At what point should we look for a non-materialistic explanation?

Hi BuzsawI call upon you, Mr. Saw, to offer up a few experiments that I might preform that will allow me to distinguish between me being stupid and non-materialistic explanations?

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It's not the man that knows the most that has the most to say.

Of course. I even did one better. I took a look at what half a doezen sites had to say about the crossing. All but one semed to have really close ties with fundamentalist causes and were about as critical as one would expect a mother to be of refrigerator art. One, truthorfiction, was less kind. They didn't seem impressed. Me either. If I were a researcher I wouldn't want to waste what little time and money I had on disproving something that hasn't actually been established. Don't you think it's kind of odd that your boys don't get on to establishing it.

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It was on that same trip in 1978 that Wyatt found what he said were the remains of chariots and chariot wheels at the bottom of the sea. They were heavily covered with coral. Wyatt claimed to have retrieved one of the wheels and said an Egyptian authority declared that it was from the 18th dynasty of Ancient Egypt, but nobody seems to know where that chariot wheel is is now located.

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It amazes me at how good they are at finding super cool artifacts that show beyond any reasonable doubt* that they're spot on right about the ark and exodus, and how bad they are about remembering what they did with them.Do you ever tire if being duped by the good guys, Buzsaw? Come over to the dark side. *Not that this would be much evidence at all. I'm sure more the a few chariots in transport across the sea only found their way to the bottom due to a storm or some such.AbE: To your post 24: You know, experiments. Surely the two different hypothesis would make different predictions. Ok, if I'm stupid I can be easily fooled into believing something has a non-materialistic cause simply because I know no better; or, something has a non-materialistic cause. How do I know which is which? Suppose aliens came to Earth with a Star Trek like matter synthesizer and started kicking out fist sized diamonds, how would I know that that was only naturalistic causes at work were I too dim to understand? What is the test?Edited by lyx2no, : Post 24.Edited by lyx2no, : Grammar.

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It's not the man that knows the most that has the most to say.

Let me use an example that may be a bit less near and dear to your heart. In Erich von Däniken's 1973 book The Gold of the Gods, we are told of Juan Moricz's 1969 explorations of Cueva de los Tayos; a cave system in Ecuador. If memory serves me I no longer have the book. My dog ate it. I had to cover it with gravy and not give her access to her regular food for three days, but she at it. the caves were more accurately described as straight walled tunnels many miles long striking out under the sea bed. The glassy walls showing signs of having been cut with lasers 1500 years ago. In rooms adjacent to the tunnels were found piles of gold and unusual art. The greatest discovery was a book with hundreds of golden pages each an inch thick and a few square feet in size but weight mere grams. The pages held many diagrams of indescribable machinery and mathematics and an unknown scrip. As evidence for these works Däniken supplied copper plates similar to that shown below. Now I ask you, should grown-ups, yet alone scientists, raise anything more than an eye brow based on such shabby evidence? Is there really any need to impugn their, and my, motives for sneering? Firstly, let us not pretend that the mysterious loss of the evidence is a one off. It's a standard part of the tool kit.Secondly, these people are not depleting their personal resources. They're making money hand over fist selling books and videos of their adventures to the faithful. If there is a motive to impugn it is here. You say far more here then you could possibly know about me. You're also wrong. If scientists even hinted at this kind of behavior I'd be first in line and alone in line because no would know what I was doing standing there, not understanding that it was a line at all because I'd be the only one standing in it to kick them out of the club. Erich von Däniken for example. Darn, that's not what I was shooting for.Edited by lyx2no, : Caption.

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It's not the man that knows the most that has the most to say.

The arm is not being move by thought. It is being signaled to move by a small, measurable electric current that we can duplicate using a watch battery and a resistor. If he were moving it by thought the tips his first two fingers would be resting on the outside corners of his eye brows and he'd be peering out from underneath them.

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It's not the man that knows the most that has the most to say.

You didn't do it without an electrical current. You simply moved the current over to your own arm. Many people argue a separation of mind and body, but not mind and thought. I'd be curious to know what is left of the mind, and why we would need it. I can't say that I'm not a tad relieved.The point was non-materialistic explanations. Your example had nothing to do with non-materialistic explanations. Frankly, even if the arm had been moved psychokinetically we'd not have evidence of non-materialistic explanations but of psychokinesis being material.

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It's not the man that knows the most that has the most to say.

Hi BuzsawI recently went to the mall. While there I had to go from the ®RadioShack® to the Foot Locker. But there was a wee bit of a problem. Between the two there was a fountain. So, using my non-materialistic powers I separated the waters and walked through the chasm, keeping my feet dry. As I walked across the dry fountain bed I dropped many coins of all denominations.As material evidence of my parting of the waters I include pictures of ®RadioShack®, the Foot Locker, a picture of a fountain, a variety coins in water and dry feet. Also note that the picture of the fountain is between the ®RadioShack® and the Foot Locker where I said it was. Is there any possible doubt of the veracity of my tale? If so, why?Edited by AdminModulous, : broke up the images from being one long line of five pictures that would cause the irritating "wide thread" problem for some setups.

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

He was not connected to the arm in the photo, but one need go no farther than the caption to find:

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European scientists say they successfully connected him to the robotic hand, using electrodes to his body, allowing him to control the prosthetic with his thoughts and feel sensations in the artificial limb.

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That the popular press, NPR, would resort to sloppy usage of the word "thought" should not lead one astray. He is controlling the arm using EMF produced in the same way you do to move your own arm. Should we consider magnetic fields non-material? When I wrote Frankly, even if the arm had been moved psychokinetically we'd not have evidence of non-materialistic explanations but of psychokinesis being material. I should have followed it up with the parenthetical "(rather than imaginary.)" Psychokinesis if the result of poor observation. It never occurs under the watch of properly trained observers.However, if psychokinesis could be demonstrated it would be as material as gravity. It is currently regarded as non-material because that is the excuse needed by its advocates to explain why it can not be demonstrated. Thoughts are generated electro-chemically. We can see them being formed in the brain with FMRI and EEGs.That we can not as yet understand the language doesn't make them non-material. And there is no evidence that thoughts themselves have any ability to to effect physical reality. It is when one can measure them. See FMRI above. It didn't. It was connected to the operator's body by electrodes. And again, it didn't read the subjects thoughts but the EMF he generated. It's even more amazing when one understands it. Science does not make the world less amazing but more. I'd not dare to think that I have a greater sense of the beauty of music than Brahms because he understands it more than I.Edited by lyx2no, : Fix my own equivocal use of he word "thought".Edited by lyx2no, : Typo.

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

Hello ∅ This is gobbledygoop. Its primary function is to allow one to pretend that confusion is a profundity. It can also be used in the hope that an adversary will also mistake it for profundity; thus, undermining confidence and causing him to hesitate in his reason.Setting the gobbledygoop aside, your post reads: Who pretends the question is irrelevant? It is a particularly fascinating one. I read something somewhere sometime that talked about a whole other subconscious self that thought and functioned a thousand time faster than does our conscious self. It went on about intuition and how we know things that we don't know. how realistic it was I couldn't surmise, but it was a really cool idea and consistent to the degree I was able to suss it.Saying Goddidit isn't good methodology even if Goddidit. So far it seems that if Goddiddoit He used a system that we have some capacity to comprehend. (Thank God.)AbE: Who's a nihilist? Not scientist; they find everything fascinating. You couldn't invent a group having more fun with ignorance.Edited by lyx2no, : Extention.

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

hi ∅ Your gobbledygook expressed no wonder. The first three sentences were absolutes, and the remaining two were rhetoric betraying a misconception that material = mass and volume. ("At what point do quantum waves manifest physical reality?" At the point that they exist.)True enough if one isn't using wonder as the end point. A child who wonders how to tie her shoes will not have an advantage over a child who tries to tie her shoes.

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

Hi ∅ Not if she stopped at wondering as religion and mysticism encourage. They say things like "Better to be ignorant in wonder than certain in nihilism." Makes a truly curious person want to hurl. One has to dare to get past the wonder. Have you changed sides then? No longer sated by wonder? If you type [qs]This is what you said.[/qs] you'll get and then you can tell me why it's wrong. Because neither mass nor volume are required for an explanation to be materialistic. Gravity has neither. Is the answer to cavediver's question "when we drop a ball."? I don't. Whereas something with mass or volume is clearly material (and let me be sure we're not equivocating here; by material we're not talking about stuff. We're talking about the philosophical concept of materialism.) materialistic explanations are not restricted to mass and volume. When you went on about energy, quarks or strange charm(?) did you have the slightest clue as to what any of it meant? Yet you use it in an argument against materialistic explanations* while all of them, if not inventions of your own making, are materialistic explanations. And you missed that little point because you were burying it in gobbledygook. I read something somewhere sometime about philosophy being the art of confounding a subject until it is no longer possible to form an argument against it. Was that you?Please, ∅, don't take what I say to heart. I mean no slight. If I start talking utter rubbish I will rely on you to tell me (that goes for all of you). It's why I'm here, and I've got skin like a old pudding.*I'm granting myself the liberty of answering the question for you in the negative.

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

Does this answer to which point I should look for non-materialistic explanations? As I look in wonder at the Grand Canyon, should I consider a non-materialistic explanation for its formation rather then the more prosaic 10 million years of erosion? Should we not examine this materialistically? There are many point in the system where we can interject ourselves. If we fail to connect the electrodes to his body his thought no longer move the arm. If we disconnect the arm from its power source his thoughts no longer move the arm. If we connect the electrodes to the pick-ups of an electric guitar (through a suitable attenuator) would we not have robot jazz hands? What is there to indicate that a non-materialistic explanation is in order?For the sake of argument let us say he is moving the arm with his thoughts, should we not still examine this materialistically? Our successes with alchemy, curses and love spells has been less then stellar. I have five handbooks of aeronautics; the oldest dating to 1909. None of them list flying carpets. Is this due to flying carpets flaring the nostrils of aeronautical engineers. It isn't the use of certain words but the abuse of certain words that flair the nostrils. Please, ∅, say what you really want to say that we might stop beating around the bush. But could you include in what you really want to say something about when a non-materialistic explanation ever explained anything? We can work on that.

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

No, not gobbledygook. I do not use the term that I might dismiss your arguments but to dismiss gobbledygook. Your arguments will be met with arguments; or, on rare occasion, agreement. Now you've got me legitimately stumped. I don't know. Every time I try to think of something non-material I run into the word magic and that's just a synonym.In my confusion let me make an example, if I can. Say Joe has PK. I stick Joe in a Faraday cage inside an access proof both full of gages and meters for everything I can think of. Joe sits naked at a table facing a floor to ceiling lexan panel separating a second table with a 10 gram weight on it. Using only his thoughts he lifts the 10 gram weight a decimeter into the air with all the showmanship and surely as I would use to pick up a pencil with my hand. My gages and meters are unaffected before, during or after the lift.Has Joe demonstrated a non-material ability, or am I (and maybe joe) not bright enough to figure out what He's doing? It could be that there is a materialistic, or physical, per the mighty modulous, way for the mind to effect dark matter and energy that my gages and meters are insensitive too. I don't know. How could I know without a full and complete understanding of the workings of the Universe?

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Thank you, modulous, for your post. But by way of warning, as envy is a sin, your posts are leading a small child away from the righteous path. I've heard you can get-it big time for that. How do you manage to be so consistently good?

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*With apologies to Miss Joplin.Edited by lyx2no, : Like, a gazzlion typos.

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

Our argument seems to reduce to "some stuff is neat." Agreed.

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

Good morning ∅ What I find intriguing about this kind of research is the why of it. What gave these guy the idea that thinking good thoughts at water would produce more ascetically pleasing crystals? Usually an experiment is an attempt to confirm a prediction demanded by an hypothesis. What was their hypothesis that lead them down this trail?And what kind of indicator is "ascetically pleasing"? Why not something objective like rate of growth or symmetry? Is it because objective criteria are harder to fudge?And it's the Institute for Noetic Sciences, for Pete's sake. I'm sure that the findings will be confirmed any day now by Barry and Brad Klinge in the Ghost Lab.

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.

This entirely misses the point. Why did they think that thinking good thoughts at water would produce more ascetically pleasing crystals? Did they just select something out of the blue as my header suggests, or did they have a hypothesis that predicted that thinking good thoughts at water would produce more ascetically pleasing crystals? What would that hypothesis be? A man is blindly guessing at what is behind curtain #1:"Is it a red hat?"
"No."
"Is it a blue hat?"
"No."
"Is it a Green hat?"
"No."
"Is it a Black hat?"
"No."
"Is it a Yellow hat?"
"No."
"Is itWhat is the sense of randomly guessing the details of an object before confirming the gross character of the object?Getting back to the topic:How do you reconcile: with: Eliminating the physical causes leaves us with magical causes.

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The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those it cannot break, it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.