Reminds me of the time I went to a JW party....
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/64267/1.ashx
Bradley
..and it wasnt as bad as i thought it would be, but it wasnt great either.
i wouldve normally avoided going to anything dub related, but my best friend had her babyshower on sat.
night and invited practically everyone i know, so i had to go.
Reminds me of the time I went to a JW party....
http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/64267/1.ashx
Bradley
the following i wrote to a friend this morning and doctored slightly for this forum.
can any of you relate to this kind of mystical experience and if you would be kind enough, would you mind me quoting any experiences listed to my friend?
please be aware that the letter uses language to detach me away from the watchtower (thus church, instead of congregation etc).
rem,
I was being conservative. It's obvious that there are far more wrong ideas that right ones. Just because someone is going against contemporary thinking doesn't give him any more chance of being correct. As Sagan was fond of saying, they laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
True. But, the fact remains, they did laugh at Galileo. And Wegener, and Freud, and Margulis, and...the list goes on. Since science has been dismissive, at times, of both good and bad ideas I think this point is moot.
As far as paradigm shifts in scientific thinking - that's all part of the process. That's why the scientific method works. Pseudoscientists don't change their theories in the face of facts.
Again, I was just curious, have you read or heard about Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolution"? It's basically a sociological analysis of science. You might check it out.
Surely you must be suspicious that not a *shred* of high-quality evidence has surfaced in all of these decades of intense study? I can see it being elusive... but all-together invisible? I doubt it. Like I said before - nobody is looking for huge phenomenon - they gave that up a long time ago. They have been looking for the slightest blip on the statistical radar for years now. The problem is that when you start looking to that level of signal to noise ratio, your procedures have to be pretty much perfect so as to rule out non-psi factors.
Well, I don't agree that there hasn't been a "shred" of evidence for psi. Your language is utterly totalizing : "all-together invisible", "slightest lip." That's simply not true. If you would read Kuhn's book you would find that anomolous data often gets ignored, or even repressed, by the scientific community. I hate to sound like a creationist, but this does happen, either consciously or unconsciously. One of the problems with the extreme skeptical community is that they have almost turned science into a God of sorts, believeing that it is almost without error.
Keep in mind I am NOT saying that God, psi or any other idea outside orthodox science is true. I'm only saying that the skeptical community, and it's followers, which include yourself , are just as biased and have their own, quite dogmatic, philosophical agenda. Not enough attention is placed on the limits of science and how things really work in the scientific community. But, most skeptics and atheists do not want to do that or dismiss other views a priori. Comfort zone?
B.
the following i wrote to a friend this morning and doctored slightly for this forum.
can any of you relate to this kind of mystical experience and if you would be kind enough, would you mind me quoting any experiences listed to my friend?
please be aware that the letter uses language to detach me away from the watchtower (thus church, instead of congregation etc).
rem
That's convenient. Define the phenomenon as non-testable. Now we are in the region of philosophy - not science. The purely rational standpoint is usually to withold judgement on such things, yet not hold them credible. i.e. allow for the minute possibility that they exist - but don't believe in it. God's and fairies fall into this camp as well.
Where in the world did you get that idea? There are things which are not testable yet I'm sure you believe in them. Your subjective sense of self, your thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc., are all not testable, yet they are real. Of course, you could argue that we could measure the effects of these internalizations, but we would never be sure if there was really any correspondence or what it feels like to be you.
Your mental state is non-testable, therefore it is not credible -- I don't believe in you!
The methods of the physical sciences work very well for the physical sciences. Unfortunately, when applied to human beings or more metaphysical matters, they are wholly inadequate. Scientism.
B.
the following i wrote to a friend this morning and doctored slightly for this forum.
can any of you relate to this kind of mystical experience and if you would be kind enough, would you mind me quoting any experiences listed to my friend?
please be aware that the letter uses language to detach me away from the watchtower (thus church, instead of congregation etc).
rem,
Keep in mind that I do respect you as an over-all rational person. Nevertheless...
Show me the money. Show me the replicated experiments.
I'm very new to exploring the "pro" side of the parapsychology debate, so I cannot give a complete answer to your request. I have heard, though, that some consider psi phenomenon to be "state-dependent" and thus not readily accesible to experimental validity. The human mental condition is complex and ever-changing; it would make sense that altered states of consciousness are inconsistent and very dependent on mood and other factors. Ask a Monet to paint in a laboratory and he might say that it is impossible. One has to be "in the mood." Again, this is just a possibility, I'm not even saying that I believe in parapsychology.
Mental conditions are almost invariably not open to scientific scrutiny. How do you quantify such feelings as love, empathy, jealousy and religious awe? You can't. No one can. It's validity or non-validity is completely subjective. Many skeptics view subjective experiences as having no validity whatsoever; since the love I have for a friend is unverifiable and unfalsifiable it must therefore not be true. Of course, such a statement is ridiculous. Couldn't the same be said for mystical and spiritual feelings?
I'm not saying that fellow "skeptics" such as Randi can't be overly dogmatic. I'm just coming at it, as best I can, from a purely rational standpoint - something new-agey types won't even begin to do.Two things: Number one, no one is "purely rational." Not even Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennet. Secondly, have you considered that you have debated "new agey" type people and not looked into more educated people who are open to "supernatural" phenomenon? Sure, one can debate Creationism with a backwater, snake-handling Pentacostalist, but that doesn't mean you've wrestled with theists who have more intellectual finesse. There are educated believers and non-educated believers. Dumb atheists and smart atheists. Just make sure you've talked to the more intelligent sides of both camps.
I admit, I believe the probability of the supernatural realm to be so small as to be practically zero. The same is true of my belief in god. All I need is some good evidence. In fact, down deep, I think I really want to believe.So, what books have you read in favor of belief (besides WT books, of course). Have you read William James's "Varities of Religious Experience"? Alduous Huxley's "The Perrenial Philosophy"? Paul Davies's "God and the New Physics"? Richard Swineburne? Kenneth Miller? Really, since you "want to believe" I'm sure you would have read something which is pro-theist.
Anecdotes are not evidence. I've seen both sides of the story.Anecdotal evidence is not repeatable, but that does not mean that they therefore have no validity.
For every example of plate techtonics you give, I can give you 10 more along the lines of cold fusion, lamarkian evolution, etc. Remember, it was evidence that turned the tide for plate techtonics theory - not anecdotes.
Since you have no idea how many examples of scientific dogmatism turned upside it's head I can give you cannot make the above statement. Have you ever read Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolution"? I also want to mention that there is a HUGE difference between a physical phenomenon and a mental one. Plate tectonics is readily available to scientific study in the physicalist sense; mystic experience is not.
Regarding SETI, I happen to have been running it on my PC for quite some time. I don't view it as a hard science (though it is based on hard sciences such as information theory), and plus it's just in it's infancy. If the skies had been as thoroughly searched as the field of parapsychology, then I think you would have point, and I wouldn't be wasting cycles on my PC
Again, there is a big difference between state-dependent mental phenomenon and physical phenomenon. Surely you must see this.
B.
as an animal lover, i have some questions jws have never dared to breach (according to a search of jw publications).
if humans die because of inheriting adam and eve's sin, why do animals die?
were animals created imperfect?.
jgnat,
You are saying that no land turtle has ever died of old age? Is that correct?
B.
the following i wrote to a friend this morning and doctored slightly for this forum.
can any of you relate to this kind of mystical experience and if you would be kind enough, would you mind me quoting any experiences listed to my friend?
please be aware that the letter uses language to detach me away from the watchtower (thus church, instead of congregation etc).
Six,
I don't think you're a skeptic. I think you're a cynic. But that's okay. Jesus loves you anyway.
the following i wrote to a friend this morning and doctored slightly for this forum.
can any of you relate to this kind of mystical experience and if you would be kind enough, would you mind me quoting any experiences listed to my friend?
please be aware that the letter uses language to detach me away from the watchtower (thus church, instead of congregation etc).
Xena,
Here's the deal: Humans like to have a consistant worldview. It's comfortable. It's stable. Whether it's believing in Jehovah God and His Organization, the dialectical-materialism of Marxism or the naturalism of skeptics -- the human mind will always sort things out to fit it's Weltenschauung.
Interestingly, one of the founders of CSICOP -- the Center for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal -- a man by the name of Truzzi, I believe, left the organization because he felt they had a dogmatic agenda and were biased in their treatment of unexplained phenomenon. It is well and good that skeptics apply the hermeneutics of suspicion on believers in the "supernatural." But it works both ways. You can't tell me that the skeptic doesn't settle down into a philosophical comfort zone and have certain motivations not to believe, or even look into, the supernatural/spiritul. I know I did.
Or maybe I'm just getting into all this fringey new-age stuff to get chicks. Hows that for the hermeneutics of suspicion!
Edited to add the link about Truzzi... http://tricksterbook.com/truzzi/Tributes/WestrumRon.html
the following i wrote to a friend this morning and doctored slightly for this forum.
can any of you relate to this kind of mystical experience and if you would be kind enough, would you mind me quoting any experiences listed to my friend?
please be aware that the letter uses language to detach me away from the watchtower (thus church, instead of congregation etc).
That was a wonderful point-by-point rebuttel of my post, Six.
the following i wrote to a friend this morning and doctored slightly for this forum.
can any of you relate to this kind of mystical experience and if you would be kind enough, would you mind me quoting any experiences listed to my friend?
please be aware that the letter uses language to detach me away from the watchtower (thus church, instead of congregation etc).
rem,
If you can show me one amazing advance that the study of parapsychology has made (that doesn't have to do with psychology), then I will eat my words. Of course, I can list of thousands made by real science.
So, if practicality and past-success is the barometer for "real science" we should cut all funding to SETI?
B.
the following i wrote to a friend this morning and doctored slightly for this forum.
can any of you relate to this kind of mystical experience and if you would be kind enough, would you mind me quoting any experiences listed to my friend?
please be aware that the letter uses language to detach me away from the watchtower (thus church, instead of congregation etc).
rem,
Well, I confess that I have been going through a paradigm shift of late. I once held a similar viewpoint to the one you are expressing in this thread and, in many ways, I still do. Nonetheless, some of what you state can be argued against quite profoundly.
For instance, you state that there are some things which are, as yet, "unexplained" and state that some people put faith in accepting a supernatural explanation while "skeptics" simply state that they "don't know." My experience with skeptics, and in being a skeptic myself, is that they very seldom state that they "just don't know." Whereas the "true believer" dogmatically states that the "paranormal event" is truly supernatural, the skeptic -- perhaps "scoffer" is the better word -- dogmatically puts faith that there is a natural, materialist explanation. That may be the case, but sometimes such rigid skepticism becomes just as unbendable and without justification as the belief of "true believers."
You state that there is no evidence for the paranormal and that parapsychologists have been searching fruitlessly time and time again. This is, of course, what skeptical critics of the paranormal would say, not what parapsychologists themselves say. As a matter of fact, there is circumstantial evidence that the paranormal might actually be a real, unexplained phenomenon. I would do a Google search under the name, "Lawrence Leshan" and see what you find. He is a well-respected psychologist with a PhD from the University of Chicago and has done some fascinating research into the paranormal. And there are others as well. Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow -- both heavy-duty names in psychology, both past presidents of the APA -- were open to the possibility of the paranormal.
Let us just admit it: Many skeptics have their own biases and agenda. There are a few names in the skeptical community -- guys like James Randi, Michael Shermer, Paul Kurtz -- who beat the materialist/atheist drum just as loudly and unreflexively as Christian Fundamentalists.
One of the reasons why the paranormal is not accepted is that there is no working theory as to how it works. Science is theory-laden, as Thomas Kuhn pointed out, and as such tends to dismiss anything that is not worked out in a theory. There are many examples of people who had "fringe" ideas that were scoffed at simply because their views did not fit into a workable theory. Continental drift, for instance, was widely speculated to have happened but few scientists accepted it -- actually many ridiculed the idea -- until the theory of plate-tectonics was developed. What was once laughed at is now proper science. Could the same be true of some aspects of what is now called "the paranormal"?
Really, I do think you have heard just one side of the story.
Bradley