Thanks for answering to my points Ashles. I feel that is very hard to correctly express my oppinions over here , since my below-average english skills keeps me from presenting a more abridged and concise idea in my
posts. This debate is purely a philosophical one, imo.
You are right, paranormal sells a lot, perhaps more
than media skepticism, there´s no doubt about it, and
i want you to know that i´m not comparing both for
their commecrial potential. I´m just saying that
skepticism seem to have it´s own commercial targets. As one do its business the other also do. An you will see through this post, that i´m not a believer on what every claimant on the paranormal spits. I get angry on how even the claimanst are so misunderstood on what might be "paranormal". That makes me growl on my cage... GRRRR
As long as you just ask for evidences, you are being a
skeptic, so no harm. And apparently this is healthy.
But, now i ask you, what is THE TRUTH? What is the
TRUTH in you oppinion? Materialism? Science? How can
you rely on your mechanisms of evaluating something to
be true or not? What are those mechanisms n your humble oppinion?
Ah but i´m not saying that searching for evidence is
bad. That is what our scientific impulse do all the
time. The problem is WHAT do you consider to be valid
evidence. How far do you really want to go until you see something that you did never make any effort to understand properly, exists? Do you think our scientific tools for testing objective and exclusively-matesialistically-manifested
things are also properly designed for evaluating
something subjective and simultaneously too complex?
Even if something is evidenced using an objective
approach, like many experiments on "paranormal" do, do
you think its worth going on and on tightening
controls over and over again until you totally
dissolve the results of something that is of
subjective nature into materialistic plain nonsense? I
insist, there is a big misunderstanding about the HOW
those things known as "paranormal" should be
understood. Charlatans, fools, eluded people, and uneducated claiments, we have a lot. But, skeptics do chose to follow the materialistic view of the world, so they start by not believing on any other kind of phenomena other than those explained by empirical experience preceived under the waking state of mind exclusively. This is to me , the origin of all the misunderstanding of a skeptic on what is valid evidence, but not accepted by materialistic science. Let me quote Einstein for instance, before I give my own oppinion:
I have yet to meet a single person from our culture, no matter what his or her educational background, IQ, and specific training, who had powerful transpersonal experiences and continues to subscribe to the materialistic monism of Western science.
Albet Einstein
This is a powerful abridgement on what i have to tell you. I think the most empirical thing that you will ever experience is your conscious perception of what is being rendered to your cognitive system in the form of space and time "inputs". Scientific method was built as a tool to simplify the proccess of understanding nature trough our severely constrained senses on the waking state of mind. It´s just a creative effort to stablish a pattern of what are you experiening while awake. I think it´s an equaly or more empirical experience, to consciously experience something, and have it unquestionably understood that THIS reality, the material reality of our waking states, is only an approximate glimpse of what is really going on cosmically and mentally speaking. What if you are unquestionably convinced by pure experience, that this reality is just a short film on the infinite pool of consciousness and the universe? Taoist and budhist philosophers, and many western scientists and philosophers, such as Fritjoff Capra, Aldous Huxley, Herman Hesse, Carl Jung and Erich Fromm seems all agree on this also. Their studies and publications on transcendent states of consciousness are unanimously implying that we can experience a more broad and balanced reality than this one of our daily waking state of consciousness under the heavy constraint of materialistic conditioning, that is at last so real as this one. There is NO ONE for example, who had an NDE (near death experience) which is the most powerful transcendental experience that someone who is not skillful in meditation can have, and continued to think materialistically. No one had ever did it. EVERYONE (100%) of the people who had an NDE and was materialistically skeptic before, became a non-materialistic person and realized that our consciousness is more than this state of waking awareness. So they automaticaly realize that we have a problem on understanding the universe properly if we just keep going the materialist way. This is utter and completely convincing, deeply intuitive and purely simple to the person who had experience this. Human nature is more than materialistic, we can experience something more profound and that is needless to be explained by words and general means of intelectual communication. The experience and the sensing of a higher level of consiousness is the ground of all the new understanding we should have in order to progress properly and not lead humanity to destruction. Sounds messianic eh? But it is not, it´s been there all the time, if you do not accept or believe it yet, is precisely bcuz you have never had any experiences on that matter. In other words, you did never experience something that you unquestionablly knows that is FAR more real than here. I can repeatedly explain to you what is the feeling of "sweetness" when you eat a candy, i canm develop hunderds of formulations and theories, but you will never understand intuitively what it is until you eat up a candy. It´s the same thing with transpersonal experiences. That is the starting point of a person who wants to understand properly about what is being labeled "pararnomal". Of course there are lame and charlatanesque attempts to show this through experiments, it is an utter shame. And i cannot be sure that this telephone thing of this toppic works as an explanation for transcendent potential of mind. I tend to think that this experiment is lame, and i mentioned it before on this thread. But i dont think sheldrake is a charlatan, i surely know through his texts that he knows about those things, global mind, colective unconsciousness, and the potential of mind of transcending space, time and our severely constrained senses. The current scientific method does not "understand" and does not allow for what is subjective even if powerful and convincing personal experiences. So , concluding, there is a new realm and method of experience mind and consciousness which is , to the average materialistic and exagerate skeptic person, impossible to be explained or understood until he experiences it directly. So, in general they discard it as plain kooky because they dont believe in transcendental states of consciousness. they only accept this state of mind, this one under influence of materialistic conditioning, being just a piece of a gigantic mechanic thing, and everything that belongs exclusively to the mind, is pseudo-scientific and even false.
The challenge is utter and completely unfair, and biased towards debunking. He and his referees are the final judges. Randi runs from many claimants, such as Kolodzey and Rosemary Altea. Simply because he seems not to know a method of debunking them. Just the feeling of not knowing what is going on, makes him run like he did on CSICOP on mars effect. So he sticks to the easy , lame , misinformed, religiously brainwashed, uneducated and naive targets. These naive targets may well be speaking about something that may exist, but their lack of education and knowledge on how do demonstrate and argument for such things, makes Randi a terrible predator to their claims. Randi is a genius, he knows everything about illusions and debunking. When you ask him direct questions he avoid them like hell. I personally know this by the lack of scientific feeling to his answer to my questions. He always answer like a biased challenger who does not want to loose the money. And people and Nature (the journal), sadly, think this is science.
I know skepticism commit serious, shameful and grotesque mistakes, but i do not discard skepticism in all its merits. I just dont like exagerated skepticism. I encourage you to read more about CSICOP´s mistakes because it makes you think whether this cannot be happening again and again. Read it and take your own conclusions.
This is it for now, i´ll answer your other points later cuz im going to work now. I´ll answer them all as well as other points other people are giving on my argumtns.
see ya later
posts. This debate is purely a philosophical one, imo.
You are right, paranormal sells a lot, perhaps more
than media skepticism, there´s no doubt about it, and
i want you to know that i´m not comparing both for
their commecrial potential. I´m just saying that
skepticism seem to have it´s own commercial targets. As one do its business the other also do. An you will see through this post, that i´m not a believer on what every claimant on the paranormal spits. I get angry on how even the claimanst are so misunderstood on what might be "paranormal". That makes me growl on my cage... GRRRR
As long as you just ask for evidences, you are being a
skeptic, so no harm. And apparently this is healthy.
But, now i ask you, what is THE TRUTH? What is the
TRUTH in you oppinion? Materialism? Science? How can
you rely on your mechanisms of evaluating something to
be true or not? What are those mechanisms n your humble oppinion?
Ah but i´m not saying that searching for evidence is
bad. That is what our scientific impulse do all the
time. The problem is WHAT do you consider to be valid
evidence. How far do you really want to go until you see something that you did never make any effort to understand properly, exists? Do you think our scientific tools for testing objective and exclusively-matesialistically-manifested
things are also properly designed for evaluating
something subjective and simultaneously too complex?
Even if something is evidenced using an objective
approach, like many experiments on "paranormal" do, do
you think its worth going on and on tightening
controls over and over again until you totally
dissolve the results of something that is of
subjective nature into materialistic plain nonsense? I
insist, there is a big misunderstanding about the HOW
those things known as "paranormal" should be
understood. Charlatans, fools, eluded people, and uneducated claiments, we have a lot. But, skeptics do chose to follow the materialistic view of the world, so they start by not believing on any other kind of phenomena other than those explained by empirical experience preceived under the waking state of mind exclusively. This is to me , the origin of all the misunderstanding of a skeptic on what is valid evidence, but not accepted by materialistic science. Let me quote Einstein for instance, before I give my own oppinion:
I have yet to meet a single person from our culture, no matter what his or her educational background, IQ, and specific training, who had powerful transpersonal experiences and continues to subscribe to the materialistic monism of Western science.
Albet Einstein
This is a powerful abridgement on what i have to tell you. I think the most empirical thing that you will ever experience is your conscious perception of what is being rendered to your cognitive system in the form of space and time "inputs". Scientific method was built as a tool to simplify the proccess of understanding nature trough our severely constrained senses on the waking state of mind. It´s just a creative effort to stablish a pattern of what are you experiening while awake. I think it´s an equaly or more empirical experience, to consciously experience something, and have it unquestionably understood that THIS reality, the material reality of our waking states, is only an approximate glimpse of what is really going on cosmically and mentally speaking. What if you are unquestionably convinced by pure experience, that this reality is just a short film on the infinite pool of consciousness and the universe? Taoist and budhist philosophers, and many western scientists and philosophers, such as Fritjoff Capra, Aldous Huxley, Herman Hesse, Carl Jung and Erich Fromm seems all agree on this also. Their studies and publications on transcendent states of consciousness are unanimously implying that we can experience a more broad and balanced reality than this one of our daily waking state of consciousness under the heavy constraint of materialistic conditioning, that is at last so real as this one. There is NO ONE for example, who had an NDE (near death experience) which is the most powerful transcendental experience that someone who is not skillful in meditation can have, and continued to think materialistically. No one had ever did it. EVERYONE (100%) of the people who had an NDE and was materialistically skeptic before, became a non-materialistic person and realized that our consciousness is more than this state of waking awareness. So they automaticaly realize that we have a problem on understanding the universe properly if we just keep going the materialist way. This is utter and completely convincing, deeply intuitive and purely simple to the person who had experience this. Human nature is more than materialistic, we can experience something more profound and that is needless to be explained by words and general means of intelectual communication. The experience and the sensing of a higher level of consiousness is the ground of all the new understanding we should have in order to progress properly and not lead humanity to destruction. Sounds messianic eh? But it is not, it´s been there all the time, if you do not accept or believe it yet, is precisely bcuz you have never had any experiences on that matter. In other words, you did never experience something that you unquestionablly knows that is FAR more real than here. I can repeatedly explain to you what is the feeling of "sweetness" when you eat a candy, i canm develop hunderds of formulations and theories, but you will never understand intuitively what it is until you eat up a candy. It´s the same thing with transpersonal experiences. That is the starting point of a person who wants to understand properly about what is being labeled "pararnomal". Of course there are lame and charlatanesque attempts to show this through experiments, it is an utter shame. And i cannot be sure that this telephone thing of this toppic works as an explanation for transcendent potential of mind. I tend to think that this experiment is lame, and i mentioned it before on this thread. But i dont think sheldrake is a charlatan, i surely know through his texts that he knows about those things, global mind, colective unconsciousness, and the potential of mind of transcending space, time and our severely constrained senses. The current scientific method does not "understand" and does not allow for what is subjective even if powerful and convincing personal experiences. So , concluding, there is a new realm and method of experience mind and consciousness which is , to the average materialistic and exagerate skeptic person, impossible to be explained or understood until he experiences it directly. So, in general they discard it as plain kooky because they dont believe in transcendental states of consciousness. they only accept this state of mind, this one under influence of materialistic conditioning, being just a piece of a gigantic mechanic thing, and everything that belongs exclusively to the mind, is pseudo-scientific and even false.
The challenge is utter and completely unfair, and biased towards debunking. He and his referees are the final judges. Randi runs from many claimants, such as Kolodzey and Rosemary Altea. Simply because he seems not to know a method of debunking them. Just the feeling of not knowing what is going on, makes him run like he did on CSICOP on mars effect. So he sticks to the easy , lame , misinformed, religiously brainwashed, uneducated and naive targets. These naive targets may well be speaking about something that may exist, but their lack of education and knowledge on how do demonstrate and argument for such things, makes Randi a terrible predator to their claims. Randi is a genius, he knows everything about illusions and debunking. When you ask him direct questions he avoid them like hell. I personally know this by the lack of scientific feeling to his answer to my questions. He always answer like a biased challenger who does not want to loose the money. And people and Nature (the journal), sadly, think this is science.
I know skepticism commit serious, shameful and grotesque mistakes, but i do not discard skepticism in all its merits. I just dont like exagerated skepticism. I encourage you to read more about CSICOP´s mistakes because it makes you think whether this cannot be happening again and again. Read it and take your own conclusions.
This is it for now, i´ll answer your other points later cuz im going to work now. I´ll answer them all as well as other points other people are giving on my argumtns.
see ya later
