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Blinded by your religion.


jamesjr191

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According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, what cannot be measured cannot be considered to be real. Reality is defined as our objective experience, that which we 'measure' with our senses, (I would consider thought as an internally measurable phenomenon) though internally this is subjective, perceived within the mind. 

So I would consider what is perceived within mind through our senses to be reality, including thought, as the brain from which mind originates is a measurable entity.. 

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1 minute ago, StarMountainKid said:

According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, what cannot be measured cannot be considered to be real. Reality is defined as our objective experience, that which we 'measure' with our senses, (I would consider thought as an internally measurable phenomenon) though internally this is subjective, perceived within the mind. 

So I would consider what is perceived within mind through our senses to be reality, including thought, as the brain from which mind originates is a measurable entity.. 

 

Yeah but there is no scientific evidence of the existence of mind. Therefore, thought is an illusion (scientifically).

 

 

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1 hour ago, Will Due said:

 

Yeah but there is no scientific evidence of the existence of mind. Therefore, thought is an illusion (scientifically).

 

 

Yeah, so what's your real point here?

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40 minutes ago, Will Due said:

 

There is no scientific evidence that when the neurons of a brain are firing that they produce thoughts.

Therefore scientifically, thoughts do not exist.

 

 

There is some evidence to support that when reading, listening, talking etc etc that there is a measurable and detectable increase in brain activity in the brain. Authors of the two papers I read suggest that these are thoughts. However it's still unproven and conjecture.

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Just now, StarMountainKid said:

Yeah, so what's your real point here?

 

That believing in an unspiritual materialistic scientific worldview exclusive to anything else, results in a form of blindness that's worse than loosing the ability to see with the eyes.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Will Due said:

 

That believing in an unspiritual materialistic scientific worldview exclusive to anything else, results in a form of blindness that's worse than loosing the ability to see with the eyes.

 

 

This is what I thought you meant. I just wanted you to state it. For me it depends on the specificity of belief in "anything else". When we 'say we 'know' the spiritual, I think we are deceiving ourselves. An awareness of the spiritual is not based on knowledge.

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1 minute ago, Will Due said:

 

That believing in an unspiritual materialistic scientific worldview exclusive to anything else, results in a form of blindness that's worse than loosing the ability to see with the eyes.

 

 

The first part has some logic to it, but the worst blindness is an unhealthy narcissist who latches onto "God".

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9 minutes ago, Will Due said:

 

That believing in an unspiritual materialistic scientific worldview exclusive to anything else, results in a form of blindness that's worse than loosing the ability to see with the eyes.

 

 

Same can be said for religious fanatics.

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4 minutes ago, danydandan said:

Same can be said for religious fanatics.

In a way, isn't the point of the OP being made in this thread?

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2 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

In a way, isn't the point of the OP being made in this thread?

I said that here already...

 

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2 minutes ago, Piney said:

I said that here already...

 

No. I said it here. You said it a few pages ago.:lol:

Edited by XenoFish
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40 minutes ago, StarMountainKid said:

This is what I thought you meant. I just wanted you to state it. For me it depends on the specificity of belief in "anything else". When we 'say we 'know' the spiritual, I think we are deceiving ourselves. An awareness of the spiritual is not based on knowledge.

This really depends on what you mean by knowledge.

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1 hour ago, Illyrius said:

This really depends on what you mean by knowledge.

By knowledge I mean some idea learned in some way, from others or from books, for example, or some personally contrived idea. Isn't the spiritual a feeling or insight that cannot be put into words? Something ineffable, .too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words, like a sunset. 

The experience of a sunset is beyond knowledge. 

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23 minutes ago, StarMountainKid said:

By knowledge I mean some idea learned in some way, from others or from books, for example, or some personally contrived idea. Isn't the spiritual a feeling or insight that cannot be put into words? Something ineffable, .too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words, like a sunset. 

The experience of a sunset is beyond knowledge. 

There are alot of books dedicated to spirituality, and also people which give or gave lessons on spiritual matters. Of course some of ideas expressed in this way are of differing quality. Some authors i know gave very interesting insights about their own spiritual experiences, but i think you have a point that you cant really grasp this experiences in the same way as you can grasp the descriptions of phenomena connected to material world since we all share senses which can receive phenomena of the world of matter, but even this is not always correct, because you can for example talk to a daltonist about colors and even if you are very descriptive he can hardly grasp the nature of colors and feeling connected to them although he will get some basic ideas.

Experience of sunset in this sense is not beyond knowledge. It is beyond objective and measurable quantyfiable description, but it is both subjective and objective experience. In this sense the good example is the experience of artwork.. in artwork there are some basic principles but you can't really objectively place a value on an artwork because it is not something quantyfiable and belongs to realm of subjective appreciation of aestethics, beauty and symbolism contained in the work.

Edited by Illyrius
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Illyrius, as to your above post, for instance, a sense of wonder, a sense of the mysterious requires no knowledge. There is knowledge of some object, then there is the thing itself. A coffee cup is a coffee cup only when you have knowledge of coffee cups. In this sense, a coffee cup is an idea.  A coffee cup is fundamentally a form, a thing itself devoid or independent of your knowledge of coffee cups. 

So I think the spiritual is not an idea, it is a thing itself, devoid or independent of any conception in the mind. The mind likes to put labels on things, a thing becomes a think, a thought. This is the way we understand the material world. This is knowledge.

But to actually see something as it is, thought serves no purpose. Usually all we are seeing are our own thoughts. If we were to ask a truly spiritual person, what is the spiritual, he/she could not tell you, or if they tried, they would have to explain in terms of your knowledge, which is not of the spiritual itself. 

.

 

 

 

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Artwork is real because it's tangible and you can touch it. The appreciation thereof comes from a different place - emotion, which is not real and cannot be measured nor touched. I went to one of the top art schools in the US and learned to judge art on it's merits but those merits are still based on the emotions or training of the viewer; what's 'good' art to me might not be 'good' art to you. I, personally, am void of spirituality and nearly void of emotion because I think both get in the way of clear thinking. I learned during wartime that emotion and being close to people who might be gone in two minutes is not a healthy thing, so I chose to never become attached. When my parents died, I just accepted it and moved on - grieving is a waste of time and accomplishes nothing. Remember them as they were and go on. I suspect that that will be what happens should my wife pre-decease me. I look at art and say "does that look like a bird?" and if it looks like a bird, it's 'good'; if it is some weird Picasso-ish representation of a bird, then it's, to me, not 'good' art - it must be technically correct - the drawing must be there. I can look at a sunset and think that it's pretty but that's about as far as it goes with me - I'm just not 'moved' by things like some others are. I think that's why I've always talked against religion - it's based on emotion and far from being real - just wishful thinking.

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Spirituality is in the mind - it is not real and concrete. You can think all you want about a coffee cup but until you can pick it up and drink from it, it is not real. Religion/spirituality is not real real -  it is 'self-convincing' that everything will be OK. You hope/pray something but that means absolutely nothing except to maybe make you feel better. Why can't people just accept that life just goes on and accept that sometimes it's not the way they would like it to be?

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Mr Guitar you're very honest in your post, but I think we can depend on the intellect too much. The intellect is limited in its scope in understanding the world and ourselves. I'm not criticizing you our your views.

I, too, was in a war and during it I thought as you did. After my discharge, I became very emotional about my wartime experiences, as I am now. It was a painful release, but I think I'm the better for it. 

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2 hours ago, Mr Guitar said:

Spirituality is in the mind - it is not real and concrete.

Spirituality is a combination of dopamine and seratonin. Those are the chemical released due to idea's such as faith or belief. They can even be drained if the idea of said belief or idea is negative. So yeah, just brain chemistry. 

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35 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

Spirituality is a combination of dopamine and seratonin. Those are the chemical released due to idea's such as faith or belief. They can even be drained if the idea of said belief or idea is negative. So yeah, just brain chemistry. 

Probably one of the most simplistic, inaccurate explanation I've read here for a while.

Edited by Clockwork_Spirit
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9 minutes ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

Probably one of the most simplistic, inaccurate explanation I've read here for a while.

That's the worst handwaving and avoidance of post content I've ever seen.  Not even 'probably'.

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1 hour ago, XenoFish said:

You got a better one?

Mind and consciousness are much more than the activity of nerve cells in our brains.

 

Edited by Clockwork_Spirit
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Belief is proven to be good for humans and to confer evolutionary advantage  One problem with belief is that there are many shapes and forms, and each individual constructs their own personalised belief structure which tends to exclude all others.

 

Plus, what is a constructive and useful belief for one person, may not be so for another especially, but not necessarily,  from  a different society or cultural back ground.   

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14 minutes ago, Clockwork_Spirit said:

Mind and consciousness are much more than the activity of nerve cells in our brains.

 

That's nearly 30 minutes of my life I'm not wasting on a video. 

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