Alchemy, astrology, and mathematical mysticisms were the sciences of their day. They were tools with which the men of their respective eras explored the universe. However, these tools were flawed, and as evidence accrued, this became more and more apparent to the men of their day.
The major flaw in these pseudosciences was that they had no error-correcting mechanism. There was no way within the various insular pseudo-sciences to test whether a higher universe of ideals exists, or whether the position of the stars affected a person’s disposition. These people ended up with a system where false belief reinforces false belief, and threw out all evidence to the contrary. The men seduced by these promises were often great men who made a lasting contribution to the whole of human knowledge. I respect Pythagoras for his giant leap forward in the study of mathematics, but that does not mean that I have to respect his cult for suppressing the idea of irrational numbers. I greatly respect Newton for his understanding of the laws of gravitation and his development of the calculus, but I cannot help but lament the years he wasted breathing mercurial fumes. I can be amazed at the way that Kepler showed the motion of the planets while also remembering that all his developments were an atttempt to prove that the universe was based on Pythagorean solids.
The great discoveries of man stand out like like bright stars against the black backdrop of ignorance and superstition. It is a shocking and sobering thought to consider the untold man-hours wasted in contemplation of the philosopher’s stone. These pseudosciences of old are important, though, in that their studies gave us a body of observations which we eventually used to reject the false assumptions people in those fields started out with. The greatest advances came not through their development, but through their rejection.
I actually thought it was aimed at both of us (and I’m disappointed, I got to say.) But neither of us actually scoffs at people in the past, or even the knowledge. I wondered if he had gotten this.
He never responded when I proved to him that the I Ching did not predict computer design, as Tim Leary claimed, so I wondered if this was in response to that.
I can’t help but dredge this thread up to remark that none other than David Bowie will be playing Tesla in the upcoming movie The Prestige. It is apparently about Tesla’s relationship with two magicians.
MAGICIAN #1 (TO MAGICIAN #2): “Oh shit… Don’t look now, but that weedy guy from the last show’s audience who got so excited about the pigeon conjuring routine is following us.”
Voyager I still maintain that it is you who misapplies science in these debates and not I. You have shown a complete unwillingness to even look into the material. You dismiss material that you do not have any knowledge of. That is hardly scientific. Timothy Leary claimed that the Trigrams in the I Ching led to the understanding of DNA, not the programming of the computer. You really need to learn the difference between believing that there are paths to knowledge other than just science, and not understanding how science works. I am not conflating mysticism and science, I am merely saying that they are complementary and not mutually exclusive. If you want to prove me wrong SCIENTIFICALLY then you’ve got a lot of studying to do about a subject that you know next to nothing about. I’m sorry to say, but your book by Arthur Conan Doyle won’t cut it. I recommend picking up “Cosmic Trigger: Final Secrets of the Illuminati” by Robert Anton Wilson. He’s one of the guys that Der Trihs is so fond of quoting when he says “Fnord”.
Der Trihs Yeah, this thread was largely pointed at you, because you have made some of the most ludicrous assertions I’ve ever seen from a member of your religion. You take the zealotry to some pretty lofty heights. You certainly have a lot of hate for a deity that doesn’t exist. But just for shits and giggles, I’d like to point out that your idea regarding memes controlling people’s consciousness is pretty central to the mystic way of life. With your lack of rationality, you might actually like taking the mystical path out for a spin. You might find yourself quite a bit more rational when you get back.
Maeglin A mystic is a mystic. You cannot seperate Pythagoras’ or Newton’s body of work from their mystical pursuit. If you look into either of their lives, you will see that they do not make the arbitrary seperation of their work that you do. You are creating a false-dichotomy. The Mathematekoi is probably the single most important thing that Pythagoras did, as much of his advancements came from that group, and are only loosely attributed to him. He created a tradition that passed on the knowledge we know today as “mathematics”. You can thank his bullshit mysticism for that one. Newton was an alchemist straight up, he made no bones about that. Dismissing the advancements of alchemists because we have found better ways of going about it and new knowledge in this day and age would be like dismissing science because some scientists in the past have been wrong. There is probably an equal percentage of charlatan scientists as there were charlatan alchemists. Some people have a great insight, some don’t. But the Scientism* Chauvanism I see on these boreds is getting pretty old.
Anyone that says Magic doesn’t work is a fucking fool. Magic is just a way of describing phenomena that one doesn’t understand. As Arthur C. Clarke said, any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic. To say that Magic doesn’t work shows your ignorance not of science, but of the English language. Magic clearly DOES work, as it describes mysterious effects. Are you denying that effects you don’t understand happen?
I can’t find a good cite regarding Tesla’s mystical pursuit on the web. Not a whole lot of info out there mostly I get info about his inventions and info about the band. The problem with finding cites for this is that people on this board will generally dismiss cites from any source that isn’t biased toward their side.
I believe the book I read about Tesla’s mystical revelation was Cosmic Trigger, as it was the book I was reading about the time I started this thread. It talked about how Tesla had a revelation that gained him the ability to imagine the entire design of a machine in his head, and then he’d build it.
Anyone who’s interested read Cosmic Trigger: Final Secret of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson. It talks about how one can go about taking apart their own consciousness and reprogram it for higher states of awareness. He gives lots of really out there ideas like aliens from Sirius, as well as talking about Quantum Physics. He has been reviewed favorably by magazines such as “The New Scientist”. He talks with the same sort of disdain for the religiously dogmatic spiritualists and materialists, and has made a much more eloquent argument than I have found myself capable, though he is arguing the exact same point I have been on this topic.
My problem is the false dichotomy of science vs mysticism that is holding back the understanding of so many people. I reiterate THERE IS NO CONFLICT. The two pursuits are complementary. One uses the imagination the other uses the intellect. An enlightened human does not place a priority on one over the other.
What I hope to see achieved in this life, the one thing I would like to contribute to humanity, or at least take part in the contribution of, is to see a world where the old generation doesn’t need to DIE, in order for advancements in knowledge to take hold. With the rate of technological advancement increasing exponentially the way it does, I think that’d be a pretty handy dandy advancement.
Erek
*Scientism the dogma as opposed to Science the pursuit of knowledge.
I disagree. Claiming that ‘magic’ is how something works is not deductive at all. Rather than seeking an explination based upon the facts, one is made up out one’s imagination. Offering the explination of ‘it’s magic’ leads toward that as an accepted reason where ‘it’s not known’ encourages investigation to solve the mystery. How much more advanced would we have been if thunder wasn’t assumed to be the gods fighting or bowling but rather a mysterious sound that often accompanies lightening and storms. Or if Galileo hadn’t had to fight religous dogma that already assigned the make up of the solar system. Using ‘magic’ as a default is counter productive to a scientific society.
Anyway, let’s review what has been told to you time and time again. When Der Trihs, or any other “evangelical atheist” tells you that god does not exist, he or she is not making some wide, sweeping generalization of cosmic facts, re: a god that is indistinguisable from a god-less universe.
No, instead, they are addressing the non-existence of The Traditional God.™
Quite a few. Newton, for example, was wrong about alchemy being a useful pursuit. He was actually wrong about quite a few things non-alchemical, too. Newtonian physics had to be largely rewritten thanks to Einstein’s discoveries. Then there’s Lamarck’s theories of inherited traits that lost out to Darwin’s natural selection. Only a century ago, most reputable scientists would talk about the ether that filled outer space. They were wrong. The scientists who rejected - with good reason, at the time - plate tectonics? Also wrong.
If you ever wonder why no one takes you seriously, mswas, it’s because you write stuff like the above and think you’ve made some sort of point. Of course scientists have been wrong. In fact, most scientists have been wrong. That’s the whole point of science: it’s self correcting, unlike mysticism, which is dogmatic. If you can show that an accepted scientific truth is incorrect, you’ll be famous. If you can show that an accepted mystic truth is incorrect, you’ll be told that you “lack true understanding.” As you have done every time anyone has poked a hole in your bizarre little cosmology.
You really need to learn that using commonly accepted terms in ways that NO ONE ELSE ON THE PLANET uses them does not work as an argumentative strategy.
The bias on this board is towards rationality. Unfortunetly, you’re pretty much always going to be left out in the cold on this one. While we’re at it, you really need to stop flogging that “atheism is a religion” horse. You’re not convincing anybody. I’d say you’re only damaging your own credibility by harping on it, but it’s not like you really have any left to damage.
I’ve read him. He’s a crackpot. He’s an amusing, intelligent, well-spoken crackpot, but he’s got no more of a line on the great mysteries of the universe than you do. You can get insights of similar validity by giving anyone off the street a blotter of acid and a notepad.
Good luck with that.
mswas, you’re an idiot. You’re a quasi-educated lunatic who’s cherry picked isolated bits of esoterica that you think support your half-baked theology, but that’s only because you simply don’t understand a single thing you’re talking about. Which would be bad enough if you weren’t such an arrogant, short-tempered little prick that you have to throw a tantrum every time someone cuts the legs out from under your bizarre little theories. Now, I’d be lying if I said your posts totally lacked entertainment value, but I can get the same thing from the street people I pass on the way to work every morning, and frankly, it’s getting pretty tiresome. You’re not enlightened. You’re not a philosopher. You’re not a teacher. So stop trying to “educate” us poor ignorant heathens, because not only are you exceptionally bad at it, you don’t know anything worth teaching in the first place.
However, Tesla is the proper inventor of the radio, though most textbooks will tell you it was Marconi. Marconi arguably used patents that Tesla had already made to create his radio, but Tesla filed so many patents himself that he just never completely followed through on that one to build an actual radio. He however did first patent what makes radios work. He pioneered in a lot of fields that he just never saw through to an end product (he built a remote control boat and demonstrated it at one exhibition.) IIRC the Supreme Court actually heard a case involving the patents that later declared Tesla the actual inventor of radio, but by then Marconi was pretty much stuck in people’s minds (and books) as the inventor.
There was a lot of bad blood between Tesla and Edison, for sure. They were at odds with each other almost their entire lives. Edison actually electrocuted stray animals for newspaper reporters to demonstrate how “dangerous” Tesla’s AC electricity was.
They showed a pretty good documentary on Tesla on PBS a while ago; they have a website about it here if you’re interested: http://www.pbs.org/tesla/index.html
I wish they had covered more aspects about his personality (his relationship with his pigeons, his aversion to women and his quirks like touching hair and counting as he ate) but there you have it. There is a nice little book by a lady named Margaret Cheney that goes more into Tesla’s personal life.
First of all, let me say ditto and bravo to Miller. He got you pegged. You’re the SDMB version of Mr. Magoo, walking around in a near-sighted mystical fog, misunderstanding everything you see but absolutely certain of your correctness nonetheless.
Bullshit. I have consistenty said that they are low on my list, but I would like to see the slightest reason from you that they are worth my time. But I don’t get any specifics, just some vague claims that the Kabalah anticipated quantum physics, but no one managed to get it for 2000 years.
You brought up the similarity between something or other and the design (not programming) of computers. I showed you that computers are not inherently binary, thus making your claim that this foreshadowed computers incorrect. I just listened to the audiotape of a book by Watson on DNA, and I’ve also read The Double Helix, and nowhere is the I Ching mentioned. You need a better source than tiny Doctor Tim as evidence of this. BTW, Watson is an atheist.
This is a great example of your magical thinking. “3” in the I Ching and “3” base pairs does not indicate anything but coincidence. Magical thinking assumes that similar things have influence on each other. It doesn’t work, and if you had the scientific insight of Alley Oop you’d know that.
There are plenty of paths to knowledge than just science. Philosophy, for one. Your nonsense isn’t one. I have, by the way, read all three books of the Illuminatus Trilogy. It’s a shame that Wilson actually believes any of that stuff.
But here’s your real problem - you are like the crackpots who write to well known scientists about their perpetual motion machines, or methods of trisecting an angle, or theories of everything. Wilson’s words on paper means nothing. How has he demonstrated anything? Is it falsifiable? We don’t need to disprove every crackpot out there. I know you don’t get that.
Way back you claimed that someone (or maybe you) could detect auras. I gave you a bunch of experiments that could validate your claim. Not only weren’t you interested, you rejected the very thought that such a thing would be important to do. I didn’t say you were wrong, I just said here is how you can demonstrate you were right. Just like the so-called psychics who are too good to take Randi’s challenge, I contend that deep down inside you know you are full of crap.
And repeating the Clarke quote and claiming it says magic works yet again does not demonstrate it. I challenge you to find anything in his non-fiction writing that would lead to the belief he believes in magic.
Certainly, I don’t disagree with that at all. What I disagree with is this strict view that magic period does not exist. A belief in magic is not letting go of the vital childlike awe and wonder of the universe. I look at Nebulae and think “Wow that is magical.” but I never for one second believe that it cannot be explained. The attitude toward magic leads to an equally ignorant attitude. Certain phenomena become labelled “Magic”, and then people just put it out of their minds and claim you are an idiot for believing it. We dismiss claims of psychic abilities, at the same time as science shows more and more that our nervous system emits electromagnetic radiation. I don’t necessarily know how all of this stuff works, and therefore it is magical. I have dedicated a very large portion of my life to the study of ‘Magick’, and it most definitely is not all bullshit. A big portion of that study is trying to figure out different sciences. My scientific education is a bit behind other people who dedicated themselves to such a study though it is probably far beyond that of the average populace. I don’t claim to understand quantum mechanics all that well, but I understand it well enough to know when someone says something that doesn’t strike me as being quite right. To me science is the study of how magic works, but that is far from claiming outright that magic is bullshit.
There you go again, mixing definitions. By that definition of magic, everyone believes, even and especially scientists like Sagan and Feynman. But that is far different from believing in magic as in the supernatural.
By default we don’t believe in the supernatural unless there is very strong evidence for it. Not understanding something does not count as strong evidence. If you don’t understand something (and we all don’t understand lots of things) you can either call it magic and stop trying or research it so you do understand. It might cease being magic, but it will likely be even more interesting and fascinating.
And since neurons operate a bit electrically, there is electromagnetic radiation. That doesn’t mean a signal is coming out of them, just noise. That is a far cry from evidence of esp. Where are the receivers for one thing?
I don’t understand. You’re studying magic by studying science? Are you truly trying to understand, or are you just learning high level concepts and vocabulary to make your belief in the supernatural sound more plausible? Have you ever stopped classifying something as magic when you understood it, and what do you think can’t be understood?
So, basically, he has no answer to my last post, and uses “magic” to mean a sense of wonder some of the time, and uses it just how everyone else uses it at other times, with no warning of when he is changing defintions. Sigh
Voyager I don’t really care if you all think I’m an idiot or not. I am not trying to convince you of anything only trying to get you to understand that your thinking is a lot more rigid and tunnel vision than you would like to think. You are using a microscope when you need a wide-angled lens.
I didn’t recommend the Illuminatus trilogy. The Illuminatus trilogy is fictional satire, as Robert Anton Wilson loves to point out to idiots that don’t get that. Cosmic Trigger is about how he broke down a lot of his conditioning, and the process that he went through to do that. In the preface to the book he says specifically “I do not believe anything”. He self-identifies as a radical agnostic. Is insulting a work you haven’t read rational?
Miller Lots of people do actually take me seriously. This board is biased toward one particular direction, and thus I post here regarding that particular position. If you really were interested in my position then I might tell you that I post here just as much to wade through my own conditioning as I do to wade through the conditioning of the others around me. I listen to people here. I generally assault the evangelical atheists, which you can claim don’t exist, but they do and it’s clear to everyone that isn’t one who they are. You dismiss Robert Anton Wilson as a crackpot on the street, but what I am trying to point out is that you’d dismiss out of hand anyone you see as being on the “other side”. You are the one laboring under the delusion that science and mysticism are in conflict, I have never read nor met any modern mystics who would say that, they are all pretty much in agreement that modern science is a wonderful thing.
There actually IS atheistic dogma, but people act as though a centralized governing body is required for dogma. Atheists love to point out which scientists are atheists. They oftentimes use the same debates. Atheists like Der Trihs who feel absolutely no need to prove their point are quite prevalent, as one who’s read any internet message boards at all can see. That doesn’t make all atheists the same, but not all christians are the same. I had one thread where I argued about atheism using only tactics that I have seen atheists use on this board and everyone thought i was a religious bigot. You see atheists lumping ALL religious people into categories all the time, but they get upset when you lump ALL atheists together. Your naivete is not a swaying argument.
Also, I disagree wholly that the way YOU use those definitions is the way that EVERYONE uses them. I travel in many different circles, and in quite a few of them I find that my usage of words does not confuse them at all, and what I am trying to illustrate for you is that what you think is Objective quite simply is not. You all are selling a similar subjectivity as objective, and you are capable of maintaining the belief in your objectivity by associating only with those that support your analysis.
There are continuous claims that belief in God is irrational. Belief in God is irrational only if it is incorrect. If one has had a direct experience of God then it is perfectly rational to believe in God, in fact it would be irrational not to. The false assumption that rationality and the belief in God are pinned to one another is the delusion I seek to unseat.
All of you have a lineage of thought and bias that you prescribe to, and what I am trying to point out is that mystics and theologians as well as scientists throughout history have helped form them. It’s like legacy code in an ancient software system, that’s what Cosmic Trigger is entirely about, for any of you who are even interested in learning about that which you are trying to debunk. What I am arguing is not that these mystics had the answer to everything, quite simply that you cannot eliminate the value of the mystical pursuit from the value of the knowledge that you possess today. You love to feel superior even though you keep missing my point and then you make fun of me for saying you lack understanding. I am not saying it in some big lofty way, I am saying you are hard headed and refuse to accept simple concepts. Newton was an Alchemist, and that cannot be seperated from who he was, if he developed ANYTHING useful then his alchemical pursuits were part of that. There are plenty of scientists who hae been incorrect or who’s theories needed a little tweaking, and you don’t have any problem with that, but with mystics you retain a rigid lowest common denominator mindset and throw out all the geniuses with the idiots.
I am quite simply tired of the attitude where people judge all mystics by the standards of crystal gazing hippies. I don’t judge all scientists by voyager or Der Trihs, who I see as the equivalent of Crystal Gazing Hippies from your side. If you’ll all note, I take Sentient Meat’s arguments quite seriously, and he often presents me with hard arguments that I need to go and study before I come back and say anything. I am sorry Voyager, but you rarely have an argument that really makes me think in the way that he does, and that’s why I don’t take most of your “Prove it” shit seriously. It simply ain’t that important to me to prove something to someone on an internet message board. There have been MANY MANY people who have attempted scientific experiments in an attempt to prove these things. That’s not my path, I am not a scientist, and never claimed to be. However, this is far from not understanding the scientific method.
You all are the ones proposing that mysticism and science are in conflict, so the burden of proof is on you. All I need to do is poke holes in that logic. You love to make fun of me, and you all completely ignore when I point out which logic is inductive. The irony is that atheists have a more strict definition of God than I do, or any mystic I’ve read or met does. You come up with this strawman God, debunk him and then act like you’ve got it all figured out.
scott_plaid I am perfectly willing to accept that the word God is hard to make useful. I don’t care if you suddenly believe in God, I am simply tired of the superior idea that belief in God is irrational. The fact of the matter is the God question isn’t settled, and I’m going to continue to go after the evangelical atheists who like to think that it is. If you for some reason identify with these evangelical atheists, and want to defend them, then go ahead, that’s your own row to hoe. But stop with the pretense that they don’t exist. There is a certain type of annoying atheist that is really irritating, and doesn’t know as much as they like to pretend. Do us all a favor and just accept that. Der Trihs is an excellent example. Voyager skirts it doesn’t really quite make it there. Contrapuntal is mostly there by swings out of it once in a while. Miller swings wildly in both directions. SentientMeat is very convinced of a belief system I do not agree with, but has quite a bit of insight, and is not on the evangelical tip at all. You on the other hand just kind of snipe, so I’d put you kind of on the edge of the evangelical leanings.
I’ve recently discovered Sufism, which according to Wikipedia, had a lot of influence on modern and post-modern thought. Sufism is Islamic mysticism. So what I am trying to say to you is that the people that coded the program that currently resides in YOUR brain, MY brain were from many different arenas, and that to truly understand anything you need to accept this, you can’t go on pretending that you popped out of some objective scientific bubble fully formed. Your biases were created just the same as mine were, and many of them are a lot more religious in nature than you appear willing to admit.
I argue with the evangelical atheists just as I argue with evangelical christians in other venues. I am not singling out atheists, there are many wrong-headed beliefs, and they are due to outdated code. You all simply haven’t been introduced to any of the advances in mystical thought.
I am currently reading, “Knowing How to Know” by Idries Shah, and he uses modern psychology to prove some of his points. The main point that I am at is about how we regress people by teaching them using hope and fear, that humanity is beyond that primitive level where hope and fear are necessary to teach them, and that by doing so we regress them to a more primitive level. He is against teaching people “Don’t do that because God says it is bad.”, he says that advances in modern science have made this lesson essential for people to learn if they do not wish for their traditions to die out, and that modern religious teachers had better heed those advances or else their tradition is going bye bye. He says that modern man needs to be taught the reasons for the knowledge, and why it is important. I am certain that you all would agree that this is essential. This is from a prominent modern Sufi mystic, you know, Garbage in and Garbage out and all that right? Stopped clock is right twice a day?
Basically this board is about fighting ignorance, and the false-dichotomy where mysticism and science are in conflict is a particular piece of ignorance that I would like to get rid of. The main difference I have found between my belief system and that of non-evangelical atheists is that I see a conscious creative force as deterministic for every aspect of the universe, and atheists do not, and that is a very big distinction, but they are still reflecting mirror views. I believe that new things are created and then discovered by others. That’s the essence of Magick, The Magi go to the edge of the void and they create new structures, but that does not mean they are not locked into the rules that govern the entire universe. The thing I am trying to relate is that at different levels of consciousness you see the rules a little bit differently, there are some basic ones that are fundamental and do not change, but others that are mutable, the old Laws of God, Laws of Nature, Laws of Man axiom. So when I get into this argument all I see is people trying to convince me of a particular subjective interpretation, and I am saying “No I will not accept that.”, and we fight a power struggle as we determine what is true. I don’t think the truth existed before the argument, the argument decides what is true, at any given moment there are infinite possibilities, and we decide which of those possibilities comes true.
So in short, I think what you believe to be objective is a lot more subjective than you think, and that reality is decided by consensus based upon certain fundamental underlying principles, that it is not static but fluid and mutable.
People on this board have convinced themselves of some standard of rationality that doesn’t apply to others. I think that something this board as a whole needs to learn is that the level of rationality and intelligence on it is not near the top of society, it’s about the mean average.
I’ll leave you with this Sufi proverb, I think it illustrates this argument rather well:
Most Evangelical Atheists are arguing from the first type of knowledge, knowledge they have been told. A Scientist is arguing from the second type of knowledge, seeing the flame with his own eyes. The mystic is talking about the experience of being burned by the flame.
So as long as you are claiming some dichotomy between science and mysticism, I am going to have to stick to my stance that it is in fact YOU who is the idiot, and not I. (Though I certainly can be a moody fuck and fly off the handle sometimes, but rest assured it has little to do with you or the argument you are proposing.)