Can there be a scientific form of spirituality?

Can there be a scientific form of spirituality?

Jonathan Dinsmore, M.S.

Jonathan Dinsmore proposes applying the same cautious inferential reasoning used in the scientific method to developing metaphysical beliefs based on first-person experience. This may open the door to a form of spirituality that, although still grounded in personal insight and, therefore, not objective in a strict scientific sense, is nonetheless based on the form of disciplined thinking that has made science so successful.

What makes an experience implausible as a hallucination, hoax, or delusion? Some examples will serve to illustrate. In my view, the experiential category that is most contradictive of this null hypothesis is veridical perceptions that could not have happened by the typical sensory means, especially when occurring via an experience whose content has clear and direct metaphysical implications. This is exemplified by perceptions of distant or otherwise inaccessible events that are later verified by third parties during out-of-body experiences, and even more so when occurring at a time that the heart and brain were flatlined, as in some near-death experiences (NDEs). This phenomenon is in principle impossible to explain under the current materialist model, beyond cynical hoax accusations. The only other explanation to which a wary skeptic might retreat is the psi hypothesis, in which case not only is psi acknowledged, but one must explain why psi is occurring under conditions of minimal or nonexistent brain activity.

These are some of the chief considerations that might inform our analysis, to which many more can and should be added. The point here is not to outline a definitive list of such, but rather to introduce the method of analysis via some of its clearest examples. It may not surprise the reader at this point to know that I personally find NDEs the most convincing form of experiential evidence, and therefore consider them a primary indicator of what may be beyond the physical as we know it. Others may think another type of nonordinary experience weightier evidence, and I would welcome them to make their case as to why.

Can there be a scientific form of spirituality?

Jonathan Dinsmore, M.S.

His suggested "scientific" approach to the paranormal is I think essentially the way at least some of us here have become proponents - it seems common sense for this to be the way one becomes a proponent especially if he/she has not had either powerful paranormal personal experiences or some other form of life-changing spiritual intuitions, which of course will convince most people except scientistic closed-minded materialists. The downside of this approach is that in the absence of powerful personal experience or intuitions, the proponent can never logically believe more than 90-99%, eluding absolute certainty and leaving some sort of niggling bothersome doubt.

His suggested "scientific" approach to the paranormal is I think essentially the way at least some of us here have become proponents - it seems common sense for this to be the way one becomes a proponent especially if he/she has not had either powerful paranormal personal experiences or some other form of life-changing spiritual intuitions, which of course will convince most people except scientistic closed-minded materialists. The downside of this approach is that in the absence of powerful personal experience or intuitions, the proponent can never logically believe more than 90-99%, eluding absolute certainty and leaving some sort of niggling bothersome doubt.

In my view, people should not come here to resolve their existential doubts. To some extent at least, one has to be comfortable with whatever is the truth to really benefit from this place.

Very little in life is actually 90-99% certain - not the latest drugs, nor being obsessively tested for possible diseases, nor the 'protection' you get from the nuclear standoff, nor obsessive exercise, nor eating the only the 'purest' foods, nothing!

David

Reading that article feels a bit like reading a supposedly cutting edge chemistry discussion about elementary acid-base reactions. In other words it is impossibly out of touch with the research which has gone on on this topic. Imagine being Dean Radin, or Rupert Sheldrake, or one of the many other people who have researched parapsychological phenomena. How would you feel?

David

Reading that article feels a bit like reading a supposedly cutting edge chemistry discussion about elementary acid-base reactions. In other words it is impossibly out of touch with the research which has gone on on this topic. Imagine being Dean Radin, or Rupert Sheldrake, or one of the many other people who have researched parapsychological phenomena. How would you feel?

David

This is a good point and it explains very clearly something else that I think is important to understand: Dean Radin, and Rupert Sheldrake, and Hammeroof, give those kind of feelings to people who experience psychic and afterlife phenomena every day. Researchers who think they are on the cutting edge of parapsychology actually know much less than Aunt Milly who never graduated college but talks to dead people.

This is why it is so hard for me to see scientists in a favorable light when they talk about psychic and afterlife phenomena.

Here is a much better article - also from Essentia Foundation - to discuss:

https://www.essentiafoundation.org/blind...es/seeing/

David

[Laird]

Can there be a scientific form of spirituality?

Jonathan Dinsmore, M.S.

It was a little verbose given its limited substance, but I appreciate the sentiments and intent: to approach "the big questions" with a broadly "scientific" methodology. The same sentiments and intent motivated my contribution to Skeptiko eight years ago (with the unfortunate and misleading "materialistic" adjective included by Alex in his titling):

Can materialistic science answer life’s big questions? |317|

[Laird]

Here is a much better article - also from Essentia Foundation - to discuss:

https://www.essentiafoundation.org/blind...es/seeing/

David

Please, if anybody wants to discuss this, do so in a new thread. Let's not hijack this one.

Please, if anybody wants to discuss this, do so in a new thread. Let's not hijack this one.

A thread already exists