Essentia Science of Consciousness Panel

Not always so diplomatic. I recall a time when I met some sort of religious person on the street, he went away thinking I was the work of the devil.  I have mellowed a lot over the years.

The last time I went to Church as a practicing Catholic was more than fifty years ago. I just thought what am I actually doing here, getting up and down from my knees when someone jingles a bell etc. Why would "God" (whatever God is) even bother if I did that and what use is performing the same ritual without thinking every week until I die. Having said that, what harm is there in it if it makes people feel better. I don't know, Typoz.

Missing: emotion, feeling, awareness, experience, being ...

Maybe I'm not an smilies kinda guy?

Nevertheless, science does address the metrics of sensation and decision-making, while not being them.  What I think quantifiable are information objects as substance and mind as activity that directly encounters and realigns the probability waves in the environment.  

Much of information is measured as outcomes.  Emotions causes outcomes.  They occur in mind.  Awareness has outcomes as learned behavior.  It occurs and experiences occur as part of mind.  (such as Whitehead's actual occurrences)

Being is not so easily addressed by information science units.  There is more to understand, but decoding how information flows continues to illuminate modern cultures.

Linguistics, sociology and psychology are are shifting to a bioinformatics basis for research.  Communication outcomes, cultural outcomes and mental outcomes (as choices) are all part and parcel of understanding emotional behavior and how people think and perceive the world.

Do we measure any of these sciences with force or atomic numbers?  No, we measure how they are communicated and enforced by mind.

The last time I went to Church as a practicing Catholic was more than fifty years ago. I just thought what am I actually doing here, getting up and down from my knees when someone jingles a bell etc. Why would "God" (whatever God is) even bother if I did that and what use is performing the same ritual without thinking every week until I die. Having said that, what harm is there in it if it makes people feel better. I don't know, Typoz.

Sure, a number of my close friends belong to various religious or spiritual groups and attend their church or meetings regularly. I actually think that's a good thing, I would not try to dissuade anyone.

Some cynicism is very healthy and leads to being able to laugh at oneself.  

Paying homage to Ray Moody, the general public may see reports of spirits and gremlins as "nonsense".  But the inability to have a context and accessible meaning -- doesn't mean that decoding actions can't reveal patterns leading to meanings.  Forest spirits are nonsense.  In the last 100k years of human evolution those whose woodland and streamside existence was primary, their environment presented patterns and signals we may no longer place them in context.

Think Mayan graphics - nonsense pictures until a long focused process cracked them open.  Today's physics, in particular, talks of decoding the "messages" in the data.  The key is the informational event of understanding.  Once it is understood that there is a meaning to be found and semiosis to decode those meanings -- nature takes its course in discovery.

I have to admit Moody's whole take on "nonsense" was hard for me to grasp. I better understood Wilson's reality tunnel concept.

I do agree that our relationship to the environment, whether we accept spirits or not, is in need of a refresher. Personally I do think if one accepts the totality of witness accounts one comes away not just with a respect for the possible reality of spirits but also a better grasp on why Super Psi's "sub-personalities" may themselves be spirits. All to say even on the proponent side I feel like there are people who balk at the idea of spirits, whether they are the souls of the dead or elementals or even what some might call "gods".

I think for many, even on the proponent side, this idea that the fundamental reality is neither physics nor some clean theism/idealism but more on the side of Dungeon & Dragons' kitchen sink spirituality feels disturbingly absurd. Nevertheless if one isn't selective about the accounts one accepts I do think this is the way of things.

Sure, a number of my close friends belong to various religious or spiritual groups and attend their church or meetings regularly. I actually think that's a good thing, I would not try to dissuade anyone.

Me neither.

I have to admit Moody's whole take on "nonsense" was hard for me to grasp. I better understood Wilson's reality tunnel concept.

I do agree that our relationship to the environment, whether we accept spirits or not, is in need of a refresher. Personally I do think if one accepts the totality of witness accounts one comes away not just with a respect for the possible reality of spirits but also a better grasp on why Super Psi's "sub-personalities" may themselves be spirits. All to say even on the proponent side I feel like there are people who balk at the idea of spirits, whether they are the souls of the dead or elementals or even what some might call "gods".

I think for many, even on the proponent side, this idea that the fundamental reality is neither physics nor some clean theism/idealism but more on the side of Dungeon & Dragons' kitchen sink spirituality feels disturbingly absurd. Nevertheless if one isn't selective about the accounts one accepts I do think this is the way of things.

Wasn't that because he was a philosopher (first) and the statement life after death is a logical fallacy, Sci ?

Wasn't that because he was a philosopher (first) and the statement life after death is a logical fallacy, Sci ?

Honestly maybe, I never could fully grasp what Moody was talking about as much as I appreciate his experiential work.

No, it's the same faith, just different interpretations.

To me, that freedom to choose, means that you have similar but different faiths.

Part of the reason I left Christianity was the whole fudgy way the Bible is handled.

That sort of logic chopping put me off all formal religions.

David

Honestly maybe, I never could fully grasp what Moody was talking about as much as I appreciate his experiential work.

I think it was pretty much that, Sci. Life after death is impossible (philosophically that is). That's why he styled his book Life after Life. Just as an aside, the subject of near death experience is turning into a circus.