Posts by Nickolas

189

Does God speak to you? HOW?

by Quentin in

an answer to this question is subjective to the individual an a posteriori experiene.

however, can there be an a priori experence, one that is objective, outside the bounds of personel experiene, or does it remain subjective?

god speaks to me, through many venus, except audible.

I haven't heard the name Uri Geller in years. He sort of fell off the radar when he was debunked on national television. The guy who debunked him, btw, has yet to see anyone claim the $1 million prize he put up for tabling any conclusive proof of the paranormal:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xrvxl3BU-wg

Another observation. Physics is physics. Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. The sun is emitting oodles and oodles of energy and some day it is going to run out. Some things, outside of some divine intervention, are very, very predictable.

59

Reality exists in your brain

by Nickolas in

i've just posted the following in another thread whose subject is supernatural experience, but it may deserve its own thread so i'll repost it here.

i don't believe in the supernatural but i do believe that people experience unexplained things.

where i differ from some people is that i perceive the unexplained things exist only in their brains and not in the physical world around them.. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.

Nickolas

You make some good points, Shelby, but what differentiates believing there was an earthquake in Japan with attendant nuclear consequences and believing that someone has experienced a supernatural event is the former is verifiable from a variety of sources, including eye-witness testimony and corroborating seismic/radioactivity monitoring in various places on the planet. The fact that you can get on a plane and see for yourself and the fact that corroborating evidence is available lends a greater degree of credibility to the event being true, as does the fact that cameras have recorded the event for all to see. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence.

59

Reality exists in your brain

by Nickolas in

i've just posted the following in another thread whose subject is supernatural experience, but it may deserve its own thread so i'll repost it here.

i don't believe in the supernatural but i do believe that people experience unexplained things.

where i differ from some people is that i perceive the unexplained things exist only in their brains and not in the physical world around them.. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.

Nickolas

kooky= big dominating personalities that we dense ones must not disagree with because when we do we are really attacking your character and not your posts

I haven't met any dense ones in here, just lots and lots of different perspectives.

Please, please attack my posts rather than my character. I already know my character is irreparably flawed but my thinking is open to change. I value and appreciate different and valid insights into what I hold to be true. Every time I am proven in error (every time my paradigm shifts) my mind grows.

77

On Human Evolution

by TD in

jw
friends

it's a subject that comes up fairly often here (understandably) and very strong opinions are expressed.

much of the discussion seems to be counterproductive.. i'd like to propose a different approach.

we all know what each other's conclusions are (or at least we should by now).

Nickolas

The skull sequence presents a certain clarity to the dynamic that some will be unable to see because it challenges what they otherwise believe. It's just the way it is. The evidence for our evolution is plentiful and virtually conclusive (adjective chosen deliberately) and is more logical than the alternative proposition. Good thread.

11

Why we grow old and die

by ballistic in

"why we grow old and die"... i remember seeing this article quite a lot, but maybe you could tell me if it still comes around?.

anyhow, i was watching a tv programme the other day about nature following the second law of thermodynamics and i realised that everything around us breaks down, everything wears, things that move generate friction, the tendancy for particles is to fall apart and "entropy" to increase, just as the universe itself will one day have no structure left as such, just randomness of elementary particles floating about and darkness.. .

really, the question implies a bogus argument.

Nickolas

Quite right, but it is a message a lot of people in here don't want to hear.

Cheers,

Nick

59

Reality exists in your brain

by Nickolas in

i've just posted the following in another thread whose subject is supernatural experience, but it may deserve its own thread so i'll repost it here.

i don't believe in the supernatural but i do believe that people experience unexplained things.

where i differ from some people is that i perceive the unexplained things exist only in their brains and not in the physical world around them.. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.

Nickolas

Psilocybin and LSD are chemical agents that induce a state of altered awareness but not a "reality" per se. One comes back to reality after a trip, to the "normal" state of being and one's usual and natural perception of the world and oneself. There is reality and one's interpretation of it and often the two are not necessarily the same, especially where intangibles are concerned, which is Nick's point. A moot point I might add, considering the title and course of the thread. Though I enjoyed experimentation with altered states and perceptions, I choose to live in the natural state of my mind and body, such as it is.

When one can attribute a cause to an altered state of consciousness, whether it may be drug induced or in a dream, that altered state of consciousness does not persist. It goes away when the drug is oxidized by the liver or when the individual either recognises he is dreaming or wakes up. It does not form part of the person's reality but for the brief time he is experiencing the altered state. However, when a person fails to recognise that an altered state of consciousness is not real (schizophrenia has been mentioned as an extraordinarily stark example but it certainly does not apply to people generally) then it will become part of the person's reality. Like my b-i-l and his friend, who continue to believe to this day that their out-of-body experience was real.

I propose that the realities that all of us hold onto are at least to some small measure affected by perceptions that may not be entirely rational. Maybe it is only a fraction of a percent of what we hold to be real, but it is still part of it.

59

Reality exists in your brain

by Nickolas in

i've just posted the following in another thread whose subject is supernatural experience, but it may deserve its own thread so i'll repost it here.

i don't believe in the supernatural but i do believe that people experience unexplained things.

where i differ from some people is that i perceive the unexplained things exist only in their brains and not in the physical world around them.. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.

Nickolas

Welcome to MY "world", dear Nick - LOLOLOLOLOL! Peace to you!

Thank you, Shelby. I am, at least, in good company.

Seems we're essentially on the same page, Terry (but in the interests of full disclosure, in a recent thread your name and mine were mentioned in the same sentence with the word "kooky".)

Crux, the shared, drug-induced experience I referred to on the previous page that caused two individuals I know to become Jehovah's Witnesses was something like what you describe that might cause you to change your rationale. These two men, one of whom is my b-i-l, were passengers in a van along with a few others all doing hallucinagenic drugs. The driver of the van lost control, causing it to leave the road and roll several times before coming to rest on its roof in the ditch. Both my b-i-l and his friend report having been standing on the shoulder of the road watching the accident happen in slowmo and then looking at one another in wonder when in a flash they found themselves strapped in their seats in the wreck, unhurt. They were convinced that this was a message from God so changed their lives from hopeless reperbates to dedicated family men and, not incidentally, Jehovah's Witnesses. My take is they were both high on drugs and coincidentally experienced the same halucination because they were both studying TM and astro-travel at the time and their minds were disposed to the out of body incident.

lucid dreaming while awake and during the day is akin to day dreaming?

Not quite, curtains. Lucid dreaming happens only when you are asleep. The thing that differentiates it from "normal" dreaming is lucidity - recognising that you are asleep and dreaming while the dream is happening. It feels as if you are awake and physically experiencing the dream, but it isn't real and you know that it isn't real. Sort of like the holodeck on Star Trek or maybe more like the situations depicted in the movie Inception, but not quite. Day dreaming is perhaps similar but happens not nearly as deeply in the mind. And, yes, as Crux says, you can use lucid dreaming techniques to control nightmares,(and as Mad Sweeney discusses on page 1 of this thread.)

59

Reality exists in your brain

by Nickolas in

i've just posted the following in another thread whose subject is supernatural experience, but it may deserve its own thread so i'll repost it here.

i don't believe in the supernatural but i do believe that people experience unexplained things.

where i differ from some people is that i perceive the unexplained things exist only in their brains and not in the physical world around them.. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.

Nickolas

I like your analogy, TJI. Music can't be seen but it still has a physical presence. It causes shock waves in the air which cause physical movements in your ears that are interpreted by your brain. Once you have performed the beautiful piece it exists only in the memories of those who have heard it. It has become part of their reality with no physical proof that it ever happened. A parallel can be drawn with a supernatural experience that has a physical presence but is not recorded anywhere except for the memories of those who experienced it. The only significant difference I can think of at the moment is that music can be captured and simulated using technology while supernatural experiences have not been.

I'm disappointed that I come across to you as arrogant, TJU. It is not my intention and I suspect it is either an example of the limitations of text communication (no facial expressions, body language or intonation of voice to complete the message) or because you don't like what I have to say so you attack my character. But just to be clear, I mentioned halucinagenic drugs in support of the post by Twitch as a trigger for spontaneous illusions that the brain interprets as real. While I do not do nor ever have done halucinagens I do know two people who interpreted their identical drug-induced experience as a message from god and who became Jehovah's Witnesses as a consequence. That's two people out of thousands, so quite rare. I didn't mention schizophrenia but it is also a trigger for people seeing things that aren't really there - if you haven't seen A Beautiful Mind yet, it's probably one of the best representations of the disorder. I have never had occasion to actually meet anyone with schizophrenia so, again, quite rare. I don't consider myself to be crazy but I shared my own personal experience of lucid dreaming, which I at the time interpreted to be real when it clearly was not. What happened to you, I don't know because I was not there, but because I do not believe in the paranormal I believe there is a rational explanation. It may not have been in your head, but it will still have had a physical cause.

OTWO, this thread might have been better titled "Your reality exists in your brain". The physical world around you is real and your brain interprets the signals from your sensory organs to create a representation of the physical world. Your brain puts all the pieces together along with all the intangibles like thoughts and emotions and the result is your perception of what is real. The person sitting next to you on the bus will not have the same perception of reality that you do, even though you share the same space in time. It is just the way it is. He believes things that you do not believe. His reality is unique from yours so where, then, do your different realities exist if not in your individual brains?

189

Does God speak to you? HOW?

by Quentin in

an answer to this question is subjective to the individual an a posteriori experiene.

however, can there be an a priori experence, one that is objective, outside the bounds of personel experiene, or does it remain subjective?

god speaks to me, through many venus, except audible.

Nickolas

Oh, come now: they don't limit themselves to atheists - LOLOLOLOL! Most "theists" (as that word negatively connotates) dislike and are suspicious of anyone who doesn't believe as they do. Even other theists... and certainly spiritual non-theists (like myself). You're not alone in that, dear one, so take it in stride. Under these circumstances, you're probably in better company than you think, actually.

Yes, how true. I am often amazed by the extent to which you and I are in agreement on some things yet be in such fundamental disagreement on another.

59

Reality exists in your brain

by Nickolas in

i've just posted the following in another thread whose subject is supernatural experience, but it may deserve its own thread so i'll repost it here.

i don't believe in the supernatural but i do believe that people experience unexplained things.

where i differ from some people is that i perceive the unexplained things exist only in their brains and not in the physical world around them.. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.

Nickolas

That is a wonderful post. Thank you, Shelby. Yes, it is clear that there is another aspect to ourselves that is not physical. My sense of the dynamic is that the non-physical aspect is psychological rather than spiritual in nature. For many years I interpreted such things as manifestations of spirituality but after so many failed tests for credibility I came to interpret them as something far more ordinary.