--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jst...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Hugo" <fintlewoodlewix@> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jstein@> wrote: > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" > > > <curtisdeltablues@> wrote: > > > > > > Do you share this belief about yourself,is that why you > > > > are so quick to defend him? > > > > > > BREAKING NEWS: You don't have to share a person's beliefs > > > to defend them from unfair attack. > > > > But using them as an excuse to launch and attack of your own > > is OK. > > Maybe you'd want to review what I said to Curtis and > see whether it could actually be classified as an > "attack," as opposed to disagreement. If one is > defending somebody from what one considers an unfair > attack, it's kind of hard to avoid expressing > disagreement.
I'm just calling it how I see it. I see Curtis has already resonded to that better than I could. > > > That said, I don't know whether one's state of mind can > > > affect "the world" (depending on what you mean by "world"), > > > and *neither do you*. > > > > Given that we know what causes earthquakes and there is no > > evidence that the mind can affect the physical world I > > can't see what there is to gain from continually speculating > > that ancient beliefs invented to explain unpleasant occurences > > have any sort of place outside of selling "spiritual" nonsense. > > Something Chopra does rather well out of. > > > > But like Chopra, I don't believe one person's meditation > > > can bring about an earthquake. > > > > How about 5000 people? > > Most likely not, but I wouldn't rule it out entirely. > > Curtis says that if the mind *could* affect the > physical world, it would have to be "some new thing," > because at this point we don't know of any way it > could happen. > > But we still haven't figured out what consciousness is > or how it operates, so I think we should leave a bit of > room for "some new thing." It would really be some "Old Thing" and we can see where the belief comes from and it isn't experience. We can't tell at all whether the mind can affect things so why the big hoo-ha in the TMO about the marshy effect? Because you can't have a belief in consciousness as the unified field without accepting that outcomes like earthquakes and political upheaval are somehow connected with people sitting around with their eyes closed. Which is why I always say a completely non-snarky thankyou to the TMO for the IA course and pundit programme because they convincingly demonstrated once and for all that it's a load of old toss and should be abandoned to save a lot of people a lot of money. That's one advantage of science over belief, helping us work out the best way to improve our lot. It turns out praying to the gods and hopping up and down turned out not to be a hugely reliable way of doing that. I know I sound like a scratched record but it has to be said. > Yes, that's an "argument from ignorance," at least in > terms of whether the possibility of such a phenomenon > should be ruled out (as opposed to claiming it's true, > which I'm not doing). > > But you and Curtis are countering it with an "argument > from personal incredulity" as to whether such a "new > thing" is possible, so I figure we're even. I wouldn't say incredulity, I have given it a lot of thought, a chance to work in my life and observed how it fails to demonstrably fails to affect world as predicted. Suppose we didn't know about plate tectonics, then you might be able to say things are happening for reasons unknown and search about for mystical reasons which is how we got here in the first place I'll wager. The thing is if it's consciousness affecting the earths crust then there can't have been any earthquakes before man evolved and started meditating. This is something the vedas (and most other religious texts I know of) are confusing about because they claim was always man here. Knowledge moves on. But perhaps consciousness affects earthquakes as well as general shifting about due to a spinning core surrounded by molten rock? That'll be the one to test for! Good luck I say. > And then there's always "absence of evidence is not > evidence of absence." Seems to me it makes sense to > hold open, even if only ever-so-slightly, the > possibility that evidence is absent because we *don't > know how to test for it*. > You and I were discussing awhile back Lawrence LeShan's > recent book about researching telepathy, in which he > makes the point that we can't prove it doesn't exist, > all we can prove is that it doesn't show up reliably > in controlled laboratory experiments. He says we should > focus instead on studying instances of purported > telepathy to see whether we can get a better idea of > the characteristics of such instances, their parameters, > which might help us figure out better ways to test for it. I'm all for it. > You ask above "what there is to gain from continually > speculating that ancient beliefs invented to explain > unpleasant occurences have any sort of place outside of > selling 'spiritual' nonsense." Couple of big assumptions > there. As usual I would be delighted to be proved wrong. and they may well be valid--but gee, seems to me > there'd be quite a few potential real-world benefits if > we could nail down that "mental states" *can* affect > the physical world, and how this occurs. Like preventing earthquakes or improving the stock exchange and preventing war? I shall remain happy sceptic until that happy day.
