BS: Matter and Spirit

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 11 Aug 04 - 02:59 PM

Nah. What you're giving us is YOUR take on what spirit is. Team spirit is motivation. People are motivated by, for instance, reminding them that they belong to a tribe and that winning is glorious. Hearing that kind of pep talk starts a physical response--the body produces adrenaline to cope with the imminent physical challenge. Better the pep-talk, more pumped the athlete. Etc.

If spirit existed in a physical sense (no pun intended) you could buy it in a jar and rub it on like ointment.

Actually, Wolfgang, can you name for me even one scientific process that doesn't involve, at some point in the process, the perceptions of the scientist who is engaged in the process?

This is simply wrong. The whole point of scientific process is to examine without prejudice. Sure. tons of people have twisted results to meet perceptions, but they fool only themselves as science will always find them out.

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: Little Hawk
Date: 11 Aug 04 - 02:11 PM

The actual meaning of spirit is simple. Spirit is life energy. You can see this by analyzing words like "spirited" or "team spirit" or "fighting spirit". Spirited means enlivened or lively. Team spirit is the energetic motivation that drives the team...gives it life. Fighting spirit is the energy that makes one a good fighter.

Spirit, therefore, means the active or the potential energy that drives and sustains life. Although that energy itself may be invisible, its effects are totally obvious. A body containing spirit is a body containing life. That life is the energy which imbues the otherwise inert body with consciousness, emotion, desire, memory, ideals, humour, motivation, drive, and everything else that one needs in order to be alive.

So, Wolfgang, for you to deny the existence of spirit is for you to deny your very own conscious existence AS a living being...but that's not why you're denying it. You're denying it simply because your understanding of the word itself is inadequate...and, in your case, mythical. When you hear the word "spirit", you imagine a childish myth of some kind which you label as "spirit". If you were to enlarge your definition of "spirit" you would have no trouble finding evidence of its existence in every living thing and every atomic structure.

It's like the electricity that powers a machine...or the energy that binds atoms together. Just because you don't have a clear idea of where it's coming from, you pretend it isn't there at all. It's effects are everywhere visible...unless you choose to be blind to them.

You're like a radio that says..."There is no electricity in me, and there is no station sending a broadcast through me, there is just me...a collection of wires and circuits in a cabinet. What you see is what you get. If you can't touch it, it's not real."

Well, my friend, that radio is totally inert and useless without the electricity and the broadcast to give it life. And so would you be without the spirit of life moving in and through you.

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: CarolC
Date: 11 Aug 04 - 10:56 AM

You only think you're in agreement with me, Wolfgang.

;-)

Actually, Wolfgang, can you name for me even one scientific process that doesn't involve, at some point in the process, the perceptions of the scientist who is engaged in the process?

Where I think you and I would disagree would be that even what you would probably consider to be non-living matter, I still would regard as "spirit".

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: Pied Piper
Date: 11 Aug 04 - 07:29 AM

I would engage you in a battle of wits Amos but my conscience will not allow me to fight an un-armed man.

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: Wolfgang
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 04:41 PM

What is mind? Never matter. What is matter? Never mind.

This is one of those moments where I am in complete agreement with what Carol writes:
some of us don't see "matter" and "spirit" as being separate at all. To us, it's just the perception of matter and spirit that seems to have separateness.

I couldn't have said it better: It is only our perception that makes us think there is a spirit different from the action of matter.

'Spirit' is a good word (as an abbreviation for more complex things) for daily communication but for scientific purposes it has no meaningful role.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: *daylia*
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 03:19 PM

Ah .... the Power of the Spoken Worm. I just KNEW it would come to this!

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: CarolC
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 03:13 PM

For some people, spirit is detectable by one or more of the five senses. But it's more of an inner manifestation of the five senses in many respects. Except for the sensation like a small (but very annoying) feeling of an electrical charge that I experience in the middle of my back when I get overloaded with spiritual energy. Also the dizziness and nausea I can experience when that happens, and the subsequent vomiting if the source of the energy isn't removed. That is definitely something I detect with one or more of my five physical senses.

BTW, the physical side effects that I experience when I get energy overload is absolutely replicable. However, if someone who doesn't accept the possibility that I can experience spiritual energy as a physical sense would happen to be the one doing the tests on me, there is a good chance that he or she would interpret a psychological cause for my experience.

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 02:43 PM

Well, now, there's a different take on the matter.

I agree with Blake. Spirit is that which cannot be detected by the five physical senses. There are a whole lot of things those senses cannot detect. Body is, as he said, an aspect of spirit, and it can be detected by the five physical senses. Other physical things are also aspects of spirit that are detectable by the five senses.

Spirit is not only the source of physicality, it is the source of intelligence, thought, emotion, desire, energy, and all perceivable existence. It is also the source from which spring ideas...like the idea of "non-existence". It is quite easy for an embodied soul to come up with the idea that there is no soul, for example, but only the body. The five senses of the body will support that notion, because they can look no farther than physical phenomena.

A worm can also say to itself with absolute conviction: "There is nothing greater than being a worm. I am the ultimate form of life."

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: mack/misophist
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 02:32 PM

Pied Piper has been reading the wrong philosophers. The Medieval Scholastic philosophers said that existance was only one of many qualities a thing might have. This line of thought settles all. Spirit is merely a force that lacks the quality of existence!

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 02:30 PM

Time for Wm Blake again:

"We have no Body distinct from Soul, for that called Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses."

If you discard the concept of spirit, then

We have no Soul distinct from Body, for that called soul is a portion of Body undiscern'd by the five Senses.

Which comes to the same thing; that they're aspects of each other.

It's useful to have two words--body, soul or matter, spirit --for purposes of discussion, but it's a verbal convenience. As some great man said, the world is not formed on the plan of the English language.

You can separate a poem into the words & the meaning, or a computer into hardware and software, but it's only a convenience of language.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: Amos
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 01:56 PM

Guest:

What just is may just be, but this question is one of the great unresolved issues in human knowledge; if you had any education in your own intellectual antecedents, you wouldn't need to ask a mindless, barbarian question like the one you posted upthread.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: Little Hawk
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 01:52 PM

Matter and spirit are not separate. Matter is an aspect of spirit and exists within spirit. You could say that it is spirit slowed down some. When you lower the vibrational rate, things become denser and more solid. They then become perceivable to the physical senses.

The reason you don't have machines that can yield empirical data about spirit is that the machines are not sensitive enough to detect that data...or the people monitoring the machines are not sensitive enough to be aware of what they are actually observing yet...mainly because they're working within a limited set of mental assumptions.

They have the potential to tap into spirit, but not the intention of doing so...and they receive exactly what they are ready to receive and no more.

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 01:19 PM

who gives a fuck? it just is.

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 12:59 PM

The meaning of spirit exactly matches the number of sentient beings in the universe. Minus 42.

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: Amos
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 12:52 PM

IF you will command your arm to rise up int he air and observe it to do so, you will see the mechanism you are looking for by which SPirit interacts with Matter. Intention is a spiritual attribute, not a material one. Understanding is another. Appreciation is a capability of Spirit, not of matter. Perception (as distinguished from chain reactions of energy and chemicals) is also ultimately resident as acapability in Spirit, not in Matter. Most important of allt he ability to decide what shall be is an ability inherent in Spirit and not found in matter.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: CarolC
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 12:41 PM

I'm not sure quite what you are asking there, Pied Piper, but some of us don't see "matter" and "spirit" as being separate at all. To us, it's just the perception of matter and spirit that seems to have separateness. And, as we know, perception is relative and not always testable.

(In other words, to some of us, matter is also "spirit", just in a different form than the more ethereal aspects of spirit. So for some of us, everythig is "spirit", matter included.)

We are the music makers. We
are the dreamers of the dreams.

--Arthur O'Shaughnessy

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: SINSULL
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 09:54 AM

Mater-spirit complex...is that anything like the Oedipus Complex? When did motherhood become so important on Mudcat? I'm confused.

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: Janie
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 09:29 AM

I pray to the 'mater spirits every year that my 'maters are sweet and juicy and don't get blossom end rot:>)

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Matter and Spirit
From: *daylia*
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 09:23 AM

In short would the universe be any different if we discard the concept of spirit entirely.

Pied Piper, I don't think the universe is in any way subject to human concepts, "spiritual" or otherwise.

I don't know of any empirically sound method of testing that hypothesis, though.

daylia

Subject: BS: Mater and Spirit
From: Pied Piper
Date: 10 Aug 04 - 08:05 AM

Now the Mudcat mystics would have us believe that the universe consists of two different types of things mater and for want of a definable word "Spirit".
Now if these two things interact at all scales then when we experiment on mater what we discover is not just the properties of mater but the properties of the mater-spirit complex and therefore the discoveries of Physics are correct and apply to the universe.
If however this spirit stuff only interacts with matter that has a mind buy what mechanism does it effect mind and mind affect spirit.

In short would the universe be any different if we discard the concept of spirit entirely.

And please give some evidence that is at least in principal testable.

PP