If it is immaterial, then it has nothing whatsoever to do with the laws of physics. The most difficult aspect of discussing this issue with most materialists here is, for me, that they will not or cannot posit, even for the sake of argument, something that is not an extension of the universe at all. By thinking of the universe as everything conceivable plus everything that isn’t, no context remains in which a discussion about spirit and its nature is even possible. There are exceptions on the board, of course — materialists who will at least acknowledge the legitimacy of certain views given a different model from the one to which they cling. But there are only a couple. Maybe three. For me, the smallness of that number is sad in the same way that a theist examining materialist claims in a context of duality is sad. It is effectively an argument that says, “Only my own premises are worthy of any consideration.” And no matter what side a man is on, I say fuck that. I see no point in engaging him at all. That may include **lekatt ** on the one side, but the other side is often equally narrowminded.
I get into trouble all the time from my fellow materialists for being willing to accept the supernatural or the immaterial if there is sufficient evidence for it. At the moment everything we have reliable knowledge of seems to be governed by the laws of physics.
I’ll be happy to consider the immaterial once there is evidence for it. If that is narrow minded, I plead guilty.
As for the universe, I’d consider it what is, not what might be. So the question is whether the spirit is in the universe or not. It is certainly conceivable. that spirit does exist - but that doesn’t mean it does.
I’m speaking as someone who used to read a lot about spirits and wanted to believe. But after 40 years there is even less reason than there was when I was a kid.
ETA: BTW, calling materialism the null hypothesis is a far cry from refusing to believe in any other. Typically the goal of an experiment is to falsify the null hypothesis. So, my statement says absolutely nothing about my position on the spirit, just on what the reasonable null hypothesis was.
Please rest assured that your “we” does not include me. If it did, you and I would not disagree.
If your fellow materialists will not accept the premise that parallel lines do not intersect simply because their experience with globes has taught them differently, then they cannot solve Euclidean problems or even admit they exist.
The fact of the matter is that you and I have different evidentiary demands, but I am willing to grant you the courtesy of accepting yours tentatively in order to understand you better and you are willing to grant me the same courtesy. That they are not so willing does indeed make them narrowminded and ignorant. In your shoes, I would discount them. As the great materialist Daniel Dennett has said, “There’s nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear.”
And the most difficult thing with trying to discuss things with religionists is their insistence that the rules don’t apply to their stuff. They throw down words like ‘spirit’ or ‘immaterial’ and expect it to hold as much weight in a debate as the laws of physics.
Anything that interacts with our universe has to follow the rules of the universe insofar as it intersects it. If something doesn’t interact with this universe, then it doesn’t have to worry about the rules, but at the same time, can’t affect anything at all here.
I’m not going to say souls don’t exist, because they might we don’t know. But since we have absolutely no evidence that they exist, there’s no point in thinking they do. Insisting that just because they might and can’t prove they don’t is not a good ground to argue for them from. If you want people to think sould exist, any ‘spirit’ at all, cough up some evidence.
I warned you about starting philosophy threads on this board. It’s as if the entire branch of learning doesn’t exist. I have no idea why, but for some reason people here just don’t engage in discussions on philosophical concepts, which I still consider to be a great shame.
But he didn’t say it was his opinion. That’s the thing with lekatt. He states in no uncertain terms, over and over, that what he is posting is fact. If he just admitted it was his opinion, it wouldn’t be so damned irritating.
Why are you mixing up math and physics? And why do you think that there are no parallel lines on globes?
Math has postulates. Physics does not. Even materialism is not a postulate of physics, since it is something just provisionally accepted until sufficient evidence to the contrary is found. We clearly disagree on what counts as sufficient evidence.
I think I understand yours pretty well, and I don’t think I’ve ever said that you shouldn’t believe what you believe. I have asked questions about the universality of the experience, and the predictive value of the experience. I do say that your evidence is not the slightest bit convincing to me. However, you are one of the few people on this board whose reason for belief is fairly clear.
One problem I think is that there are many things that are very easy for us to conceive of, but which don’t necessarily exist. Life after death is one - it is far simpler to imagine our consciousness continuing than ending. Souls are another - since we feel somewhat independent of our bodies, it is not hard to think of our “I” floating around. God as a concept is pretty straightforward also, though with increasing sophistication the details have gotten less so.
There are other things that do exist but which are hard to conceive of, many of them found in quantum physics.
Religion builds a structure around many of the things we think should be true, often a consistent one. Science starts from nothing, and tries to sort out which of our concepts can be justified at our given level of knowledge and which can’t be.
I’m not. That’s what (some) materialists do. They demand empirical evidence for analytic propositions.
I never said that. What I said was that if we discount the postulate that “parallel lines do not intersect” because on globes we observe that they do, then we cannot deal with Euclidean problems because Euclidean geometry postulates that parallel lines do not intersect. (See Euclid’s Definition 23.)
Both of Einstein’s relativity theories rest on two postulates: (1) that the speed of light is constant in a vacuum, and (2) that physical laws are in every inertial frame the same. Cite.
I think it goes beyond that. We disagree on what even constitutes evidence.
Well damn you and thank you. 
Let me be clear, AGAIN. If a person chooses to offer an opinion, cool. If someone cares to hypothesize, I’m game. I WILL suspend disbelief long enough to hear out a differing point of view. I’d encourage you to read further in that thread (post 6, for instance) than the one point you’ve cited so far.
At this point, I am beginning to wonder if I am the one with the baggage. My tone with lekatt changed when, ONCE MORE, he didn’t care to offer any real evidence other than anecdote - but persisted in asserting it as Truth.
I can sympathize with the NDE idea. And an experiencer. If I died, came back with, what feels to me to be, a REAL memory of death, time after death, and even thought I remembered leaving my body… I’ll admit, I’d have a hard time shaking that. It is quintessentially emotionally compelling. And we are ALL emotional beings. Even logic requires elements of feeling. My statement of emotion was not an accusation, rather a statement that we are all in this rickety boat together.
Having said as much, we have logic for a reason - whether it’s from God, or evolution, or some other source - we have to admit it is a VERY useful tool. I don’t think I need to cast it aside…
As a side note - I have a very deep belief that the human brain lies to us all the time. Our intuitions are remarkably well adapted to work within the frame that 99.9% of life creates. And those same intuitions… those same certainties are built on, very often, what seem to be illusions. Helpful ones, but I don’t see proof of many things: free will, soul, spirit, etc. I experience them all the time. It’s just called being alive. I can no sooner shake the illusion of free will than I can stop breathing.
I feel like I am losing my way in replying here. Point is, I’m open to entertaining notions that I don’t feel exist. I’m open to hypothesis and the suspension of disbelief. I’m open to considering things that appear false, to be well adapted to other parts of life.
I’m relatively new here - and I think you are tarring me with a broad brush.
What makes me pity lekatt is his single-minded devotion to his beliefs-he never posts about anything else. Even the nuns and priests who taught me back in the day had outside interests. Sister Frances Romana was a Pirates fan. Father John used to play basketball with us and was into Bruce Springsteen. Our current pastor used to have a black and gold stole with Steelers logos that he wore on Steeler Sundays.
Hell, even the friggin’ POPE is into cats and classical musice. He even has a friggin’ IPOD.
Pope John Paul II liked football and tried on Bono’s sunglasses when he met him.
Why doesn’t he tell us anything else about himself? Does he like to cook? What sports’ teams dose he root for? I believe he said he has cats-does he ever post in the “Does your cat do X?” What is his favorite tv show?
It’s kind of sad, really.
As the initiator of that thread, I don’t mind lekatt too much - he diminishes the signal to noise ratio a little, but provides a dubious example for others considering whether or not to share his beliefs. His obstusity is a warning in what might happen to your critical thinking faculties if your threshold of skepticism drops low enough to admit his anecdotes as conclusive evidence. So I hope that the only hammer tom might drop is to simply remove all the offending posts in a given thread retroactively if the SNR drops precipitously.
And Lib, good to see you again old friend. Your input to the thread would be very welcome, but I understand if GD is not a garden you can feel relaxed in these days.
Because there hardly is anything else about him. Read his story - his life had turned to shit, he had the unusually vivid dream he claims was a near-death experience even though he was nowhere near death, and since then that has been his whole life. “Kind of sad” doesn’t cover it.
As you say, under Euclid that parallel lines do not intersect is a postulate. We can deduce from that that the distance between two parallel lines will be a constant no matter where we measure.
Scientifically, we can measure the distance between the two lines in your example, see that the distance changes depending on where we measure, and thus falsify the hypothesis that the lines are parallel.
But say we build a Euclidean system with the postulate that they are parallel. Then there is a contradiction between two postulates in the system. We can create a system where parallel lines do meet (and we have.) We can build many mathematical systems; science uses the ones that are helpful. (You know all this, this is for the peanut gallery.)
That’s the distinction between Euclid’s postulates and Einsteins. Changing Euclid’s postulates creates another system, but Euclidean geometry is just as valid as before, based on the postulate. It doesn’t matter if there is correspondence to the real world, whatever that is. If on the other hand we found a case where the speed of light is not constant in vacuum, all or much of relativity would collapse. We might use it if we could define conditions where ti more or less applies, as was the case with Newton’s laws, but we’d cease to consider it a good model of reality, which is crucial.
Now physicists make all sorts of simplifying assumptions (as in the joke that ends “first, assume a spherical chicken” ) but mostly they remember that they are.
This doesn’t get to the underlying problem of evidence, which I agree is difficult, just that I’m not sure what your example is trying to demonstrate. If it is that people sometimes create incorrect hypotheses, no argument here.
God, it’s good to see your name — and to see that you are as perceptive as ever. These days, I just sit on the garden bench and wait for friends like you to happen by. I’m jealous that the materialists have you on their side. There is no intellect more broadminded and trustworthy than yours.
Actually, it is that systems are themselves created by postulates.
He’s back-now it’s “Out of Body Experiences”. Is there NO supernatural bullshit he won’t believe in?
I’ve been subscribed to the Soul vs. Innermost Self thread, and he finally got to me. I had been so good at ignoring his posts, but his most recent spate of schlock goaded me into a reply. However, the idea of actually engaging him again is repellant – if I wanted to waste (more of) my time and effort, I’d be better served finding some nutter locally and arguing with them in real life. At least there’d be a tangible sign of any progress.
Anyway, I wrote the following as a response to post #218 and was going to delete it as inappropriate to GD. Then I recalled the existence of this thread and decided to just copy and paste it here as a minor salve to my psyche. Gah! Fuckin’ wanker. :mad:
***** Written for the other thread:
lekatt, do you eat stupid food for breakfast? You’ve finally become enough of an irritant to me to respond, much to my chagrin.
Yes, clearly, if by “brain” you mean the lump of cells making up the locus of the central nervous system, “the brain does not speak”. Duh…a brain doesn’t have a mouth. Of course, given your sloppy and vague manner of using words, it’s obvious that you aren’t being pedantic in that way. So, I’m quite sure you meant “brain” as the organ that many/most claim as the seat of thought. Then, yes, delusional (def: a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact) is exactly the description of someone’s brain lying to them. I’ll leave it to you to perform a self-administration, as clearly no one else is up to the task.
More inane textual dingleberries (as in: the typed analogue to the fecal matter missed by a shoddy ass-wiping) emanating from your keyboard. Nuggets that glom onto the thread, seemingly impervious to the strongest logic cleanser by your impenetrable belief-field. Yes, this is a world of killers and thieves – if one adheres to an absolute standard that says that a single example makes it so. In a similar way, yes, personal experience is unreliable – one can make mistakes (do you argue that point?). But personal experience is good enough for the most part, and certainly good enough (in the vast number of cases) to perform the basic functions required for day-to-day living. The idiocy is so sharp, it hurts me to read it.
And the above is what really got to me; the snotty-nosed, strawman characterization and subsequent dismissal of a sceptical viewpoint. The man who should be your champion (if you were more mentally adept than a retarded chipmunk), DesCartes, was a master of scepticism – the one thing he could not doubt was that he thought. Inherent in the very act of doubting is thought, and thus an “I” – cogito ergo sum. And yes, dualism has become his eponymous stance in the realm of philosophy. And I’d point you yet again to Princess Caroline’s objection, which demands answering. At least, to a level that approaches some semblance of sense, of which you seem pitifully incapable.
Believe it or not, I feel just a tiny bit better. 
That’s because God is Love, and now that you’ve gotten all the hate out of your system, your spirit can feel the Love Energy.
Well, in lekatt’s case, his brain definitely doesn’t “speak”.
If lekatt and Der Trihs merged into one person, I bet they would end up being a single stable human being. Possibly even a brilliant one contributing immeasurably to whatever field they are in.
Is lekatt a woman? If so they should get married. 