Can science REALLY explain Reality?

  • Thread starter Thread starter OrdinaryMelkite
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
AlanFromWichita said:
I’m glad you like it. If a person does nothing but look at frequency graphs, such as a speaker salesman, they will have no idea about what the speakers will do to a certain (name removed by moderator)ut signal.

Unless they know the convolution integral and/or how to get from frequency back to time. But they won’t know unless they are underemployed engineers, so they may even say the information doesn’t exist.

If they look at time graphs, they miss the notion that frequencies are even useful at all; but going to the frequency domain reduces a great deal of Calculus into Algebra and shows relationship you would never see if it weren’t for brothers Fourier and LaPlace.

You know what’s funny? LaPlace lived 200 years ago, and developed the transform as a way to explain his probability theory. How did he know that 100 years later the light would be invented, electrical would become widespread, and that literally billions and billions of products would be designed and used, whose designs would not have been possible without his math?

Similarly, Jesus knew that what He was on to was important, but He Himself did not know how far His teachings were going to go:

John 14:12
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

Does this mean that we are greater than Jesus? No. No more than we are greater than LaPlace because we know how to use his math. Jesus showed us “heart math” and “head math” in a way unrecognizable to all but those who enter into His kingdom. Sought but not found by those trying desperately to use dualistic thinking to discover it – such as people who bicker over literal sense of the Scripture day in and day out.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

Now 2000 years later we have the science, the vocabulary, and the theology to start putting this together and weaving the harvest. For the harvest is ready (just like ever) and the number of workers are increasing by the minute! We will do greater works than these precisely because we have all these things – and let’s not forget Internet.

The Good News has now been preached one way or other to all the lands. Among my favorite ways, are the missionaries who actually show their faith with their works. In Ethiopia, kids there know this about Christians: that they bring water wells, farming skills, schools, and food. They don’t need to know the math because they were never trained in the society of dualistic-only thinking that Jesus was and still is trying to save us from.

Alan
Click to expand...
What do you mean by “dualistic thinking”?
 
AlanFromWichita said:
I’m glad you like it. If a person does nothing but look at frequency graphs, such as a speaker salesman, they will have no idea about what the speakers will do to a certain (name removed by moderator)ut signal.

Unless they know the convolution integral and/or how to get from frequency back to time. But they won’t know unless they are underemployed engineers, so they may even say the information doesn’t exist.

If they look at time graphs, they miss the notion that frequencies are even useful at all; but going to the frequency domain reduces a great deal of Calculus into Algebra and shows relationship you would never see if it weren’t for brothers Fourier and LaPlace.

You know what’s funny? LaPlace lived 200 years ago, and developed the transform as a way to explain his probability theory. How did he know that 100 years later the light would be invented, electrical would become widespread, and that literally billions and billions of products would be designed and used, whose designs would not have been possible without his math?

Similarly, Jesus knew that what He was on to was important, but He Himself did not know how far His teachings were going to go:

John 14:12
Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.

Does this mean that we are greater than Jesus? No. No more than we are greater than LaPlace because we know how to use his math. Jesus showed us “heart math” and “head math” in a way unrecognizable to all but those who enter into His kingdom. Sought but not found by those trying desperately to use dualistic thinking to discover it – such as people who bicker over literal sense of the Scripture day in and day out.

“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

Now 2000 years later we have the science, the vocabulary, and the theology to start putting this together and weaving the harvest. For the harvest is ready (just like ever) and the number of workers are increasing by the minute! We will do greater works than these precisely because we have all these things – and let’s not forget Internet.

The Good News has now been preached one way or other to all the lands. Among my favorite ways, are the missionaries who actually show their faith with their works. In Ethiopia, kids there know this about Christians: that they bring water wells, farming skills, schools, and food. They don’t need to know the math because they were never trained in the society of dualistic-only thinking that Jesus was and still is trying to save us from.

Alan
Click to expand...
That’s kind of humorous to me, because I used to do QA on speakers in a factory using oscilloscpes to generate frequncy testing sweeps. It is further funny because it perfectly demonstrates that just because you know a bit of something, it doesn’t mean that that bitty bit-bit is all, as we do tend to think our thoughts have a 1/1 correspondence to reality.

What we think we know isn’t even beinging to cover it all, despite the ever increasing breadth and depth of human “knowledge.” If we percieved allness, it would appear blank or empty to our mind. We haven’t, as identifying with our motal mind, any sort of adequate bandwidth to do other than delve into what that bitty brain is capable of. The heart is another matter, and that is what can inform the mind of the Ineffable, as far as it is trained and depending on what fulcrum of human capability it has tipped on. That is why my Mentor said “The head and the heart must dance together!”
 
gentle_atheist said:
What do you mean by “dualistic thinking”?
Click to expand...
It’s kind of complicated to explain, but I can see it usually when it’s there. I’ve heard the term but never really understood it for the first time until I listened to a couple CD’s a friend sent me about the topic. So listening to 1 1/2 hours of lectures a year ago, then lots of observation later, I’ll try to put it into words that don’t make this post huge.

Dualistic thinking is absolutely necessary and is a constant necessary thing in life. This, to me, is the type of thinking represented by the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil. Dualistic thinking separates. Non-dualistic thinking unites

Civilized people tend to use a “calculus” view of creation. We call one thing a duck, and another thing a feather, when in reality neither would exist without the other. So it isn’t like you can talk about a duck without feathers, but for some purposes we want to so we take God’s creation and cut it into “duck,” “feathers,” and “neither.” This is useful if we are making pillows or preparing a duck to eat, but is an artificial distinction. Want proof? Tell me exactly where to draw the line between a duck and its feather. Do the follicles go with the feathers? If we’re a cook we don’t care so the dualistic distinction is made.

Now Jesus came to show us that there are other ways of thinking than dualistic, that we don’t need to divide. To put ourselves in groups. To give ourselves labels. We are all one Spirit, in one Body, in the Lord – so any distinctions we make are artificial. Jesus saw this and saw right through it.

For example, when they asked him whether they should stone the prostitute, they were asking a simple, dualistic question. Yes or no? Follow the law or not? Death of life for her? Why didn’t Jesus give a straight answer? Because he saw it was a bogus question.

He saw parts of the same Body, all sinful, and one was about to stone another one for its particular sins. When He said the one who is without sin should cast stones, it was just like the thing about the speck in the brother’s eye. We need somebody who is perfect, if we’re really going to do that prostitute any good, spiritually. Then, of course, Someone who Was perfect, failed to condemn her. Notice He didn’t forgive her sins; he failed to condemn her. This is because he thinks non-dualistically, which means there is only one Body.

Another example is when they asked Him which of eight wives a dead man would be married to, and He blew it away by revealing that outside our physical world, there is no distinction.

When they asked him about Caesar v. God. Again, none of the above.

So God doesn’t answer our yes/no or multiple choice questions, necessarily, with one of the options a dualistic mind offers.

Great scientists know how to transcend dualistic-only thinking, as well. But this post is getting long. I don’t know if I’m making sense to anyone, but at least I’m trying to answer. I just noticed your handle is “atheist” so maybe I should have included more technical examples? :o

Alan
 
Gaber said:
That’s kind of humorous to me, because I used to do QA on speakers in a factory using oscilloscpes to generate frequncy testing sweeps. It is further funny because it perfectly demonstrates that just because you know a bit of something, it doesn’t mean that that bitty bit-bit is all, as we do tend to think our thoughts have a 1/1 correspondence to reality.
Click to expand...
Too many meaningful coincidences here. I’ll contact you soon by PM.
What we think we know isn’t even beinging to cover it all, despite the ever increasing breadth and depth of human “knowledge.” If we percieved allness, it would appear blank or empty to our mind. We haven’t, as identifying with our motal mind, any sort of adequate bandwidth to do other than delve into what that bitty brain is capable of. The heart is another matter, and that is what can inform the mind of the Ineffable, as far as it is trained and depending on what fulcrum of human capability it has tipped on. That is why my Mentor said “The head and the heart must dance together!”
Click to expand...
I saw a credible video recently that showed that the heart has a magnetic field something like 500 times that of the brain, and that much more information travels FROM the heart to the brain than the other way around. When people are in the same room, their electromagnetic fields actually interact. This is interesting because emotions can actually be picked off the EKG. Love looks like a nice little sign wave, and anxiety has more high frequency components so it makes a more jagged display.

So call it spirit or whatever, but there is electromagnetic interaction between human beings in the same room, and their feelings are actually communicated electronically.

Can this explain why flocks of birds all lift up at the same time and fly in exotic formations, all turning this way and then that, perfectly synchronized?

So yeah, if your heart and head dance, then you can be fully human, without losing the instinct the lower animals have that are part of our wonder and folklore.

You know what? I have a close EE friend Chris who is an expert at electromagnetic interference, and I bet he’d love to talk to me about setting up an experiment that measures electromagnetic field from people and groups. They have chambers big enough. I’ve just decided, I will ask him.

Here he is, when I visited him a few months ago. This man may help us understand heart-to-heart communications!

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.ne...04674244_1169979370_32529141_1470355937_n.jpg

Just think. We may be able to measure electromagnetic waves that help explain the unexplained, with this sort of equipment:

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.ne...504034228_1169979370_32529138_661366319_n.jpg

Edit: I just called Chris. He says they don’t have anything sensitive enough to detect these kinds of fields. He has made detectors that see whether people are carrying a hidden transmitter, but not emanations from the people themselves. He’s never done this but wants to talk more; he was just going to lunch so I only had a minute with him.

Alan
 
AlanFromWichita said:
Too many meaningful coincidences here. I’ll contact you soon by PM.
Click to expand...
Look forward to it. Agree completely or not, something that may be beside the point, we certainly appear to have much to talk about.
I saw a credible video recently that showed that the heart has a magnetic field something like 500 times that of the brain, and that much more information travels FROM the heart to the brain than the other way around. When people are in the same room, their electromagnetic fields actually interact. This is interesting because emotions can actually be picked off the EKG. Love looks like a nice little sign wave, and anxiety has more high frequency components so it makes a more jagged display.
Click to expand...
I saw that too! Astounding!
So call it spirit or whatever, but there is electromagnetic interaction between human beings in the same room, and their feelings are actually communicated electronically.
Click to expand...
Yes, that happens so much more thatn we imagine. Even infra-red interaction happens, and while we take conversation for granted, the quality of that sound, similarly to the sine waves of the magnetic readings, have an effect. And it is said that there is someting that can go from pupil-to-pupil when looking into another’s eyes. Yoou probably know that from your life with St. J 🙂 And how do dogs know precisely when thier owner leaves for home at someone els;s randomly selected moment???
Can this explain why flocks of birds all lift up at the same time and fly in exotic formations, all turning this way and then that, perfectly synchronized?
Click to expand...
So yeah, if your heart and head dance, then you can be fully human, without losing the instinct the lower animals have that are part of our wonder and folklore.
Click to expand...
Exactly. Maybe you know about Ken Wlber’s ideas about fulcrums and quadrants regarding levels of awareness?
You know what? I have a close EE friend Chris who is an expert at electromagnetic interference, and I bet he’d love to talk to me about setting up an experiment that measures electromagnetic field from people and groups. They have chambers big enough. I’ve just decided, I will ask him.
Click to expand...
Edit: I just called Chris. He says they don’t have anything sensitive enough to detect these kinds of fields. He has made detectors that see whether people are carrying a hidden transmitter, but not emanations from the people themselves. He’s never done this but wants to talk more; he was just going to lunch so I only had a minute with him.
Click to expand...
Alan
Click to expand...
Yes, we have much to talk about.
 
Gaber said:
Exactly. Maybe you know about Ken Wlber’s ideas about fulcrums and quadrants regarding levels of awareness? Yes, we have much to talk about.
Click to expand...
No, but maybe I’ll check it out. Lemme tell you, my mind has been places no Star Trek has gone, in the last 11 years. I have a lot of thoughts about levels of awareness, and whenever I hear anybody talk either science or religion, it like totally clicks and makes sense, and validates what I came up with on my own.

In fact, earlier today I saw a video which had separate universes spawning at each moment (though “each” is a limited, dualistic term I’m using it for convenience) which actually play out all the possibilities. They were taking the best of Einstein, Hawking, and a couple others and putting it together.

I realized all this several months ago, clear as a bell, as a logical result of the study I’d done and my experiences. That was one way we could actually explain how we even live, using statistics which one would think were against us. It also explains how we can both have free will, and how God knows the future, and how the Holy Spirit operates. Here I just thought of this today – the Holy Spirit transcends all these “consciousnesses” that have their own separate universes, and gently flows toward the end that we might call “Godly.” Like the Bible says, He’s like the wind; can’t see but can feel. Well, those who are sensitive enough and peaceful enough will feel these tuggings to more or less degree depending of course, on everything individual about any given situation. So this was we can make science and God happy, all at once.

Also, I look at the “quantum foam” and the loose ends (my term) of the “string theory” and “relativity” and “free will” and “randomness” and “chaos” as all leading to the same place – roughly the Cloud of the Unknowing, to use the book title from the famous anonymous Catholic mystic.

Alan

Edit: I just thought of another resource. I left a message with Ann, a lady I knew several years ago, who had a business doing brain wave measurements using a hat with 24 electrodes, as biofeedback. Clients would go through exercises that would arouse or calm their anger or anxiety or whatever, and they could see it on the screen. She has worked with a number of mystics and can recognize them from their brain scans. She also has scanned some self-described psychics. I think I’ll see if she knows anything about this magnetic field thing.
 
AlanFromWichita said:
You must know some pretty boring scientists. 🤓

I’ve never met one that wasn’t fascinated with how the mind works, and interested in how that interacts with their “real work” whether it be of the mind or not.

Alan
Click to expand...
Do you include neuroscientists in your statement? They seem to exercise considerable influence in our secular society…
 
AlanFromWichita said:
Who wants to know, and whaddya got? 😃

Alan
Click to expand...
Phew! I was afraid you might take offence at my post. Thanks for taking it as the joke I meant it to be. 🙂

Also, thanks for answering my question about dualistic thinking. I have to think about it some more. 🙂
 
tonyrey said:
The metaphysical principles are not invented “on the fly” and can be found in any textbook on the philosophy of science.

Please least the principles on which you think science is based.
To explain science means explaining the metaphysical principles on which science is based.

You are making the materialist’s assumption that science can explain the whole of reality - including metaphysical principles .

How do you justify that assumption?

How would you justify your assumption that metaphysical principles are “moot philosophical concepts and imaginings”?
Click to expand...
👍👍

Again, the materialism/scientism paradigm says “Science=Reality.” It is NOT.
 
inocente said:
Well there’s your problem straight off. The OP pits philosophy against science on which is top dog in explaining reality. You’re using a philosophy text book, so of course it will put philosophy on top. It’s this issue again of biasing the evidence.

Why? Seriously, on what grounds, as science is unconcerned with metaphysics, it is successful in great part because it deliberately doesn’t try to assign meaning.

It isn’t an assumption. If you’ve been reading my posts, I’ve been arguing that as humans we cannot have a completely objective explanation of reality. I would therefore argue that such things as meaning, purpose and knowing how we know that we know are bound to be subjective and cannot be aspects of objective reality.
Click to expand...
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but what you have just posited goes against the teaching of Holy Mother Church AND just common sense.

Of course, one can then ask “what is common sense,” which will obviously derail the thread---------let’s save that for another time–OK? 👍

But yes-------what you have just posited goes against Churhch teaching. Ok by me, then. Just pointing that out.👍
 
gentle_atheist said:
What do you mean by “dualistic thinking”?
Click to expand...
AFW did an excellent presentation of what practical dualism means. Since I’m involved in this, here’s my “5 cents/sense” worth on it as well.

Dualistic thought is what the awareness uses to navigate the time space continuum it inhabits as identified with a body/mind. It is what constitutes everything you call “me” and “me’s” assessments of relativity to is own “me,” as well as we’s, it’s and they’s. It is the subject/object mode of awareness of everyday encounter with the world, and is predicated on contrast, difference and division. The brain devides in order to calculate by difference. This s/o awareness field is what comes after the infantile absorpion of “I and the world are one” matures past the fulcrum that happens at about seven years old.

Eventually, it can happen, and does, in many cases, that another fulcrum is tipped on and one can become aware of awareness as such, and at that instant the world and its meaning changes for that individual. It is the same world, but it is on a different footing. At this point the individual can distinguish between “I” as the permament unchanging substrate of expereince, and “me” the person which which is conjectured and mistaken for self by mind’s divisive nature.

To the discursive mind pure awareness looks empty in terms of qualifiers and attributes, yet is constiuted of Significance and Potential. At one time this was commonly known by mankind and utilzed as a wholistic encounter with the four dimensions plus seven. But that was perhaps in sets of approximatley 14K years agos. Or there are other stories to explain it, like one in the Bible. But those stories are cross culturally ubiquitous.

So now, after a particular Revalator, Who’s timeless knowledge of this was explicated some 2K years ago, we have a what seems a belated upsurgance and re-encountering of this kind of awareness manifesting in ways AFW pointed out. He and I may not be exactly synched in all respects of detail on this, but I feel in essence we agree at least about the vital nature of non dualist thinking coming to the fore. It will be, is, insstrumental in resolving such issues as we are encountering on another thread.

Hmmm…Drugs. Ever see the party sequence in Down the Rabbit Hole? Belief is a drug, my friend. Ideas are freedom from belief. They can grow and develop. Unexamined faith is revealed for what it is by the word “religion.” And there is nothing wrong with that until you discover that you are tied to it so you can penetrate its symbolism. Then the gordian knot is cut in one stroke.
 
tonyrey said:
Your deconstructionism leaves you without any principles on which to base your own conclusions!
Click to expand...
Before you change the subject, I’d love to hear your response to the original point: that only science avoids the glaring problem that every religion and every school of philosophy has its own different, incompatible explanation of reality.

(And as Baptists are a doctrine-free zone, for the sake of your spiritual welfare please try to avoid the temptation of telling me what I must and must not believe lest it leads you into sin).
 
tonyrey said:
Sure, but you support materialism which excludes belief in the supernatural.
Click to expand...
Thank you for drawing attention to my point that philosophy is useless when it comes to reality - are we supposed to go with materialism, idealism, monism, dualism, pluralism, …?

Second, it’s a bit bizarre to suggest another Christian supports materialism, the position that only matter and energy exist, which would exclude God. Christianity is monotheistic, which means believing in one God. Whether we also happen to believe in hoards of angels, demons, fairies or UFOs is strictly optional whatever you may want.
 
OrdinaryMelkite said:
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong, but what you have just posited goes against the teaching of Holy Mother Church AND just common sense.

Of course, one can then ask “what is common sense,” which will obviously derail the thread---------let’s save that for another time–OK? 👍

But yes-------what you have just posited goes against Churhch teaching. Ok by me, then. Just pointing that out.👍
Click to expand...
Some argue that reality is whatever their religion and their common sense dictate, and the rest of us must accept that as being somehow more real than our own reality. Some even expect reality to change to fit whatever their religion and their common sense dictate.

Whether those people should be allowed to operate heavy machinery is off-topic. 😃
 
OrdinaryMelkite said:
👍👍

Again, the materialism/scientism paradigm says “Science=Reality.” It is NOT.
Click to expand...
If you’ve run out of arguments and the only weapons you have left are thumbs up signs and writing NOT in capital letters, then of course I graciously accept your surrender. :curtsey:
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top