Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Skeptic
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 09:18 AM

Wolfgang,

Thanks.

John

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Grab
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 10:22 AM

Fib, carrying 3 isn't too bad, if they're small. I run out of carrying room after 5 or 6 though. My maths teacher once asked me to carry a thousand, and I strained myself.

A sceptic (I'm sticking to the English version, and nuts to the rest of you! ;-) is someone who asks for convincing proof b4 they're prepared to believe something. If you give them incontrovertable proof and they still don't believe, they're not a sceptic, they're a believer in science, the same way that alternative folk may be believers in UFOs or astrology. And note that this is often "science as they were taught it" or "it stands to reason", not any version that accepts the universe is still full of stuff we don't know about.

As John says, sometimes you need a better class of sceptic (brilliant line! :-)

Grab.

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Skeptic
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 11:04 AM

Grab,

Exactly. And point made far betetr than I could (and did in another thread).

Regards and Thanks

John

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Biskit
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 02:08 PM

All this longwindedlargewordedstuff,is really great for philosophy majors,....I want'a get back to lil' Neo's Bikini top!-Biskit-

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Midchuck
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 02:54 PM

Why does it make more sense to believe that Jesu ben Joseph was a human incarnation of God than to believe that Elvis Presley was? (Leaving out as utterly irrelevant the fact that more people have believed the former for longer.)

Peter.

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: mousethief
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 03:40 PM

Peter:

Yes. For one thing, Jesus (to use the most common Anglicized version of his name which was probably close to Yeshua or Yoshua) apparently had a far less self-serving lifestyle than Elvis. Nor has Elvis founded a religion that beyond all odds became the official religion of a huge empire (indeed, it's not at all clear that Elvis, nor any of his followers, founded a religion at all). And above all, to his eternal credit, Jesus never sang "In the Ghetto."

Alex
O..O
=o=

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: GUEST,Uilleand
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 06:52 PM

I believe in what I've experienced. For everything else, I keep an open mind and allow for the possibility. So many people, so many different experiences and perspectives on life. To steal a concept from Douglas Adams I have found valid in exploring alternatives including the one mentioned: Astrology is like graphite when you try to find what someone had written on the sheet of a note pad. The original note is gone, but by using graphite and sprinkling it over the note paper underneath, the writing from the top is revealed. We all are trying to find what was written. The graphite is not important, it could be charcoal, it just reveals what is underneath. So all of astrology, religion, and other methods of explaining life, are just about people thinking about people. If it makes us happier, more loving, and empowered people, who cares whether it is or isn't part of someone else's reality. Even Abraham Maslow said in 'Toward a Psychology of Being' that the scientific method was not adequate to explain personal experience. But instead of invalidating experience he feels that we need to revise and expand the scientific method, not deny the existence of anything that doesn't fit. So, yeah, I believe in distance healing, astrology, and past lives, I allow for the possibility of alien abductions, but don't really believe in them as part of my reality.

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Skeptic
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 09:49 PM

Uilleand,

I'll take your word on the Maslow quote but want to add that Maslow, at least in trying to validate his theories, was an exacting experimenter. His revisions to the scientific method involved, I believe, cross-disciplinary studies (still not all that common) and not elevating experiences to a higher level of truth.

I believe in my experiences too. Its the interpretation of meaning that's issue.

Amos You seem to be looking for a middle ground. It may not exist. It would seem to me that the two ways of knowing are mutually exclusive.

Regards John

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Troll
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 10:08 PM

About that bikini top...

troll

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Troll
Date: 12 Oct 00 - 10:10 PM

About that bikini top...

troll

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Rich(bodhránai gan ciall)
Date: 13 Oct 00 - 12:05 AM

I don't believe Amos could snap Bonnie's bikini top off as she went by. Some things you can go by on faith, but that one I'll have to see to believe!

I'm gonna get smacked if I post this but the temptation is just too strong.
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Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Amos
Date: 13 Oct 00 - 12:48 AM

Well, you could be right -- my knuckles aren't as deft as they once were back the last time I practiced the one-handed lift-off technique. !!

As for the brain mind argument, why no extraordinary proof is required. There are plenty of documented cases of people seeing imagery (mind-objects) for which the "owning" brain is far absent; this especially happens when very high affection exists, or when a close connection is under duress. There's plenty of experimenting that can be done within the bounds of ordinary experience. If you wanted really extraordinary proof, you would have to take a human being and do something really weird to him, like force him act repetitive in the same way that dustmotes and photons usually do -- talk about unnatural -- or expose him to conditions that undermine the phenomena you are trying to study. Weird, man. Or, something extraordinary in civilized circles, anyway, get him to reveal his most intimate perceptions and intuitive awarenesses, and then beat him up on the point, telling him he couldn't "possibly" be right. That's extraordinary.

Interesting, John, to think that two segments of the spectrum should seem mutually exclusive -- like two sound frequencies that just happen to nullify each other, or colors combining to vanish. I think that, in the range of human conditions ranging from stoner-dead to more alive than life, you encounter a lot of different "ways of knowing", some of which are direct, some of which are firmly locked behind mysteries and magic symbols, some which require solid efforts to bring about knowing (I'll belief it when I can pound it), and so on. It isn't just beliefs versus hard evidence. Anyway, the day is long and I am bound to retire for a brief turn on the other side of that wall over there.... :>)).

A

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Wolfgang
Date: 13 Oct 00 - 05:53 AM

Perhaps this is the Maslow citation from that book:
"...to enlarge the conception of science so as to make it more capable of dealing with persons, especially fully developed and fully human persons."

This (or similar) citation(s) is(are) often found in transpersonal, esoteric, humanistic psychology...writings. From the context I gather that the persons citing Maslow take the words as an advice to leave the scientific method of enquiry. I read it as an advice to apply it to more fields it has not been applied yet such as personal experiences. But you may have read the opposition I got when I applied scienctific concepts or results to personal experiences reported by others in these threads.

Even if the issue was clearly not the experience as such but its interpretation (to borrow the clear words of Skeptic on this difference).

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: GUEST,Fibula Mattock
Date: 13 Oct 00 - 08:37 AM

Not to detract in any way from the serious discussion going on here, but furthering the research into the waterskiing hypothesis...
If "anything is possible except waterskiing through a revolving door" then we shall have to consider Skeptic's dematerialization theory. However, we don't want to rely on it too greatly as it seems a bit of a cop-out and the other sceptics will start to complain as they are wont to do, so how about it if the bikini clasp dematerializes? (Stop me if this bothers you Bonnie, this is purely in the interest of science, and as a fellow female (is that an oxymoron?) I am fascinated by the reasoning behind the theory and not the actual bikini top removal.) This removes Amos from the equation, neatly avoiding the reflex and unfastening time, thus freeing up more seconds for the trick of passing through the revolving door. Here, as well, I have made an important discovery while carrying out important scientific research (under the guise of shopping) - those doors don't have to be divided into quarters! You can get revolving doors which merely split the door in two! This gives us a much better chance of dispproving the original hypothesis, therefore it may be perfectly feasible to waterski through a revolving door, therefore anything's possible, therefore we have the universe compltetly sussed, and those infinite number of monkeys with typewriters are holding a book signing as we speak. Not bad for a Friday morning.

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: GUEST,Fibula Mattock
Date: 13 Oct 00 - 08:39 AM

Mind you, despite having solved the mysteries of the universe, I still can't manage to close an italics tag properly. One thing at a time, eh?

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Skeptic
Date: 13 Oct 00 - 11:25 AM

Or perhaps telekinesis to do the unclasping? And do we have to be content with a Euclidian, three dimensional revolving door? After all, this is about alternate beliefs, one of which is precognition, which presupposes time travel so:

A revolving door has four panels, A, B, C, D. The boat "E" and skier "S", approach the door. "E" enters between panels "A" and "B" which are rotating in our three dimensional world. As "S" approaches, Panels "B", )and "C" if needed), additionally rotate through time so that when "S" reaches where panel "B" or "S" would be in this space /time, they are actually "X" seconds in the past (where "X" would be determined by the distance to be covered, velocity of the boat, length of the tow rope and so on)

Wolfgang, thanks for the citation.

Amos,

Can I be a devout atheist and a devout Christian at the same time?

Overgeneralizing, skepticism requires proof, the three "c",s and so on. Belief structures do not. So what is the underlying criteria: When do I use skepticism, when don't I?. If there is no criteria beyond "In this case I think skepticism doesn't apply...." or "well, I'll use skepticism foo this part but not for the other", then (worst case) I would submit that what you have is a belief structure system that dresses up a belief system with the intermittent use of skepticism to validate the belief system. Again, I may be misreading where you are going with this, but this seems to me to be the implications of your argument.

As to remote seeing, it requires not just acceptance of the experience, but accepting (or rejecting) a lot of the fundamental theories of how reality works. And remember that one validation of some of these theories was that they were able to correctly predict a behavior before we had the techniques or ability to verify that behavior. Remote seeing involves, among other things, undetectable energy, would seem to imply that conservation of energy, inverse square and so on aren't.

By the way, photons, being quantum waves/particles, tend not to act repetitively. Or rather not always act the same way. Predictions of dust motes follow chaos theory . On the other hand, the EPR Paradox which Einstein claimed was impossible appears not to be. Unfortunately, that's on the quantum level and we aren't

Regards John

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: GUEST,Fibula Mattock
Date: 13 Oct 00 - 11:59 AM

WOW! The fourth dimension. I never thought of that. I was too restricted in my thinking...
so....anything IS possible. Theoretically. QED.

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Skeptic
Date: 13 Oct 00 - 01:28 PM

Or anything is theoritical, possibly?

Going multicultural, I supose it could be argued that its all illusion anyway, so the door isn't really there. Or go with Xeno's paradox and agrue that the boat/skier would never reach the door to begin with.

Much more interesting, the thread on "The Prisoner" is diverged into Diana Rigg as Emma Peel. Truely worthy of more consideration

Regards John

Subject: RE: Alternative Beliefs - a pattern?
From: Rich(bodhránai gan ciall)
Date: 13 Oct 00 - 11:53 PM

I believe this thread is getting long, but I don't believe I know how to make a blue clicky thing.

Rich