Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

Vandal-72's back.

Whadda 'bout OBE's? How does one tell if you're having an OBE vs. just a weird dream?

People say in fact that you often have OBEs in dreams. But of course, a conscious OBE would happen when you are wide awake.

Oh, OK. I think that explains why hell is so hot. As the number of souls in hell increases, so does the temperature. Hell is like an air compressor. As the air compressor compresses air, the air inside heats up. Conversely, if you let the air out, the outflowing air cools off. <half baked theory by Rags />

That would make heaven pretty lonely. I don't think so.

Unless your theory is that there is no heaven, but only hell. That would be true, if only fundie Christians survive death because they've accepted Jesus as their savior. But then, that would be hell for us; heaven for them. They might even elect George W. Bush as their president. Now, hell that would be!

People need to remember that souls are known from the inside, from self-awareness; it's hard to measure and detect one with science. It might be possible. But they are subject to the uncertainty principle by degrees of magnitude greater than atomic particles. Souls have no location in space and time. They can be described as particles, or holograms, of God (or the "greater mind" you wrote of earlier, Rags). But maybe a soul is not a particle at all unless you observe it, or think of it that way. It is really the universal mind observing itself from one point of view.

Souls are really what there is. All things are souls; some just more awake than others. Consciousness extends all the way down the scale (pan-psychism). As for "matter," we know it's only energy. Apparently impenetrable "material things" are mostly empty space, and what isn't space, is condensed energy, perhaps consisting of strings of vibration known only by mathematics. What seems hard to penetrate, is only so in relation to our softer skin. It's a relative thing. Heat up some of this "matter" to "hot as hell" and it becomes very fluid and penetrable anyway, and eventually becomes energy.

Something sets this energy in motion; it can only be Spirit. Sheldrake points out in the video that conservation of energy fails by measuring the energy in people; they found that they can destroy or create it by what they do, exercize, eating, etc. I always knew that! And "dark energy" seems to be increasing as the universe expands! Some "conservation;" whenever the scientists need some to account for their measurements of the universe, they just add some more in! More than 96% of reality now is "dark."

Things exist as such only when we observe them. That is the idealist principle of Berkeley and quantum physics. This "observation" is also "measurement." Otherwise they are just probability waves of possibility. Measurement itself we know is impossible anyway, except relatively speaking. Exact measurements never happen; the boundary on your device gets fuzzy as you approach it. Look for any exact line on your measuring stick and it gets wider the close you get. The object you are trying to measure moves through time, as Sheldrake and Whitehead say in the video above. (this post with the video will get closer by putting Vandal on ignore; his posts then are quicker to scroll past). You can't pin down what is moving to an exact location. That's all true of "particles," it's even more true for souls. They have no fixed boundaries, and they are always in process, and indeterminate or spontaneous. You can't pin down a soul. I am not a number, I am a free man! -- The Prisoner.

PS: that was a good post, brower

I was going to mention this; this is really something for us! Sheldrake debunks the idea of constants in Nature, and he found that the speed of light dropped between 1928 and 1945.

http://youtu.be/0waMBY3qEA4?t=23m22s

Hmmm, A drop in the speed of light. between 1928 to 1945. Familiar?

Maybe we could call it a "depression" in the speed of light? A turning in the saeculum corresponded to the fluctuation in the speed of light??!!

Robert Lanza, pioneer stem cell biologist, is on the frontier of restoring life and consciousness to science and a proper "theory of everything."

http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/

Much to explore here.

Another article worth exploring:

http://www.juliaassante.com/reflecti...e-after-death/

I read a skeptical article too. Nothing was said there that Brian or Vandal did not say right here. Don't present any facts. Just summarize them in your own words, leave out most of the research you don't like, and make arguments about why it's not possible. He ends up just restating the materialist philosophy that clouds and distorts his limited vision:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor...b_1428710.html

http://youtu.be/VRKvvxku5So?t=11m15s

In this section of Sheldrake's video, starting here with Whitehead's view informed by quantum theory, he discusses the new view of Nature as organic, pan-psychic and probable in ways Brian might appreciate.

In this video, Sheldrake also participates in investigations of life after death. I don't know if this video is worthwhile or not yet; there's so much to watch and read in this field that I can't report on it all as quickly as folks like Brian might like me to. This is a long one, but might have some good reports, or at least some interesting anecdotal tales of the type that need more verification.

http://youtu.be/6qSEi_sfaSU

Some ads to skip over too.

Sheldrake first appears at 22:42

He is there to remind us how the materialist paradigm restricts our approach to the afterlife. At the same time, he asks a question like one that Brian asks, showing that he can still wear his skeptical scientific hat.

Later, Mr. Thomas A. Edison drops by with some technical advice for building spirit communication equipment that he did not get to complete while alive, and he left his signature.

It's cool; it is scientific, even if incredible. I recommend it. Especially the ending. One of the chief investigators interviewed in the film, dies, and then is contacted.


In another article, Sheldrake explains that the soul is not inside the body, the body is inside the soul; it is very large. And he reviews the various historical and current views of the soul. He is joined by Matthew Fox.

http://www.sheldrake.org/about-ruper...of-soul-making

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

What does "what you have psi" mean?

You have claimed that evidence exists that telepathy exists. What is this evidence? Doesn't it amount to a number of "hits" that is greater than what would be expected from chance. That is, #hits - expected # of hits. This is what I mean by excess probability. Did not not understand this?

Excess probability is the operational definition of psi. If a person scores excess probability on many occasions one can say they are exhibiting psi. Is this so hard to understand?

You don't seem to have mentioned two things here, only one. Please clarify.

Nobody has measured synapse firings. Yet you believe that telepathy exists. Why? I submit it is because of excess probability. We can talk about psi in terms of Ganzfeld experiment results. You have hypothesized that we could talk about psi in terms of synapse firings. Since nobody who is doing research is this field is looking at synapse firings the concept of psi exists independently of synapse firing. Hence excess probability of card reading or ganzfeld experiment results and excess probability of synapse firings are two different things.

The "excess probability" here is the probability OF synapses firing in a certain way.

Not it is not. It is when a person scores higher in a ganzfeld experiment or reads cards more successfully that what would be expected from chance.

This is also incorrect, in that just about everyone makes use of telepathy. It's one of the most common activities around. It's used to know when someone close to you is about to call, or is in danger and needs help, or when you're being watched, to cite three very common applications. That's without even going into the methods for increasing the effect of this and other psi abilities.

These aren't applications. Look if anyone possessed precognition that that allow them to reliably predict an event with 25% probability with 29% accuracy half the time would have an earth-shaking ability. Think about, huge wealth with a few years of using your talent to earn a living. But nobody has done this. I cannot believe that people with this ability would throw all that cash away. Hence I believe nobody can.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

You have claimed that evidence exists that telepathy exists. What is this evidence? Doesn't it amount to a number of "hits" that is greater than what would be expected from chance. That is, #hits - expected # of hits. This is what I mean by excess probability. Did not not understand this?

Excess probability is the operational definition of psi. If a person scores excess probability on many occasions one can say they are exhibiting psi. Is this so hard to understand?

I think Brian was just asking you to clarify or edit your sentence. I didn't understand it well either.

Nobody has measured synapse firings. Yet you believe that telepathy exists. Why? I submit it is because of excess probability. We can talk about psi in terms of Ganzfeld experiment results. You have hypothesized that we could talk about psi in terms of synapse firings. Since nobody who is doing research is this field is looking at synapse firings the concept of psi exists independently of synapse firing. Hence excess probability of card reading or ganzfeld experiment results and excess probability of synapse firings are two different things.

Not it is not. It is when a person scores higher in a ganzfeld experiment or reads cards more successfully that what would be expected from chance.

I'm with you on that one. Psi has nothing to do with synapse firings. That is a wish by a quasi materialist to explain psi in quasi materialist terms.

These aren't applications.

They show that psi is useful to have.

Look if anyone possessed precognition that that allow them to reliably predict an event with 25% probability with 29% accuracy half the time would have an earth-shaking ability. Think about, huge wealth with a few years of using your talent to earn a living. But nobody has done this. I cannot believe that people with this ability would throw all that cash away. Hence I believe nobody can.

Although you have a point, they would not disprove actual experiments. Also, for one thing, who's to say that those who get rich this way are not using psi? Some of them may; a few even consciously, if perhaps secretly. Furthermore, since psi is so taboo in the world of practical affairs in our society, there just aren't that many people interested both in making money and in spiritual or psychic development. Most professional psychics are in the business of counseling people, using their abilities to help them. Psychic ability alone does not guarantee that you have the talent for making money; those are not identical abilities.

Healings, rather than financial gain, are more likely through use of psi.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Not all these applications are "benefits" either; the benefits of genetic engineering is very questionable. Knowledge of genes may be able to help doctors tailor treatments, and is involved in biochemistry, but the benefits of knowing the genome are over-rated; it is not itself a cure for anything.

I used genetic engineering (GE) as a response to your question about the applications of evolution. Most of the really big applications of GE are in the future. But I also mentioned as an already-in-place accomplishment the impact of antibiotics:

The first real test for the Florey lab came when Albert Alexander, a 48 year old London policeman had nicked himself while shaving. It was only a minor cut and was ignored for several days, but this would have a major impact on medical history. After a time, Alexander's face became swollen and infected and developed a temperature that rose to 105F. The minor cut had developed septicemia. When he was rushed to Radcliffe Hospital, sulfa drugs were administered without success. When the doctors believed that the policeman only had several more hours of life remaining, Florey and Chain requested that they be given permission to treat this patient with their "purified" penicillin. This would be their first human subject to which penicillin was applied. Florey and Chain took charge of the case personally and injections of penicillin were begun. After five days, the impossible had happened, the patient was recovering. Unfortunately, because penicillin was in such short supply, that small amounts had to be extracted from the patient's urine. after five days, the supply of penicillin that was produced for experimentation had been used up. There was no more penicillin available, and the policeman had a relapse and died five days later.

Obviously more was needed:

By this time, it was now 1941, it was now acknowledged that penicillin was indeed a worthwhile drug and could save thousands of lives. Unfortunately, the process that Florey and Chain developed, for extracting penicillin, was producing only one part penicillin per million part of culture medium.

However, during the summer of 1941, Florey had negotiated an agreement with the Rockefeller Foundation, which had been funding his research, to fly he and one of his assistant to the United States to continue his work with penicillin. The United States, who was at that time a neutral country, would enter into World War II in another few months. This gave added incentive to the penicillin project which became declared a war project and was given top priority.

Despite the efforts and resources that were being given to producing large quantities of penicillin, it soon became obvious that Fleming's original culture would not be able to produce enough penicillin regardless of the environment in which the fungus was grown. By 1942, there was only enough penicillin produced to treat a few hundred people. There are many species of Penicillium, and a search was started to find other species that could be tested for penicillin production. Eventually, one was found, on a moldy cantaloupe in a market in Peoria, Illinois. This species would be identified as Penicillium chrysogeum, and would produce approximately 200 times as much penicillin than P. notatum. This is the species that is currently used to produce penicillin. However, even this amount would be inadequate to produce the amount that would be required.

They went to the USDA National laboratory in Peoria IL, In the mid 1980's I toured our sister lab in Peoria--I was as the USDA Forest Products Laboratory in Madison WI at that time, where Pat Slininger showed me the fermentor in which the original submerged cultures of Penicillium chrysogeum were developed.

The story continues:

Scientists then began to try to increase the amount of penicillin produced by P. chrysogenum, by irradiating it with X-rays and UV rays in order to induce mutations of this species.

This is a DIRECT application of the Theory of Evolution.

This eventually lead to a mutant that produced 1000 times the amount of penicillin than Fleming's original culture. In addition to the development of this mutant, a new means of growing the mold was also perfected. Previously, penicillin was grown in flask, the size of milk bottles, and hundreds of bottles of Penicillium notatum were needed to produce enough penicillin for only a single person.

The new method involved growing the mold in large metal tanks, which held 25,000 gallons of nutrient, were aerated so that the mold could grow throughout the entire tank rather than on top. Aeration was the key to growing it in such large tanks. Previously, this had not been tried because it was known that the mold would only grow on the surface of the liquid medium. Thus, utilization of a large tank, under such circumstances would be highly inefficient in terms of cost, space and penicillin production. With this new method, production quantity began to rise. In 1943, 29 pounds were produced, and with increases in the number of pharmaceutical companies producing penicillin, there was a tremendous increase. By the end of the war, enough penicillin was produced to treat seven million patients/year. With respect to the war, the use of penicillin was immediately apparent. During World War I, death rate from pneumonia in the American Army totaled 18%. In World War II, it fell to less than 1%.

Today it is my understanding that a penicillin fermentation, if run in our equipment (which are 50 years old and out of date) would produce 450 TONS of penicillin per year from a SINGLE fermentor.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I was going to mention this; this is really something for us! Sheldrake debunks the idea of constants in Nature, and he found that the speed of light dropped between 1928 and 1945.

Has Sheldrake also determined that pi is not 3.1415926...? But is, instead an even 3.2? I hope so, because it sure makes my calculations easier. AND, the area of my circles is bigger; that's a real benefit.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I was going to mention this; this is really something for us! Sheldrake debunks the idea of constants in Nature, and he found that the speed of light dropped between 1928 and 1945.

http://youtu.be/0waMBY3qEA4?t=23m22s

Hmmm, A drop in the speed of light. between 1928 to 1945. Familiar?

Maybe we could call it a "depression" in the speed of light? A turning in the saeculum corresponded to the fluctuation in the speed of light??!!

Translation: A non-working botanist failed to understand that physicists had developed new tools and techniques for measuring the speed of light accurately. Previous values using technology of the 1920's proved to be slightly higher than the measurements made using technology that had undergone two decades of improvement. Said botanist then tried to tell physicists that their measurements showed that the speed of light itself had decreased. Physicists laughed their asses off at the fool and then went back to work doing actual research.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Robert Lanza, pioneer stem cell biologist, is on the frontier of restoring life and consciousness to science and a proper "theory of everything."

http://www.robertlanzabiocentrism.com/

Don't forget to purchase one of his books on your way out.

Much to explore here.

Another article worth exploring:

http://www.juliaassante.com/reflecti...e-after-death/

Don't forget to purchase a book using the link at the top of the page.

I read a skeptical article too. Nothing was said there that Brian or Vandal did not say right here. Don't present any facts. Just summarize them in your own words, leave out most of the research you don't like, and make arguments about why it's not possible. He ends up just restating the materialist philosophy that clouds and distorts his limited vision:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor...b_1428710.html

Translation: He presented simple examples and explanations for why woo-meisters repeatedly fail to provide any actual evidence to support their claims. They literally have nothing beyond "someone told me it happened, therefore it happened".

Originally Posted by Mikebert

I used genetic engineering (GE) as a response to your question about the applications of evolution. Most of the really big applications of GE are in the future. But I also mentioned as an already-in-place accomplishment the impact of antibiotics:

Antibiotics are becoming ineffective because of overuse. I guess more research is needed!

This is a DIRECT application of the Theory of Evolution.

I read through your quotes and I didn't see anything about evolution. Penicillin was known as a "species;" but wasn't that idea known anyway? Evolution is about how species change over time, not that there are species that could be used in medicine.

But I don't doubt that evolution theory has had some applications, and that it spurred genetics.

Originally Posted by TnT

Has Sheldrake also determined that pi is not 3.1415926...? But is, instead an even 3.2? I hope so, because it sure makes my calculations easier. AND, the area of my circles is bigger; that's a real benefit.

Sheldrake did not mention mathematics as one of the 10 dogmas, so I guess it stays the same for now

But it is interesting what he says about the fluctuations. Since the downturn in the speed of light virtually matched a 4T, it could be cyclical and match the saeculum overall. Sheldrake also debunked Big G, the gravitational constant, and said it apparently is effected by the cycles of the Earth and planets. So astrology could be connected to this too. We need more info to know. If Sheldrake and his colleagues manage to set science free from its dogmas, maybe this kind of research will someday tell us.

"If, for example, you had ever experienced and properly understood the implications of the mutable nature of your own identity"

Interesting quote from Brian, whose symbols of "identity" in his horoscope, the Sun and Mars, are in mutable signs, Virgo and Pisces. Well, mine aren't; and I have a different view!

And yet his statement is amazing given the fact that what he writes has not changed virtually at all, in style or substance, in the 15 years or so that he has been posting here, on and off. Not that he is unusual in that regard, either; if anything, that is the norm. No such thing as identity? I don't think so.

Identity, personality, character, individuality; these are notions that have not been explored well enough in Western knowledge. Do we know what these terms really refer to? We have made advances since Freud and Jung, and Jung's typing system has been very useful. But other trends close the door on this knowledge.

We hear the views of such people as Brian, who say the individual personality is an illusion. Some Eastern spiritual people agree with this, and some counter-culture people in California, and so on. But others disagree. I think that Brian thinks that he already knows the truth about things. But I once held his view, and changed my mind. I have been open to new ideas. Not that I change them very frequently, in profound ways, either.

Others deny the personality or the individual soul or character on more-strongly materialist grounds. Sheldrake mentioned the behaviorists, who reduced our conscious being to stimuli and responses. Vandal probably accepts this blatant nonsense, along with the rest of the crap he believes in, with no basis whatsoever. Other psychological theories tend to omit the "psyche" from their "logic;" but how can such reductionism ever hope to understand real people?

With these strong influences, personality and character are often neglected in our study of human life. Astrologers have done much better, devoting many books to such a study. They have archetypes which are combined in a holistic view. You can look into your horoscope and see yourself in the mirror. Many also refer to Jungian psychology. Transpersonal and humanistic psychology since the 1960s has offered many pathways as well, and the human potential movement gave us tools for personal growth and transformation. Young people today would do well not to neglect this knowledge, just because boomers were interested in it. Many generations helped to generate this knowledge. It is our heritage now.

To reduce human personality and character to nothing, as the Vandals do, or to leave it in disintegration and chaos, as Brian does, is not helpful to our growth. Integration is the proper goal instead.

Brian might say that our only identity is generated by our bodies, and it is unstable and goes away at death. But with the idea of morphogenetic fields in developmental biology, we understand that chemistry does not explain how living cells form into different patterns.

http://youtu.be/wXpndnjHvqw

The body does not form the soul identity, which is amorphous. Our soul shapes and forms the body, and when the soul returns to Earth in another incarnation, it shapes the body in virtually the same pattern.

The notion of the soul sends materialists and quasi-materialists (or "first-person spiritualists") like Brian into fits. It violates the materialist taboos. You can't talk about the Sun as alive, and you can't talk about souls; much less souls that survive death. This is primitive and childish.

I take the NDE accounts at their word; I accept and believe what they say. I have no basis to just deny it. That doesn't mean that they have scientifically demonstrated the afterlife. So it's best for me to keep an open mind about whether science has demonstrated this. I don't assume it has been proven, or that their experiences can be verified; nor do I assume that they can't have occurred; that they must have occurred while they were still alive and not in the afterlife at all. There IS evidence to demonstrate it, but it's probably not conclusive.

And I notice that Brian asked me for evidence, and I see no evidence that he has looked at the dozens of articles and links that I posted. As of now, he doesn't really want to know what is actually happening. It might violate his worldview, and expose himself to the same charges he makes against me. That is really what is going on. People don't want to admit that the truth might be labeled as primitive and childish; that souls are real, astrology works, and the Sun is alive and makes a smiley face.

Our words are only generalizations and approximations. Reality is reality. We can be open to what just is, and the life within that just is. It is not what Brian says, or what Vandal says, or what I say. The Vandals want to steal your soul, and the Brians want to trap you inside your Brain, unless you are willing to drain yourself into an amorphous and powerless continuum. But these tales, and the tales I spin, are not the reality; the map is not the territory.

Here Rupert Sheldrake and Bruce Lipton describe the dead end of molecular biology and the human genome project. Biology has become narrower as physics has expanded, and biologists wanted a big "atom smasher" like project that would generate big bucks. But it is one of these busts that shows materialist science is bringing diminishing returns. It is not the big breakthrough that mikebert describes. Humans it turned out have only as many genes as worms. Genes and Darwinian evolution just don't explain very much after all.

http://youtu.be/wXpndnjHvqw?t=21m33s

Interesting how in minute 21 of this dialogue Sheldrake links the two great false ideologies of rugged individualism and materialism together, through his discussion of Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene. Wonders never stop with this guy!

From now on, if we want advances in science, as well as in society, we are going to have to return to an organic and alive cosmos and rediscover the soul. There is just no way around it. Science and spirituality need to come together, even as they maintain their methods of inquiry. We need to junk the materialist and quasi-materialist models.

Vandal thinks Brian and Eric are on the same side, and are just as irrational. I think Brian and Vandal are on the same team, and are just as narrow-minded. Interesting! Well OK, I admit, Brian is not nearly as narrow-minded as Vandal, FWIW! He's somewhere in between, I imagine. Vandal won't take my philosophy test, so I don't know exactly where

Originally Posted by Eric

1. Vandal thinks Brian and Eric are on the same side, and are just as irrational.
2. I [Eric] think Brian and Vandal are on the same team, and are just as narrow-minded.

-
Interesting! Well OK, I admit, Brian is not nearly as narrow-minded as Vandal, FWIW! He's somewhere in between, I imagine.
-


Vandal won't take my philosophy test, so I don't know exactly where

1. Too complicated! Brian is a pinch hitter for Eric's and Vandal's teams!
2. What philosophy test? How the hell could Vandal take it if he doesn't know such an animal exist? I don't even know about it.
Is it pass/fail or graded on a A-F scale?

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I read through your quotes and I didn't see anything about evolution. Penicillin was known as a "species;" but wasn't that idea known anyway? Evolution is about how species change over time, not that there are species that could be used in medicine.

The naturally-found organisms produced far too little antibiotic to ever make treatment of more than a handful of people possible. It was necessary to "evolve" strains that gave more antibiotic. This was done by speeding the rate of evolution by increasing mutation rate and screening mutants for desirable features. In some case environmental characteristics were manipulated in order to select for one or another trait.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

The "excess probability" here is the probability OF synapses firing in a certain way.

No it isn't. You claim there is evidence of telepathy for experiments. What is the form of this evidence? Does it not consist in part of experiments in which one person views an image and thinks about it, while another one guesses at what the first person is thinking. Experiments in which correct guesses are obtained more frequently that expected from chance are considered a evidence that something is happening. The difference between the actual frequency of successful guesses and that expected from chance I defined as excess probability.

Excess probability is defined in a way that makes no use of synapse firings. There is no implied involvement of synapses at all. You are hypothesizing that what you consider evidence has something to do with synapse firing patterns. It doesn't have to. Synapse firing patterns could have no bearing at on on the issue, be a dead end. This is the more likely scenario since hypotheses rarely pan out.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Antibiotics are becoming ineffective because of overuse. I guess more research is needed!

Evolutionary theory helps us understand why they are becoming ineffective and more importantly it shows us what steps to take to reduce the rate of decline for other antibiotics.

I read through your quotes and I didn't see anything about evolution.

That's because you don't have the slightest bit of understanding of what evolution actually is.

Penicillin was known as a "species;" but wasn't that idea known anyway?

This from the guy who tries to tell me that evolution has a purpose and plants have feelings.

Evolution is about how species change over time, not that there are species that could be used in medicine.

Evolution is how populations change over time and you clearly don't know what a species is.

But I don't doubt that evolution theory has had some applications,

It is the foundational basis for all of biology. Any technology that involves living things (agriculture, medicine, criminology . . .) is informed by evolutionary theory whether you yourself know it or not.

and that it spurred genetics.

Actually the basics for both were developed independently of each other (Darwin and Mendel). The two were merged together during the 1930's and 1940's (Modern Synthesis).

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Sheldrake did not mention mathematics as one of the 10 dogmas, so I guess it stays the same for now

But it is interesting what he says about the fluctuations. Since the downturn in the speed of light virtually matched a 4T, it could be cyclical and match the saeculum overall. Sheldrake also debunked Big G, the gravitational constant, and said it apparently is effected by the cycles of the Earth and planets.

It's not. It's a constant. Trying, as scientists have over the decades, to detect variation in the universal constants has repeatedly confirmed their constancy. Have physical constants changed with time?

When Sheldrake tells you that scientists just assume that G is a constant, he is flat out lying.

So astrology could be connected to this too. We need more info to know. If Sheldrake and his colleagues manage to set science free from its dogmas, maybe this kind of research will someday tell us.

You can't set science free by lying about what the experiments and observations have shown.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

"If, for example, you had ever experienced and properly understood the implications of the mutable nature of your own identity"

Interesting quote from Brian, whose symbols of "identity" in his horoscope, the Sun and Mars, are in mutable signs, Virgo and Pisces. Well, mine aren't; and I have a different view!

And yet his statement is amazing given the fact that what he writes has not changed virtually at all, in style or substance, in the 15 years or so that he has been posting here, on and off. Not that he is unusual in that regard, either; if anything, that is the norm. No such thing as identity? I don't think so.

Identity, personality, character, individuality; these are notions that have not been explored well enough in Western knowledge. Do we know what these terms really refer to? We have made advances since Freud and Jung, and Jung's typing system has been very useful. But other trends close the door on this knowledge.

We hear the views of such people as Brian, who say the individual personality is an illusion. Some Eastern spiritual people agree with this, and some counter-culture people in California, and so on. But others disagree. I think that Brian thinks that he already knows the truth about things. But I once held his view, and changed my mind. I have been open to new ideas. Not that I change them very frequently, in profound ways, either.

Others deny the personality or the individual soul or character on more-strongly materialist grounds. Sheldrake mentioned the behaviorists, who reduced our conscious being to stimuli and responses. Vandal probably accepts this blatant nonsense,

You really think that a public school teacher is a strict behaviorist? Your are more pig ignorant than I thought. And that's no small feat.

along with the rest of the crap he believes in, with no basis whatsoever. Other psychological theories tend to omit the "psyche" from their "logic;" but how can such reductionism ever hope to understand real people?

With these strong influences, personality and character are often neglected in our study of human life. Astrologers have done much better, devoting many books to such a study.

Never mind that those books are always the focus of their speeches or appearances. No financial conflict of interest there at all.

They have archetypes which are combined in a holistic view. You can look into your horoscope and see yourself in the mirror. Many also refer to Jungian psychology. Transpersonal and humanistic psychology since the 1960s has offered many pathways as well, and the human potential movement gave us tools for personal growth and transformation. Young people today would do well not to neglect this knowledge, just because boomers were interested in it. Many generations helped to generate this knowledge. It is our heritage now.

To reduce human personality and character to nothing, as the Vandals do,

Go ahead and quote some of my posts that do such a thing. Come on, I dare you to back up your pathetic bluster.

or to leave it in disintegration and chaos, as Brian does, is not helpful to our growth. Integration is the proper goal instead.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Brian might say that our only identity is generated by our bodies, and it is unstable and goes away at death. But with the idea of morphogenetic fields in developmental biology,

There is no such thing as a morphogenetic field.

we understand that chemistry does not explain how living cells form into different patterns.

Care to explain how sonic hedgehog works then?

http://youtu.be/wXpndnjHvqw

The body does not form the soul identity, which is amorphous. Our soul shapes and forms the body, and when the soul returns to Earth in another incarnation, it shapes the body in virtually the same pattern.

The notion of the soul sends materialists and quasi-materialists (or "first-person spiritualists") like Brian into fits. It violates the materialist taboos. You can't talk about the Sun as alive, and you can't talk about souls; much less souls that survive death. This is primitive and childish.

I take the NDE accounts at their word; I accept and believe what they say. I have no basis to just deny it. That doesn't mean that they have scientifically demonstrated the afterlife. So it's best for me to keep an open mind about whether science has demonstrated this. I don't assume it has been proven, or that their experiences can be verified; nor do I assume that they can't have occurred; that they must have occurred while they were still alive and not in the afterlife at all. There IS evidence to demonstrate it, but it's probably not conclusive.

And I notice that Brian asked me for evidence, and I see no evidence that he has looked at the dozens of articles and links that I posted. As of now, he doesn't really want to know what is actually happening. It might violate his worldview, and expose himself to the same charges he makes against me. That is really what is going on. People don't want to admit that the truth might be labeled as primitive and childish; that souls are real, astrology works, and the Sun is alive and makes a smiley face.

Our words are only generalizations and approximations. Reality is reality. We can be open to what just is, and the life within that just is. It is not what Brian says, or what Vandal says, or what I say. The Vandals want to steal your soul, and the Brians want to trap you inside your Brain, unless you are willing to drain yourself into an amorphous and powerless continuum. But these tales, and the tales I spin, are not the reality; the map is not the territory.

Here Rupert Sheldrake and Bruce Lipton describe the dead end of molecular biology and the human genome project.

I guess those billions of dollars generated as a result of the human genome project are imaginary? And those cancer sufferers receiving individualized treatments for their own particular genome should just give up and die because Eric listens to a crank?

Human Genome Project benefits

Biology has become narrower as physics has expanded, and biologists wanted a big "atom smasher" like project that would generate big bucks. But it is one of these busts that shows materialist science is bringing diminishing returns. It is not the big breakthrough that mikebert describes. Humans it turned out have only as many genes as worms. Genes and Darwinian evolution just don't explain very much after all.

http://youtu.be/wXpndnjHvqw?t=21m33s

Interesting how in minute 21 of this dialogue Sheldrake links the two great false ideologies of rugged individualism and materialism together, through his discussion of Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene. Wonders never stop with this guy!

It's called the Gish gallop. It's a standard technique used by old school creationists. Basically, you stand up and rattle off falsehood after falsehood as quickly as you can. In a few minutes you can spew an amount of bullshit that will take critics days upon days to go through to show every single lie and error.

From now on, if we want advances in science, as well as in society, we are going to have to return to an organic and alive cosmos and rediscover the soul. There is just no way around it. Science and spirituality need to come together, even as they maintain their methods of inquiry. We need to junk the materialist and quasi-materialist models.

Vandal thinks Brian and Eric are on the same side, and are just as irrational. I think Brian and Vandal are on the same team, and are just as narrow-minded. Interesting! Well OK, I admit, Brian is not nearly as narrow-minded as Vandal, FWIW! He's somewhere in between, I imagine. Vandal won't take my philosophy test, so I don't know exactly where

Your philosophy test is pathetically easy to see through and has clearly been constructed by someone who doesn't understand half of what he's writing.

[QUOTE=Vandal-72;502746]
Human Genome Project benefits


Yup. Cool stuff like

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FucK

"The gene name used for the gene that encodes L-fuculokinase is fucK"

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

Evolution is how populations change over time and you clearly don't know what a species is.

This is correct. In the case of antibiotics the population is the microorganism making the antibiotic. In the case of penicillin it was the species of genus penicillium collected from that moldy cantaloupe in the Peoria farmer's market.

To make lots of product the roller bottles had to go. You need to make in in tanks. Fungi don't like to grow in agitated tanks. So you had to some get a population of these fungi to evolve towards a new variety (a strain) that could grow and make antibiotic in tanks.

Fungi like to form pellets in submerged culture. You don't want that because they become oxygen-starved and productivity suffers. You want them to grow in a disperse fashion like a yeast. And so on. Modern production strains come from very different populations that behave very differently from their ancestor in that farmer's market 70 years ago.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

The naturally-found organisms produced far too little antibiotic to ever make treatment of more than a handful of people possible. It was necessary to "evolve" strains that gave more antibiotic. This was done by speeding the rate of evolution by increasing mutation rate and screening mutants for desirable features. In some case environmental characteristics were manipulated in order to select for one or another trait.

Yes, more knowledge helped this development, although selective breeding was well known before Darwin, and was in fact the model for his theory of "natural" as opposed to artificial selection.

Originally Posted by Ragnarök_62

1. Too complicated! Brian is a pinch hitter for Eric's and Vandal's teams!
2. What philosophy test? How the hell could Vandal take it if he doesn't know such an animal exist? I don't even know about it.
Is it pass/fail or graded on a A-F scale?

You took it before. Of course he knows about it. It is easily accessible through the links to my personal page here.
http://philosopherswheel.com/questionnaire.htm