I'd say this point from Wolfgang actually supports the idea of matter and spirit being the same thing, much more than it undermines it. (Carol)

You're so right, Carol, but do you realise what that means what you have posted? If you read the first posts you can easily see that I'm not a dualist but a monist (like, for instance, Little Hawk too). So neither he nor I expect any proof either way from Kirlian photography, for we both would make the same prediction: Living and not living matter (I use these words as abbreviations for something more complicated) lead to the same photographs.

To mention it as anything resembling a proof only makes sense for a dualist. The people usually offering Kirlian photographs as a proof are dualists (so I have to guess that either Two Bears is dualist or doesn't realise that taking Kirlian photography as an empirical argument is completely senseless). They claim that Kirlian photographs from dead matter are different from Kirlian photographs of living matter (like for instance a leaf still at a tree or a fallen leaf). My argument that dead matter leads to the same pictures can only be directed at those claimants (and in this context it was only directed at Two Bears' argumentation). For a dualist, a result contrary to his world view would make a problem.

I never would have offered Kirlian photography as an empirical argument to, for instance, Little Hawk (though he seems to think so), for I know we both expect the same result. To quarrel about empirical results (or to look for them in the first place) only makes sense, if it matters one way or the other. Some of you could profit a lot from reading about the methodology of science and what makes a theory testable and what not.

first hand experiences trump a second rate opinion (Two Bears)
Two Bears, you seem to think and to imply that you see there a big difference between you and me. And I have the impression that you have little knowledge of what an empirically working scientist does besides reading books.
(1) Many of your arguments are like many of mine arguments you have read, second hand arguments.
(2) A part of my job is doing experiments, empirical experiments. I have first hand experience doing experiments near the absolute threshold of perception and also about human errors. When I talk about the difference between what stimuli humans have actually been subjected to and what they report and what their interpretation of their experiences is, I speak not from books. The notion I read so often that scientific findings can be dismissed out of hand in comparison to personal experience is mostly rubbish.

Wolfgang