an important topic of discussion in Early Christian times.

[Moontanman]

Just because a belief is popular it doesn't make it true. Since I criticize Christians and Hindus alike I don't have to be sympathetic to anyone who doesn't go with evidence. Yes, this is a science forum, whether those Aeons exist or not is one thing but the fact remains that 33 Aeons exist in Christianity as well as in Hinduism.

 

So you don't think that some of Hinduism might have been borrowed by Christians? Isn't that more likely than the Aeons exist? It's certainly demonstrable that Christianity borrowed many concepts from other religions, the trinity for example... In fact I think that all religions have borrowed from those that came before and any profound connection is more likely to be due to plagiarism than divine revelation... The Earth is not composed of many cultures existing in a vacuum, all of the earth is connected culturally at some level... On top of that you have humans all with very similar minds having similar "revelations" and not unexpectedly similar hallucinations when exposed to similar hallucinogens ... wouldn't occam's razor suggest the connection is the biological mind instead of the divine?

[John Cuthber]

 

Insulting someone who is always way ahead of everyone is not a good idea, instead it makes you sound foolish especially when he is speaking based on evidence.

 

OK, i admit it was a deliberately impolite way to express the idea.

It was also deliberate.

You see, the polite way to explain my point was to remind you that arguments by authority are a logical fallacy and are therefore not permitted.

So, if I had been polite about it one of the mods might have spotted that you were using logical fallacies again and banned you. I wanted to get my point across but you refuse to listen

You didn't answer the question: you just repeated the fallacy.

Now, for what might well be the last time before you get banned.

 

How can you do an experiment to prove that reality (which includes the experimental apparatus) doesn't exist?

 

(Incidentally, winning the Templeton prize is evidence of being roughly 2000 years behind the rest of us, but that's beside the point)

 

Answer the question. If reality doesn't exist, what do you make the experimental apparatus from? (and I want a real answer not more logical fallacy)

[Iggy]

So you don't think that some of Hinduism might have been borrowed by Christians? Isn't that more likely than the Aeons exist?

 

I wouldn't grant him the premise. There are no Aeons in Christianity. It's a Gnostic idea. Different gnostic schools had different numbers of aeons, so one could have any number they liked. The Christians who survive today are the descendants of the Irenaeus and Tertullian schools -- people who weren't counting aeons, but pointing out what a schizophrenic exercise it was to name them and count them.

 

Christians decided that aeons were too insane an idea for them a long time ago, and that's saying something.

[Moontanman]

I wouldn't grant him the premise. There are no Aeons in Christianity. It's a Gnostic idea. Different gnostic schools had different numbers of aeons, so one could have any number they liked. The Christians who survive today are the descendants of the Irenaeus and Tertullian schools -- people who weren't counting aeons, but pointing out what a schizophrenic exercise it was to name them and count them.

 

Christians decided that aeons were too insane an idea for them a long time ago, and that's saying something.

 

 

Very good point...

[swansont]

OK, I can play the game. There was a survey of top physicist taken by Maximilian Schlosshauer, Johannes Kofler, and Anton Zeilinger and published on arXiv on matters pertaining to foundational principles of quantum mechanics. They specifically asked about the role of the observer in QM. Only 6% said consciousness of the observer is required for wave-function collapse.

It is remarkable that more than 60% of respondents appear to believe that the observer is not a complex quantum system. Also, very few adhere to the notion that the observer plays a distinguished physical role (for example, through a consciousness-induced collapse of the wave function). Given the relatively strong (42%) support for the Copenhagen interpretation (see Question 12), this finding shows that support of the Copenhagen interpretation does not necessarily imply a belief in a fundamental role for consciousness. (Popular accounts have sometimes suggested that the Copenhagen interpretation attributes such a role to consciousness. In our view, this is to misunderstand the Copenhagen interpretation.)

Which implies your view is in the minority. Appeal to authority and cherry-picking results makes for an intellectually dishonest argument.

 

D'Espagnat won the Templeton prize because holds a philosophy that they like, not because of any objective truth he has uncovered.

[tar]

Immortal,

 

"According to Irenaeus, Basilides taught that the universe began when five Aeons (or Aions, literally "eternities") emanated in succession from the Unbegotten Father. These were: Mind (Nous) or Christ, Word (Logos), Intelligence or Prudence (Phronêsis), Wisdom (Sophia) and Strength or Power (Dynamis). These five Aeons constitute the Plêrôma ("Fullness")."

 

Ok, so why not look at the situation empirically rather than magically or imaginarily?

 

Let's say at some point during the evolution of man we usurped and repurposed our predictive motor simulator to extend our motor control past the limits of our nervous system, and thusly developed "MIND". Then we found ways to communicate and symbolize and share our MIND and thusly developed language or "the word" or LOGOS. Workable excercise of language, orderly cooperation and experimentation in affecting and controlling our environment, outside the range of our nervous system and physical body, developed intelligence or Prudence of (Phronesis). Wisdom came with generations repeating and passing down the most workable systems of thought and real world implementation (Sophia).

And strength or power naturally accrued to those best suited, most educated and most capable at affecting the world and ordering the world, beyond the reach of their nervous system and musculature.

 

We get the same 5 universally (human) repeating patterns, with no need for magic, with no need for them to have prexisted, and been "given" to us, and leaves all 5 thouroughly empirical, sensible and proovable, within the greater understanding of the genesis of life and evolution of man, on this planet.

 

Why not look for development of these things within the confines of empirical reality?

If they developed to give us some power over our environment, why not take them as the real things that they are? There is no purpose in figuring them to be something based in supernatural land.

 

Especially since we might be able to actually trace their development for real.

 

Regards, TAR2

[Iggy]

Sometimes a mythical magical being is just a mythical magical being.

[immortal]

So you don't think that some of Hinduism might have been borrowed by Christians? Isn't that more likely than the Aeons exist? It's certainly demonstrable that Christianity borrowed many concepts from other religions, the trinity for example... In fact I think that all religions have borrowed from those that came before and any profound connection is more likely to be due to plagiarism than divine revelation... The Earth is not composed of many cultures existing in a vacuum, all of the earth is connected culturally at some level... On top of that you have humans all with very similar minds having similar "revelations" and not unexpectedly similar hallucinations when exposed to similar hallucinogens ... wouldn't occam's razor suggest the connection is the biological mind instead of the divine?

 

 

Its a highly valid hypothesis.

 

It is worth noting that Valentinianism shows an astonishing degree of similarity to another monistic system, the Advaita Vedanta school of Indian philosophy. In Advaita, the material world is an illusion (maya) attributed to ignorance (avidya) of the true reality. Through knowledge (jnana) of the ultimate reality (brahman), the world of multiplicity vanishes. True redemption (moksha) is the knowledge of one's true nature.

 

This raises the intriguing possibility of some kind of connection between the two. There was some awareness of Indian thought in the ancient Roman world. However, at the time of Valentinus, there was no systematic statement of Advaita thought. It is possible that Valentinus came into contact with some form of early Advaita Vedanta teaching. Advaita philosophy as it now stands was given its definitive form by Shankara in the 6th or 7th century AD. There also exists the possibility that he was influenced by Valentinian thought. Valentinians are known to have been active in the Middle East as late as the seventh century. It is possible that Valentinian missionaries or refugees may have made their way to India and come into contact with Shankara or his immediate predecessors. However, any connection between the two remains purely hypothetical.

 

- Valentinian Monism

 

 

 

What I have discussed here is the very heart of Christianity and Hinduism, I have read works which you guys haven't, it is unlikely that Carl Jung knew about Devudu or the other way around, Carl Jung's works were hidden in a vault and no one knew about it except his family and much of Devudu's works has not been translated from his native language by his family either and yet their cosmogony is identical and both acquired their knowledge via intuitive access to the numinous, there is an astonishing degree of similarity between Valentinian Monism and the Vedic Aryan religion, every word to word except the Demiurge part which has been corrected by the Neo-platonist Plotinus, other than that everything else is ditto and it deserves an explanation.

I am happy that scholars like Allan Wallace do recognize it. View our ancients in their own eyes and not put your pet theories on a pedestal and distort their beautiful insights.

 

I really wish people would stop trying to extrapolate quantum physics into spirituality issues, which one might term Choprafication. "Reality" in this context (i.e. quantum reality) is not the same as what is being discussed. The physics experiment uses a very specific definition of the word, as one might expect. It has nothing to do with whether observations are merely a state of mind.

 

 

There is just too much misrepresentation and that's what forces me to speak out loud, we are mainly concerned with Aeons, Caves, Bridal Chambers and such stuff where as you are concerned with Quarks, Labs, Bubble Chambers and other stuff. The methodologies and epistemologies are completely different if its anything that is in agreement between science and religion it is the conclusion about the nature of reality that's all.

 

OK, I can play the game. There was a survey of top physicist taken by Maximilian Schlosshauer, Johannes Kofler, and Anton Zeilinger and published on arXiv on matters pertaining to foundational principles of quantum mechanics. They specifically asked about the role of the observer in QM. Only 6% said consciousness of the observer is required for wave-function collapse.

 

Which implies your view is in the minority. Appeal to authority and cherry-picking results makes for an intellectually dishonest argument.

 

 

That's a result which physicists should be embarrased of and you have posted it as though scientists have solved the measurement problem and concluded that there is no mystery in it. It was this conviction of the founders of Quantum mechanics like Bohr and Heisenberg that science cannot give an objective account of reality which forced them to look for alternative models of reality or other philosophical systems, take as much funding as you want and build as many big particle accelerators as you want but do remember that 8 year olds who are educated based on eastern philosophical systems know about the nature of reality better than physicists do. No wonder why the foundations of QM has not been taught to physics students.

D'Espagnat won the Templeton prize because holds a philosophy that they like, not because of any objective truth he has uncovered.

 

You are badly mistaken.

 

 

"The "veiled reality", then, can in no way help Christians or Muslims or Jews or anyone else rationalise their specific beliefs. The Templeton Foundation – despite being headed up by John Templeton Jr, an evangelical Christian – claims to afford no bias to any particular religion, and by awarding their prize to d'Espagnat, I think they've proven that to be true."

Concept of hypercosmic God wins Templeton prize

[John Cuthber]

"The Templeton Foundation – despite being headed up by John Templeton Jr, an evangelical Christian – claims to afford no bias to any particular religion,"

And the tobacco industry claimed that there was no link between cancer and smoking.

Not many believe either group.

 

Anyway,

perhaps you would like to stop the pointless debate about who said what to whom and when (which is only ever going to be evidence of what they thought- rather than evidence of what is true) and answer my question

How can you show that reality doesn't exist?

What do you make the equipment from?

[swansont]

There is just too much misrepresentation and that's what forces me to speak out loud, we are mainly concerned with Aeons, Caves, Bridal Chambers and such stuff where as you are concerned with Quarks, Labs, Bubble Chambers and other stuff. The methodologies and epistemologies are completely different if its anything that is in agreement between science and religion it is the conclusion about the nature of reality that's all.

 

 

I doubt there is agreement on the nature of reality, either, especially as you present it.

 

 

That's a result which physicists should be embarrased of and you have posted it as though scientists have solved the measurement problem and concluded that there is no mystery in it. It was this conviction of the founders of Quantum mechanics like Bohr and Heisenberg that science cannot give an objective account of reality which forced them to look for alternative models of reality or other philosophical systems, take as much funding as you want and build as many big particle accelerators as you want but do remember that 8 year olds who are educated based on eastern philosophical systems know about the nature of reality better than physicists do. No wonder why the foundations of QM has not been taught to physics students.

 

I suspect foundational issues are not taught to physics students because it's philosophy, and is not critical to most physics research.

 

You are badly mistaken.

 

 

"The "veiled reality", then, can in no way help Christians or Muslims or Jews or anyone else rationalise their specific beliefs. The Templeton Foundation – despite being headed up by John Templeton Jr, an evangelical Christian – claims to afford no bias to any particular religion, and by awarding their prize to d'Espagnat, I think they've proven that to be true."

 

I didn't claim that there was bias toward a particular religion, so that is moot. By the very description of the prize one can see that there is a bias toward religion. That's the whole basis of the prize. It's not going to go to someone claiming God is doesn't exist, no matter how persuasive the argument.

[Moontanman]

All immortal ever provides as evidence is appeals to authority, he has no empirical evidence what so ever...