« Can't stop quoting from "Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide" | Main | Death of 14-year-old boy shows appeal of religion »

June 04, 2018

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Human awareness can be trained to be part of Cosmic awareness by discarding energy sapping emotions/acts like lust, anger, excited state of mind, gluttony etc. Himalayan yogis some of them are receiving energy directly from sunlight without food, they are called sun gazers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTtPU1uBVf0

Hi Brian
It was a good book the first time around, and I'm excited to read the new edited version (kindle... I travel the country for my work).

Would you consider a candid and updated introduction by the author (looking back)? One that, perhaps, acknowledges progress in the fields of neuroscience and physics, and possibly, the perspective of a true, mature Atheist (creation is still sacred, maybe more so today, and its mysteries just as wonderful, and miraculous, if we understand that term no longer as supernatural, but more wonderfully part of nature, without the overlay of an all judging personality, or conceptions of "holy" that condemn rather than elevate, and a culture bound morality that inevitably leads to bigotry, territoriality and bloodshed)? The book would have a broader appeal to the non - religious, and it would establish your version of Atheism as inclusive of religion and spirituality as natural steps toward this more inclusive objectivity. We let go of beliefs, and embrace Truth.

I just plugged down $12.99 for Evan Thompson's Walking, Dreaming, Being in Kindle. It's beautifully written but way too conceptual, focused on details that undermine his own thesis. And his own personal experiences way too limited.

I think you have an opportunity here, Brian, building upon a beuautiful work from your own hand.


Hi Brian

I'm working my way through your book and it did strike me in a completely different way today.

It is elegant in its prose. But it's logic, at least in the first few pages, seems hopelessly flawed.

You wrote
"Materiality can be observed and measured with the physical senses of sight. hearing, touch, small, and taste. This distinction is important because it separates material science from spiritual science."

This may be a case of reductum ad absurdum. The "material sciences" measure many things well beyond the range of the physical senses. From the distant cosmos to subatomic waves of pure energy, to brain waves and the firing of dendritic interlaces, science extends our vision and understanding. And in distinction to your claims, it often does so measuring indirectly. We learn about gravity from objects that fall or move in space, not a direct measurement of gravity waves.

When you wrote this you faulted, I believe falsely, the physical sciences for being unable to measure spiritual events because they have no apparent measurement in physical reality.

Today you fault spirituality for exactly the same reason. Despite your development, your reasoning remains based in the same argumentation. Earlier you constrained science to what could be measured at the time. Today you constrain spirituality because of those same constraints.

But in both cases the argument is premature. Your argument extends well beyond your evidence.

Even thoughts are correlated to biochemical events. What happens to us is connected to this world. Spirituality and all the classic experiences noted repeatedly in mystic literature and mythic symbols throughout recorded history must at some point find measurable correlates.

You quote Max Planck
"Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and, therefore, part of the mystery we are trying to solve."

This echoes the same argument for analogous reasoning made by Thomas Aquinas, when he wrote that God cannot be understood by deduction, since God is not a reducable element that can be manipulated, but is in fact greater than this creation. And this echoes Kant's argument that reason cannot accurately extend too far beyond its premeses of common experience to explain metasphysic experience.

But as the tools of science are honed in studying mystic experience we certainly can and will gain greater insights into it.

All the modern research into meditation and its physiological effects are evidence, hard evidence of this.

I think the same flaw in reasoning from your book pervades your current thinking.

You once dismissed scientific inquiry as too limited to capture the full range of reality. Your argument then seemed to be 'If science can't test it today, science must be too constrained to witness true mystic experience' .

You now dismiss mystic experience for the same reason. You seem to now be saying 'If mystic experience can't be tested it must be false, non-existent.'

Brian, I hope you can see both of these are unscientific and fallacious claims, based as they area on a single false premise: Your arguments are too final for either science or statements of divinity, based as they are on flawed human limitations, either in meditation or science. But in both cases development invalidates that argument.

You site Joe Rosen's definition of science based in the study of what is reproducible and predictable (reliable).

All meditation practice and specifically the internal experiences that accrue must at some point meet these same criteria in order for the practitioner to conclude they are witnessing truth.

Your approach to criticizing science as a means of creating a space to defend meditation is based on a flaw that had to crumble at some point.

I wonder why you would choose to write this book without first having a thorough grounding of spiritual experience that met the conditions for reliability and repetitive reproducibility at your volition, so that you could test it, and get beyond imagination and subjective experience.

Hi Brian
Reading further, the schema you create for objective vs subjective reality is out of date. The two are no longer seen as distinct. You try to define subjective as ephemeral and capricious, and objective as more permanent and causal. But in the details of your definition lay a bias for the physical sciences alone as objective, and the cognitive sciences as merely subjective.

Our capacity to measure one thing and not another (so far) does not make something objective or subjective. All of it is objective, but most of it is not yet within the realm of objective measurement.

Did the subatomic world become objective with measurement? Was it subjective before that? No. It was just as objective as before, merely unknown. Unknown, but objective reality.

Indeed the act of measurement, whether that is by instrumentation or just using our own senses, involves constraining and filtering a holographic reality of immense data through a single pointed lens down to a two dimensional focused image. That isn't real. It's just the best image we can comprehend. And it doesn't look at all like unfiltered reality.

Reality is an immense and out of focus blur of non linear multi dimensional information, not the quantified objectified, two dimensional picture we filter and focus down to. That process isn't reality. And our capacity to do that doesn't define objective or subjective.

Indeed the distinction of internal reality and external reality is just a convenient concept, not an actual physical distinction.

This is the logical flaw that underlies your schema.

A cognitive scientist sees the products of imagination as direct and predictable outcomes of events, conditioning and biochemistry as objective as rain falling from a cloud. Your suggestion that these things belong in a different, less "physical" category that somehow is free of the laws of reality or cause and effect is not defensible. The symbols of the mind follow their own laws, but those laws are as immutable and amenable to objective study as the laws of physics and no different qualitatively than the different laws governing different aspects of the biochemical realm, or the nuclear realm, or the astrophysical realm.


Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Your Information

(Name is required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)

Welcome


  • Welcome to the Church of the Churchless. If this is your first visit, click on "About this site--start here" in the Categories section below.
  • HinesSight
    Visit my other weblog, HinesSight, for a broader view of what's happening in the world of your Church unpastor, his wife, and dog.
  • BrianHines.com
    Take a look at my web site, which contains information about a subject of great interest to me: me.
  • Twitter with me
    Join Twitter and follow my tweets about whatever.
  • I Hate Church of the Churchless
    Can't stand this blog? Believe the guy behind it is an idiot? Rant away on our anti-site.