Thelemic Materialism (Thelemic Philosophy)
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I asked you a question. Even if I were to grant that something minor is happening that we cannot explain right now, what do you think that would demonstrate?
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That information can be transmitted in ways other than the experiment prevented. It could demonstrate telepathy, precognition, or something else.
Regardless, it ain't chance.
We just don't know.
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@Avshalom Binyamin said
"We just don't know."
Correct. Even if the experiments actually indicate what some readings of the data might suggest -- and it's a big if -- the most that they would demonstrate is "we just don't know" what's actually going on.
It doesn't make any supernatural claims even slightly more likely to be true.
In logic, this kind of fallacy is called an "argument from ignorance." Just because we don't know something, it doesn't support any particular claim. Witness, for example, Creationists who try to find things that evolution can't explain, thinking that if they can demonstrate the existence of something that cannot be currently explained, it supports their supernatural ideas.
But "we just don't know" can never support a claim. Just like not being able to explain something in biology doesn't make creationism any more likely to be true, not being able to explain some statistical anomaly (which may or may not exist) in guessing games doesn't make any supernatural claims any more likely to be true.
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Well, I'm not trying to convince you to believe in something, so that's irrelevant.
Now, if you were alive between when Semmelweis and Pasteur did their main contributions, you would be correct to say:
We need more evidence
There's a statistical anomaly here
I haven't seen definitive proof of germsBut a Baffoon to say:
Germs do not exist
Nobody has good reason to believe in germsWhen you say the first things, you can have your mind changed. When you say the second things, you're being a fanatic.
The world will go on being what it is, regardless of you or my silly opinions. Skeptics and scientists are focused on discovering what that world is. Fanatics are busy worrying about making everyone believe the same as them.
You're a fanatic. Not a skeptic. And as long as you go around acting like one, I'm gonna keep pointing it out.
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@Avshalom Binyamin said
"But a Baffoon to say:
Germs do not exist
Nobody has good reason to believe in germs"Before there was sufficient evidence for germs, nobody had good reason to believe that they existed. The time to believe a claim is when the evidence is there for it, and as you've adequately demonstrated over the last few posts, these guessing-game experiments aren't evidence for any claim.
EDIT: And to anticipate your likely next line, of course it's fine for people to do experiments to try to demonstrate the existence of germs or magic or whatever. But nobody -- including the people performing the experiments -- has sufficient reason to accept the claims until these experiments generate evidence for those claims.
"You're a fanatic."
Oh, please. It's not being "fanatical" to not accept outlandish claims on the basis of the flimsy crap you've been pointing to.
It's also not being "fanatical" to point out that nobody is justified in using the flimsy crap you've been pointing to as evidence of any of the wildly outlandish claims that are routinely discussed on this forum as if they were self-evident fact.
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"Before there was sufficient evidence for germs, nobody had good reason to believe that they existed. The time to believe a claim is when the evidence is there for it, and as you've adequately demonstrated over the last few posts, these guessing-game experiments aren't evidence for any claim."
There was always sufficient evidence for germs as long as germs existed. People just hadn't noticed the evidence yet. There's a difference between what is, and what we happen to notice.
Semmelweis noticed a statistical correlation. He ended up saving lots of lives at a hospital because of it. He had sufficient evidence. But the scientific community didn't consider it sufficient.
"Sufficient evidence" is therefore subjective.
"Oh, please. It's not being "fanatical" to not accept outlandish claims on the basis of the flimsy crap you've been pointing to."
You're entitled to your own opinion. You're free to not accept anything you don't personally have sufficient evidence for.
"It's also not being "fanatical" to point out that nobody is justified in using the flimsy crap you've been pointing to as evidence of any of the wildly outlandish claims that are routinely discussed on this forum as if they were self-evident fact."
You're right. A more accurate term would be "dogmatic".
You're peddling your own dogma.
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You are aware that nothing is material ?
That is to say an energy wave form only becomes a particle when it is observed.
Until then, it has no "real" existence. -
Since every one here does not have a scientific background, I am going to avoid jargon and attempt to explain this in "layman" terms ( so any errors fall on my shoulders):
If we go by the findings of the physicist David Bohm:
Any apparent separation between matter and consciousness is an illusion.
A construct only occurring/assembled after both consciousness and matter have unfolded into the perceivable world of objects and sequential/linear time.
There is another realm of impercievable objects, including the inner worlds (such as thought) which take place outside the confluence of linear time and our senses.To quote Bohm:
"... at the sub-quantum level, in which the quantum potential operated, location ceased to exist. All points in space became equal to all other points in space, and it was meaningless to speak of anything being separate from anything else." -
@Los said
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You disagree? Then astral project into a room where a neutral third party is waiting with random words printed on a piece of paper, read them, and report them to the other netural third party who waits with your body. Report the correct words and do this several times.
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It's not that I disagree or agree, it's what you suggest here is irrelevant to my experience and my experience is for my own reference. I am not making claims about astral travel, I am reporting an experience that occurred OUTSIDE of my body and this was a phenomenon that occurred while I was a child until the age of around 5 in waking consciousness.
You don't believe it?
Who cares.
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@Los said
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Yeah sure, whatever you say, buddy.One of my favorite mockeries of this kind of nonsense was written by Robert Todd Carroll in his article "What if Dean Radin's Right?" [Radin being a wackaloo who supports this kind of nonsense, of course]
A few choice excerpts that sum up my feelings on the subject as well:"
Ahh, your feelings on the subject eh? Using a 'biased' source? what happened to reason Los?
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@Los said
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You know the old saying, "Figures don't lie but liars figure." Statistics are very open to manipulation, and that's just when conducting very simple kinds of opinion polls or collecting data on crime. Nevermind performing complicated meta-analysis of data and demonstrating that guessing games might, if we run a large enough number of guessing games, produce results that are a tiny bit higher than what we might assume by chance.
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Los do you have ANY background in science or statistical analysis to be able to make such a counter? HARDLY. You're copying and pasting or lifting words from someone else to make this claim. What you are saying is here absolutely false - or, at best goes both ways. If statistics can be manipulated to fit the interpretation, then that could very easily apply to the interpretation of data by the pseudo skeptic crowd.
You're playing the 'heads I win, tails you lose' game. You claim there is no evidence, but when presented with evidence, claim it's not really evidence. This is a very typical response and certainly not new. Statistical analysis is valid for all science, not just the science you like. Modern medical research use these same statistical averages to make claims about the efficacy of a drug trial.
You have absolutely no credibility here in this discussion.
If anyone wants to hear a REAL skeptical scientist (richard wiseman) debate this EXACT argument with a REAL scientist (rupert sheldrake) regarding a bit of research into psi
you will find this pod cast quite enjoyable. Wiseman not only gets refuted beyond measure, he also gets exposed for his bias and manipulation of the data to fit his worldview. He actually replicated sheldrake's data in his study, and covered it up!www.skeptiko.com/rupert-sheldrake-and-richard-wiseman-clash/
Scroll down a bit to find the audio player.
Let's USE THIS case Los. Would love to see how your arguments measure up. Try to support Wiseman in this study. Let's see how far your reason can go before you go completely irrational.
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@Uni_Verse said
"Since every one here does not have a scientific background, I am going to avoid jargon and attempt to explain this in "layman" terms ( so any errors fall on my shoulders):
If we go by the findings of the physicist David Bohm:
Any apparent separation between matter and consciousness is an illusion.
A construct only occurring/assembled after both consciousness and matter have unfolded into the perceivable world of objects and sequential/linear time.
There is another realm of impercievable objects, including the inner worlds (such as thought) which take place outside the confluence of linear time and our senses.To quote Bohm:
"... at the sub-quantum level, in which the quantum potential operated, location ceased to exist. All points in space became equal to all other points in space, and it was meaningless to speak of anything being separate from anything else.""Bohm, like Rupert Sheldrake and a small handful of other scientists, are part of the Holistic Philosophy of Science school. In the philosophy of science, this is a very very small school. The reductionist school in the philosophy of science is what makes up the majority of science.
Science only delivers KNOWLEDGE, it does not deliver UNDERSTANDING, philosophy does. It's not that the science is wrong, it's the reductionist philosophy of science that is incomplete and we have a long way to go before that horse takes a rest.
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@ldfriend56 said
"Ahh, your feelings on the subject eh? Using a 'biased' source? what happened to reason Los?"
WHAT ARE YOU DOING MY OLD FRIEND?
Next, you are going to reveal how many "scientific facts" are only true by definition (which was "determined" to be a fallacy) -
subsequently rocking his theoretical considerations to the coreThat would be akin to removing the fruit from his cake.
@ldfriend56 said
"Science only delivers KNOWLEDGE, it does not deliver UNDERSTANDING, philosophy does. It's not that the science is wrong, it's the reductionist philosophy of science that is incomplete and we have a long way to go before that horse takes a rest."
I entirely agree.
My intent is never to argue against the sciences, unfortunately too many discussions get bogged down in one or more parties being unable to accept the basic restriction that knowledge is the only thing imparted.EDIT:
After all, I do have a background in Mathematics and Computer Science
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@Uni_Verse said
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Next, you are going to reveal how many "scientific facts" are only true by definition (which was "determined" to be a fallacy) -
subsequently rocking his theoretical considerations to the core"
Hmmm, well what you are suggesting here are called 'tautologies', meaning that something can be tautologically true because the definition is logically consistent in terms of how it defines itself. It refers to the logical sequence of the formula, not the semantics of each word or the formula. But this can apply to anything, even the sentence "All X are also Y and move towards Z" is tautologically true. If I fill it in with "All toddlers are small and crawl towards mommy" is still semantically true as well as tautologically true. Make sense?
Unfortunately, we all can run tautologies without being aware of it and anything that is really really really true, still would also have a tautological form that would also be true. The trick is not to confuse the words or the logical form as to what makes something true with a capital T, because then it becomes rhetoric and open to fallacy (not a fallacy in and of itself)
However! Yes this is something that does occur in the philosophical debate in the Philosophy of Science.
Look at the Philosophy of Science as the 'meta' rulemaker for mainstream science, which is very conservative. The arguments that happen there academically inform the understanding and trajectory of scientific research. This is only really a small handful of people having these discussions at that level, comparatively. This is where there may have been a philosophical argument which suggests something similar to scientific facts being only true by definition. it's true that all scientific facts function in a way that follows the tautological form (because ALL facts MUST follow this form logically) but that's not the problem. The problem is when a philosopher uses the tautological form of the argument (not say the evidence or interpretation of the evidence) to influence the philosophy of science, and that is, I believe, a fallacy as well. But that's where the debate is happening! it's not a 'proof'
but there is still hope! 
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Hey Uni_verse! Let me give you an example of how tautologies are abused in rhetoric, Los does this very manipulatively but there is more than likely a heaping dose of delusion in there too
@Los said
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It's also not being "fanatical" to point out that nobody is justified in using the flimsy crap you've been pointing to as evidence of any of the wildly outlandish claims that are routinely discussed on this forum as if they were self-evident fact."see that tautology in there? his entire 'rebuttal' to AV rests on the 'truth' that locks his rebuttal into play and because it fits the form of a tautological truth, he is resting on the logical form of the sequence although the meaning of the sequence is quite biased and subjective and false and all of those kind of things!
Los is defending the idea about Los on this forum. Many here perceive him to be a fundamentalist, like the Christian fanatical kind who knock on your door at 4pm. His defence that he is not a fundamentalist whack job are actually supported by his use of rhetoric that is consistent with, umm.... fundamentalist arguments!
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@Avshalom Binyamin said
"There was always sufficient evidence for germs as long as germs existed. People just hadn't noticed the evidence yet. There's a difference between what is, and what we happen to notice."
Absolutely. The germs have been around for a very long time, but before humans had observed the sufficient evidence for germs, no human being would have been justified in accepting the claim that germs exist.
"Semmelweis noticed a statistical correlation. He ended up saving lots of lives at a hospital because of it. He had sufficient evidence. But the scientific community didn't consider it sufficient."
Is that the guy who came up with hand washing and disinfecting? He certainly did have evidence that hand washing and disinfecting was linked, somehow, to lower rates of disease transmission. He didn't have sufficient evidence for the specific concept of germs, though.
And sure, he experienced some push-back from the scientists of his day, but science came to accept his ideas because they are supported by evidence. There wasn't some international conspiracy of scientists working hard to maintain their dogmatic commitment to non-hand-washing. Some guy was challenging their basic ideas about how stuff works, so they were understandably skeptical....but over time, the evidence changed the mind of the scientific community. Because there's actually evidence for the effectiveness of hand-washing.
"You're entitled to your own opinion. You're free to not accept anything you don't personally have sufficient evidence for."
My point, in case you missed it, is that nobody has sufficient evidence for this supernatural stuff. Nobody has sufficient evidence to demonstrate -- even "to them" -- that they really and truly left their bodies or that they can really and truly "remote view" a location.
If they can, then have them use their super powers to demonstrate, under controlled conditions, that they can obtain information about the world.
"You're peddling your own dogma."
It's not dogmatic to observe correctly that nobody has anything resembling sufficient evidence for these grandiose claims.
Your ship in this discussion is sinking, fast, and the only play you've got left -- since you don't have evidence (or you would have presented it) -- is to hurl inaccurate insults at me.
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@ldfriend56 said
"what you suggest here is irrelevant to my experience and my experience is for my own reference. I am not making claims about astral travel, I am reporting an experience that occurred OUTSIDE of my body and this was a phenomenon that occurred while I was a child until the age of around 5 in waking consciousness."
What I'm suggesting -- that you were mistaken and that you never actually left your body -- is extremely relevant to your understanding of how the universe works. Sure, you had an experience that felt like you left your body. Nobody's questioning that.
I'm questioning your interpretation of that experience -- and your (mistaken) conclusion is that you actually left your body. You didn't.
How can I be so sure? Because there is no evidence whatsoever that people having OBEs actually leave their bodies. There is, however, plenty of evidence that people can be mistaken, which is what you are in this case.
If your interpretation of your experience is so correct, then how come nobody -- including people who claim to be able to leave their bodies at will -- can ever leave their bodies to go into the next room and discover information that they couldn't have already known or easily guessed?
"You don't believe it?
Who cares."
Well, you care enough about what I'm saying to do your usual act of quadruple-posting and then trying to take the conversation in a thousand different directions instead of sticking with the subject under discussion.
We're sticking with this one topic. I'll gladly talk about anything else you like -- podcasts and all -- but we're going to talk about everything one single point at a time, and keep talking about one point until we're both satisfied.
Right now, we're talking about this "leaving the body" stuff, which is seems as if nobody can do.
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You're still missing the point.
At the point that Semmelweis made his observations, somebody had good reason to believe in the correlation (Semmelweis). But until he published it, and others read it, and replicated it, they didn't have good reason.
Similarly, just because you haven't seen sufficient evidence for something, it doesn't follow that nobody has.
This doesn't require me to present evidence. I'm not arguing that you should believe in remote viewing. I'm arguing that your concept of sufficient evidence is subjective. The fact that you keep trying to shift the debate is telling.
Saying your behavior is dogmatic is not an inaccurate insult in my opinion. It's in line with the definition, which is insisting ones opinions are unassailable facts.
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Los -
@Los said
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What I'm suggesting -- that you were mistaken and that you never actually left your body -- is extremely relevant to your understanding of how the universe works.
Sure, you had an experience that felt like you left your body. Nobody's questioning that.
I'm questioning your interpretation of that experience -- and your (mistaken) conclusion is that you actually left your body. You didn't."
Now this is quite a claim.
How can you be so sure?
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How can I be so sure? Because there is no evidence whatsoever that people having OBEs actually leave their bodies."
How can I be sure this statement of yours has any credibility? Really? No Evidence? I am doubtful that statement is even relevant here. You've done a pretty poor job on this forum maintaining any consistency whatsoever. Any claim you make regarding anything scientific or philosophic, including your diatribes about reason, logic, and empiricism have zero credibility.
If you want me to accept that there is absolutely no evidence of this whatsoever you're going to have to explain it in a way that will not produce any contradictions.
Until then, I shall not accept your claim that there is no evidence for OBE.
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There is, however, plenty of evidence that people can be mistaken, which is what you are in this case."
Evidence please. Please show this evidence in light of the whole body of evidence.
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If your interpretation of your experience is so correct, then how come nobody -- including people who claim to be able to leave their bodies at will -- can ever leave their bodies to go into the next room and discover information that they couldn't have already known or easily guessed?"
Beats me. I'm very skeptical of your claim that there is no evidence whatsoever. And even if there was no evidence, that would not be enough for me to change my very reasonable observation, I was outside of my body. So far you given me absolutely nothing to use that would make me change my world view in the other direction.
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Well, you care enough about what I'm saying to do your usual act of quadruple-posting and then trying to take the conversation in a thousand different directions instead of sticking with the subject under discussion."Los, it's statements like this that make you lose even more credibility, because now you are practicing deception. I am going to hold you to your language and words and request you hold your integrity with them as well.
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We're sticking with this one topic. I'll gladly talk about anything else you like -- podcasts and all -- but we're going to talk about everything one single point at a time, and keep talking about one point until we're both satisfied."
I am going to hold you to this.
You have made a number of claims - I expect a list or a summary, without bias, as to how this evidence prevents me from stating the blatantly obvious.
I say I left my body because reason leads me to conclude this. Occam's Razor. If my consciousness didn't leave my body like you claim, then that means it must have all been in my brain and a product of chemistry and physics only. This material model creates too many unnecessary entities for the purposes of a rational (and personal) claim and you have given me absolutely nothing within reason to edit my claim. If you do this, then I shall edit my claim.
Your turn.
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If anyone is interested, there is actually an archive of 'skeptical fundamentalists', 'guerilla skeptics', 'militant atheists' in the public eye that get busted for fudging their facts and arguments.
www.skepticalinvestigations.org/homepage.html
More than likely, Los is just lifting many of their arguments and probably buys into it without being skeptical about them. What Los is doing here is not isolated, there is actually an online movement of this sort of ideology happening and they all go around the internet and bully people and claim evidence this and evidence that.
Here is an example of one such group