So, no amount of evidence, of any quality, would even lead to a supernatural hypothesis? And yet you believe in God, because, IIRC, you have experienced evidence (personally) for it. How odd.
Never said they were necessarily correct. But when the choice is between upsetting all of science and some guy cooking the books, I know which way I’d bet.
We can end this right now if no one ever again uses this word in the SDMB 
You are completely incapable of comprehending context. So there is absolutely no point in discussing every point you made.
As far as the Babylonian Cosmology argument goes, my ENTIRE point has been that dismissing something with a lack of knowledge is not reasonable. I am using Der Trihs’s words. You are talking about something in terms Astronomy only. Your cite only applies when discussing Babylonian Astronomy. CONTEXT CONTEXT CONTEXT
I didn’t say you never went to school. I said American schools did a pisspoor job of teaching critical thinking skills. It’s why Der Trihs thinks it is skeptical to dismiss something he knows nothing about, and you cannot understand context. I went to American schools also, and I have my problems from it.
My point about Masonry/Mysticism, is that there is a wealth of information about it, just none that I believe you would accept as valid, even though you’ll use Herodotus as a cite despite the fact that he freely admitted to making up a lot of what he said.
I don’t know why you think I am arguing that older systems are better than modern ones because I am not.
Mysticism doesn’t deal in “Problems and Solutions”, that doesn’t mean that it is irrelevant and no good comes from it. Perhaps you might want to stop trying to fit a round peg into a square hole rather than saying round pegs are useless. You labor under the misapprehension that Mysticism and Science are supposed to perform the same function. All that I am saying is that Mystics helped form what you consider science today. Alchemy and Astrology were mystic pursuits that developed into what you today call “Chemistry and Astronomy”. I have not ever in my life dismissed the value of science, yet for some reason people argue with me as though I am anti-science just because I dismiss a lot of the rhetoric against mysticism.
The Mystical pursuit has spanned across all cultures and been studied by myriad people. You can’t judge all mysticism simply by limited experience.
Erek
Yeah, but most things that people label as fraud/hallucinations won’t upset all of science. If there is telepathy science can explain it. As for God, well you see a scientific explanation as evidence that there is no God, and I see it as an explanation of “Oh, so that’s how God does it.”
Oh my stars and garters, a girl can only dream of such a utopia. 
Erek
I only demand better examples so I can consider the idea that Mystics helped shape the science of today.
As for my schooling, you are wrong too, my schooling was done in El Salvador (Catholic institution). Curently, in the USA, I just got back to college to get my degree.
As for your name calling, even when carefully couched in third party descriptions and conditional syntax: see you in the pit.
No, I see a scientific explanation as indicating there is no compelling reason for there to be a god. It of course does not rule out a god.
As for upsetting science, I think you underestimate how much would have to change. We’ve all seen TV shows where telepathy exists, and no one bats an eye. The real world wouldn’t be like that. If aliens landed, however, science would probably be advanced but not totally upset, since there is nothing impossible about them, and if they had capabilities we couldn’t reproduce, they’d be able to tell us the new science that explains it.
If it were ET on the other hand … or Uncle Martin.
Science could easily adapt to an alien. “Ok, so that one’s solved, there is life on other planets.” It wouldn’t upset modern science all that much, we’d adapt to the new information. It might answer a whole lot of questions.
As far as telepathy existing. There is nothing is science that says it cannot exist, only that it hasn’t been proven to exist. I believe it does. I have had personal experience with telepathy, and I know there are a lot of factors that go into it. Not the least of which is understanding the other person’s thought process. I’m not an accomplished telepath so I couldn’t reproduce it in a lab for you, but I think that the lines of inquiry have been drawn in the wrong directions. I think that telepathy is a combination of all the senses, that a more accurate reading is aided by all the possible data that one can formulate using the other senses in concert.
In short there is a lot you are willing to deny that I haven’t seen sufficient falsification for, so I am still waiting. Aliens COULD exist. If there are aliens more advanced than we are that come here regularly, it shouldn’t be terribly hard for them to hide their presence from us. I simply don’t know the answer to that one.
Erek
GIGObuster, your citations to ancient Egypt provide a look at one religious division within the Egyptian culture badmouthing a separate tradition that they appear to have overthrown, as related over two thousand years later. In fact, while Herodotus reports on the general hatred his people felt toward Khufu, it should be noted that he was worshipped as a god in a couple of later periods and there is no clear evidence whether the stories Herodotus heard were actually from the 27th century B.C.E. or were invented by rival worshippers some time after his period of worship. Even the tales related by Herodotus do not indicate that he was despised for the construction of the pyramids, but for the usurpation of the places of the other gods–and the Egyptians continued to build their rulers (and themselves) impressive and ornate tombs for well over a thousand years following the construction of the Ghiza trio. The resentment you perceive appears to be overstated–and misapplied.
Regarding the Maya: if the calendar successfully predicted the growing season, that was an accomplishment. If it regulated the periods of warfare, that was, again, an accomplishment, since (given that warfare was probably inevitable, anyway), it meant that the levies would not be summoned at a time that would interfere with either the planting or the harvest, thus allowing the society to carry on despite the continuing warfare.
As to the prediction of the world’s end: the Mayan calendar does no such thing–that is the claim of various modern crackpots. What the Maya did was identify the three great cycles of their calendar, very accurately identifying the celestial events that would occur within those cycles. They never claimed that the world would end in (our) 2012, they simply stopped calculating their cycles beyond that point where the three cycles coincided at a terminus–a point many years in their future.
The whole “Craft” thing was an early Renaissance invention of a group of guys that wanted to establish a fraternal organization. The “heavy” relationship you see is the invention of the last 400 years. The Egyptians applied mysticism to engineering in the same way that the medieval stonemasons invoked the saints to guide their work, but the actual engineering, whether it was by Sennedjem in the 15th century B.C.E. or Maurice de Sully in the 12th century C.E. relied on the practical application of mathematics to the known properties of stone and lumber. Sennedjem might have asked Te Ho Ti or Ra to bless his labors in the way that Maurice invoked Sweet Gesu or Our Dear Lady, but they used real numbers and mathematics to decide where to install which stone.
Uh, they did not carry on. You see I am not saying it was not an impressive achievement, I am saying that their history had a lot of similarities like the people of Easter Island, while it is not good to minimize ancient achievements, it is also not good to assume they were acting wisely.
I was not clear then: I meant to say exactly what you said here, that that is the claim of various modern crackpots, it just so happens that many of them are calling themselves mystics.
I already knew about the Maya not really expecting the end of the world on those cycle ends, but if one reads the descriptions of what the Maya did during those days, it is clear that they did prepare for a possible end anyhow:
I am fully aware that this was invented by Freemasons 300 years ago. What I am trying to get at is that the way people interacted with their ‘science’ was quite different, and that they didn’t see the seperation in the same way that we do, and that to expect them to is ignorant. I am not claiming that I know exactly HOW they viewed it, only that it was an integral part. The example of Pythagoras that I give so often is an example of how complex maths were generally propagated by Mystics being that the average person had very little use for them. All I am saying is that the secular seperation didn’t exist then, and that people have come about real useful practical knowledge without seperating it from their spirituality. Freemasonry was formed specifically to continue traditions like this at a time when those traditions were being replaced by a sweeping radicalization around the idea of “Natural Philosophy”. For some reason people seem to have this idea that people didn’t learn to think until around 1700, and they point to people’s religious practices being intertwined with everything they did, as evidence. What I am against is the idea that “Nothing good came from Mysticism”. Mysticism was integral to the Pyramid construction as Khufu was trying to use the structure to deify himself, and it’s also a celestial observatory. The Egyptian system was a Theocracy that was ruled by a living God Emperor. Throughout history trade guilds have maintained their knowledge in secret and have very often included a mystic tradition along with that. What you and GIGObuster are both trying to do is judge ancient civilizations based upon your idea of secularism where you seperate religion from every day functions. I am saying that the ancients did not do this, and were still capable of scientific advancement.
Erek
No, regardless what GIGObuster may be doing, I am merely pointing out that your expression keeps making it sound as though the disciplines of science and engineering and spirituality were all bound up together. I see plenty of evidence that this is not true.
Now, I am perfectly willing to note that people (often–I am not quite prepared to accept always) included their perception of the spiritual in their daily lives in ways that most people, today, do not. Whether it was the invocation of a god or saint to guide their thoughts and actions or the framing of all their efforts as gifts from a god or in other ways, the expression of many people related the spiritual to their daily lives in many ways.
However, they were quite capable of recognizing that there were separate disciplines required to successfully complete many projects. In many of your statements, you convey the notion that they thought that all thought and action was part and parcel of some nebulous whole that required no distinction. I have no trouble accepting that Pythagoras thought that he had stumbled on some glorious truth beyond mathematics when he began to see the relationships among numbers. However, even he separated his discussions of the Higher realm available through numbers from his practical work that described triangles and the relationships of musical notes. Granted, he left only an oral tradition, but the works that his followers left, both those of the Pythagoreans and those of various forgeries, described the mathematical and the philosophical separately.
Yes he made seperations, but what I am saying is that he didn’t go around being “Mystical Pythagoras” for an hour and “Scientific Pythagoras” for an hour. I am saying they were all one whole Pythagoras, and that his interest in the metaphysical relationship of numbers would have informed upon his practical applications of the same. Basically what I am saying is that Mysticism is not bullshit, and that the understanding gleaned from the Mystical pursuit complements the practical arts quite nicely, and one does not need to choose one over the other, and in fact placing them in opposition is creating a false dichotomy.
Erek
I have no problem with that.
Here, you would have to provide a better example. I can see his applications of practical numbers informing his mystical perceptions, but I fail to see where his mystical perceptions would have played a part in his practical applications. (If the lack of a written work makes Pythagoras a bad exemplar, choose someone else.) I can point to Teilhard de Chardin using paleontology and Evolutionary Theory to inform his mysticism, but when he tried to apply his mysticism to biology/paleontology, he got the biology/paleontology wrong. This does not mean the same is true of all such people, but I cannot think of a good exemplar for mysticism informing a practical body of knowledge.
Mind you, I am not arguing that the two must be in irreconcilable opposition. For that position you will need to look at other posters. However, every time you try to show where they join (as opposed to simply coinciding), I see no supportable evidence.
I think this is questionable in view of the Britannica article on Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. The conclusion of the article’s author is that Pythagoras himself was probably not a scientific scholar but rather was simply a mystic and any scientific work was the result of later Pythagoreans.
The above quote would indicate that it was the Pythagorean school of later times, and not Pythagoras himself, that formulated the proof of the famous theorem. As I mentioned in a previous post, the fact about the right triangle relationship was know to the Babylonians and probably the Egyptians and Chinese as well and it is the Pythagoreans who are credited with the formal proof.
Pythagoras is both a good and a bad example to use as to the value of mysicism to a scientific project. Little is really known about the actual person, Pythagoras, and so everything said about him and his work is mostly speculation. On the other hand, so little is known that one is free to speculate without limit.
It seems that there is a lot of intuition involved in a scientific investigator’s deciding the possible reason, or reasons, for observed events. However the test of the validity of the intuition about the reason is always to formulate a hypothesis and test predictions made using it. I think it is not and never has been possible to nail down the facts about nature by merely making assumtions and then proceeding by merely thinking about those assumptions.
Well I have actually addressed the idea that “Pythagoras” was more of a mythological creation of the Pythagoreans, regardless of whether there was a real man Pythagoras. However, the Pythagoreans were a mystical order.
There really isn’t much I can say either way, I wasn’t there.
Well I wasn’t trying to establish ‘facts’ I was trying to open people’s mind to speculation. A lot of people who are enamoured by science have an inability to open to possibilities that they have closed themselves to. A lot of the time they have closed their idea to a bias and consider it to be ‘fact’. As I have said multiple times in my posts, I am not trying to convince people of facts, only to illustrate that their conception of ‘facts’ might not be as solid as they think.
tomndebb Well, what the mystical process lends to the scientific process is an opening of the mind a broadening of possibilities. This opening to the infinite and then figuring out the limits helps inspire the seeker of knowledge. This is why they are complementary. This is why I think it is silly when people bash Robert Anton Wilson, because the book that I have been using as a reference is designed specifically to open one up to possibilities, and not to convince people that those possibilities are cold hard facts.
This is why I think that Isaac Newton’s mysticism played a major role in his scientific discoveries. The mysticism helps him arrive at the question, and his science helps him arrive at the answer. Certainly he started out with some major assumptions that he was trying to reconcile that many people have problems with, but they are looking at external manifestations of his subjective exploration, they are judging this experience by only tiny little fragments that they can see of his experience. Judging the mystical experience by scientific standards is not a failure of mysticism, it is a failure of science.
So what I am saying is that his mystical experience was integral to his genius. I am not saying that the mystical experience was a substitute for good scientific rigor in analyzing the output.
Erek
That should have been “I addressed the idea of Pythagoras…in other threads.” However, the Pythagoreans were a mystical order, and they were not laboring under the same secular bias that we have here in modern America.
Erek
True and the number of people who are able to make original contributions to the advancement of science is small compared to the total number of people involved in scientific work.
However, I don’t think turning scientists on to mysticism is a way out. The individual who does make discoveries is able to guess at a fruitful answer better than, or lucker than, most and is also able to follow up with a coherent and testable hypothesis to account for obervations. Curiosity seems to be one of the big winners. “Gee, that’s odd. I wonder why that happened? Maybe …” and the drive to follow up on the question is crucial.
This is sort of a “no true Scotman” statement, but I don’t think the really original scientific thinker is all that sure of permanency of “the facts” as you seem to think they are.
I’ve heard that just barely more than enough Nitrous to paralyze someone and a number of rough fillings/tooth extractions can do the trick. Just give it a couple of months and then hypnotize them. 
You’d be amazed.
Actually no, that is not true. If I were discussing something with a truly original scientific thinker I would be discussing it very differently. The people I am arguing with here on the boards are not of that calibre. I am speaking to my audience, not to the people that my audience is idolizing.
Erek
David Simmons Ok, I just looked up “No True Scotsman”, and what I would say in this context is:
No true scientist would make fun of Isaac Newton for exploring alchemy, because he was clearly not convinced that alchemy was bullshit given the time and place in which he lived. A true scientist would understand that Newton not taking for granted the idea that alchemy was bunk, went out and did his experiments for himself, making Isaac Newton a true scientist, even when pursuing a fruitless line of inquiry. The true scientist would understand that this falsification was part and parcel with his line of inquest that lead him eventually to the subjects that bore greater fruit that have benefitted all scientists and scientist wannabes who have been born since. The true scientist would understand that to make fun of Isaac Newton for practicing alchemy or to say that it was a waste of his time, shows a deep ignorance for both the scientific process and history.
And I do not think that this is redefining the term “scientist” to fit my point.
Erek