|
|
unsui
|
 |
Likes it here |
Registered: September 2007
Messages: 338
|
|
|
No Message Body
[Updated on: Fri, 24 October 2008 18:05] |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
I tend to go for a mutiverse view, in that there are an infinite number of universes and that we exist in ever one in every possible physical configuration making every possible choice that cold ever be made in ever time period in history.
Ok well, maybe not, but can you get where I’m goin with this. This has always been my best guess as to why we experience déjà vu. Kinda like a bubble pipe, we are in a universe totally surrounded by others and we are just picking up on our other selves in those universes.?
People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The idea of having past lives is always an interesting idea. The closest I have come to "proof" is when my older daughter was about four years old, we were playing catch. She commented that she was a really good baseball player before. My wife and I asked her "before when?". Her reply was "before I was born, in my other life". When we asked her about the other life, she couldn't remember anything past the baseball comment, but she insisted she lived before. We were totally blown away with that line of discussion - with our 4 year old.
Cycling is the one sport where a guy can shave his legs, wear spandex and bright colors, and be accepted.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Alternative universes are not as far fetched as one might think. Mathamaticians and scientist have debated this idea for a long time. There is also the idea that sometimes tears occure between these universes and odd things happen. At the turn of the century two boys were found out west wandering alone. they apeared to be about 7 and 9 years old. They spoke no known language and they had green hair. Both boys died of respiratory complications.
As far as reincarnation goes. There is actually a theological argument in favor of this actually happening. The Hindu's believe in it and Buddah Broke the never ending cycle. In the Christian Bible, when Jesus died, the curtain deviding the Holy of Holies from the outer court was torn and " The dead were seen to walk the face of the earth".
The world is a strange place.
If you stand for Freedom, but you wont stand for war, then you dont stand for anything worth fighting for.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dear Roger &c.
These are nice thoughts and make good science fiction, but in my opinion there is nothing worth discussing in them. It's like UFOs. There are, of course, unidentified flying objects - until they are identified but if they remain unidentified we know nothing about them. It's like the canals on Mars. When you get a closer look there aren't any.
And, in the face of Weapons of Mass Destruction, do I need to tell you that people are very gullible while they are ignorant about such things.
And, to make things worse, organised religion has been teaching people for ages that it is GOOD to have faith in things that cannot be known about!
How can it be good to be stupid?
Look back over the ages at the things that the churches have said were true and tortured people to force them to accept. Most of those things are now accepted by everyone, even the pope as false. I won't bore you with a list.
Of course it is harder to persuade religions to give up their prejudices that have no faith content. How do you persuade Nigerian Christians to accept gay or female priests? How do you persuade muslims to treat women as equals. How do you persuade jews and arabs to stop mutilating their boy babies?
Religion is responsible for so much harm that we should all reject it and with it all the other superstitious nonsense.
Love,
Anthony
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Were such a mechanism possible, or in any way demonstrable, I have no doubt it would be considered ... but the existence of reincarnation is not a falsifiable hypothesis, and there is no reliable scientific evidence to suggest that it occurs. Anecdotal evidence is not very useful, as children are well-known to be fanciful and no child has ever been (nor should ever be) brought up in a clinical environment without exposure to outside factors that cannot be fully accounted for by observers.
It's rather like suggesting that someone is gay or transgender simply because a deity made them that way -- it's impossible to disprove and it doesn't give us any more information about the way the mind works, so it is not of much use to researchers.
David
[Updated on: Sat, 28 June 2008 23:28] |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dear Anthony
As Roger pointed out there is mathematical evidence to support the existence of a mutivers.
Let me say also the only stupid question is the one left unasked, and anytime anyone thinks they have all the answers the discovery proses will end with a screeching halt.
It is definitely not good to be stupid!
People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dear Arich,
Mathematics is wholly and completely a product of the human mind. It cannot provide evidence of anything factual about the world. I'd like to see what purports to be evidence (of anything at all!) in mathematics.
I agree that thinking one has all the answers is as stupid as believing things without evidence.
A simple fact such as this is a huge help in thinking clearly about the world and getting to your own view of what it is and what is your place in it. It was because I wanted to know where I fitted in it and how to tell right from wrong that I studied philosophy at university - in those days one didn't have to study a subject in order to get a job!
But the process of discovery DOES make progress and when something (like my first sentence) is discovered and becomes accepted as the truth then it would be foolish to pretend it hadn't been. Sir K R Popper published "The Logic of Scientific Discovery" in 1935 but the first English translation wasn't printed until 1959 - the year after I left university. Ironic that part of the answer to my reason for being a philosopher only arrived after I left.
When President Thabo Mbeki insists that HIV is not the cause of AIDS no right-thinking person can do anything but despise his opinion.
If you have a problem accepting that mathematics is a product of the human mind, I'll be glad to correspond with you about it - just send me an email. It would be too much of an imposition on the others here to burden them with it.
Love,
Anthony
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Well said, David,
It's not just 'reliable scientific' evidence that is missing. It is any evidence at all.
And it's not just researchers it's no use to. It can mislead anyone.
Love,
Anthony
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Hi Anthony,
>It's not just 'reliable scientific' evidence that is missing. It is any evidence at all.
There is anecdotal evidence. It's neither reliable nor scientific, but sometimes people mistake anecdotal evidence for scientific evidence, hence my addition of those two words.
It's certainly true that anyone can be misled by poor-quality evidence -- however, I was phrasing my answer from the point of view of a scientist involved in the study of gender and sexuality, not everyone. In more general terms, you are of course quite right.
David
P.S. Mathematics might be man-made, but it's been a remarkably useful tool for modelling and predicting the behaviour of the world. It doesn't provide absolute evidence by itself, but it can certainly tell us where to look for it. I assume you're not contesting that?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
You are right, of course, David,
And it's a question of usage that I would not include anecdote as evidence and you use the phrase 'anecdotal evidence'.
And mathematics is closely related to logic. So closely that the attempts by Frege and others to derive mathematics from logic are (in the opinions of many, of whom I am one) are successful. Logic can't tell you anything about the world but it can tell you about relationships between propositions and a proposition can certainly be about the world (although all propositions are also constructs of the human mind).
You wrote ""but it can certainly tell us where to look for it".
And without the mathematics Einstein would never have been able to predict the effects of the theory of relativity that he did and so it would have remained untested and so unproven. I'm not denying the usefulness of mathematics, only that it doesn't occur in nature.
And so, for example, mathematical models such as quantum theory fail to match some observations (ie they fail to explain or predict some things and so the model imports some probability theory. But as Gérard Langlet said "Nature always decides" so we know that our model fails to match the decisiveness of nature. Chaos theory may actually be evidence of the inability of mathematical models to match the real world.
So I am agreeing with everything you say, longwindedly, as becomes a boring old fart!
Love,
Anthony
|
|
|
|
|
Goto Forum:
|
] 
A Place of Safety
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
