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The Parapsychological Experimenter Effect

Maybe you would be willing to rate your level of agreement with the following quotes on a scale from 1 to 10. 1 being complete and utter rejection, 10 being complete and utter agreement.

1. "...a mythology is a control system, on the one hand framing its community to accord with an intuited order of nature and, on the other hand, by means of its symbolic pedagogic rites, conducting individuals through the ineluctable psychophysiological stages of transformation of a human lifetime - birth, childhood and adolescence, age, old age, and the release of death - in unbroken accord simultaneously with the requirements of this world and the rapture of participation in a manner of being beyond time."

2. "Religion is a defense against a religious experience"

3. "Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is Whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning."

4. "Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble."

5. "God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that."

6. "The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases."

7. "Myths are first and foremost psychic phenomena that reveal the nature of the soul."

8. "Myth is the primordial language natural to these psychic processes, and no intellectual formulation comes anywhere near the richness and expressiveness of mythical imagery."

9. "Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science."

10. "Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. You may argue against it but you should no more treat it with disrespect than a perfectly cultivated writ."
 
Limbo said:
Maybe you would be willing to rate your level of agreement with the following quotes on a scale from 1 to 10. 1 being complete and utter rejection, 10 being complete and utter agreement.
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I'm willing, though I don't see what the point is.

1. "...a mythology is a control system, on the one hand framing its community to accord with an intuited order of nature and, on the other hand, by means of its symbolic pedagogic rites, conducting individuals through the ineluctable psychophysiological stages of transformation of a human lifetime - birth, childhood and adolescence, age, old age, and the release of death - in unbroken accord simultaneously with the requirements of this world and the rapture of participation in a manner of being beyond time."
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1. It's bilgewater.

2. "Religion is a defense against a religious experience"
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4. Someone is just being snarky here, I think.

3. "Life is without meaning. You bring the meaning to it. The meaning of life is Whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning."
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8. Pretty much right.

4. "Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble."
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1. Even the metaphors are garbage much of the time.

5. "God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that."
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1. Pure rubbish.

6. "The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases."
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2. While it's true, it's also a trite aphorism.

7. "Myths are first and foremost psychic phenomena that reveal the nature of the soul."
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1. Garbage.

8. "Myth is the primordial language natural to these psychic processes, and no intellectual formulation comes anywhere near the richness and expressiveness of mythical imagery."
Click to expand...
1. Garbage.

9. "Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science."
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1. Garbage.

10. "Mysticism has been in the past and probably ever will be one of the great powers of the world and it is bad scholarship to pretend the contrary. You may argue against it but you should no more treat it with disrespect than a perfectly cultivated writ."
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1. Garbage.
 
PixyMisa said:
I'm willing, though I don't see what the point is.


1. It's bilgewater.

4. Someone is just being snarky here, I think.

8. Pretty much right.

1. Even the metaphors are garbage much of the time.

1. Pure rubbish.

2. While it's true, it's also a trite aphorism.

1. Garbage.

1. Garbage.

1. Garbage.

1. Garbage.
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You pretty much trashed both Campbell and Jung. Good going. The one you ageed with was Campbell.
 
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Jeff Corey said:
You pretty much trashed both Campbell and Jung. Good going. The one you ageed with was Campbell.
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Happy to help. Though really, what I trashed was woo-ish quotes of Campbell and Jung taken out of context.

Though Jung was pretty woo-ish at the best of times.
 
Anyway, now that you've identified the culprits for me, I expect that the point is that Limbo can jump in and say "Aha! You've trashed two of the greatest scholars of myth and mysticism of all time! Shows what you know!"

I'll pre-empt him.

First of all, being a great scholar doesn't make you immune to foolish beliefs, much less foolish statements. This goes doubly when the quote is removed from context.

Second, and more important, being a great scholar of myth and mysticism requires (or imbues) a profound, intuitive understanding of the nature and processes of human belief. It need not confer any insight at all as to whether those beliefs are true.

If the argument is that myths have power over minds, then my answer is, of course they do.

If the argument is that myths therefore reflect reality, my answer is, they reflect reality about as well as a shattered funhouse mirror.
 
Um... While all of this is incredibly interesting... What exactly do myth, mysticism, and religion have to do with the experimenter effect, or the validity of scientific experiments??
 
Jeff Corey said:
You pretty much trashed both Campbell and Jung. Good going. The one you ageed with was Campbell.
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Ah. So to "trash" something all one has to do is disagree with it...call it garbage, bilgewater, etc. Gotcha.
 
Limbo said:
Ah. So to "trash" something all one has to do is disagree with it...call it garbage, bilgewater, etc. Gotcha.
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He said "trash", not "refute". I did not refute their claims, but I certainly trashed them.

And since you're here, would you care to proceed?
 
PixyMisa said:
He said "trash", not "refute". I did not refute their claims, but I certainly trashed them.

And since you're here, would you care to proceed?
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Don't see much point...anyone can just "trash" anything anytime and then just la-de-da provide a music video.
 
I did exactly what you asked. You presented a list of quotes, and asked for someone to rate each one on a scale of 1 to 10 according to whether they disagreed or agreed. I disagreed strongly with almost all of the quotes.

Did you or did you not have a reason for this exercise?
 
SkeptiChick said:
Um... While all of this is incredibly interesting... What exactly do myth, mysticism, and religion have to do with the experimenter effect, or the validity of scientific experiments??
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http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_psycho10.htm

And now...once again I have reached the point where I am sick of talking to ignorant, narrow-minded, arrogant, smart-ass pseudo-skeptic fundamentalists. Unfortunetly it happened before I resume talking to arthwollipot. He seemes like a decent guy that I wouldn't mind talking to. Oh well. I'll be back sooner or later
 
Limbo said:
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_psycho10.htm

And now...once again I have reached the point where I am sick of talking to ignorant, narrow-minded, arrogant, smart-ass pseudo-skeptic fundamentalists. Unfortunetly it happened before I resume talking to arthwollipot. He seemes like a decent guy that I wouldn't mind talking to. Oh well. I'll be back sooner or later
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I pride myself as being a smart-ass rather than a dumb-ass. Apparently you have no reason to.
 
PixyMisa said:
Okay, I read that. Pseudoscientific drivel from beginning to end.

Would you care to discuss why it is drivel?
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I just read through it too. I think you're being overly kind.

An extract from the introduction:

The most exciting research in quantum physics today is the investigation of what physicist David Bohm calls quantum-interconnectedness or non-local correlations. It has now been demonstrated repeatedly that quanta of light that are sent off in opposite directions at light speed, maintain their connection to one another, and that each little photon is affected by what happens to its twin, many kilometers away.

This surprising coherence between distant entities is called non-locality. In writing on the philosophical implications of nonlocality, physicist Henry Stapp of the University of California at Berkeley says these quantum connections could be the “most profound discovery in all of science.”
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A standard introduction to quantum interconnectedness. The only question now is whether this is going to be misused as a proof of homoeopathy, ESP, Reiki, Remote Healing or Remote Viewing.


Psychic abilities and remote viewing are demonstrations of our personal experience with such non-local connection in consciousness. Mind-to-mind connections give us expanded awareness, which is entirely consistent with life in a non-local world.
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