BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 12:30 PM

Bee's observations are well taken; a major part of the whole problem is understanding the degree to which the delicate web of signals and cells in the CNS can generate and/or modulate perception. There are so many examples of false or distorted reality being estabslihed in individual minds when conditions of stress, fatigue, rush, or just general dull-wittedness are involved that it is difficult to sort out in any reliable way.

In each moment of perception there is certainly a confluence of factors going on. INdividuals have different chronic levels of ability to perceive; acute conditions in the environment at the moment are a wild set of variables; individual associations of precent perception with past perceptions are a completely wild variable. The confluence of individual state, individual past, CNS state, biochemical details of the moment, and historic fallibility make it easy to conclude that the pottage of electrical and chemical impulses is the whole thing.

But even in Bee's example the question that is begged, like the elephant in the living room that no-one talks about, is who it is that does the filtering she mentions, the interpretation. Interpretation to and by whom? Because the final repository of perceptions and impulses, accurate or distorted, is a viewer.

The potentialities of that viewer to override the CNS and the automatic pattenr linking of the brain is possibly the biggest question of the 21st century, but it will not be answered until some understanding develops as to its nature.

To assume that the viewer is just more of the same mishmash of electro-chemical patterns in the nervous system strikes me as a woefully premature assumption, very similar to the belief in the flat earth that was held for centuries by some people who were deprived of a sailors insight and who based their conclusion on an inadequate set of data.

From my view it is because of the unreliability of this confluence of dynamic elements in any instant's perceptions that we have to respect the individual's description of what they have seen even while reserving the distinction between those observations and what we are here calling empirical reality. Empirical reality by its natur eis going to be a small subset of those things that have been and can be perceived. For one thing, there is no empirical reality that can survey the scope and dimensions of the imagination or capcity for vision, but it is these abilities which have brought baout every major cghange in our culture.

To dismiss this realm of the viewpoint as merely an extension of the mechanical is therefore dangerous. The risk it entails is cutting human beings off from their own powers iof vision and imagination.
SO although empiricism is a vital tool in continuing to sort out the mysteries of ther material continuum and isolate those phenomena and models which actually do describe the common parts, it is probably a bad choice to try to therefore insist that the world of individual perception should have forced down its throat a molecular/electronic explanation.

At the same time it is an equally bad choice to decide to force down the throat of individual viewpoints who do operate in the bands of vision and inagination any metaphysical construction of forms or entities which they do not, themselves, elect. To do so is just as surely to undermine the sovereignty of the creative soul as it would be to hypnotize him/her into believing he was just an electro-chemical servo mechanism without fire, hope, vision or any future beyond entropic decay.

THere are many ways to trash a human soul, and pushing religion down his throat is one; pushing materialism down his throat is another.

There are a few ways to strengthen him, and one is increasing his power of self-determination over data, explanation, and understanding.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: M.Ted
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 01:01 PM

That is a pretty waxy screed, Amos, but it is lunchtime (here, at least) and inquiring minds want to know:

Is the bacon sandwich a good thing or a bad thing?

Is the bacon sandwich an entity of it's own, or is it a useful construction that really is comprised of other entities, unique in their own regard?

When does a sandwich become a sandwich?

When does a sandwich become a bacon sandwich?

Is a bacon and egg sandwich a bacon sandwich?

Is a club sandwich (which is bacon and chicken) a bacon sandwich or a chicken sandwich?

Which came first, the bacon and chicken sandwich or the bacon and egg sandwich ?

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 01:12 PM

Waxy!! WAXY???! I am glad you have retained your sense of yewmah, Mister Ted, but the glistening dew you see on the flanks of my masterpiece are not wax but inspiration.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: M.Ted
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 01:43 PM

What is the ratio, 10% inspiration, 90% perspiration? It's waxing that makes you perspire;-)

I don't mean to give you a hard time, Amos--there are some wise and reasoned thoughts in your text--perhaps more than one could process during a single lunch. And since you didn't respond to my "bacon" questions, I went the safe route and had a ham sandwich instead.

As to my sense of...well you know, It is always with me--unfortunately, my lilting irony isn't always appreciated.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Bee
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 02:35 PM

I mostly agree with you Amos, (and you express my contentions better than i do, I think).

But:
'To dismiss this realm of the viewpoint as merely an extension of the mechanical is therefore dangerous. The risk it entails is cutting human beings off from their own powers iof vision and imagination.
SO although empiricism is a vital tool in continuing to sort out the mysteries of ther material continuum and isolate those phenomena and models which actually do describe the common parts, it is probably a bad choice to try to therefore insist that the world of individual perception should have forced down its throat a molecular/electronic explanation." - Amos

A good deal of what I understand about perception stems from two sets of experience; as a visual artist who refers to three dimensions by manipulating only two, and as a teacher of, and having learned from, very young children for many years.

Children's art has a very strict development, which initially follows physical development, from aimless scribble, to curvilinear back and forth scribble from the shoulder, to circular, from the wrist. They are developing fine motor skills from twoish to threeish, and their manipulation of drawing media refelcts that directly. Most children have an 'Aha!' moment when they see, in their circular scribbling, a round shape, and to a child, that is a representation of a human face, to which they have responded since infancy.

Once seen, the circle/face is drawn over and over, marks are added to represent eyes and mouths. Shaky lines are drawn from it (and at this point some adult will say: "You drew the Sun!", but it isn't), those lines are representations of limbs, hair, features.

After a while, the lines develop, trunks appear, limbs appear, fingers appear. I've watched this progression hundreds of times, and so have others - Rhoda Kellogg wrote an interesting study sometime in the sixties, I think.

(Now, where the hell was I going with this?)

Okay: at least in a basic manner, I understand how children come, physically and mentally, to this ability to translate from three dimensional reality to two dimensional representation. It is almost rote from one child to the next. And it is marvellous, I never tire of watching children go through this process, and seeing their intense delight when they make that first essential transition from purely physical expression to comprehending the image within that expression. Why would I not want to know how and why this happy process occurs, and to tell others, so they could share?

Shortly after that, of course, adults and older children and other people's pictures begin to influence (and in some cases, IMO, corrupt) their further artistic development, starting with that damn 'sun' comment. I am not being a starry-eyed woo-person when I say every single normal child has the capacity to become a visual artist, to be able to see the world in a clear and focussed fashion. They are, most of them, either prevented by circumstances (adults, available media, self esteem, etc.), or the desire to extend that ability is over-ridden by other pursuits, such as music or sports or language.

Now, I have no idea if I've gotten across what i wanted to. I think I mean to explain that I don't see a molecular/electronic explanation is in any way cold, or wrong, or brutal, or mechanical. Aren't we human animals, interacting with our brains and bodies and our vast environment, engaged in the expression of vision and imagination?

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Nickhere
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 03:53 PM

Mrrzzy: "demonstrable. Note that this includes the word Demon... yikes!"

Don't worry Mrrzzy, there's no worry there! 'demonstrate' has nothing to do with dark forces, just comes from the old Italian via Latin stem of 'mostrare' the verb meaning 'to show'.
Like 'manager' has nothing to do with men, just comes from 'mano' meaning 'hand' as in, "to have a hand over something".

Bee -

the one problem with attributing religious experience to physical dysfunction as you described above, is that such a cause-and-effect realtionship cannot be be proved with 100% certainty as being simply the result of psychosomatic disturbance. If anyone tries to claim otherwise, they also cross the threshold into belief. Even with drugs like LSD, we know they cause hallucinations, we expect people to have hallucinations and delsuions when they take it. Some of these delusions can be easily demonstrated (remember, the criterion of empiricism?) for example the delusion one can fly, but beyond such examples we are getting into a more grey area. If someone says they have had what they call a religious experience on LSD, how can we know that such is not the case and ascribe it solely to the drug? If we are to keep our minds open to all possibilities, it is possible that such a thing did indeed occur; and especially if the divine doesn't manifest itself in some physical, empirically meaureable way, there is no way of coming to a firm conclusion about the experience. All we can say is that it was real enough for the person who experienced it, though we may never have experienced such a thing as such ourselves.

(BTW I haven't had any experinces I would consider 'divine' on LSD myself, just in case you were wondering)

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Stringsinger
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 03:57 PM

I agree with you Susan but don't leave out the cats.

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Stringsinger
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 04:01 PM

MTed, the problem with bacon sandwiches is that they will come back (up) to haunt you.

I prefer to stay away from them.

Yours for good health,

Frank

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Nickhere
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 04:04 PM

"If someone says they have had what they call a religious experience on LSD, how can we know that such is not the case and ascribe it solely to the drug?"

Just to clarify, I mean that when a person claims they've had an experience they believe was of a supernatural nature while under the effects of LSD, it is impossible to write this off with 100% confidence as a mere mechanical effect of the drug on the brain and deny any possibility that what was expererienced might possibly be of a supernatural nature as well.
(though personally I would instinctively be very, very, very cautious about accepting such a claim under such circumstances, I couldn't flatly say it was not so with 100% confidence).

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Nickhere
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 04:16 PM

Bee -

"Aren't we human animals, interacting with our brains and bodies and our vast environment, engaged in the expression of vision and imagination?"

I think that's one area where 'religionists' tend to differ. They see the human as an animal on one level, it's true: we inhabit physical bodies that have similar needs to animals: the need to feed, reproduce, stay protected from the enviornment etc., and these needs generate impulses that govern many of our actions. But they also view humans as being something a bit different to all other animals as well, being able to transcend all these physical imperatives (i.e to voluntarily abstain from food even when hungry: hunger strikes, shaolin monks, the saints.. no animal voluntarily starves itself for any end, even a higher one / to voluntarily choose a life of celibacy etc., etc.,)

Humans also seem to be the only creature capable of self-reflection, who asks 'who am I, what am I and where am I going?" (it's not clear if animals do this, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of this. By way of one small example, animals tend to be deeply conservative and stick within their prescribed roles for life - as do many humans, I admit! - but the important thing is that many humans do not) A good book that looks at some of the nature of animals is "The Life of Pi" by yann Martel. He seems to understand them as well as anyone, and talking to a friend who worked in a zoo for several years, his observations seem spot-on.

Humans have developed culture, history, created mass societies, changed their enviornemnt in radical ways and adapted to every climate in ways animals have not done, etc., etc., It is clear we are like animals in some ways (especially when we get drunk and let ourselves down ;-0) but we are also capable of being something far more.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Nickhere
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 04:48 PM

Just a further thought on the 'religious experience under the influence of fever / Lsd etc."

It may be that many people need these extreme conditions in order to open their minds and be receptive to the supernatural (remember the old saying about "there are no atheists in a crisis?"). It may be that during our normal workaday routine we get so bogged down with our own patterns and preconceptions like hamsters on the wheel (I go to work, I come home, I eat, I sleep, I go to work, I come home...at weekends I have a few beers...I get up, I go to work (hungover), I come home...) that we are not open to the supernatural and even try and shut it out if it intrudes on our lives where we have left little space for anything else except the drudge of our familiar and comfortable routine.

Taking Bee's comments on kids, I see an analogy here: kids are like a blank canvas, their minds are open to all possibilities. And as Bee says, they lose this openess as a result of growing up, often of being told 'green trees are green, red roses are red, and there's no need to see them any other way that the way they always have been seen'. You could take this axiom as being an analogy of empiricism. It's no surprise that kids have 'imaginary friends' that they lose as they get older and are told such things are 'impossible'. But how do we know they are, since as adults most of us have lost the faculty of being open to such things due to our own hard-wired preconceptions about the world?

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 04:52 PM

Here is a funny posting(funny to me, that is!) my ferret found...

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 04:59 PM

I would love to have remained open to the supernatural, but we've tried SO hard to demonstrate it that I think we'd have succeeded if there were really anything there... and if there is something supernatural that is completely outside of any perceptual capabilities, then it's not worth worrying about being wrong when you conclude (from all that aforementioned data) with 100% certainty that there is a natural explanation for experiences while on LSD, not matter how amazing they seem, even to people who aren't tripping.

The trick is, with the natural, you can do a whole lot that appears supernatural.

But that's a whole 'nother thread - how LSD works to make your attention so much more efficient (I've read inhibiting conditioned reflexes but that's an understatement) - boy, is it fun, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: M.Ted
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 05:06 PM

Frank--My doctor has a little lecture room with charts and graphs about the ill effects of various sorts of eating, as well as little dinner plates with good and bad meals on them. Sadly, bacon is on the bad plates, and, in spite of all my pleadings, he refuses to move it to a good plate--and so I keep no bacon--

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Nickhere
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 07:16 PM

If you're interested in chemicals and religion, you'll like this site, which looks at all the traditions associated between the two;

Pharamceuticals and religion

But personally I don't reccomend it if you're after the real thing. At this stage of my life I find a lot of wisdom in teh words of John Fire Lame Deer, talking of his time in the Native American Church (the one that uses peyote as the basis of its dream quest - the Sioux, to which John Fire belonged, traditionally used the vision pit) "I became a peyoter for a number of years...but I never gave myself wholly to it. I also got myself deeper into our old Sioux beliefs, the spirit world; listened to preachers, herb men and the yuwipi (spirits). I was slowly forming an idea of where I wanted to go...but I could see a number of roads leading up to it and I did not yet know which one to take. so i tried them all, coming to many dead ends....at the time I quit peyote I had found out what a real Sioux vision was like. If you dream, that's no vision. anybody can dream. And if you take a herb - well, even the butcher boy at his meat counter will have a vision after eating peyote. the real vision has to come out of your own juices" ("John Fire Lame Deer - Sioux medicine man" by Richard Erdoes & Lame Deer)

But if you like to read about people's experiences on LSD etc., you'll find this page from the same site interesting:

The vaults of experience

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 07:26 PM

The question is not one of the supernatural, I would suggest, but of the true scope and nature of the natural.

In response to Bee's observations about the repeating patterns of cognitive stages in maturing humans, I have no problem with them. They do not, however, speak to the point I was making. The development of complex response patterns, including language complexities, is an ongoing curve in all humans, and it doesn't surprise me that the patterns within one culture are repeating. I wouldn't be surprised if children in other cultures, left to their own devices, also go through similar phases.

The difference comes into play the day the child makes an original joke, or offers you an insight you did not think of yourself. More important, comes up with an original thought.
Of course, the mechanist school claims that all such complications and pretenses of individual creativity are just recombinant elements of culture and perception in the physical universe, not creations. And they are right with respect to a huge volume of traffic which really is just the dramatization of combinations of tired old memes

But once a while, one soul or another will break out with an original thought and astonish folks for a bref momoent as they scuttle to get their wits around such a thing. Holy, moly!!

That's the break-point in the program for me.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: GUEST,Juan Hu Tutz
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 08:53 PM

Have you lot really got nothing better to do?

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 10:02 PM

You have left out   Not Even Jesus

which I thought was the salt of the thread.

and while you mean well I don't want my poems sent up into the main forum any more.

I am content to stay down here in the BaSement.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: number 6
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 10:15 PM

I heard Romney's (losing) N.H. primary speech on CNN tonite. He said Americans are great because they beleive in God.

Then I recalled watching a CNN interview (back in 2001) with some Taliban leader in Afghanistan. He declared the U.S. will be defeated, because his people believed in God, and Americans didn't.

Oh well, silly post I agree but for some meaningless reason I posted.

Hmmm ... now I think I'll watch Hillary's victory speech.

biLL

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Janie
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 10:26 PM

Freightdawg, are you looking at a site that the demographics would be clear to someone unfamiliar with NH? If so, would you mind providing a link?

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Bee
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 10:56 PM

"In response to Bee's observations about the repeating patterns of cognitive stages in maturing humans, I have no problem with them. They do not, however, speak to the point I was making. The development of complex response patterns, including language complexities, is an ongoing curve in all humans, and it doesn't surprise me that the patterns within one culture are repeating. I wouldn't be surprised if children in other cultures, left to their own devices, also go through similar phases." - Amos

All children go through the same development patterns, at least in terms of fine motor control, drawing, and recognition of two dimensionality in the form of a human face, Amos. It is not cultural, but human. A child drawing in the dust in Ethiopia will follow the same pattern of development.

I see great beauty in this. And even if "all such complications and pretenses of individual creativity are just recombinant elements of culture and perception in the physical universe, not creations", isn't that just the same thing as creativity? There are only three primary colours that we can see, plus white, the reflection of all colour, and black, the absorbtion of all colour (explaining simply), yet painters mix and recombine and dilute and saturate these five elements, strain them through the individual experiences and thought processes and emotionality of their unique-as-fingerprints minds and produce a nearly infinite variety of expressions. No never-seen-before colour needs to be created out of the stuff of the universe in order to effect all this originality.

"But once a while, one soul or another will break out with an original thought and astonish folks for a bref momoent as they scuttle to get their wits around such a thing. Holy, moly!!

That's the break-point in the program for me." - Amos

How would you know that the thought is purely original? How could you ever tell the difference between pure creativity, the "something new", and your recombinent elements of culture and perception?

That's where I stall. I think what we achieve, do, say, make, write, and so on is marvellous in itself, that we take our 'primary colours', that is, being physical creatures in a physical universe (which itself is infinitely full of marvels), and to a great extent, make ourselves, each one, unique.

I don't, as some might think, deny the faint possibility of Something Other existing, or that we ourselves might contain some Other Self. But I don't see that anything we presently do, or make, or become, no matter how astounding, is more indicative of such supernatural underpinnings than it is of our own and the universe's natural properties. I wish it were. I would be greatly comforted by such a reality.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Janie
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 10:58 PM

Oops. I guess that post I made to the New Hampshire Primaries thread didn't disappear into cyberspace after all.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Riginslinger
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 10:59 PM

I don't think a reality like that would confort me, in all honesty. It would only make things more confusing.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: M.Ted
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 11:21 PM

I can usually make sense out of what I see, it's when people start explaining things that I get confused.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Amos
Date: 08 Jan 08 - 11:42 PM

Well, it simplifies things in my view. But I am a simple minded, if curious person.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 08:10 AM

Actually, the number of "primary" colors you see depends on the number of color terms in your language. Languages with only 3 color words see 2 primary colors: red, and not red. The other 2 words will be black and white.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Riginslinger
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 08:42 AM

Still, it seems like a guy would see one someplace, from time to time. Maybe if we went back to polytheism there would be more goDs and it would increase our chances.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: M.Ted
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 11:17 AM

Meaning that if you don't have a word for a color, then you don't see it?

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 11:36 AM

Well, you don't see it as different from other colors for which you don't have a word. For instance, if there are a bunch of shades of red and a bunch of shades of blue, English speakers will sort them into 2 piles, one for all the reds, one for all the blues. Different monolingual English speakers may differ on whether they class certain purples as red or blue, but there will be 2 piles. Monolingual speakers of Hungarian will make three piles - one for dark/blood red (one word in Hungarian), one for other reds (a separate word in Hungarian), and one for blues. Again, there may be disagreement on where the purples go, but they will not see the 2 reds as shades of the same color, the way the Anglophones will.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Amos
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 11:55 AM

Ya know what I think? I think there is a hypnotic program of agreement operating from the incessant impact of space-time implosion ont he individual operating a body, which is so persistant andhypnotic that if there ever WERE a spiritual being connected with said body the chances of his breaking free of the complexity is about 2 in 100. If all we are at our best is a mishmash of mechanism simply being churned over and regenerated, then the species of man is simply animal with an order of cleverness attached. That, I cannot see. There are too many other phenomena to fit that model. I have no problem with the evolutionary description that places the homo sap genetic structure one slot over from the other chumps. I mean chimps. But I do not think it wise to turn our backs on the spiritual dimensions of human experience, at least as private individuals.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: TheSnail
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 12:17 PM

I remember hearing Prof Steve Jones say that he didn't think Snails had a spiritual side.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Riginslinger
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 12:19 PM

Yeah, but it's a slippery slope. One minute you're not turning your back on spiritual dimensions, and the next you're out being cured by Oral Roberts.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Amos
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 12:29 PM

HEar, hear, Rig.

ALl the more reason, IMHO, to stare bravely into the face of the unknown and approach all exhortors and evangelists with tons of salt and ferocious adherence to your own powers of observation and intuition, cleaving to honest self-examination and the complete willing interest in seeing what is there to be seen. I am not trying to pitch a bill of goods; simply warning that perhaps one should not abandon the errand just because too many bills of goods have been pitched. :D


A

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Bee
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 01:01 PM

Mrrzy, that is interesting from a linguistic POV, but regardless of what you call them, the colours humans see are dependent on the structure of our eyes and the light spectrum which is visible to humans. You may call yellow 'not red' but your eyes still see yellow (provided you are not physically colour blind. And being familiar with a small portion of Hungarian art and craftwork, I can say with certainty that regardless of what they may name a colour, they are fully engaged in sorting shades of red and purple and blue and yellow and green and orange into meaningful relationships vis a vis making something they hope other eyes, regardless of language, will see as beautiful or charming.

"Ya know what I think? I think there is a hypnotic program of agreement operating from the incessant impact of space-time implosion ont he individual operating a body, which is so persistant andhypnotic that if there ever WERE a spiritual being connected with said body the chances of his breaking free of the complexity is about 2 in 100. If all we are at our best is a mishmash of mechanism simply being churned over and regenerated, then the species of man is simply animal with an order of cleverness attached. That, I cannot see. There are too many other phenomena to fit that model. I have no problem with the evolutionary description that places the homo sap genetic structure one slot over from the other chumps. I mean chimps. But I do not think it wise to turn our backs on the spiritual dimensions of human experience, at least as private individuals." - Amos

An interesting speculation which wouldn't indicate a very successful god handling the operation.

Amos, what phenomena do you see that don't fit the idea of man as clever animal? I see none, but hey, I live in rural obscurity, perhaps angels are dancing on pinheads in Paris as we speak, and I just haven't heard the news. I know, that isn't what you mean... still: what phenomena? I know there is a tremendous amount of buzzing and clanking and occasional clarion bell-ringing that goes on inside our heads which may be difficult to reconcile with a mechanistic universe, but it is a BIG universe, with infinite probability going for it, lots of room for clever chimps and singing whales and a whole that is greater than its parts.

Spiritual is a much abused word, meaning anything from 'he's a really good person who thinks a lot and has mighty refined ideas that make sense' to 'he's a drum-banging woo who thinks stealing a few ideas from shamanic tradition and dressing up in mediaeval outfits will really attract the woo-girls'. What do you mean when you refer to 'spiritual dimensions'?

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Amos
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 01:38 PM

Hmmmm....good question, Bee. I am excluding as "spiritual" any authoritarian system of dictating labels or imposing beliefs; I exclude any system of bizarre icons with long strange names and contorted grimacing visages. I am excluding, as well, any mapping of spiritual things that requires subscribing to one or another zoo of postulated entities that are not found on inspection.

I include the ultimate nature of the conscious center of "I" that seems to lie behind "nomral" identity and the capabilities of perception, admiration, understanding, communication, the postulation of space, energy and images into existence, and a lot of other abilities often disregarded or discounted. I guess I consider that the discovery of those dimensions is an inidfividual expedition, and exploring the outer limits of your imagination certainly brings you face to face with the question of who is doing the imagining. The nature of that "who", I suggest, is perhaps the center of spiritual dimensions.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Riginslinger
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 01:47 PM

That's a good point. If no other forces are present, imagination might be memory, or based on memory, or a perverted sense of some past memory, or...

                           It all reminds me of that painting by Salvador Dali with all the wilting clocks.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 01:58 PM

The colors we see as "prototype" (best example of) are, yes, determined by the physics of color perception. even people with one word for "either blue or green" will pick a standard blue as the best example, not the aqua in the middle.

But whether we see 2 wavelengths as "different shades of one color" or as "different colors" is linguistic, not physical.

It's the same as whether we hear different vibrations as the "same" speech sound or not. Depends on whether the difference is phonemic (meaningful) in your language or not. English speakers can tell the difference between the P of POT and the P of SPOT only by putting their hand in front of their mouths and feeling the difference in air puffing - but speakers of languages which differenciate the aspirated and unaspirated P the way English distinguishes between P and, say, B, can actually HEAR the difference. We anglophones just hear them both as P, despite having the same inner ear workings.

Way cool!

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Bee
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 02:17 PM

Aw, Rig, those wilting clocks were just an indicator of how nervous old Sal was at the time with the young wife and all.

Well, Amos, that's a good try and narrows the field some - I will not expect to see you tricked out in burnt whale fat face paint and loon feathers, then.

I know that point of consciousness of self that you refer to, and Carl Sagan speaks of it in, I think, the Demon Haunted World or Dragons of Eden (I need to read Sagan again, been too many years). He was, if I remember correctly (and I recommend reading DoE if you haven't, as my memory is faulty and I don't have the book), suggesting that the 'other self' we encounter is an evolutionary revenant, perhaps related to the (almost independent still) reptilian brain upon which our mammal brain sits, like a fat marmot on a turtle, thinking the reptile beneath is just a convenient rock when it is a living entity on its own. Or maybe not, but Sagan gives the investigator into spirituality and the mind a lot to consider.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: M.Ted
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 02:52 PM

You don't actually have any way of knowing what a particular color looks like to someone else. You can tell if they agree that the color of one object matches the color of another object, and you can tell whether they use the same word to describe the color of an object as you do.

Usually, people will agree on which colors match other colors, but often, they will not agree on which words describe particular colors. That's why we have the Pantone Color books.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 04:02 PM

Right - but if you ask Are these 2 chips the same color or not, your answers are better predicted by the language spoken by the choosers than by the wavelengths...

Terms are a whole 'nother kettle of fish!

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Bee
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 04:22 PM

It is more complicated than that, Mrrzy. How we perceive colours, in relation to naming them, even in English within one cultural group, is even affected by whether the colour is on the left or right side of otherwise identical arrays, by what series of colours are laid next the one we wish to name, by our age (older people perceive yellow as a stronger (more intense) colour than younger ones, probably because of yellowing corneal lenses), and many other factors. That linguistics plays a part in our perception is no surprise, but my original point was that all humans physically see the spectrum we have evolved to perceive, we don't pluck out a spectral colour only bees can see and use it to make the most original of original paintings.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: M.Ted
Date: 09 Jan 08 - 05:35 PM

Actually, people can match the wavelengths pretty well--and not agree on what the name of the color should be called--that's why the PMS colors have numbers, not names.

In a way, it is a bit like matching pitch, we have names for 12 pitches, but we can make much finer differentiations in pitch than that, which is why we can tune our guitars--

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Mrrzy
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 09:02 AM

Isn't the human mind a fascinating thing? And all the ideas we can come up with... (trying to get back to the thread... kind of nicely...)

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Riginslinger
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 09:38 AM

Yes, I was beginning to wonder what all of this had to do with goDs. I was about to go out and rummage through the garage, to see if I could find one on my own.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 09:43 AM

Hell, RIg, just close your eyes and dummy one up!! Be sure and make it overwhelming, so it will intimidate folks into complying. Maybe make Her look a lot like Hillary or Oprah or somp'n. And give it lots of attributes that cannot be checked out -- the ability to see into people's underwear, massively parallel processing systems totally devoted to pecadilloes, and some kind of laser-guided punishment system with a random target generator thrown in just for good luck. I am sure you can come up with amuch longer list if you set your mind to it.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: TheSnail
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 09:51 AM

Amos

totally devoted to pecadilloes

Aren't they those South American hamsters the size of sheep?

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: Riginslinger
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 10:13 AM

Amos - I'll see what I can do. An Oprah goD sounds pretty exciting, maybe I'll start there.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: M.Ted
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 10:31 AM

If, as I take it both the estimable Riginslinger and Mrzzy contend, there are no gods, then this thread doesn't really have a topic, does it?

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: GUEST,Wesley S
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 11:01 AM

M Ted - of course theres a point to this thread. The point is that people who believe in gods are just plain wrong - and those who don't feel vastly superior about that. And need to point that out.

Subject: RE: BS: Still no gods 2008 (continued)
From: GUEST,Wesley S
Date: 10 Jan 08 - 11:02 AM

200 - PRAISE THE LORD!!!!