Okay, the long awaited response to ZaaaaaaAAaaaay's arguments..
I already addressed the top of his argument regarding the known/unknown pair of opposites and his 4x4 value system, but to summarize it again, it's useless. It depends on the knowledge of the inquery to make the evaluation.
The statement "I am wearing a white shirt" is unknown to everyone right now except me. It could be a true/unknown or a false/unknown, but how can anyone tell unless they see me or I confirm it? Sure, it's either one or the other, but that's the same thing as 'it's either true or false'. We dont know what it is yet. It's simply unknown to all of you.
Those are cult/religion/babble terms, Fish. Gotta try avoiding them.
I find this statement intriguing since you are an admitted wiccan priest and most likely a leader of a cult! Do you avoid cult/religious terminology in your practice?
the skeptic is applying unknown=false unless proven true... meaning the skeptic remains open to changes in the situation.
yes, I know that most skeptics are saying unknown=false. who cares about thier personal philosophies? WE WANT CERTAINTY, not FAITH. the law of identification states that A=A. Simple. We don't assume that A=B until we have proof.
The Christian believer, however, applies unknown=true, regardless of other info. That's a huge difference.
it may be a different philosophical motivation, but it's the same logical error.
See, this is part of the woo behavior that pisses people off with you: you're faced with a question or statement, and instead of addressing it, you run off-topic on tangents that have nothing to do with the topic at hand.
the question you're referring to was regarding the existence of God relative to the atheist and the theist. My answeres relate the 'unknown' aspects of what God 'could be' as opposed to what believers 'believe it' to be. I answered your questions directly. You apparently were blinded by your illusions of what my statements regarded.
No one's saying that religion isn't beneficial to society to some degree; we just had a hypothetical discussion about the Biblical God's existence, period. And your dialectician is somewhere in left field, discussing Roman Catholic art and the benefits of the Nursing Schools, or something.
My statement regarding the dialectician is still accurate and pending. If we discuss 'god', then we have to find what is objective, and what is subjective, about the term.
All peoples in all cultures have ideas about 'God' or 'gods'. What do all of them share in common? A belief in something that can be said to have a 'higher intelligence' than human beings. Something which can give 'fore- knowledge' of events in the future, neccesary for survival. That's what all beliefs have in common.
So I dialectician simply asks the question objectivly, 'Does a higher intelligence exist in the universe?'
And it's not - as regards the question of whether or not the Biblical God exists.
there is NO consensus about what the 'biblical god' is, there are only interpretations relative to the orthodox, gnostic, pentacostal, catholic, and cabbalist. all interpretations share something in common, however, which is an acceptance of 'higher intelligence'
The question was asked - 'Does the Christian God exist?' - and the questions you would follow with have nothing to do with answering that question.
They most certainly may! If higher intelligence exists in universe, if higher intelligence is the 'ordering and creative' princaple of universe, then the question "does the christian god exist" could indeed be relevant to those questions.
Mythologies are known to contain higher order truths indifferent to those believing the mythologies. The Stories of Demeter tell the story of seeds in the springtime. The stories of Christ may be revealing a higher order truth independent of the beliefs or interpretations around him.
an interpretation of deity is a 2 value, personal. the discovery of higher intelligence in the universe is a 1 value, objective. we can experience a 2 value regarding something which is currently unknown to be certain.
Philosophically, we can't go on hunch, however, which it appears to me that you are.
Where did you get that from? I mean, honestly, where are you pulling that from?
from your statement regarding skepticism, the placement of unknown=false. I assume you're presenting yourself as a skeptic, although I am no longer quite so sure, as you dabble in occultic realms, which sure, you can be skeptical about, they are more fun that way, but I would'nt consider an occultist a skeptic in the classical sense, only in the agnostic sense.
So I speak of 'classical skepticism', the quality of skepticism that is assosciated with Randi and community here. I state therefore that Mystery is nothing but a tangled hierarchy of true and false, and skeptics see mystery as false and believers as true.
Strawman noted. Skeptics see mystery as unknown, and tenetively false until proven otherwise. Believers as true, regardless of other information.
It is niether strawman nor mysticism. 'Mystery' is simply a placement for 'unknown'. to claim that the mystery is 'tentavily false until proven otherwise' is irrelevant to an objective point of view, it is dependent on belief systems. to an objective and clear minded individual, it's value is simply unknown in the objective sense. it may be likely to be BS, or not, but that's opinion. Opinions are for blogs, not for critical thinking.
Now, you mention qi, you made some claims which I said were epistemological and philosophical. I dont understand why you responded with...meaning your making epistemological and philosophical claims based on your research, no?
No. Just making factual statements based on my research.
well they are hardly 'factual' in the sense that a researcher would use the term. They appeared to me to be assumptions based on your knowledge and practice. They are not a matter of pure historical record that all taoists agree on, far from it.
And I suggest your personal experience is not what you believe it to be.
I believe what I know. I know my experience is an experience, and nothing more than an experience. I place no objective validity on my experience.
Fine, as a matter of faith, that works for me. Beyond faith, however, qi does not exist beyond concept.
that has not yet been determined scientifically, that's an assumption based on your belief systems about Occult lore and science.
That's not what you said, though; you said it did not exist as a normal phenomenon. That makes any other statement contradictory.
'normal' would be correct. Perinormal, however, BECOMES a normal phenomenon after it's discovery. so watch again
0=perinormal
1=normal
2=paranormal
The concept of a thing is not the thing itself, right?
correct. A=A
So the concept of qi is not the same as qi itself, right?
correct
So if the concept of qi exists, but qi does not exist, then all we have is the concept of qi, right?
correct
The concept of dragons exists; that doesn't make winged lizards any more likely to be real.
correct.
Our awareness and knowledge of its existence is irrelevant, as regards such existence.
Absolutely. This means things either exist/are true, or they don't/are not true.
let's go back to your statement/belief that the world is 'too complex to be evaluated in terms of true and false'. You dont really believe this statement, or you dont really believe the other statement. Which is it? Here is another contradiction.
Existence exists. This is A=A. Inside of the set 'existence', there are things known to exist, and things which have not yet been discovered to exist. Things which have not yet been discovered to exist are called peri-normal phenomena.
So let's revist 'Qi' now. Qi could exist as a peri-normal phenomena. It clearly doesnt exist as a normal phenomena, and it could simply be a concept, a paranormal phenomena whose existence is pure subjective phantasm.
It most certainly is [peri-normal] a mystery when we havent discovered it yet!
Our imaginations do NOT follow the laws of the physical universe, our imaginations are NOT limited to those laws.
Let me say it again.Our imaginations do NOT follow the laws of the physical universe, our imaginations are NOT limited to those laws.
No, actually, all mental activity follows universal laws.
Then how am I able to fly in my dreams?
The experiences generated by imagination do not appear to follow universal laws, but they actually do, much the same way illusions or movies may seem impossible, but there is actually solid physics underlying it all.
what laws of physics allow me to fly in my dreams?
My ability to fly exists in 'conceptual' space.
existence=existence. conceptual=conceptual.
We can only verify it exists through personal experience, there is no proof of it's existence outside of this. Same as consciousness. We have absolutly no scientific evidence for the existence of consciousness other than direct experience of ' I Am, I think, I feel'.
Wrong. We also have communication of experiences and inferences.
so? Those are all grounded in personal experiences, translated into ideas, words, and text. So?
We have observation of behaviors and reactions. In fact, we have a whole lot of evidence about both consciousness and imagination.
such as? what is the scientific evidence that proves consciousness or dreams exists 'outside' of our subjective verification that they exist?
To a new topic.
Human beings are not ideas, yet human psychology argues against propositions and suggestions exactly as if they are.
Please explain and give examples, because I have no idea what you're saying here.
this thread is an example. Note how I must 'be' in other people's eyes, and note they use that value as a way to suggest my arguments are not plausable.
But that doesn't mean a human being cannot be so intimately connected to an idea, as to be in some way inseparable from them.
then your still confusing ideas as people at a basic level of your metaprogramming. You may not be able to seperate a person from an idea, but you most certainly can seperate an idea from a person.
Take Crowley, for example:
One of my favorite tricksters of all time.
a very twisted, dark, and devious person whose theories, ideas, and teachings have been a tremendous setback to reasonable thinking for many decades.
Depends upon who you talk too.
Yes, we can discusss Crowley the man, but we cannot do so without discussing ideas Crowley may have embraced or proposed, because so much of what he is about is built upon these ideas.
Sure, let's look at Crowley's 'do what thou wilt'/true will of thelema. it's also the idea of François Rabelais from the French Renaissance. We can absolutly look at that idea philosophically, isolate it away from Crowley. Although, please, that's a seperate discussion. If you start a thread on it, I will join in when time permits.
Crowley is not Witchcraft, but Witchcraft is very much a part of Crowley.
Crowleys ideas about Magick are irrelevant to the philosophy of Thelema.
Dr. Shui Yin Lo is a friend of mine. You confuse ideas about people again here.
And, given what I've read, both of your posts and of what others have posted about you, I'm not surprised. Like attracts like, in the world of social interaction.
that's mystical thinking. Doc Lo is a friend, but so is the head of the nuerobiology department at a major university a friend of mine. Macy Gray was a friend of mine too. So was DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill Gang. So is my nanny from el salvador, who is uneducated.So is a few entrepunears who are worth millions. So are a few actors and filmmakers. So?
My friends dont define me anymore than thier ideas define them or me. You dont know Doc Lo, yet you judge him based on his ideas, and then judge me for knowing him.
he was accused of incompetance, and scientific ineptitude.
so? does that make his claims false because reactionairy individuals made a claim about him? Do accusations made include the truth of the claim by default? He was a professor of physics at some of the most prominent universities in the world known for physics. I would imagine if he was so incompetant, he would'nt have those positions.
Actually, he gave the laundry ball thing rave reviews. Of course, it was just another bit of quackery, like homeopathy (which he also supports).
he did not give them rave reviews, he showed to ATG that the reason they worked was because people put too much detergent in their clothes, and that was the cause. ATG abused his determinings and put them out anyway, and he resigned. He does NOT support homeopathy, rather, Homeopathists use his research to make thier claims. There is a difference.
Several attempts were made to replicate, as usually happens in proper science. Results were overwhelmingly negative.
Please provide a link to the experiments of doc lo that were repeated by other scientists. I am not aware of them, and either is doc lo.
Sure, Dr. Shui might well have turned over a new leaf and learned how to conduct science properly; but until we see some of these properly conducted, double-blind, placebo-controlled, peer-reviewed studies appear in respectable scientific journals, and see independent researchers properly duplicate the results... then his experiments will always be suspect.
they should be suspect until there is proof, agreed.
It tells me that you, like so many others, just don't know what the placebo effect really is.
can you tell me or define the mechanism of the placebo effect? Looking forward.
I do know that body hardening is a part of special forces martial arts training; and they don't bother with nonsense like qi.
Then your simply ignorant regarding the practice of Iron Shirt Qi Kung.
Tell me, how do you describe turning sexual jing and refining it into qi, and then into shen, without using qi as a placeholder?
Conception. Semen becomes life.
huh?
I'm not talking about reproduction, i am talking about taoist internal alchemy, altering one's biophysical structure. What the hell are you talking about?
I can honestly say, I've never experienced anything which I can call qi as a separate phenomenon from other previously identified phenomena. I have, in fact, felt electric charges in my body; I have, in fact, generated small amounts of static electricity, via meditation, in my body. I've completely reverse my spiritual polarity during ritual on three separate occasions, though I don't know that this relates to what you're discussing.
those are also the effects of qi kung practice.
I can generate heat on demand from my hands, chest, face, feet, and genitals, and have had the ability to do so since I was a child. I can harden parts of my body and resist great damage with simple concentration. And I could do all this before I had ever heard of qi.
so?
If it is biioelectric energy, would you concede that qi is little more than a synonym for bioelectric energy?
Yes, I could concede to that. I suspect it may be that myself.
And, as such, is an irrelevant - or, should I say, redundant - term?
perhaps outside of Qi kung practice, but not inside of qi kung practice.
His science, or the replies of qualified scientists to his published papers?
scientists disagree all the time. just because a group of scientists disagree with the work of another scientist doesnt mean that the work is faulted. It took something like 10 years for relativity to be accepted, before then, it was laughed at and critiqued by 'scientists'.
either qi is a physical mechanism, or the concept of qi accompanies a psychological mechanism.
agreed
If the mind is an emergent property of matter, then mind and matter are already one.
Then where is memory? If what your saying is true, then we should be able to digitize it. Which I hope for, by the way!
All mystery exists to be unravelled, to be resolved into true statements and discarded ideas.
so I see we agree then after all. you apparently accept mystery the same way I do!
Well, for one thing, you're assuming some form of dualism - that there exists both the material and the non-material.
did you not yourself state that the idea of the thing is not the thing itself? hmm?
For another, you're assuming that mystery exists as a thing apart, rather than as a quality of a thing,
I dont know if mystery is a thing or not a thing, I just know it is unknown.
... huh? Common reality is mysterious???
Objective reality is certainly a wonderful mystery we have been uncovering for thousands of years. There is still more to uncover. Black holes, dark matter, DNA, consciousness.
Now I KNOW you've got some problems.
all problems are oppurtunities to arrive at further truth.
And unknown is not a value, compared to true/false. It is a value compared to known/unknown.
in ternary logic, unknown is a value as opposed to true and false. Your making an ignorant statement
would you like to see the paper?
http://www.aymara.org/ternary/ternary.pdf
What you're arguing for is a four value system.
no, I'm not. a four value system is useless until after the fact, and then it's unneccesary.
I'm afraid I have to snip out the remainder of your replies, as you appear to descend into nonsense discussions of numerology and woo-heavy wishful thinking.
cant wait to hear your wiccan ideologies.
Is there any more arguments I havent addressed? Do I have to sift through philosophical insanity in more of your posts? Please bring whatever else I missed to my attention, I can't wait to address.
BF
