In a Nut Shell

Well thats all calculating an asteroids trajectory would be. I don't understand the difference between running calculations on something known, and discovering something new through calculation when they both just exist. Expecting to correctly calculate an asteroids trajectory is exactly what your refuting.

It is true though that we study things based on past experience, but what we are experiencing is the nature of reality. We know how things are NOW to a certain degree (i don't want to go off on a tangent about what it means to know something), and there are no variables (known) representing dramatic change. If gravity stops working one day, we can say "okay, THIS is how the universe is" but it would be silly to postulate that it will happen if gravitys current continuity is what we understand as its nature.

im confused as to why the combustion engine, computers, and the rest of earths technology was disregarded in light of the suns independence from humans. All of those things are great examples of how science CAN make the sun shine...

Its basically proving an understanding of reality.

 

Scienific Research into the Chakras
There are few involved in the investigation of the Chakras. Below are some of the better know researchers who have attempted to prove their existence, although as you can see, this list is by no means exhaustive.
Dr Hiroshi Motoyama
"…We may define the chakra as an energy centre which spins like a wheel and opens like a flower. Metaphysical concepts, however, do not belong purely to the world of spiritual experience; scientific enquiry has in many cases confirmed age-old beliefs.
Dr Hiroshi Motoyama bridges the world of the scientific and the spiritual with dual authority. He is both a scientist and a Shinto priest. Motoyama is the founder of the International Association for Religion and Parapsychology. In 1974 he was recognised by UNESCO [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization] as one of the world's ten foremost parapsychologists. He is especially interested to verify scientifically the claims put forward by proponents of spiritual practices. Several significant experiments have been conducted under his auspices.
He has specifically developed a Chakra Instrument which is designed to detect minute electrical, magnetic and optical changes which occur in the immediate environment of the experimental subject. In a typical experimental situation, the subject sat in an electrostatically secure room which was internally lined with aluminium sheeting and shielded by lead sheeting embedded in the walls. A round copper electrode and photo-electric cell were placed in front of the body, level with the location of a supposed chakra. During one test on the centres of the stomach and heart, the subject was monitored for a period of three minutes at each of the two locations. Separate readings were taken one minute before a state of concentration, during concentration, and one minute after concentration.
Curiously, when an advanced yoga practitioner was tested, the two centres gave quite different results. The stomach centre showed no change in measurable activity during the three-minute monitoring period. However, the heart centre showed a considerable intensification of measurable activity during the period of concentration. This difference corresponded to the subject's regular spiritual practice. He regularly meditated on the heart centre during meditation. The subject did not as a rule use the solar plexus chakra as a focal point for meditation as he suffered from a serious digestive disorder.
When working with another subject, Motoyama found that the increased activity of the heart chakra was sufficient to produce a measurable effect which was detected by the photo-electric cell. In other words the activity of the heart chakra was enough to produce a weak but measurable physical light. Moreover the subject was asked to press a button whenever she thought that she experienced the emission of psi-energy. The subjective feelings corresponded to the objectively measured periods of activity. It was experiments like these which were conducted with 100 subjects which led Motoyama to conclude 'that mental concentration on a chakra activates it' [Motoyama, The Theories of the Chakras, p.274]."
Ozaniec, Naomi. (1999). Chakras for Beginners. Hodder & Stoughton Educational, London. ISBN 0 340 62082 X

Professor Valerie Hunt
"Ever since the 1960s there has been much loose talk about raising vibrations. Over-used though this phrase may be, it should not be dismissed. For the past twenty years, Valerie Hunt, a professor of kinesiology [the study of human movement], has measured human electromagnetic output under different conditions. Using an electro-myograth, which records the electrical activity of the muscles, Hunt, like Motoyama [Dr Hiroshi Motoyama, scientist and Shinto priest], recorded radiations emanating from the body at the sites traditionally associated with the chakras. Through her research she made the startling discovery that certain types of consciousness were related to certain frequencies.
She found that when the focus of a person's consciousness was anchored in the physical world, their energy field registered the frequencies in the range of 250 cps (cycles per second). This is close to the body's own biological frequency. Active psychics and healers, however, registered in a band between 400 and 800 cps. Trance specialists and chanellers registered in a narrow field of 800-900 cps, but from 900 cps onwards Hunt correlated what she termed 'mystical personalities' who had a firm sense of the cosmic interconnections between everything. They were anchored in reality, possessed psychic and healing abilities, were able to enter deep trance states, yet had transcended and unified the separate experiences through a mystic, holistic, metaphysical philosophy."
Ozaniec, Naomi. (1999). Chakras for Beginners. Hodder & Stoughton Educational, London. ISBN 0 340 62082 X

 

just thought i'd throw that out there....

any thoughts?

 

electrical and magnetic fields in the human body can be explained without introducing anything mystical or magical.

 

Rather, electrical magnetic fields in the human body are mystical until they are explained. At least thats a practical way to look at it.

Whats important is that we acknowledge that there is something here, whether we can explain it or not.

Reality is right in our faces, and we still cant agree that religion and science are consistent with each other provided the nature of both beliefs are understood

When it comes down to it, we are all arguing the exact same points.

We only disagree when people don't realize that we are arguing the same points, or don't realize that we are talking about two different things entirely. (usually the ladder)

We get stuck on words like god because EVERY culture has a different definition....i mean come on....how much more obvious can all of this be!!!

 

yes, my point was that chakras and the idea that the human body is not only an energy system, but that said energy is focused in certain points, can be controlled consciously, and can appear as light, was and still is considered to be supernatural and/or fantasy.

heeh2- we're not talking about religion, we're talking about a creative force that may or may not (i suppose most believe it does) have a singular awareness. i do think, however, that you are starting to get a pretty good idea of my sense of "god," and that is pretty satisfying, i must admit.

i think its about time we take religion out of the god debate. this is similar to attributing evolution to darwinism.

 

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Well, definitely not anything can happen. The problem is we don't know what parts of anything can happen, and people have a ball exploiting that fact.

We know what constitutes an organism who's biological functions have stopped, we know why a pillow is soft and why cheetahs can run fast, but its true, they are finite events extracted from the seemingly infinite universe. Its rare that a theist will recognize this, and that is the only problem with "everything" being permitted.

I think I'm getting kind of blurry so i'l say it like this...

'Universe' describes one type of thing, which is what exists. And the only "thing" that changes is our understanding of it (I hope that's what you meant by "things change").

Its not really fair to say that science is making the world a better place when its really just revealing how wonderful the world already is. and i think that's what they meant when they asked if science made the sun shine.

What I meant was that computers, cars, and possibly suns can be produced through an understanding of the universe, but you don't need to understand how a computer works to recognize that it works.

Our understanding of things has many, many grey areas, but when it comes
to reality, there is only one way.

Its just so stupid to even attempt to think "beyond" what is logical or evident because it does not even resemble what you are trying to grasp, which is reality.

provided you are trying to grasp reality.

 

Well that's a pretty big problem. We're prisoners of our perceptions. If we don't know what parts of anything can happen, then as far as we know, anything can happen. I don't believe that's true. I think that science and logic enable us to know some important things, but the whole picture could be far different than we think it is.


'Universe' describes one type of thing, which is what exists. And the only "thing" that changes is our understanding of it (I hope that's what you meant by "things change").
Yes, that's what I mean. It's possible that the universe does change, but there is enough regularity to it to provide lots of predictability.

That seems likely, but the implications of quantum physics make that "one way" somewhat less stable and predictable than a mechanistic model implies.

I disagree. I think it makes sense to operate on the basis of the best available evidence, even though that may fall short of scientific proof. The alternative is not operating at all, or taking a "if it feels good, believe it' approach to reality.

 

What happens is a matter of intensities, not particulars. One happening distributed over an uneven topology.

Practically we know the punch line, a string of sensations of varying intensity.

 

The universe doesn't merely facilitate change, the universe IS change and everything else that exists.

I know you understand this but I think your doing that thing the four horsemen were talking about where your a scientist one minute and something else the next....

heeh2: "And the only "thing" that changes is our understanding of it (I hope that's what you meant by "things change")."

Okiefreak: "Yes, that's what I mean. "

Okiefreak: "It's possible that the universe does change but there is enough regularity to it to provide lots of predictability."

see what I mean?

 

You sound like a human saying humans don't exist.

What is "the truth about being and the very life of oneself"?

 

Are you being metaphorical? Of the various definitions listed for "universe" my dictionary doesn't include the word "change"

I disagree. I'm an armchair scientist and theologian every minute.

see what I mean?[/QUOTE]

No. I don't see the issue. The first quotation, responding to your assertion, suggests to me that there is a universe "out there" which remains relatively constant in terms of its laws even though our knowledge about it changes--like the old fable of the blind men studying an elephant and drawing wildly different conclusions, depending on which part of the beast they latched onto. The second statement was a qualifier, acknowledging that while I think the laws of the universe are constant, it is dynamic and changing in ways that are not necessarily predictable. Your own statement that "the universe is change" seems to be contradicted by the various "laws" describing its properties and allowing us to make predictions with a high degree of certainty. The Big Bang incorporates change. Something replaced nothing, and its on a course of motion. That's change, but presumably it's also behaving according to regularities. What then? We can only guess, within the bounds of scientific understanding. Some scientists propose a series of Big Bangs, of which ours is the latest iteration. Others posit multi-dimensions and parallel universes. Smollen envisions cosmic evolution in a fecund universe. What I think is unlikely is that anybody knows.

 

Change is included with the word "everything"

 

If God, defined as the creator of everything, did exist, does it not follow logically that God would have to be equated with "the universe"?

Because if God is supposed to have created everything, then originally there couldn't have been anything to create from but God's self. Otherwise we're talking about two separate things, a mind and a set of building blocks, for which you could choose either or to celebrate, really.

 

/\ This is where the concept of God really falls apart...
God, a singular conscious being of near perfection or as perfect as the universe can get or at least incomprehensibly more superior than ourselves..., decides it is BETTER to mutilate himself into billions of suffering ignoramuses!n

 

This doesn't make much sense. Decides it is better to mutilate himself?

 

Not really. The universe as we know it may not be everything. There's the possibility of the multiverse. Conceptually, God has been thought of outside the framework of the universe the :Unmoved Mover", etc, meaning that the definition of the universe as "everything" is simply wrong. More accurately, it would describe physical or material reality.

 

"Included in" is different from "is".