Is There Any Room For God In Modern Science?

You are all of the atoms that make up you....you have your own memories, feelings, experiences.....perspectives....etc....your own fingerprint that is different than anyone else's, as does everyone.

 

Just so. But as you said earlier 'search your souls and inner being for the answer'. It's this inner being that interests me.

 

I'm not going to download a pdf, is there a related article?

 

Do you feel your inner you?

 

Sometimes I feel more deeply centred in myself. Can't say much more than that.

 

LSD has a pharmacological effect on the brain and nervous system, senses are still very much involved.

 

LSD has an effect at 5ht2a serotonin receptor subtype, partial agonism at D2 dopamine receptor, action at a few other 5htxx receptor sites, pupil dialation, etc. This Definitely all falls within the realm of "senses addressed by Science." One of the obstacles science will face if they pursue psychedelic research again on humans after the ~40 year hiatus as I see it, is how the compounded mechanisms of action work to give unique affects to particular psychedelics and in varying doses.

For instance, An effect like this:

May be more common on one psychedelice compared to another, regardless it Is not beyond the senses. It may be considered a novel experience of senses, but it is a condition which some people are born with and experience regardless of having ever touched LSD in their life.


The phenomenology and 'qualia' of a psychedelic experience may reside outside of science, surely will be for anytime in the foreseeable future and probably is best relegated to a philosophical perspective, however the argument could be made, the same goes for the experience of eating a salad for instance or any experience where it requires first person recounting of the phenomena.

 

been there, done that and I agree completely

 

By the way, I have experienced high doses of all these drugs...

And I completely understand how a particular trip can take one to a level of experience that seems completely unrelated to the experiential processess of our minds and bodies in normal sober consciousness, however that qualifier in the Ketamine bit pretty much sums it up, you get to a certain dose on these trips and you may lose consciousness as well.

 

Great post Meagain.

Here's the problem I see. There's little doubt that many people, self included, say they have had what can loosely be called mystical experiences under the effects of LSD. Others say they have taken lots of it and experienced nothing of the kind.
No amount of argument or discussion is likely to produce any change of mind in either side.

There are probably differing reasons for different people's response to LSD. The mind set of the individual is obviously key. I don't think it's a question of dosage, or many repetitions of the experience. For some, acid is spiritual from their first session. Others never seem to get to the levels of experience you talk about.

The convinced atheist will probably say it's simply an illusion, whilst their own experiences presumably are valid.

I can't see any way around this, and I expect the arguments will go on and on.

 

So what happens when someone you are acting as psychedelic sitter for has an experience of some form of union with god, or some other aspect in which you don't believe? Do you try to convince them their experience is incorrect?

 

So they are similar on the basis that they are both methodologies. You could say that any practice is a methodology like a boy throwing a rubber ball against a wall and catching the retort. A good method for improving hand eye coordination or a good method for whiling the time away. Scientific method is used and the scientist has a use for it. So the question is there any room for god in science depends on the scientists desired aim. The religious methodologies come with projected outcomes. Specifically the advertised projected outcome of christ teaching is coming to satisfying
accord with your own subjective estate. ( come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.) Buddhist methodology, the elimination of suffering, et,all. Now if your advertised result is persistently achieved we might say it is a scientifically accurate effort as the theoretical projection becomes the test result.

I have found that semantics oft times presents solutions to the questions at hand and are in fact necessary when dealing with such issues as is god appropriate, i.e. what do you mean by god.

 

Unless I am misunderstanding you, you are presenting the psychedelic experience as if you cross a certain threshold in dose, your consciousness is for lack of a better word 'magnetized' to the absolute state where you sense of identity dissolves and you are not aware of senses. How are you aware there is any phenomena going on without senses?

The point with Ketamine I'm making, is that if you take enough of it, it can literally knock you out where you do actually lose your senses but without any awareness, (which I'm guessing is different than the nothing/void in the description) you are just out cold. There is anecdotal evidence blacking out with every single one of these psychedelics as well, so how do we account for the spectrum from mystical experience to blacking out to flavor of experience that reside in between? For instance, LSD and Salvia are pretty much different as day and night, as different to each other as they are to sober consciousness except maybe in terms of mind altering magnitude.


I try to be careful with magical thinking but I have gone so far to suggest that if nanotechnology ever gets sophisticated enough for use in clinical studies, that there should somehow be an attempt to project DMT experiences participants have. It is the one psychedelic that I am most convinced by of prompting a free standing dimensionality filled with intelligence(s) of some sort. That would likely require it to be made legal and significant advancements in all fields involved to perform such a study.


Even with the same drug BlackBillBlake basically addressed the point...

Although I disagree with the last part here. I've tripped with people who are religious and have flat out trivialized psychedelic experiences.

I don't necessarily dismiss people's transcendent psychedelic experiences as 'illusion' but at the same time, many phenomena in the past which has been regarded as "holy" or "divine" have turned out to have naturalistic explanations. I keep that in mind and It doesn't make much sense to me that "God" waited until the middle of the 20th century to out itself in the form of some chemical which is only utilized by a minority of the population of a single species on the planet.

 

My ecstatic experiences have been both associated with chemical additions and spontaneously as the result of intense personal practices. My only experiences of a free standing dimension filled with intelligence has been in the throws of emotional intensity, not psychedelics, and consisted of sights, sounds, conversations, and up to date and evolving relevance to everyday life and my particular interests. That have not appeared predictably but appear as a predictable quality. These appearances are usually counted as hallucinations by mundane versions of consciousness. I can best describe the experiences as lucid day dreams in that obviously my own consciousness is fully involved to the extent that nothing else enters my attention at that point. Curiously the things said to me by them have the effect of surprising me with novel perspectives, things I hadn't considered before. I can't tell if my own consciousness is just wildly entertaining itself or if an entity is in fact there. The entity remains mysterious in that I only sense of it what it reveals. I saw a blond haired guy in a hawaiian print shirt but I don't consider that appearance to be relevant. What I think transpires is that this informative thing communicates with you in a form that you can definitely recognize, you get the message, and that form seems to be intensely personal.

 

What if the answer, in this moment, is "I don't know, and you don't know, and now you never will"? Does that mean that Thor lives in the sky? Does that mean that there is an intelligent creator of the universe, because you aren't able to retroactively diagnose a health concern you had? Medicine is still stumbling in the dark in many ways, and we don't know a lot.

Resist the god of the gaps argument.

If Thor is real, as some Norse seem to believe, then clearly it could come from a hammer blow. How is this different from what you said?

Btw, I'm buddhist, and I don't believe in reincarnation. It's a bit like saying "All christians believe in the holy trinity"; that's not true, only a particular subset do, catholics.

Only those buddhists who choose to believe in the metaphysical doctrine of reincarnation, will believe in it. I don't, and neither do many alive today. It is not central to what buddhism is about. Trying to conflate buddhism with metaphysical doctrines is a weak rhetorical angle and a non-sequitor.

Yes, it does, with zero indication that anything "spooky" is going on.

I have experienced spontaneous healing; I would say it is a hallmark of the psychedelic experience. I feel like in your mind, the subtext to that statement is "....therefore god is real and the jews are the chosen people". You can take potshots at me but you haven't addressed any of the real and valid points I've brought to your attention and it's disappointing, because it seems you too are unable to show me the money.

Just to be clear, almost every single experience I've had with LSD can be described as mystical, transcendental, spiritual, etc. Do you think I'm sitting in lotus position chanting "there is no god, praise science" when I trip? I have the exact same experiences as anybody else with a nervous system who ingests LSD. The difference is what logical conclusions I draw from it.

I have had my ego shattered into crystal droplets, while pouring out onto the universe on DPT, I've swam in galactic waters as my mind expanded to enfold the local supercluster on ketamine, I've felt the thunder of the cellular drums and the pull of their rhythm on DMT, I've ridden the currents of the first protons on heroic 2c-e doses . . . I've experienced states of being which a less flexible vocabulary would have no choice but to call "Touching god" or "being god". Almost every damn time, too. They are quite predictable. Almost as if there's something psychopharmacological happening

That doesn't mean that any system of theism is correct

 

and therein lies 75% of the problem, your assumptions concerning me or anyone who makes the slightest suggestion of acceptance or belief in anything Christianity believes or teaches.

You adopt a very arrogant and condescending attitude to anyone who professes any type of religious belief, until you can get past those assumptions and preconceptions, there is little progress to be made.
I'm not saying my position is correct nor am I saying yours isn't, just trying to get you to see your own errors in considering these topics.

In another thread you made claims that your knowledge of Abrahamic religions was more than sufficient to take the authoritative position you present.
Problem is time and again you illustrate the exact opposite, for example you and many other here are really keen to bring up crap from the old testament and apply it to modern Christianity.
But, according to the beliefs of this religion you claim such knowledge of, Christians are NOT bound by/to the OT law whatsoever at all.
As I told you elsewhere, when Jesus proclaimed "it is finished" as his dying words he was talking about the fulfillment and completion of the Old Testament law and prophecies.
Therefore every time you make some juvenile remark like Christians need to get to work on stonings and similar asinine remarks, all you are doing is illustrating your complete ignorance of the topic.

Have you ever even read the entire book or even just the NT?

Now I'm not trying to convince you of a damn thing at all, just illustrating you don't really know what you are talking about so maybe tone down the authoritative attitude.

you say I shy from addressing your points, no, I just see little point in regurgitating the same tired bullshit about evolution, which you may be surprised to hear I have no problem with accepting at all. It's a pretty good schema for the development of life, but does not in and of itself negate the possibility of a creator.
You want to point to it as some solid foundation for the toppling of Christianity and it simply isn't.

As I have said numerous times, your arguments only stand juxaposed against the most meager and pop-culture representation of the religion which has little to do with the meat and potatoes of it.

 

Nor does it mean any system of atheism is correct.

Maybe there's some further experience yet to come.