On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 08:39:06PM -0700, Deborah Harrell wrote: > Perhaps I wasn't clear, but since no-one can get inside another's > mind, no-one can be sure they are experiencing the exact same numinous > event.
Yes, I know that. That is the problem and the point. Numinous experience is all in the mind of one person, and cannot be verified independently by others. Reliable knowledge, in contrast, can be verified or falsified by others in a repeatable experiment. > If you place 'verifiable/scientific' in front of "knowledge about the > universe" I'd agree; but that such experiences are a human attribute > (maybe some of the higher animals have similar ones, but we can't tell > that) *is* a verifiable fact: "X% of the general population claims > to have felt the presence of a divine being at least once in their > lives." I don't dispute that. It would be silly to dispute that. I am not sure why you think people are disputing that. > But that hasn't been _my_ point at all; I have stated that it is > important emotionally *to me* -- as have others, WRT themselves. Of > course, there are folks who claim that they have special knowledge of > the universe, but they truly can't prove it. And _my_ point is that those people do NOT have any knowledge of the universe if it cannot be verified or falsified by others in a repeatable experiment. It is all in their mind without that -- it is not really knowledge, more of a delusion (if they believe it is real) or a fantasy (if they don't necessarily claim it is real), or a hypothesis (if they think it could be real and are working towards testing it by falsifiable experiment). > Until the microscope was invented, no-one had any proof that tiny > creatures could live in a spoonful of pond water, although there > _were_ stories about water sprites, and pixies, and boggles... > which is why I wrote that we might someday be able to actually > detect/investigate such ephemera-to-us-at-this-point. Of course, almost anything has a non-zero probability. But it can be extremely small. Your comparison is not apt. In those times, science was a much smaller and rarer pursuit, and very little of the universe had been carefully studied. When you first move into a house, it is not surprising to find new things. But after you (and to stretch the example, tens of thousands of others ) have lived in the house for 30 years, remodeled it, torn out and replaced walls, gone through every nook and cranny, become familiar with all of its areas and sounds, discussed all the observations and checked them with others, then it is very unlikely you will find anything completely unexpected or completely new that hadn't been examined before. Science has been going strong now for a long time, and particularly in the past 100 years or so, hundreds of thousands of scientists have studied virtually everything that has ever occurred to anyone to study about the universe. And with all that time and effort by hundreds of thousands of people, no repeatable experiment has been found that suggests that there is any sort of psychic or whatever mental power that you talk about. That is strong evidence suggesting that these experiences are just in a person's head and have no real existence in the universe. > <rolls eyes and stomps feet exasperatedly> <bends over and points, kiss my> > *Honestly,* Erik, I happen to know that you *did* read Honestly? You mean you aren't lying? My, how useful to know. > those posts, since you dismissed my conjecture of the > biological/cultural utility of having both 'experiencers' and > 'non-experiencers' as "politically correct nonsense" (IIRC the exact > phrasing). Your knowledge may be wrong (your statement is somewhat ambiguous, did you mean I read all of it, or a specific portion?). I stopped reading at the point I wrote that comment, and there was several screenfuls below that. > But NO WHERE did I call anybody a "poor soul" or express pity, and the > analogy I used, red/green color blindness, was chosen *specifically* > because NO ONE can claim *pride* in being able to distinguish colors. Whatever. You definitely made the point that other people may be jealous or feel bad not to have such experiences. > Did I not make it clear that I JUST HAVE THEM, and have since > childhood? I was attempting to answer, honestly, a question posed to > the list. Whatever. You also made it clear that you thought others would be upset (or distressed, or some negative emotion) that they didn't have them. > Once upon a time, science "proved" that Negroes were inferior, that > women were a sub-species of human; I posted a study abstract to the > list that "proved" that Baycol was as good as other statin drugs -- > but later it was noted that a number of Baycol users were dying, > compared to other statins. I don't think we have the same idea of science proving based on your first statement (inferior is not a precise scientific concept in this context, to point out only one problem with your statement). As far as the drugs, this is an example of science working to filter out the reliable knowledge from the unreliable. SCIENCE IS WORKING there. People are performing experiments and testing knowledge, and when several people perform the same experiments and obtain the same results, in contradiction to previous (now found to be flawed) results, the knowledge is updated appropriately. Where do you see this sort of scientific method being applied to prove the reality of the "numinous experiences" that people have claimed are real? > In the fifties (or was it the forties?), they did not even imagine > the microchip, and thought computers 'might weigh less than a ton,' > and that there might be a need for as many as a dozen or so in the > world... (IIRC) Not an apt comparison. A better one would be Bardeen had a numinous experience that the transistor could be made, and that no one else did, but he believed he was right. So he set out to make it, and eventually DID make it, and it worked. And the transistor worked when other people made it as well. So the transistor does have a real existence outside of Bardeen's head. In contrast, despite hundreds or thousands of years of trying, no one has been able to similarly produce a falsifiable, repeatable experiment to verify the existence of a divine being that they perceive in their head. This is very persuasive evidence that this thing exists only in their head, and has no real existence in the universe. > False dichotomy - that one cannot base one's actions on both > verifiable science, and one's numinous experiences. Nope, not what I said. One obviously can, but that is basing one's actions partly on delusions. Not a good idea. > experiences and those of their colleagues. I just presented the > current data on pancreatic cancer to a friend's friend: it is dismal, > with only 20% of patients eligible for potentially 'curative' surgery > at diagnosis, and of those, the median survival range is 12-19 months. > Yet the individual is not a median or a mean, and I also told him of a > pin that I sometimes wear: "Sometimes you have to look Reality square > in the eye - and defy it." Whatever. I don't think we can really make any progress since you keep missing the point and are now glorifying denying reality. Science may not have the knowledge to cure it, but IT IS STILL STUDYING IT SCIENTIFICALLY and making forward progress in repeatable experiments and clinical studies, etc that anyone can verify. The same cannot be said for the type of numinous experiences that we are talking about. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
