This is my favorite discussion to have.. the one where the "hard fact" scientist can't accept that religion has consistency and value, but will take great leaps of faith to accept scientific theories that may eventually be disproven.

I'm chuckling already.

I'm glad you've already found the answers. If you don't mind going away, or at least leaving your preconcieved notions at the door, I'd appreciate it.

Blondy wrote: "We waste far too much time fixating on this alleged eternal truth and not enough questioning what it means to presume there is such a thing."

That's where you've lost your way there, Blondy--"presuming" that eveyone, since the beginning of time, who has encountered something beyond provisional truth, has merely been "presuming" it was more than provisional, when in fact, according to you, said truth was only the fruit of performance, or a rhetorical construct, or an idea that we cooked or dreamed up in our heads, or that tumbled out of our time-bound lives.

There's no chance of movement or expansion since you're basically fixed in a perspective.

Bit I don't want to pollute that grat picture of that strip of stars with this dithering. That's were the adventure is--in that strip of stars.

D'ya think he'll last? I'm betting he's just a drive-by myself.

I read this board a whole lot more than I post. But worry not, I'm here to stay. :D

Cool. Now, as Petsfed said, drop some of those preconceptions and you might just be worth talking to.

Blondy wrote: "All I said in that aforementioned quote was that it does seem a little off to operate based on a presumed concept without even questioning why we need to believe in it."

You're still missing it, Sweet Pea. What I'm talking about is not presumed and it's not a concept. Presumed means, in common usage, that one goes on an idea or concept that seems to be the case, not one that IS the case.
The "need to believe" thing assumes, falsely, that what I am referring to is a belief, which it is not. This is a notion that you will never grasp till experience shows you otherwise--before that experience, it's just an idea, a mental construct, a concept, something for the "weak" to believe in. And a concept is the map, not the territory...

Fortunately, thanks to a whole host of things which scientists have no way to understand or describe and which terrify them to the point of hatred and invective, I know that there are people and things in this world which mean infinitely more than all those countless stars and planets put together...

... I was actually talking about love, emotion and simple compassion.

Yes, I thought you'd probably pretend not to get it.

I appreciate your predicament, though: it must be very difficult to maintain your "if-science-can't-explain-it-then-it-must-not-exist" posture when we're all surrounded every day by things for which there is no scientific explanation whatsoever.

:D

Oh no, his predicament is that he doesn't see the leap you're making from professionally empirical to privately, well, human. Once more Tradman, (lord knows I've said this about 20 times to you alone) science is not concerned with what is, it is concerned with the recreation of what is. So if emotions are actually caused by magical pixie dust that can't be brought into the lab, then it won't figure into the scientific explanation of it. The scientist might instead look at the chemical reactions in the brain that mimic the effect of the pixie dust.

That is not to say that scientists are inhuman, or don't believe in the non-material (although there are some that subscribe to that belief in their private life, its the exception, not the rule), just that it holds no professional interest for them.

If you want to talk about wierd, unexplainable things, look at the EPR paradox. In fact, look it up on wikipedia. There's clearly something non-physical and non-measurable going on, and outside of quantum mechanics, it looks like magic. But its still true.

But you were saying something about how if science can't explain something, it can't be there?

Thanks. What can you do but laugh?

Quite right.

I'm laughing too. The difference is that I'm not pretending science has an invisible secret "explanation" which I can't and won't provide for the emotions which lead to me cracking up.

:lol:

Well, I'm sure they are for you.

And just when I thought there were no romantics left in the world.

:lol:

First, Blondy, it's my weakness to want to lampoon your style of taking in the Voice of God with those pronouncements of yours, which in my opinion are not based onthe solid stuff of direct experience, but are rather second-hand ideas cribbed from who knows what qauagmire of erudition.

That there is something all encompassing -- as I've stressed all along -- is only a concept to someone who had not experienced same.

To claim that everyone in the history of mankind who has had such experiences is delusional is also a concept--and a false one in my experience.

But there's no need to hammer this one any longer. If you were interested in having those kinds of experiences, rather than just ideas or speculations, you'd ask how to go about that, and since youu haven't, I guess your're not.

Someone wrote: Humans evaluate based on comparison which is dependent on point of view. Remove a point of view and you don't have enough basis to even comment on relative existence, because neither nothing or something is defined under those terms.

The whole point is to get past comparisons and experience the thing, or non-thing, directly, "neat," with no rose water or olive. There is a way to experience in this way, without having to "define' the experience in the usual way--which is normally contrasting the new with the old.

That's your argument?

Not quite. Petsfed already made my argument for me, and you endorsed it: just because something isn't explainable by one system of rules doesn't mean it isn't true or doesn't exist.

If you only use one system of rules and dismiss all others, of course you'll end up foolishly trying to cram funny "explanations" of things it doesn't cover into it.

Not quite. Petsfed already made my argument for me, and you endorsed it: just because something isn't explainable by one system of rules doesn't mean it isn't true or doesn't exist.

If you only use one system of rules and dismiss all others, of course you'll end up foolishly trying to cram funny "explanations" of things it doesn't cover into it.

Which is funny because I used it as a counter-argument to your claim that scientists neither felt, nor understood, emotion. So please, justify yourself.