Religion Vs. Philisophy

I can dig this. But you gotta stand up for your own experience. You don't have to obviously, but it can be inspiring.

 

Thing is China, nothing I could say will make any difference to people who have already made their minds up that spirituality is a non-existent thing.

I don't see it as my role in life to try to convince others of my own views. If someone wants to believe it's all based on the material, there is no spirit, no soul and the rest, it's their life, their decision. And IMO their loss.

I'm happy to talk about all this stuff up to a point, and if people are interested, well and good. If they're not, there's nothing to be done. Or not by me anyway.

 

Well, technically one only got to have an interest in sharing thoughts, ideas and beliefs without any other motive than taking notice of them. If people can do that without the urge to point out they are right and the other wrong (and let that overrule any convo) it could already be the opposite of a waste of time.
I agree having an interest in what the spirit is according to others makes a more productive, fun and interesting convo partner than one who has merely an interest in taking notice of them in order to debunk the concept.
That being said: not seeing any use in the concept of spirit or regard any form of spirituality as processes of the mind is not wrong or invalid at all (naturally). It is just so that if one would only be rejecting and denouncing other people's most sincere personal spiritual experiences for that reason then there's little point indeed

 

Let me give another example, although it isn't a complete parallel.

If I posted something about classical music, let's say Bach, and someone replies that they hate classical music, don't listen to it now, and never intend to do so in the future, there wouldn't be much point in my insisting that Bach's well tempered clavier is of fundamental importance in the development of the western musical style and technique. It would probably be better to say OK, that's your decision, and leave it at that. Maybe one day, they'll get the wax out of their ears and change their mind. But there's nothing at all I could do to convince them.

If it was a person who likes Mozart,but who was ready to consider Bach's greatness, I might have an interesting exchange.

 

It sounds like you are suggesting once you're pushed out of your comfort zone and faced with any challenging conflicting ideas, it is best to refrain from any further analysis. That would appear you have your mind made up as well if that's what you're suggesting. Perhaps preclusion to other ideas is a part of life experiences.

 

Rebirth in Buddhism is the doctrine that the evolving consciousness(Pali: samvattanika-viññana)[1][2] or stream of consciousness (Pali:viññana-sotam,[3] Sanskrit: vijñāna-srotām, vijñāna-santāna, or citta-santāna) upon death (or "the dissolution of the aggregates" (P.khandhas, S. skandhas)), becomes one of the contributing causes for the arising of a new aggregation. The consciousness in the new person is neither identical nor entirely different from that in the deceased but the two form a causal continuum or stream.
In traditional Buddhist cosmologythese lives can be in any of a large number of states of being including the human, any kind of animal and several types of supernatural being.

 

Maybe it is. But it would work both ways as regards this topic. The materialist wants to exclude ideas about spirit and all that is connected with it. The spiritually inclined person obviously rejects materialism. We already know that.

Having said that spirit is incommunicable by words, what would then be the point in seeking to explain it in words? I see only a pointless waste of time. If people want to think it's all mind only, they're free to think that so far as I'm concerned.

 

I'm relatively sure that this pragmatic separation of various religions into useful building blocks was not commonplace before 1960.

Point to ponder: If you could get a thousand intellectual scholars to agree that this division is not legitimate, but ten million ordinary people decide they're going to do it anyway, who really won the debate? I'm just guessing at numbers, but that's our basic situation. This is going on with Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and to some extent, liberal Christianity.

 

I would think that a true non materialist person would not even have a computer.........or anything but the basics to live.......
I am certainly not materialistic really......as i could live without most things that I have to house, clean, care for, etc....material objects can be burdensome......but....there always is a happy balance, too.......

 

Well first off it is including the notions that Consciousness can occupy Supernatural Beings. Just thought I would mention that.

Secondly, it's still implying that a Consciousness is continuing on and surviving death. If it isn't, then how can it be said that the passing away consciousness effects the birth of a new human? And how exactly does it do this anyway?

 

I think a true non-materialist simply doesn't recognize the boundary between the mind and matter. There really is nothing materialistic about owning a computer. It's not really something distinct from what you are. We are the universe observing itself, and we can't own or disown ourselves. Materialism is when you start saying you're better than someone else because you own a computer. It's all about attitude.

 

Well obviously if they exist they would be "natural". Supernatural doesn't necessarily mean non-natural. It's more of an extension of the natural.

This question of "what do you mean by Consciousness?" is the same question that somebody asked Writer earlier by "what do you mean by Spirit?"...there are countless answers to that question potentially, so we don't need to go there for the moment.

I'm just posting what the Buddhist tenets are.

 

We were discussing materialism in the philosophical sense not the consumer, buyer sense. Although, I think the first sentence you say is pretty amusing regardless, as say the anti-materialist that goes on a forum like this is reliant on a material medium to express a significant portion of their ideas.

 

Your first link has a common mistake--it says that if a scientist looks for a wave, it uses a wave detector. This is important because it plays into the problem of your second link. There is no wave detector---unless you refer to the double slits itself-----this experiment was originally done in the 1800's and it naturally produced an interference pattern, which is how scientists first knew that light existed as a wave. It wasn't until later when they began to understand the piezo-electric effect that they realized light must also exist as a particle, and then at some point tried to measure it as it moved through the double slits creating the measurement problem---the problem of a conscious observer. That is the only measurment is when the scientists measures the particles creating a probability wave collapse.

Your second link tried to debunk the idea of an observer by arguing decoherence--which is the only logical answer. The author admitted that he (or she) did not know how the actual measurement took place indicating that he was making assumptions based on what would seem to be apparent--that, "...the detector itself must brutally interact" with the particle. This is a difficult problem, because on the one hand, it is true that the detector itself could create decoherence causing the wave to collapse to a single particle. The problem is that the wave represents a superposition, meaning that there is no position, and yet it is in all infinite possible positions at the same time---which also means that the double slit itself would then create the same decoherence, because the wave is split in two and wherever the wave is hitting in between the slits should create the same decoherence thus preventing the interference pattern entirely. But the interference pattern still happens.

This is exactly why I said in another thread recently that scientists have a very hard time accepting what is really happening here. The immediate response was---no they don't (in fact, was that what you told me?). But this is what I was talking about. Experiment after experiment is done to try to change what happens---but it doesn't change. Yes, many scientists long ago gave up on the idea of an observer---as this blogwriter claimed---not because they had proof, but because it was just too weird for them, and it threatens the materialistic dogma of science. This is also why I also said in that same thread that we need philosophers to get with the times and approach this problem.

The blogwriter is correct---there is no actual direct observation by the scientist. But this is what makes it even more strange---because the impliaction is, as I have said, that the wave collapse happens because the scientist is aware of a reality--his conscious awareness--even after the fact, is what causes the probability wave collapse to happen. This means that it is too easy for scientists to try to find another explanation because of the idea of how could he affect it if he didn't even see it directly. Again---this is the problem of the mind reaching out, or having a non-local impact.

However---there was a double slit experiment that was done where the measurements were done randomly, and there was no record maintained of the results---in other words, there were measurements without any chance of conscious observation. This means that if the decoherence argument is correct then we would have still seen a double slit pattern everytime a particle was measured even though we did not know it was being measured. This did not happen. Instead there was only a continuous interference pattern. This suggests that a conscious observation in these experiments---or to be more exact---a conscious awareness or belief---must happen in order for the probability wave collapse to occur.

Materialist scientists are as defensive about their dogma as are fundamentalist Christians of their dogma. I think it is suspiciously strange that there are not more experiments like this one to determine if it is simply a matter of decoherence---and I am always looking for one. And for that matter, such discussions fail to account for the results of this latter experiment. I am trying to find more information on this particular experiment but even that seems to be swept under the rug.

However, while the blogwriter said that most scientists have long ago abandoned the idea of an observer, the fact is prominent physicists such as Brian Greene (author of The Fabric of the Cosmos), and Fred Allan Wolf have not.

Then there is the problem of the recent proof of the Zeno Effect, which was done using radioactive material----which naturally goes through continuous decoherence, but still decays at a normal rate. (just as I mentioned in my previous post on this).

 

Oh---I forgot to mention---the fact that decoherence can occur in the double slit experiment without changing the interference pattern (such as the portion of the wave that lands between the slits, or whether or not the detector causes a change or not by detecting a particle) is suggective proof of phenomenalism----but that is a whole new can of worms---and I won't hijack this thread to go down that avenue...

 

Then there was the rebellion of the youth in the 60's and 70's------breaking away from the status quo and the traditional Christian values of their parents.