I’d go further and say the OP has a fundamental misunderstanding on what evolution is. Evolution isn’t a guideline that takes you from one place to another. No species is evolving towards a goal.
Evolution is a reaction to the environment. Species evolved to detect light because light was there to be detected. If species haven’t evolved to detect spiritual forces, it’s evidence that those forces haven’t existed. There’s no reason why these spiritual forces would have waited around for millions of years until human beings came along. Primordial species would have used them, just as they used other natural phenomena like light and sound.
Yes, and furthermore it would be very remarkable that this force is only detectable by one, and only one, biological species, but not by any instruments or other technical means. Heck, we just measured the very tiny effects of gravitational waves which originated 1.3 billion lightyears away, but we cannot detect these spiritual forces that our physiology allegedly can? I call bullshit.
And I believe there have been scientific studies of what goes on in the brain during these experiences - which could be the same thing that goes on during “natural” spiritual experiences. That’s real science. Saying that these experiences map into anything outside the brain is another matter.
And this is why you still have very far to travel. You’re starting out with the idea that there is an unfiltered reality to look at. But this is an error. There are only different filters, always and forever. The danger of spirituality (as with religion) is that it encourages its practitioners to define truth as that which is in accord with their unexamined filter. It is a self-congratulatory epistemological box.
Evolution has no urges. It is only your spiritual filter that is imposing that self-serving frame upon it.
The first step on your journey should be abandoning the notion of “true nature” either for yourself or the universe. You have no “true nature” and if you think you do it’s because you have become so committed to one particular filter that you can no longer conceive of other ways of conceiving. Run from truth! It is an epistemological trap!
Well, I knew already that teleological philosophy is sniffed at nowadays, but I didn’t think it was because it was garbage. I’m a little angry at the notion that all natural philosophy prior to…who’s your boy: Darwin, Newton, or Bacon?..all of it - is simply to be heaved overboard as irrelevancy born of ignorance. Them old folks sure figured they’d got the world pretty well figured out, hadn’t they, but later, it turned out they were all wrong, bound by their prejudices and limited ability (and technology) to do proper scientific investigation. Sucks to be them.
But WE, now, THAT’S a whole different matter. See, WE’VE got the tools and the talent. WE know the true score. Only a few more particles to discover, or waves to sense - just a few more - and it’ll all balance out into the Unified Theory, and science can close up shop. And I swear I can hear the scientists in 3016 laughing their asses off.
Here’s a suggestion: If you want to turn your nose up at modern science, quit using sciency terms when trying describe whatever it is you’re trying to describe.
Missed the edit window. I’ve already said I’m not a scientist, and so I’m guessing that what I said, especially the last paragraph - will be explained to me with a pat on my poor little head. But the point is not to demonstrate my ignorance - I got it. The point is: why are we seemingly so sure we are right, or on the right track, or using the right methods, simply because we are in the now, as opposed to the past? I’ve got news for you: we are already the past; we just don’t realize it yet. I’m pretty sure that the Internet, and a cellphone to access it, would have been inconceivable to Aristotle or Aquinas (I hope I’m right about that, at least!). My question is, whatisinconceivabletoyou, right now, in 2016? You cannot even know.
O.K. I can’t address everyone’s reactions satisfactorily for two main reasons. The first is that I don’t have time, and the second is that I know I’m out of my depth. I have tried to say so, in so many words, in several posts. I never wanted to sweep away all before me in a mighty burst of intellectual brilliance; I didn’t wan’t to “win.” I wanted to enjoy reading intelligent people discussing the relationship that exists between, or the antagonism that exists between, science and what we have been referring to as “spirituality.” Apparently, I was wishing for the impossible; intelligent people apparently realize that “spirituality” is either a term void of content, or an ignorance to be fought, or a cancer that must be cut out of the human race to avoid the senseless bloodshed of holy war, or some grotesque combination of all three; therefore, discussing these two facets of the totality of human experience is a pointless exercise. Science rules; spirituality drools.
The whole problem, I see now, was my posting in the wrong forum. This could never be a Great Debate - just some Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share. I’m just wondering why a moderator hasn’t whisked it off to there yet. You win.
I don’t reject the possibility that “spirituality” is awesome – and that someone like unto the sea creature that can perceive light would be able to perceive something spiritual which I happen to be blind to.
I merely note that, were someone to claim they see what I can’t, I’d put them to the test. I note this because, being color-blind, that’s what I actually do when people make claims about something I happen to be blind to.
To the extent that spirituality is like light, I’m like the blind sea creature: I freely grant that a claimant might be telling the truth about something wondrous and valuable; and I treat that claim like I treat every other such claim.
We’re not, and this is a specious line of argumentation.
Your position is where you wind up if you start from the idea that there are knowable absolute truths. (It’s not uncommon for people to start out with such an idea because its been popular in the West for thousands of years, from Platonism to Scholasticism to Logical Positivism.) If you ground your epistemology in the notion that absolute truth is knowable, and then observe that it isn’t known currently, then this seems to open the window to any imaginable possibility. OMG, maybe spiritualism is TRUE because we haven’t PROVED that it’s false!
But the problem here isn’t with our knowledge of the universe but your conception of what constitutes knowledge. If you start with the idea that all knowledge is provisional and embodied in human brains and experience, then the window you’ve opened slams shut. Knowledge is not a matter of knowing the truth about what IS, it’s a matter of producing internally-consistent explanations for what we EXPERIENCE. So we don’t need to hypothesize a spiritual sense because such an explanation is unnecessary to account for our current lived experience. And if some future time comes where it does become necessary, then we will abandon our current provisional understanding and construct a new one to take spiritualism into account.
The OP has floated the idea that “spirituality” is an external, ‘real’ force that humanity has failed to detect via science, but yet is capable of detection/interaction with by some ‘special’ people via personal magic, or something. This notion is roundly mocked because science is all about studying what humans are interacting with. Since its very origin science has been taking notes on spiritualist claims and looking to find consistency and patterns in them. And for all this time the spiritualists have utterly failed to paint a consistent picture of any otherworldly force they’re supposedly interacting with, and additionally have consistently achieved spectacular failure every time they claim to be able to use their magic do things to the physical world. Which they claim all the time. And fail all the time.
Thus, any rational person would conclude that either there are no spirits, or they’re deliberately screwing with us because they’re jerks. And with the hundred years of terrible track record, the supposed spirits are way too good at consistently not existing to plausibly exist even in theory.
So that’s one thing. On the other hand Stoneburg is proselytizing for something in walls of text I’m not eternal enough to spend the time reading, but is massively defensive about it to the point of not wanting to talk about it. Um, okay. Personally I suspect that he’s making a mountain out of a molehill - in my experience ‘advanced philosophical spirituality’ mostly amounts to mellowing out a lot, changing your tastes so you’re cool with not having fun things, and entertaining yourself with the mental (or pharmaceutical) equivalent of pressing on your eyeballs so you can see the funny flashes of color. Oh, and taking these supposedly enlightened practices and selling them to people for lots of money, that happens a lot too.
So regarding the OP, no, I seriously don’t think there’s any real thing out there that the human body could evolve to detect that hasn’t already been detected by science. In fact if humanity did naturally develop any new senses it probably would be because of science, indirectly; there was little reason for humans to sense radio waves in the past but nowadays it would sort of beneficial to evolve a way to psychically pirate wifi. Give or take the fact that anybody with that mutation would just Netflix and chill instead of breeding, which would be the end of that. Regardless physical evolution is pretty slow; science is going to cut it off at the pass by implanting receivers in our heads anyway.
And regarding Stoneburg, I ask him: Suppose I’m already content playing computer games and netflix-and-chilling. Having established that your type of spiritualism is purely mental, why should I abandon my content life to pursue it? What benefits could it offer? (Note: zenning me out so much I quit my job and starve in the street is not a benefit.)
They might lead to what some call “peak” experiences (if not mere addiction or mental breakdowns), but they might not lead to a new permanent plateau of understanding. Note that it isn’t just about seeing a bunch of cool patterns swirling around behind your eyeballs that make you go “Wow!”, but about finding peace and equanimity, a higher moral perspective, and a number of other things that have very little to do with psychic fireworks.
This is brand new-we as a species now have the chance to consciously direct our own evolution, be it mental, cultural, or even physical (if you want to go into gene splicing). At that point you may no longer wish to call it “evolution,” per se, but that makes our species unique I’d say.
That’s true of ANY belief system. [And very soon someone will undoubtedly chime in with “Materialism isn’t a filter!” At that point I will likely chime out.]
The problem with this attitude - and I see it a lot - is that it ignores the progress we’ve made. Of course we don’t know everything. Of course it’s possible that some things we think we know could turn out to be wrong.
BUT WE DO KNOW SOME THINGS. We know a LOT of things, in fact, and we know a lot of things that we didn’t used to know. That’s not arrogance. It’s not closemindedness. It’s a simple fact. We haven’t just been wasting our time over the last few centuries. We can’t just hand-wave all that away with “oh, but how can we be SURE??”