Pied Piper, you are putting words in my mouth. Doing what Bill D calls operating from a faulty premise. I said that people start wars for reasons having to do with money, power and territory, and they employ science to help them do it. You are the one who said scientists started the war.

However, any time a scientist creates a weapon because of the money, fame, recognition or respect from peers, etc, that come with breaking new ground in the scientific world (I'm not saying all are motivated by this, but some certainly are), he or she is in no way motivated by altruism or anything other than self-interest.

the point is: IF your premises happen to be false...(I mean really, ultimately false) THEN your conclusions are suspect. Therefore, it is a good idea to be wary of conclusions whose premises are, by definition, not testable under current knowlege

Much of the more 'esoteric' experiences do need to be investigated and compared...who knows-- we might find out stuff that is solid and clear explanations for some of it! (Maybe someone will develop an instrument that can monitor the emanations of a Genesa crystal and SHOW that you are right...*shrug*)

No boubt that some of what you call "esoteric" experiences are indeed just flights of fancy. And no doubt some of them cause people to make bad decisions. But in the case of those people, I would suspect that such people would most probably be making bad decisions based on faulty premises even in the absence of the more "esoteric" way of looking at things. I've met many such people.

On the other hand. many people who are serious about the way they conduct their lives, from a spiritual standpoint, would tell you that their spirituality doesn't produce a "feel good" kind of convenient pretend world, but rather, it causes them to have to live a lot more responsibly with regard to their fellow humans and also all of nature, and the planet as a whole. And that, while they are at peace with their particular trajectory in life, it is not any easier, and is, in fact, a lot more challenging and even more difficult to maintain than a life without this spiritual focus.

And as you can see, many of my experiences can be described as anything but "feel good" experiences. I have no incentives to want to experience energy the way I do. There is nothing about the way I experience energy that would cause me to want to have these experiences. If anything, there are many, many things about my experiences that would motivate me to want to not have them. And I never expected to have these experiences either. I have never seen or heard anyone describe the kinds of experiences I have, so it was not "suggestion" that prompted these experiences. I just note what I experience and when I have enough of the same kind of experience, I try to notice what the circumstances are that surround that experience and learn how to deal with it in the most effective way.

It is just as faulty a premise to suggest that a spiritual focus causes bad or inapropriate behavior or decisions in humans as it is to suggest that a scientific focus causes bad or inapropriate behavior or decisions in humans. The reasons for bad behavior and decisions is a result of faulty thought processes within each human, and things like spirituality and science (and many, many other kinds of focus) are simply the vehicles for the expression of these faulty thought processes.

(Maybe someone will develop an instrument that can monitor the emanations of a Genesa crystal and SHOW that you are right...*shrug*)

Maybe. They don't emanate anything though. They work with the energy that is already present. They draw it in, concentrate it and "condition" it, and then send it back out.

Me...I'd rather help TBPL set up the double-blind experiment...*grin*...but you guessed that)

I have issued the invitation. It's up to you and TBPL to take me up on it.