i think the limited understanding of how things work and the finiteness of our possibilities drive a deep demand in humans for something "devine" to be there..
something to explain everything.. even at an subconscious level i guess humans have the need for a "justyfying" power for all that is.. a power that gives life a meaning
what would you live for when there is nothing there just plain physics. all our morale and ethics? what for? if we are just peaces of meat that will fall apart one day.. we could just live like animals (a lot people on this planet do worse at the time if you ask me)
i agree with you colin, i am pretty sure science will find the "spot" in our brain, be it a spot or a network or everything together that they will claim to be responsible for our "awareness.." because that is the way we work, chemical processes triggering electric signals that move us and make us think and feel.. nothing holy about it.. even if we think of something devine there would be a physical explanation there..
take some acid and there you go, devine moments of truth at 5 per hit..
just a smoll molecule making up your world. simple chemistry
however that does not keep me away from my personal feeling. and i believe in that devine power.. however you want to call it. because thats what my feeling says and my life taught me so far.. if you are clear and watch that is what happens, at least to me
i am a scientist and do have a scientific approach to everything, and scientist are not really known to be the religious or spiritual people.. yet my feeling never betrayed me and wins against my logic thinking when it comes to my absolutely subjective understanding of (my) life.. althoug i know that there is no proof whatsoever for all i believe in.
i know everything can be questioned that is beyond scientific facts.. and (almost) everything will be explained by scientists in the future i am sure.. in the end it is what you see and hear and feel for yourself.. what will be right for you.. if someome does not want accept a devine power, he will alwas have an easy time to argument against it.. hence it is hard to discuss that matter ultimately..
and who are we, carbon based lifeforms, imprisoned in our bodys and stuck in our dopamine triggered minds to judge wether we are just chemical reactors or devine beeings.. i donŽt think this theme can be discussed to a conclusion..
anyway, talking about it may open minds and is a procreative way to spend some time on this planet.. so thank you everyone for the nice thread, that has gone "slightly" off-topic:-)
loveŽnŽlight to you
oh, and bukboy: if your way is so fuckin right so why be so fuckin rude about the fuckin religious shite, fuck?
because flakey hippies are vermin like commies. They come out whenever you're not watching. They're the standard type I have to deal with everywhere. to me theyre lower than and less informed than scum.
acidkills
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Jul 4, 2008 11:58
Quote:
On 2008-07-04 10:44, klippel wrote:
i agree with you colin, i am pretty sure science will find the "spot" in our brain, be it a spot or a network or everything together that they will claim to be responsible for our "awareness.." because that is the way we work, chemical processes triggering electric signals that move us and make us think and feel.. nothing holy about it.. even if we think of something devine there would be a physical explanation there..
take some acid and there you go, devine moments of truth at 5 per hit..
Scientist will never find that "center of awareness" since its thousand times smaller than diameter of hair.. That center is soul and awareness is feeling that what u call imprisoning in this body, feeling this body and other objects around it with its senses.. Now, when u are aware of another soul in a body u realize its a living body.. Other object with no soul are just dead matter.. You are right when u say that lot of people live like animals.. This is cause of this awareness, soul becomes aware of the body and gets illusion that he is that body which blacks out her and she becomes slave of his own body and its senses.. There is no need of justifying power, power will still be power no matter what u think of it.. But every power has its source.. You can get a glimpse of that source for 5 euros but to return to the source u have to do a lot more than that..
http://www.myspace.com/djacidkills http://soundcloud.com/acidkills/dropbox
Scientist will never find that "center of awareness" since its thousand times smaller than diameter of hair..
well, would be easy to find at that size.. but what you want to say is more or less that it cannot be found because there is no physical "source" for that, right?
well, i believe we can specify a region or process for this thing we call mind sometime in the future, why not?
finding of that "region" is not connected to an understanding to what that consciousness or awareness really IS.. or its sources as you say.. nor does it say something about how this evolved or its quality..
it is simply a finding on physical and chemical level were our experienced mind is generated in our body..
religion and spirituality are just memes that are successful, not because they are true, but because they lend social cohesion and survival benefits.
These days they are anachronistic. Why am I so against it? because a lot of people are being forced to believe this shit because of all the mystic posers around who pretend to have special communion with god or the 10th dimension. They use this to scam people for money and political power. Thats ALL IT IS.
religion and spirituality are a plague on mankind keeping people from developing their critical ability and making something of themselves, But not only this generation is affected, but the next ad infinitum. This shit must be stopped.
acidkills
IsraTrance Junior Member
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Posted : Jul 4, 2008 13:13
Quote:
On 2008-07-04 12:09, klippel wrote:
well, would be easy to find at that size.. but what you want to say is more or less that it cannot be found because there is no physical "source" for that, right?
well, i believe we can specify a region or process for this thing we call mind sometime in the future, why not?
it is simply a finding on physical and chemical level were our experienced mind is generated in our body..
No, I mean a lot smaller in size, smaller than neutrinos and quarks.. And that center of awarenes is situated in the center of the heart.. So scientist look in the wrong place, they will never find center of awareness in the head..
And no, they cant even specify a region in the brain to say where the mind is cause mind is all over the brain, it jumps from synapse to synapse at speed of thought and its more subtle than mater.. You can even travel to other places with your mind like u do in your sleep but center of awareness stays in heart until body stops functioning.. Than it switches to another body cause its not under the laws of material world and it cant perish, and cause of desire it needs material body to fulfill those wishes also cause of attachment to a body it instantly transfers to another body which could easily be animal body if it degraded to that level..
http://www.myspace.com/djacidkills http://soundcloud.com/acidkills/dropbox
On 2008-07-04 12:17, bukboy wrote:
Thats ALL IT IS.
religion and spirituality are a plague on mankind keeping people from developing their critical ability and making something of themselves, But not only this generation is affected, but the next ad infinitum. This shit must be stopped.
i fully agree with you on the fact that religion is (and most of the time was) a simple means for subordinating people. and more or less all religions and how they are "carried out" by their leaders and followers are purely a farce by themselves and the opposite of what they pretend to be.. hyprocrisy everywhere.. one of mankinds biggest problems without a doubt! no objections.
but i think you should differ between religions and their presence in life and personal subjective sensations of spirituality. because that does not affect other people nor is it an instrument to empower yourself above someone else.. its just your way of seeing life.
its the same kind of thing. religion and personal subjective sensations of spirituality.
religion = bullshit but "christianity is the truth so go donate to the pastor"
spirituality = bullshit but "you need to repattern your brain waves to dolphin specifications for a small fee" or "you need to buy crystals and believe that when u buy acid u experience super human consciousness and go to the 6th dimension"
I hate the originators of this crap. I feel only pity for the poor idiots who entertain it. And there are a mass of them on this forum.
On 2008-07-04 14:15, bukboy wrote:
spirituality = bullshit
I have my own definition of spirituality. (No idea if anyone shares it). To me it is anything that pertains to the spirit. By spirit I don't mean some magical nebulous entity that exists somewhere outside of our body or even that can be pinned to a specific location in our brain. I just mean that which we as humans experience as consciousness.
So spiritual activities is anything that makes one a more complete and happy person. This could be listening to a beautiful piece of music. Reading a thought provoking book. Taking a walk in a beautiful landscape. Meditation. Making love with your partner(s). Dancing for hours on repetitive beats. Whatever rocks your boat.
We all need to feed our "spirits" to be happy complete people and this way we can talk about that without resorting to any magic or dogma.
It answers a lot of the objections from religious types like "How can you live if there is no purpose to life? How can you accept that you are just a biological machine? What is the point in living if there is no God? etc etc" but still resonates with many people religious or not.
Undertow thats something I can subscribe to as well. No objections.
But its also not the standard definition which most people would care about precisely since it removes the supernatural.
As I understand it conventional spirituality is necessarily tied in with the concept of afterlife.
On 2008-07-04 09:01, Upavas wrote:
Did they have that part of the brain removed on both sides Colin?
It is true that some people had parts of their brains removed and still retained part of it's functions. To my knowledge never fully (I may be wrong there). Since there is a male and female side to the brain this function still might have resided on the other brain half (question)?
This is the first time I read about a female/male side of the brain. There are specialist regions in the brain which are only on one side, like speech. If your speech centre gets damaged other parts of the brain can take over. In this case it is unlikely that you fully recover but that is normal: You are not using the specialised centre any more and, maybe more importantly, you don't have the years and years of training that someone with no damage has. Also the brain loses plasticity as we grow older. Everything takes longer to learn as we advance in age.
On the other hand, there have been cases were people had brain damage (to the speech centres) at birth and still developed perfect speech. MRI scans show that other regions of the brain have fully taken over those functions.
Quote:
Another interesting idea is that humans rarely ever use more than a small fraction of the entire potential of their brain. I wonder how that part has to do with evolution?
And with awareness?
Stop! This is a myth! Some scientist made this claim in the 50s (I think) but he himself retracted the claim later on.
Unfortunately the popular press had already heard and published the story and since then this idea has never left the public's imagination.
My analogy for this: If you are driving a car, you never hit the gas/clutch/brake pedal at the same time yet no one would say that that means you don't fully use the car, right? That just isn't how a car works. The same goes for our brains.
I suppose in a sense some people do occasionally have full activity in their brains: It is called having an epileptic attack!
Quote:
Maybe I should have put a stronger emphasis when I mentioned that science SO FAR has not yet come up with a center of awareness. Meaning you definitely have a point there.
I'm with Colin on this. No one at the forefront of cognitive sciences thinks there is a centre for awareness. They all think it has to do with emergent properties.
Also, awareness might just be (mostly) an illusion. Daniel C. Dennett says something like "We do not have to explain what isn't there". He has many experiments to demonstrate that what we experience as a fluid continuous flow of reality really is not. There are massive gaps in our awareness (easily demonstrated with some experiments) but we can not be aware of these gaps because the gaps exists in the mechanism which we use to find the gaps! (Our minds). As soon as we focus our attention on such a gap, the gap is filled while other gaps appear in the places were we are not focusing on any more. (Catch-22).
Here is one of Daniel C. Dennett's lectures addressing this:
Quote:
The other thing is that so far western science has not come to terms with awareness. It is still based on cogito ergo sum, (I think therefor I am).
"Cogito ergo sum" is a logical fallacy: Just look at the first word of the english translation: "I". If you start with "I" as a
premise, in other words if you start with your own existence as a premise, there is no way you can use that same premise to prove your own existence. It is circular logic.
Quote:
Since we never have 100% control (mostly 0%) hehehe of what is being thought of in our minds I would hardly call awareness part of the mind...
Why? There is no direct logical link between awareness and control. I can be fully aware of someone torturing me yet have no control over that torture. (Just the first thing that came to mind. Don't ask me why. I have no control over such things ).
No, I mean a lot smaller in size, smaller than neutrinos and quarks.. And that center of awarenes is situated in the center of the heart..
You are kidding right? This is really medieval thinking and can easily be dismissed as complete and utter rubbish. The heart is a pump. Nothing more.
Quote:
You can even travel to other places with your mind like u do in your sleep
No you can't. Those are just dreams.
Quote:
but center of awareness stays in heart until body stops functioning.. Than it switches to another body cause its not under the laws of material world and it cant perish, and cause of desire it needs material body to fulfill those wishes also cause of attachment to a body it instantly transfers to another body which could easily be animal body if it degraded to that level..
Again, purely medieval thinking here.
UnderTow
the daleks
The Daleks
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Posted : Jul 4, 2008 20:51
that book on music and the brain mentioned here on another thread was pretty informative. he mentioned cognitive psychologists reckon consciousness arises from the overall hum in the brain, like a 40hz hum or something like that, and is the sum of the parts connection together, and furthered the analogy that the brain is the hardware, while consciousness is the software i.e. you can have similar brains in structure but vastly different types of people, and different brain structures with similar people of viewpoints. same way you can have the same hardware but a variety of OSs running... I highly recommend this book!
>Undertow
word. spirituality in now way needs to conflict with a rationilist perspective, and can be rather enriching
>Colin
Matrix theory.. thats cool. I have long felt a little bit like this. Salvia, DMT, and ketamine experiences have lent a little to this. i'm going to check out that article..
Gamma Riders EP out now on iTunes and Amazon.com!
Whatever rocks your boat.
