--- Carvalho <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Response: > There you go again Santosh with those words "totally > wrong". Of late, you've even begun calling for the > pastoral exile of people who you find "totally > wrong". > Very disappointing that was coming from you. I had > truly held you in much higher esteem. >
The above statements of Selma do not add anything worthwhile to this discussion. She is simply engaging in innuendo and further mischaracterization of my statements. I have already explained why her characterization of my earlier assertions were totally wrong. In the academic field, one does have to point out when a student or colleague is totally wrong about some thing. More importantly, one has to tell them why they are wrong. Selma's statement above that I have begun calling for the pastoral exile of people who I find totally wrong is false. I had merely made a light-hearted comment in response to a derogatory remark made by another Goanetter, in the form of question to Bosco about his rules for pastoral action. My comment had nothing to do with whether I thought the person was right or wrong. > > Response: > Now, this statement alone is fudging the truth a bit > isn't it? > No, it isn't. Please see below. > >What you mean to say is that certain patterns of >electrical activation have been known to reproduce >apparitions, religious experiences etc. In order for >the converse to be true, you would have to round up >centuries of "fools" who have had apparitions, >religious experiences, near death experiences, >heightened sense of awareness, etc and conclusively >prove that at that precise moment, their brains were >undergoing "certain patterns of electrical > activation in specific parts of the brain". > First of all, I do not think these people are "fools". Science does not claim that these people are "fools". Science is a dispassionate enterprise. It contends that these people are displaying well-recognized natural phenomena, which have now been reproduced in the laboratory. Second, it is unreasonable for anybody to expect scientists to go back in time and prove that any natural phenomenon (in this case a given conscious experience) that has occurred in the past is due to a natural cause (in this case brain electrical patterns) because this type of time travel is not yet possible. If people demanded this type of proof, several well-established scientific theories describing our past would also have been regarded as mere philosophical opinions. Examples of such theories include the theory of evolution by natural selection, the Big Bang theory, the theory of stellar evolution, and the geological formation and age of the earth. Indeed, the case for these theories would have been weaker than the case for the brain basis of mental phenomena. What modern scientists have done instead to confirm the dependence of mental phenomena on brain activity is the following: 1. They have recorded brain activation patterns while present day folks are having these experiences in the clinic or the laboratory. 2. They have reproducibly induced these experiences by direct electrical stimulation of specific parts of the brain. > >Now, Eric Von Daniken also has "conclusive evidence", >that religious apparitions are holograms beamed to >us from aliens in outer space. What if in 50 years >from now, we find out that Eric Von Daniken was right. >It would certainly disapprove that apparitions were >divinely motivated but it would also disprove your >theory. > To find out if this is an appropriate analogy or not please provide me with the "conclusive evidence" that Eric Von Daniken has for his extraordinary theory. I have already implied what would disprove the current scientific explanation for mental phenomena. To state it explicitly, any experiment that shows a person has no specific electrical activation of the brain while he/she is having a religious or any other conscious experience would conclusively disprove the current explanation. > >Humanity doesn't owe anyone a dime except the Deity of >Truth but just as I'm wary of religious zealots who >insist they have uncovered the whole truth, I'm >becoming anxious about scientific inquiry which seeks >to prematurely euthanise the indomitable fakir that >resides in all of us. > This anxiety is unfounded. As I have said earlier, science is simply a humble method to find internally consistent natural explanations for observed natural phenomena based on objective evidence. The scientific method has not yet yielded a detailed complete natural explanation for the conscious mind. However, we know that the idea that it exists independently of the brain is inconsistent with an overwhelming body of objective evidence. Moreover, there is absolutely no positive evidence in support of this idea. Cheers, Santosh
