posted 12-29-2000 01:18 PM            

quote:

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The Supposed Signal of Purpose
by Victor J. Stenger

For about a decade now, an ever-increasing number of scientists and theologians have been asserting, in popular articles and books, that they can detect a signal of cosmic purpose poking its head out of the noisy data of physics and cosmology. This claim has been widely reported in the
media (see, for example, Begley 1998, Easterbrook 1998), perhaps misleading lay people into thinking that some kind of new scientific consensus is developing in support of supernatural beliefs. In fact, none of this reported evidence can be found in the pages of scientific journals, which continue to successfully operate within an assumed framework in which all physical phenomena are natural.

The purported signal of cosmic purpose cannot be demonstrated from the data alone. Such
observations require considerable interpretation to arrive at that conclusion. Those not very familiar with recent deliberations in the philosophy of science might be inclined to scoff and say that the observations speak for themselves, with no interpretation necessary....

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posted 12-29-2000 01:30 PM            

quote:

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"Ignoring the data from advanced
scientific instruments and going back to relying solely on the data from everyday life
will only result in a degradation of knowledge and a return to barbarism."
- Vic Stenger

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posted 12-29-2000 03:10 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by roman74:
The problem exactly is all these individual goals without some kind of common goal between us - this isn't to say that I wish to limit individuality, but the truth is we are here together, alone on this planet. It's up to us to make this world work. So the very first priority in anyone's mind should be responsibility - to yourselves and others of this planet.

Think about why we have so many conflicts in the world - because everyone has decided their own agendas without considering a bigger picture - that we're all here for the same reasons - our survival.

Encouraging belief in the supernatural and so-called psychic phenomenon is irresponsible. These things are not reliable, and nor are they consistent - if they work at all. Teaching people to hope and wish for things will create a planet of dreamers - of people who sit on their asses waiting for things to happen, instead of taking responsibility here and now.

The 'usefulness' you don't see is because you spend too much time thinking about what YOU want (in your own mental states), and not enough time thinking about what's good for everything else.

---

Ironically, that's exactly what I think is good about spiritual beliefs - they usually motivate people to think about others and to raise their consciousness to universal concerns. So that argument doesn't wash.

quote:

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Originally posted by roman74:
Take a hint, those of you who rely purely on your own perceptions of the world.

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dude, that's ALL you're doing. You're judging the world based PURELY on your perceptions.

Now I agree, the majority of people pursuing psychic phenomena are motivated by ego gratification or projection. We called them psychic vampires, or psychic junkies when I worked as a psychic.

What jobs are useful to your plan for the world? Is psychology useful? I know in my role as a psychic I usually operated as an intuitive psychologist. People had reached a bump in the road, I helped them get over it - so they could function again as productive human beings. Encouraging people to fulfill their dreams, which in turn would benefit humanity.

The only psychics seeking to turn people away from a productive life are the televangelist types - and they're more thiefs than psychics. I think you've had a bad personal experience with a friend or family member that is creating your bias. The fact is you can't know for sure about the psychic world unless you personally investigate it, and so to place so many judgement calls on psychic phenomena and research and the people who pursue these interests is unfair.

posted 12-29-2000 03:19 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by TommyTerror:
[BI will relate one psychic experience which had physical consequences. It's rather dark, and I am ashamed of my early behavior but it was definitely a learning experience. When I first got into psychic studies, I didn't understand a lot. I was a young, angry, emotional teenager and I made a mistake one night. I lit a candle, borrowed a rare amulet from a psychic friend, and summoned a demon to run over someone with a car. I felt it happening, and at the last second I let go of the emotional power that was surging out of me. 2 hours later, this same person came running back to the college we went to, he had been walking in town when he saw a strange house with a dark energy. In front of the house was a car with the very same design of the amulet on the hood. This was a very rare amulet, I have never seen the design anywhere else. There was no driver in the car, but he said the car suddenly started up and tried to run him over. He jumped in a ditch, the car turned around and came at him again, and he ran through yards to get home, freaked out. There is no way he knew what I had done. I did not tell him about my actions until many years later.

Pretty freaky stuff, and it freaked me out definitely. I attempted suicide the next day. Many years later a psychic, who knew nothing about that situation, told me that I was never suicidal but that once I had been possessed by a demon and had to exorcise it.

This is one experience.

You are narrowing your 'reality' if you seriously think the world of material science is the only true measure of reality. [/B]

---

Wow, Tommy, a bad experience. Thanks for sharing!

posted 12-29-2000 03:26 PM            

Verification of incidents - I have plenty. But he refuses to accept that I do. Want me to give you the names/phone numbers of the witnesses so you can verify them for yourself? It's no use, because you would say I put them up to it or some other insult.

posted 12-30-2000 05:51 AM            

Being rational and responsibly-minded is not the same as being close-minded. Anyone can believe in the supernatural and the perceived cause/effect relationships it takes to believe in so-called psychic phenomenon.

The fact remains, on the whole these things are largely inadmissable as reliable facts. Hunches and instincts DO NOT pay off in the real world. PAX-TV is not reality, it's cable. If there were some validity to these claims where have they been printed in reputable, peer-reviewed journals? (I wouldn't doubt if the producers of that show were the same ones that produced the Alien Autopsy hoax or that they also produce late-night infomercials to lure willing victims in other ways).

posted 12-30-2000 07:08 AM            

quote:

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"Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. A man full of faith is simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and realistic thought. He is not a mere ass; he is actually ill."
-H.L. Mencken

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posted 12-30-2000 07:44 AM            

Anybody can quote other people. If I had the time I'd quote other people to contradict your quotes. People on these boards are trying to make you THINK FOR YOURSELF.

posted 12-30-2000 08:21 AM            

Your points are extremely well taken, but the response you'll receive will show you that Roman74 has either not read your post well, or didn't understand it.

posted 12-30-2000 08:21 AM            

It is not clear.

Voltaire

See, Roman, a quote, and it works for both of us!

posted 12-30-2000 08:31 AM            

Good questions. I especially liked:

"Einstein had this thing called a brain, mixed with a healthy dose of humility."

Perhaps, Roman can learn from that statement.

Satire.

quote:

---

Originally posted by hagbard13:
That's your answer? You're going to throw some guy at me? Man, you are something else.
I suppose this guy is the end all be all of cosmic information, right? Sorry, but those quotes don't mean shit. I could sit here and quote Einstein to you all day, supporting a higher consciousness, and believe me, I think he'd be better received. Einstein had this thing called a brain, mixed with a healthy dose of humility. However, I prefer to work with my own faculties. I'm still waiting for YOUR answer. I mean, you've spent much time deliberating that question, right? Before you decided there was no God? I should hope so. I know that if I were debating the existance of God within myself, I would have spent months on the origin of emotion. So far, you've quoted someone else who said "what if". Ooooh. and "it could all be chemical". Of COURSE IT'S CHEMICAL!!!
Jesus, if you want to get sophomoric.
The question was, can YOU in YOUR infinite wisdom, tell me YOUR REASONS that support
the non-existance of a God in relation to emotions like empathy. Love. Hate. Jealousy. all chemical?? To what end, pray tell? What does nature have to gain from emotion? You'll say continuation of the species. I say, oh yeah?? That works for physical desire, but what about love? What about ecstacy? That is derived from both.
And don't say to keep us together longer for the propagation of the species, that's bullshit too, we've always gone from one partner to another, if you study the growth of man, and it worked better that way. Either way, people were getting laid and having babies. C'mon, Roman, you're going to have to better than that. I'm not in tenth grade, my dear.

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posted 12-30-2000 08:36 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by roman74:
You hypothesis is based on your own biases first (ad hominem), not what exists in the outside world.

Science doesn't work that way. It says, here is something that exists, let's try to figure out why it is this way --- not "Let's make something up and go looking for it," like you are suggesting.

Why else do you think science and psychology have given up on the 'soul' theory? They go with what we know exists and what is most useful for explanations of why things are. If it was there, it would have been found.

---

This is grossly inaccurate. Science is principled on premises that are as undemonstrable as any other belief, and that means they are frought with assumptions about the material basis of the world. They do not treat concepts like "the soul" only because such concepts do not fit into the material model. Plenty of scientists and psychologists have a spirituality apart from the material and conceptual models of science, but they are (or are supposed to be) kept strictly separated. No scientist can discount the existence of spirituality. That doesn't mean that spirituality is something in and of itself distinct and apart from human experience. It only means that it is distinct and apart from science, and as such, inappropriate to its hypotheses.

It's important to note that science does not make claims to truth; it only presents hypotheses that are inductive (and thereby always refutable upon the gathering of new and relevant data). Science is also based on a metaphysical first principle: that there is a human reality that is shared and demonstrable upon demand. But there is no way to prove this as a truth, and most scientists will not even try to.

In the 18th century Hume demolished this first principle of science that no one afterward was ever able to reconstruct. Heisenberg later showed how the experiments of science in and of themselves create their own reality, a reality which cannot be claimed to exist outside the conceptual model of science. In other words, that science establishes no reality but that of itself. Science is an artificial construct relevant only to its own rules -- rules which have no relevance apart from human societies who consent to them. (And some do not consent, nor do they need to by any dictate of the world or experience.)

I'll finish by saying that Science is a mythological language and model of the world like every other human language and model. That doesn't mean it's true or false, but that it is a structure of meaning that is wholly human and not real unto itself, apart from humans.

Science is based on values. Measurement is a value as much as an opinion is. The only difference is that it is subject to ready consent based on deduction (that is, humanly definded principles of mathematics and logic), whereas spirituality and other human systems apart from science have a much wider margin of consensus, and therefore is subject to greater variations of interpretation and dissent.

The positivist notions of sciencce that roman 74 is offering were popular in the 19th century, but largely unpopular for most of the 20th century thanks to the arguments of phenomenogy, existentialism, postructuralism, deconstruction, and the philosopy of science.

posted 12-30-2000 09:00 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by roman74:
Untrainable/Unteachable in the arts of psychic abilities? LOL.

Being rational and responsibly-minded is not the same as being close-minded. Anyone can believe in the supernatural and the perceived cause/effect relationships it takes to believe in so-called psychic phenomenon.

The fact remains, on the whole these things are largely inadmissable as reliable facts. Hunches and instincts DO NOT pay off in the real world. PAX-TV is not reality, it's cable. If there were some validity to these claims where have they been printed in reputable, peer-reviewed journals? (I wouldn't doubt if the producers of that show were the same ones that produced the Alien Autopsy hoax or that they also produce late-night infomercials to lure willing victims in other ways).

What it comes down to are Hunches and Instincts on your own parts. You want to believe these things are true, so you are persistent and oblivious to the known unreliability of these things. Your psychological needs for security and purpose have went seeking after romantic idealisms.

---

No untrainable/unteachable, period. I can't believe you do not actually seem to grasp what we all (most all) of us are trying to say here. The testimony of thousands counts in courts of law, and counts in scientific studies, etc. You are wholesale discounting all the testimony given here in these threads. WHY?

The PAX-TV show I talked about had a REAL SCIENTIST talking about the results of his study that was conducted by accepted scientific standards! Roman - I said this like three times now, but you have chosen NOT TO HEAR what we all are saying.

I talked about REAL LIVE POLICEMEN who have solved REAL cases using their instincts and hunches. I said this also like three times now, BUT AGAIN, YOU REFUSE TO ACTUALLY EVEN HEAR what I said. You say I want it to be real.

Well, that really isn't true, not at the beginning of this life, anyway. I was born a dyed in the wool Taurean. We go with the flow (majority) most of the time. We don't like to upset the apple cart. We accept and believe what can be felt heard, smelled and touched. We don't usually believe in all this supernatural 'nonsense'. BUT I had an experience as a BABY (WHO WANTED TO DIE) that made me become who I am today - more open-minded, never in a rush to judge, seeking, etc. Too many strange things have happened to me. I didn't accept the truth of what happened to me until I was about 8 or 9.

It's like talking to a wall, when we try talking to you. I am not trying to make you believe everything I believe, but I think you should be courteous, and, if you take part in these threads, at least CONSIDER what we are saying without telling us we do not look at facts, etc., when it YOU who are not listening!

Here are a few more FACTS for you. It is true that all living things are connected to their higher selves with what is commonly called silver cords.

Consider this FACT. When a human being is hit hard enough in his solar plexus (near, appropriately enough, the belly button), he will immediately die, even though no major organs are severely damaged. Why, you ask? One guess. The silver cord is connected to the body there and if the body is hit hard enough in that same spot, the body's connection to the more spiritual silver cord is severed. A karate expert would know this.

Another FACT. When a human dies, rigor mortis (where the body becomes stiff) does not set in immediately. It takes time. That's because the silver cord slowly dissipates the connection to the body.

Yet another FACT. When a cat dies, rigor mortis sets in IMMEDIATELY. Many people have run over cats who become stiff as soon as they die.

I ran over a cat once myself - felt terrible. I observed the cat as it appeared to jump almost twenty feet into the air several times, and at first I was happy because I thought I hadn't actually killed the cat. But, what really was happening is the silver cord was pulling out of the cat and jerking the body with it, as the cat's higher self tried to severe the connection to its body. Cats, Dr. L. Rampa says, serve a special purpose here on earth and do not have to go through normal (for humans and most other animals) death processes.

P.S. The Alien Autopsy tape is largely accepted as being a hoax. (But I am not 100% sure of that, as I want to keep an open mind. Hint, hint!)

[This message has been edited by psichick (edited 12-30-2000).]

posted 12-30-2000 09:25 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by hagbard13:
frances-

Beautifully said, concise and unbiased.
Would that I could communicate as effectively. You give me something to aspire to.

---

Thanks, hagbard. It's just my standard spiele (sp?), which I must have written a hundred times over in journels or articles. I dream that stuff now.

Never let anyone tyranize you with science. It may be a powerful institution, but it is not irrefutable. It is a human institution, after all.

That said, I will share my most recent mystical experience here.

Some may have noticed that my handle francescoassisi is the Italian name of St. Francis of Assisi. (Actually it's Francesco d'Assisi.) The reason for this is because he plays a small but pivotal role in my screenplay, ANTHONY IN THE DESERT.

The reason he does is because of what happened this past June, when I visited Francesco's tomb in Assisi. I had been accumulating an interest in him over the years, as I think he is the most brilliant European mystic, and one of history's most audacious, extraordinary, and beautiful figures. Far greater than any general, king, or pope for renouncing all the things that most of us hold dear.

On the first day of my six-day visit to Assisi, I was "pulled" by some force to his tomb. Upon entering, I broke down crying. For no reason. I was not unhappy. I was not happy. I had simply lost control of myself. I felt a powerful presence eminating from that tomb that mingled and become one with my own. I was opened up by this force. And as I was crying, someone brought a newborn baby into the tomb. As that happened, I merged with the baby; I couldn't distinguish between my crying and the baby's. Then I felt as though every atom in my body was hurling away from my center in an infinity of directions. It was as if the force from the tomb was a radiation that cause me to first implode and then explode, while reaching for a mergence with the Whole of existence and beyond.

I spent six days at that tomb crying. Only that first day, though, did I experience that extraordinary event that I just described. But from that day, I felt connected to San Francesco in a way I have never before. I still don't know why, except that I am overwhelmed by a feeling of sublime beauty whenever I think of him: a beauty in his life that I had always recognized, but never realized was also within me.

That's the best I can do in describing my mystical experience.

posted 12-30-2000 09:39 AM            

But there was no "them," apart from me, except when I thought of them, which was before and after the experience. No voices or visions.

posted 12-30-2000 10:03 AM            

quote:

---

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
-Albert Einstein

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posted 12-30-2000 10:13 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by hagbard13:
That's your answer? You're going to throw some guy at me?

---

hagbard13-

That article was a starting point for you. Thomas Clark set the stage, so to speak for what I have to tell to you. I was preparing you for what you didn't want to hear by showing you that this issue has been thought about and considered long before you got to it.

The truth is, everything you are is mostly housed in that head of yours. All your emotions, thoughts, feelings can be reduced to nerve impulses and chemical reactions. There is no proof otherwise for you to be something more than your body.

So far the only excuse you have for not accepting this is that you DON'T LIKE it. You don't like the idea that everything you are, everything that makes YOU you is a combination of chance, circumstance, and conditioning through nature - so you resort to ideas that propels you further than a mere sack of cells.

There is no proof that you are more than your physical components, that your emotions are dervied of any supernatural interventions, or that there is a God --- other than you want to believe in it.

Like I've said more than a few time now... the easiest test to see if God/spiritual beliefs are man-made is to start questioning them.... and then sit back and wactch all the people get defensive about what they desperately want to believe.

(I forgot to erase the rest)

posted 12-30-2000 10:25 AM            

"The truth is, everything you are is mostly housed in that head of yours. All your emotions, thoughts, feelings can be reduced to nerve impulses and chemical reactions. There is no proof otherwise for you to be something more than your body.

So far the only excuse you have for not accepting this is that you DON'T LIKE it.

There is no proof that you are more than your physical components, that your emotions are dervied of any supernatural interventions, or that there is a God --- other than you want to believe in it."

Wrong again. There is no proof of these things, but neither is their a disproof. No scientist makes this claim in a scientific context. Its very statement are beyond the principles and methodology of science. All that is claimed by science is that the interpretations given too material events are outside the parameters of science. In otherwords, they can neither be demonstrated to be refutable or irrefutable.

posted 12-30-2000 10:34 AM            

"So far the only excuse you have for not accepting this is that you DON'T LIKE it."

Or that s/he likes something better.

Well, that can, quite simply, be said about every belief we adopt, including a faith in science. We like the elegance of science. We like how it's models seem to explain much (but not all) of physical existence. We like that it is applied through technology.

We (historically speaking) also liked the systems that served us well before science. Just as someday, after we have evolved further, we may like some metaphysical system that explains physical reality (and perhaps other things) even better than science does.

Science is as premised on what principles we like as everything else.

posted 12-30-2000 10:40 AM            

quote:

---

Originally posted by francescoassisi:
No scientist can discount the existence of spirituality. That doesn't mean that spirituality is something in and of itself distinct and apart from human experience. It only means that it is distinct and apart from science, and as such, inappropriate to its hypotheses.

.... because spirituality is a subjective claim. Unlike science, it doesn't demand a peer-review or consistent standards, it is merely the free-willed imaginative perceptions of its host. To even compare subjective emotive imaginations to objective standards is ludicrous. The real ludicrous part of all is that you would try to downplay the role of science and its accomplishments, of all things, on the internet!!! That's irony... Using science to discredit science!! LOL... Trust me, I'm laughing on this end.

[quote]Science is also based on a metaphysical first principle: that there is a human reality that is shared and demonstrable upon demand. But there is no way to prove this as a truth, and most scientists will not even try to.

---

This metaphysical truth is called materialism, for material realism. The reason why it's so popular because nothing has come along to sufficiently replace it. Material realism is the answer for indoor plumbing, automobiles, computers, clothes, and just about everything else that makes a safe and happier world to live in. This is a metaphysical truth because we live it everyday; we don't need to assume what might be or what could be better.

quote:

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Heisenberg later showed how the experiments of science in and of themselves create their own reality, a reality which cannot be claimed to exist outside the conceptual model of science. In other words, that science establishes no reality but that of itself. Science is an artificial construct relevant only to its own rules -- rules which have no relevance apart from human societies who consent to them.

---

What you are referring to, I have to assume, are scientific models of how the world works. Of course science speaks its own language; it has to. Descartes wanted a separation of the orthodoxy of the Church so that there can be discerning lines between the subjective needs of the community and that which exists outside us in an objective world. Proper study and methodology is required to do this. Only someone without the capacity to understand this or the mature concentration skills to dive into this world would dare dispute its necessity. 'Nuff said.

quote:

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I'll finish by saying that Science is a mythological language and model of the world like every other human language and model. That doesn't mean it's true or false, but that it is a structure of meaning that is wholly human and not real unto itself, apart from humans.

This is the dumbest part, I have to admit. If Humans create science, then how is it apart from Humans? I already agreed it is a separate language - but Humans, on this planet, invented it. Man, that was dumb.

[quote][b]
Science is based on values. Measurement is a value as much as an opinion is. The only difference is that it is subject to ready consent based on deduction (that is, humanly definded principles of mathematics and logic), whereas spirituality and other human systems apart from science have a much wider margin of consensus, and therefore is subject to greater variations of interpretation and dissent.

---

Good. Science is based on values. Mostly, reliability and consistency, unlike the drivelings of an individual mind which have no value but to their own host- nothing to compare it to. As community citizens of this earth we need a common way of dealing with the same things that we can all relate to... this is what science does for us. We all know that when someone lives in their own little world, irrespective of the world around them, they create their own rules of how that world should work - not necessarily wrong, just not the agreed upon version. And from here we can likely assume that different held belief about the same things can cause obstacles.

Science is a universal language to communicate what happens to us in our everyday lives. Creating and believing in your own world, believing and hoping for things simply because you want to believe them, are all irrational and irresponsible mindsets for sharing this world with each other.

Fine, you have found a group of people who are like-minded as you, so you gleen from them their perceptions of the world and find that they also want to believe they are more than their own physical parts. Well guess what... that doesn't make it anymore true that you have found people with the same needs and wants.

I suggest next time, try discrediting science writing on cave wall or something, because you will always do a poor job using a computer... And it's laughable at best.

It's even more humorous to watch your cohorts in despair, who obviously were looking for more support (as misery often does) and they come over and pat you on the shoulder --- after all this, you have only come to the same conclusion as the rest of them. You simply disagree with me, and the only thing you offer is a sorry attempt at invalidating the very thing that makes it possible for you to voice your subjective opinion.

posted 12-30-2000 10:49 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by francescoassisi:
[QUOTE]There is no proof of these things, but neither is their a disproof. No scientist makes this claim in a scientific context. In otherwords, they can neither be demonstrated to be refutable or irrefutable.

---

Remember, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It's not up to the person who doesn't believe in something to disprove it. It's up to the person with a positive claim to provide proof for something. THAT IS THE REASON why science chooses not to delve in that area, because there is no proof and no logical reason to suppose something just because someone believes in it. For some reason that dumb response always makes it into discussions like this.

quote:

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Neither is anything stated in science as a truth: that we have a material presence is merely stated as a hypothesis verified by a consensus of human experience. To state anything in science as an inductive truth is largely regarded as reckless and irresponsible, and hence unscientific.

---

Like I said, science is the best tool we have. And we have collectively, as a human population, welcomed it into our homes because it is the best tool we have for figuring out how the world works.

Material Realism, unlike Spirituality, is deductive - because we can take what we do and see everyday and define it.

posted 12-30-2000 10:52 AM            

quote:

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Faith; noun. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel."
-Ambrose Bierce

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posted 12-30-2000 11:05 AM            

2. Again: there is no use of the term "truth" in science. There are only "truth functions," applicable in discussing the logical basis (not material basis) of the principles of science. And there is certainly no "metaphysical truth" called materialism posited in science. There is a material basis to science that is agreed to by consensus, after the intersubjective features of that materiality are agreed on.

This material basis, by the way, does not resemble the "material world" of common experience, and usually it is referred to more often as the physics of science. Materialism is not accepted by all scientists, especially those in psychology or those who place an emphasis on the phenomenolgical interpretation of data.

3. When I referred to Heisenberg, I was not referring to what you describe. I was referring to his widely accepted (within the scientific community) theory that in setting up a scientific experiment, the physical reality is altered, and therefore the experiment cannot ever conclusively be inferred as an instance of reality as it ordinarily occurs. In other words: Science is determined by humans who alter the world they wish to study in its unaltered state. In further other words: Unaltered states of the world apart from human presence can never be described by science because science itself alters them.

As for:

*pat on head* Run along now..."

This arrogant and crude dismissal reveals what science really is for you. Not simply a tool for making life better for all humans, but a tool to be use for your own aggrandizement. In other words: an elite knowledge whose principles, left obscure to the masses, raises you above the masses so you will no longer feel inferior to them or insecure when among them.

As such, you misuse science to dismiss those ideas THAT YOU DON'T LIKE. You use science to bully people into buying into your ideology, not to liberate the creative forces within people as they see fit to use them in their own lives.

posted 12-30-2000 11:24 AM            

Deductive systems are invented by humans: logic and mathemtics are deductive. To some extent a language is deductive. All that means is that the rules precede the system (at least in its formalization). All mathematics are deduced from the principles of math that humans define.

Inductive systems are those projected by humans onto our experience of the physical world as we know it through the senses. The rules come after the experience.

Only deductive knowledge can be proven. But it can only be proven because we made the definitions which prove it.

Inductive systems can never be proven. Because our experiences of the world are all subjective, and the comparison of those experiences (which is the intersubjective, or what used to be called the objective) can never be demonstrated to be one and the same. You cannot get into the experience of another person, at least not in any scientific way.

Materialism is an inference from our experience. As such, it cannot be proven. It can only be shown to be shared by people who have the same faculties of sense. Hence it can never be called a truth.

posted 12-30-2000 11:34 AM            

I agree, but only in the interpretation and use of physical things that we all agree exist.

It is not the best tool for other things, however. And you don't have to enter a spiritual model to see this. It cannot function well in matters of politics, ethics, law, social relations, art, or even things like economy and human language. Whenever people have tried to impose science on these systems, there has been little achieved but tyranny.

Hence science has no place in spiritual or metaphysical discussions, unless you want to build a spiritual model on a scientific (physical) model of the world. This, by the way, is something I like doing. But I never impose it on other people's world views, because I realize that even science is but an ideology, however prominent it may be.

posted 12-30-2000 01:28 PM            

You like pithy authoritative citations, I see, so here are some from the foremost authorities in science and theory bolstering my views as stated here earlier. Try them on.

"Science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may be expressed by an image: Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."
-- Albert Einstein (Science and Religion, 1939)

When the founders of quantum physics gathered in 1952, they had a conversation about metaphysics, God, and the soul. here is part of it:

When Wolfgang Pauli asked Werner Heisenberg if he believed in a personal God, he responded: "May I rephrase your question? Can you or anyone else reach the central order of things or events, whose existence seems beyond doubt, as directly as you can reach the soul of another human being? I am using the term �soul� quite deliberately so as not to be misunderstood. If you would put your question like that, I would say yes."

Pauli then asked: "Why did you use the word �soul� and not speak simply of another person?"

"Precisely because the word �soul� refers to the central order, to the inner core of a being whose outer manifestations may be highly diverse and pass our understanding."
-- Werner Heisenberg (Physics and Beyond, 1971)

Science is not a system of certain or well-established statements; nor is it a system which steadily advances toward a state of finality. Our science is not knowledge: it can never claim to have attained truth, or even substitute for it, such as probability. yet science has more than mere biological survival value. It is not only a useful instrument. Although it can attain neither truth nor probability, the striving for knowledge and the search for truth are still the strongest motives of scientific discovery. We do not know: we can only guess. And our guesses are guided by the unscientific, the metaphysical (though biologically explicable) faith in laws, in regularities which we can uncover.
-- Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery, 1936)

Today most scientists would agree with Popper that theories are never really confirmed by experiment, but can at best survive from one test to the next, remaining hostage to possible disproof tomorrow.
-- Timothy Ferris (The Ways of Science, in The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy, and Mathematics, 1991)

We create an array of mathematical structures, symmetries, and patterns, and then force the world into this mould because we find it so compelling.
-- John D. Barrow (The World Within the World, 1988)

And if you want to get more subtle, roman 74:

In light of this basic principle of mythic metaphor we can grasp and understand what is commonly called the metaphorical function of language. . . [which] governs and characterizes all human talk . . . and is not just a certain development of speech, but must be regarded as one of its essential conditions . . . For in this realm of thought there is no abstract denotations; every word is immediately transformed into a concrete mythical figure, a god or demon. Any sense impression, no matter how vague, if it be fixed and held in language, may thus become a starting point for the conception and denotation of a god.
--Ernst Cassirer (Language and Myth,1923)

The temptation to look for criteria is a species of the more general temptation to think of the world, or the human self, as possessing an intrinsic nature, an essence. That is, it is the result of the temptation to privilege some one among the many languages in which we habitually describe the world or ourselves. As long as we think that there is some relation called "fitting the world" or "expressing the real nature of the self" which can be possessed or lacked by vocabularies as wholes, we shall continue the traditional philosophical search for a criterion to tell us which vocabularies have this desirable feature. But if we could ever become reconciled to the idea that most of reality is indifferent to our descriptions of it, and that the human self is created by the use of a vocabulary rather than being adequately or inadequately expressed in a vocabulary, then we should at least have assimilated what was true in the Romantic idea that truth is made rather than found. What is true about this claim is just that "languages" are made rather than found, and that truth is a property of linguistic entities, of sentences.
-- Richard Rorty (Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 1989)

The thing (in the world) itself is a "sign"...it concerns the concept of the sign and the manifestation of presence, the relationship between the re-presentation and the originary presentation of the thing itself (truth)...The so-called `thing itself' is always already a "representation" shielded from the simplicity of intuitive evidence. The "representation" functions only by giving rise to an "interpretation" that itself becomes a sign and so on to infinity. . . . From the moment that there is meaning there are nothing but signs. "We think only in signs."
-- Jacques Derrida (Of Grammatology, 1967)

Categories like "the natural" and the "everyday" are not essential but conventional. They refer not to properties of the world but to properties of the world as it is given to us by our interpretive assumptions....[Take] evidence: it is always a function of what it is to be evidence for, and is never independently available. That is, the interpretation determines what will count as evidence for it, and the evidence is able to be picked out only because the interpretation has "already" been assumed.
-- Stanley Fish (Is There A Text In This Class?, 198-)

No theory ever solves all the puzzles with which it is confronted at a given time....If there were but one set of scientific problems, one world within which to work on them, and one set of standards for their solutions, paradigm competition might be settled more or less routinely by some process like counting the number of problems solved by each. But, in fact, these conditions are never met completely. The proponents of competing paradigms are always at least slightly at cross-purposes. Neither side will grant all the non-empirical assumptions that the other needs in order to make its case....Though each may hope to convert the other to his way of seeing science and its problems, neither may hope to prove his case. The competition between paradigms is not the sort of battle that can be resolved by proofs.
--Thomas S. Kuhn (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962)

And thank god for this one:

Don�t be too hard on me. Everyone has to sacrifice at the altar of stupidity from time to time, to please the Deity and the human race.
-- Albert Einstein (in a letter to Max Born, 1920)

posted 12-30-2000 02:19 PM            

Besides, the work of digging up quotes I did years ago for a talk I gave at Columbia University on nomadic shifts in critical theory.