Argument for the existence of spirit

[methylatedghosts]

This is an argument I'm going to begin to develop for the existence of spirit/soul/whatever you wanna call it. It came to me today as we were discussing dualism today in class.

I just would like some help pointing out holes in the argument and such as we go along, as I know some of you are VERY good at that

Ok, to start.

As far as I know, we have 4 dimensions

Vertical
Horizontal
Depth
Time

Would it not be possible for another dimension which I will call the "spiritual dimension" that exists in the same point

The dimension of time you cannot feel, taste, smell, hear or see. The spiritual one, you can also not feel, taste, smell, hear or see.

The basis for dualsim is that the physical and spiritual interact. If a spiritual thing exists in the same point as me, that is a part of me, and exists in a separate "spiritual" dimension, you won't be able to sense it, but it'll be there and effect the physical. In a similar sense, time has an effect on us.


Ok, away you go. I'll try and keep a regular post in to reply and TRY to counter the holes all you people poke into it =D

[joer]

What do you think of this following concept that postualtes the intergration and unification of the spiritual and material realms? Co-existing and linked at a level more basic than anything we have discovered yet in what appears to us as the exact same space.

..."The grand universe is mechanism as well as organism, mechanical and living--a living mechanism activated by a Supreme Mind, co-ordinating with a Supreme Spirit, and finding expression on maximum levels of power and personality unification as the Supreme Being..."

Man I can hardly wait fo more M theory development and the immense linear accelerator (7 times more powerful than anthing we currently have) their building in Scandinavia.

[bernee51]

What do you think of this following concept that postualtes the intergration and unification of the spiritual and material realms? Co-existing and linked at a level more basic than anything we have discovered yet in what appears to us as the exact same space.

..."The grand universe is mechanism as well as organism, mechanical and living--

i'm with you up to here.

a living mechanism activated by a Supreme Mind, co-ordinating with a Supreme Spirit, and finding expression on maximum levels of power and personality unification as the Supreme Being..."

Now I run into my disbelief. Is the universe alone evidence of this supreme mind, spirit and being?

But then again...

Sir James Jeans in his Rede's Lectures said "The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter...we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter."

That said it tis the idea of 'supreme' I have trouble with.

[joer]

QED and Bernee,

Following the idea I was expressing about how the study and practice of science produces a temporal interpretation of reality. So I hope you can see, although it’s not an important enough point to argue, that the term metaphysical that you apply to expressed concepts of spirituality can equally apply to perception of materialistic aspects of physical reality. I’ve noticed several times throughout my life when people witness unexplained phenomenon, they have a tendency to immediately correct that perception to conform to their materialistic OR Spiritualistic concepts of reality.
For example: The following email is circulating around the Internet. Notice how the cognitive part of our brain fills in the gaps so we can make sense of this message.

Fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55% of plepoe can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.

So what I’m saying I witnessed many times is that people's brains naturally do this and in doing so we may miss the new reality of an already existing phenomenon because we are making our observation conform to current data reality. So what are we missing? What are we not seeing. We see and observe may not be as important as what we are not seeing.

I saw a story the night before last on a program broadcast here call Big Science. It had the story of Kim Peak a person classified as Autistically Mentality Retarded until he was 34 years of age. He is considered to have one of the highest savant abilities of anyone on the planet. Scientists love to study him. Kim Peak is the person or character if you will that Dustin Hoffman played in “Rainman” with Tom Cruise. “Rainman” won four academy awards and delighted audiences all over the world. Dr. Lynn Paul a leading professor of neurological sciences had the good fortune to be one of the many scientists who have evaluated Kim Peak’s abilities and neurological basis underlying the nature of his abilities.

What Paul found in a magnetic imaging study of Kim’s brain is that Kim is missing the Corpus Colosum, that inner part of the brain that separates the left and right side of the brain. The so called intuitive and cognitive halves of the brain. Without this structure the brain has full access to either side of the brain. This condition is know as an “agenesis of the Corpus Colosum”. In addition, Kim’s frontal lobe of his brain which has the tasks of making sense of his brains perceptions is also degenerative. So Kim’s missing that function that makes sense of the world around him. It is most likely that this condition is what allows him to have and us not to have a photographic memory.

Another scientist analyzing Kim discovered for example that if Kim read a list of 20 to 25 things that are sweet. When then ask to recall, they would insert the word sugar and ask him if it was on the list. Most of us because of conceptual encoding would be fooled and say “yes” sugar was on the list. But Kim Peak got everything right. This same scientist demonstrated that Kim was unable to interpret metaphors and took everything literally. So in this sense Kim pays the price for his lack of conceptual encoding.

Kim Peak came to Oxford in England and answered the toughest questions students and teachers there could throw at him at the Oxford Union. He also took advantage of the trip to look at the tombstones and grave sites of his great grand parents who were buried there in 1863 and 1871 respectively.

So perhaps you can see QED when humankind’s highest conceptual ability was to see God as a “burning bush” than that was what God was to us then. And if our highest conceptual ability is to see God as:

..."The grand universe is mechanism as well as organism, mechanical and living--a living mechanism activated by a Supreme Mind, co-ordinating with a Supreme Spirit, and finding expression on maximum levels of power and personality unification as the Supreme Being..."

Another example of the fluidity in the reality as outlined by science is the cognitive development of scientific theory as presented by Stephen Hawkings and the acceptance and contesting of his theories by his colleagues. Most specifically his ideas on the Information Paradox after his description of the working of a Black Hole and his mathematical resolution of everything into a simple formula representing so much of physics. S= c>3A/4hG

And after sufficient time the refutation of “the loss of information” of his “Information Paradox Theory” by Leonard Susskin. Well things like that turned the physics community of it’s ear for a period of time. But eventually when we find something that represents of understanding of the reality of everything better than what we have now, The Physics community will change and adapt to the most useful scientific representation of reality.

So let me relate another real little story. I was with some teen age boys in the hills doing some hunting. One of the boys shot at a bird that the four of us were observing. As he shot it appeared the single bird became two. One which fell to the ground and another that took off and flew away. Right away I asked the boys what they saw and they began filling in the observed reality with cognitive solutions. They all admitted that it appeared that the bird that was one became two. It appeared that the bird that fell, fell out of the bird that flew away. But the cognitive explanations immediately followed. One said there must have been a bird right behind it that we didn’t see. Well then how did the bullet pass through the bird in front and hit the bird behind? Well the bird behind must have been on another branch close to the one in front but offset a bit and Mark (the shooter) must have missed the one in front and hit the one in back. If that was the case why didn’t we see the birds move from different positions instead of the same position? Oh by the way after an exhustive seach we never found the bird we saw fall to the ground. What did we see?

On and on it went with reasonable explanations for what happened but inaccurate for what we observed. My point is QED like with your crop circles, ghosts, spirit, God and other phenomenon there are plenty of rational explanations. But as a scientific observer I hate rationalizing away what I empirically observe just because the observation doesn’t fit acceptable logic or current conceptual frames of reference. How is one ever going to discover something new if one denies or conceptually modifies the results of scientific observation? Now I’m not saying that these rational explanations don’t apply. I’m saying it’s wrong to say they do apply in cases where it’s not directly observed or proven directly. Without using deduction and extrapolation that could be wrong.

And so a group of graduate students from MIT studying crop circles as a project. Found some things that weren’t that easily explained. For example that some crop circles contained geometric patterns that represented solutions to here to fore unsolvable mathematical expressions. And others unlike the ones created with boards had a feature that was like nodules of a substance on the grass stalks where they were broken or bent that could only have been produced by heat of certain intensity and application that caused the chemical reaction that created the nodules without burning the stalks of grass. They couldn't resolve that finding.

So what I’m saying QED is I believe it’s a mistake to try to pretend that everything can be explained. Some things can’t be explained sufficiently at this point in time. BUT that’s not to say the discovery of a more realistic explanation isn’t just around the corner.

I think Bernee we need the concept of God to further understand ourselves as well as to cover all that, that we don't understand. And it is faith in this underlying concept that gives us peace, security and contentment as we struggle to make sense of the unknown by constantly renewing our understanding of reality to high and higher levels of conceptualization. Then trough physically and materially unverifiable phenomenon and experience we are given indications that this Ultimate, Supreme all encompassing entity in which we believe that all resolution, explanations and understanding resides, really exists AND is a LOVING BEING responsible for our creation. Of course we know this is just a temporal understanding and we await a future more comprehensive understanding of this God phenomenon.

Cheers my friends.

[QED]

Following the idea I was expressing about how the study and practice of science produces a temporal interpretation of reality. So I hope you can see, although it’s not an important enough point to argue, that the term metaphysical that you apply to expressed concepts of spirituality can equally apply to perception of materialistic aspects of physical reality. I’ve noticed several times throughout my life when people witness unexplained phenomenon, they have a tendency to immediately correct that perception to conform to their materialistic OR Spiritualistic concepts of reality.
For example: The following email is circulating around the Internet. Notice how the cognitive part of our brain fills in the gaps so we can make sense of this message.

Fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55% of plepoe can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs forwrad it.

So what I’m saying I witnessed many times is that people's brains naturally do this and in doing so we may miss the new reality of an already existing phenomenon because we are making our observation conform to current data reality. So what are we missing? What are we not seeing. We see and observe may not be as important as what we are not seeing.

But joer, haven't I been saying all along that we only imagine that we are linear interpreters of everything that presents to us? Your scrambled text reveals a clear non-linearity (so long as the first and last letters are in their correct place, the brain is happy with any ordering of those letters in-between). Perhaps you're trying to say that the radical empiricist is unaware that he is rearranging a different order without realizing it when he sees a naturalistic explanation for some phenomena?

I just can't buy this as a general attitude to how the world should be interpreted. We have had people sincerely come to these forums convinced that they were being targeted by demons when their experience is a well known effect of sleep paralysis known as the The "Old Hag" syndrome. You seem to be saying that the rational, scientific explanations are somehow skipping the underlying order (due to a non-linear appraisal of the evidence) rather than the victim of the "Old Hag" being misled by the non-linear response of their cognitive capacities on the borderlines of sleep. You would be right to call it a possibility. But that doesn't establish it as an "equal time" issue. That's what you seem to be pressing for.

I think you would be right to caution that because so much superstition has been dismissed by the analytical application of reason we shouldn't automatically discount the fact that we might be misinterpreting things, but I don't think you can use this argument to create an entire parallel-world out of the paranormal. Rather, I would suggest that it has to be watered-down to the point where it serves as a signal to shift scientific paradigms.

[bernee51]

I think Bernee we need the concept of God to further understand ourselves as well as to cover all that, that we don't understand.

So your god-belief covers a gap in your understanding of yourself. As you understanding growes, what happens to your god-belief? Doe it shrink with growing understanding?

And it is faith in this underlying concept that gives us peace, security and contentment as we struggle to make sense of the unknown by constantly renewing our understanding of reality to high and higher levels of conceptualization.

It speaks volumes of human consciousness that it can gain 'peace, security and contentment' from a concept.

Then through physically and materially unverifiable phenomenon and experience we are given indications that this Ultimate, Supreme all encompassing entity in which we believe that all resolution, explanations and understanding resides, really exists AND is a LOVING BEING responsible for our creation.

So - as I have said previously - god is subjective to the individual. Beleive strongly enough and it really, really exists because in that belief everything is explained.

Of course we know this is just a temporal understanding and we await a future more comprehensive understanding of this God phenomenon.

I guess I'm just impatient. I'm not willing to wait. I have gone out (and in) and looked for understanding.

[joer]

Hello QED. Good to hear from you.
You wrote:

Perhaps you're trying to say that the radical empiricist is unaware that he is rearranging a different order without realizing it when he sees a naturalistic explanation for some phenomena?

What I’m saying is the natural empiricist is aware that he or she is cognitively rearranging what he or she is observing to fit their conceptual frames of reference. Therefore being thus aware they can guard against contaminating their observations of a studied phenomenon by being careful in not allowing their cognitive rationalizations to “Change” or “misinterpret” the actual data of what they observed. By doing so they allow themselves to “Keep an open mind.”

I just can't buy this as a general attitude to how the world should be interpreted.

Neither can I. The world should be interpreted to the standard of excepted norms. BUT scientists or those who interested in finding out new things OR who are looking for new evidence to support old concepts SHOULD keep the skeptical attitude toward rational scientific explanations of things. They should do this in order to avoid missing that new perspective that brings new understanding of old phenomenon, because it was too quickly relegated to an accepted rational explanation or school of thought.

For example if this wasn’t done, how would we have gotten the Scientific explanation the "Old Hag" syndrome? I’m sure it was by someone questioning the given explanation of “being targeted by demons” that led to our current explanation of the sleep disorder. Just as in the future by questioning the current explanation we may arrive at a BETTER explanation of the Sleep disorder and thus a better treatment for it. And so our conceptual frames of references evolve mentally even as we do physically. And as we do so there is also knowledge of our underlying “spiritually” that many of us have, that is evolving also. And the lack of understanding we have of our spiritually today is buoyed up by the realization that we will understand it better in the future.

And so we have a promise based in our historical experience of an ever-evolving understanding of our reality in all it’s aspects, physical, material, intellectual, mental and spiritual to name a few.

I don't think you can use this argument to create an entire parallel-world out of the paranormal. Rather, I would suggest that it has to be watered-down to the point where it serves as a signal to shift scientific paradigms.

You’re right QED. It’s not a parallel-world that’s being created, but rather a safe-guard to prevent overlooking the not-so-obvious in our REAL world.

Cheers my friend.

[joer]

Howdy Bernee!
You wrote:

So your god-belief covers a gap in your understanding of yourself. As you understanding grows, what happens to your god-belief? Doe it shrink with growing understanding?

As your understanding grows so does the realization of your God (god-belief) and or yourself. To understand your God is to understand yourself since you are of God. And to understand yourself can help you understand your God because you are in God’s image. For instance, with the increase of the recognition of the “Feminine” in all aspects of our waking reality including their rise to higher and higher positions in our world community there is a aspect of God that we have not recognized very well that becomes more obvious. That is the cooperation in God’s design in the co-creation of our reality. By excluding woman from their rightful place as co-creative beings with us (men) we have been blocking out the reality that God is differentiated into different free-will cooperating co-creative personalities in the actualization of all created reality.

It begins to dawn on us after the valiant struggle of women, especially in the last few hundred years, for rightful recognition of their place in the world, that we have been missing the influence that their distinct feminine personality can add to the resolution of so many problems in the world.

And being as that we’ve been told by God that we’ve been created in GOD’s image both male and female, we are now realizing that the error in our perception of GOD as a strictly male figure has led to a lopsided male dominated vision of the world. Now with the feminine vision being introduced by women into the leading sphere’s of influence, some of us can see great promise in this corrected vision of humanity and how it affects our vision of GOD. NOW finally we can see God as female again! And it’s about time.

But what’s more important is that it reminds us of the cooperative nature of creation. This aspect of the image of God (cooperation in creation) is repeated in almost everywhere we look. Men and women cooperate in the co-creative nature of God when they join to create new life in the life of their child. Just as God , the Holy Spirit and Jesus are co-creators of a Universe. So we begin to see we are NOT just created in the imagine of God because we’re men. We are in the image of God because we are co-creative as men and women. And in all of nature we find this balance of co-creativeness, participation as various aspects of a phenomenon. Everything has it’s function. The positive charge of a proton, the negative charge of an electron, the neutrons, neutrinos, quarks, etc. all play a co-operative role in the existence of everything.

It speaks volumes of human consciousness that it can gain 'peace, security and contentment' from a concept.

It’s not just from the concept but also the faith “experience”.

So - as I have said previously - god is subjective to the individual. Beleive strongly enough and it really, really exists because in that belief everything is explained.

Not exactly. As I just mentioned the faith “experience” can give the person a sense of objective verification of their subjective reality. And in "belief" everything is not explained BUT there is a “hope or promise” that in GOD the true explanation exists.

I guess I'm just impatient. I'm not willing to wait. I have gone out (and in) and looked for understanding.

That’s O.K. mate. Good things come not only to all who wait, but also to all who question.

Cheers Bernee. Good day Mate!

[bernee51]

As your understanding grows so does the realization of your God (god-belief) and or yourself. To understand your God is to understand yourself since you are of God.

Now we are getting somewhere. Man is god.

God was created by man in the image of what he would hope to be if he was perfect.

And to understand yourself can help you understand your God because you are in God’s image.

I spoke to soon...

For instance, with the increase of the recognition of the “Feminine” in all aspects of our waking reality including their rise to higher and higher positions in our world community there is a aspect of God that we have not recognized very well that becomes more obvious.

No these are 'archtypes' Jung spoke of these. And before him Plato called them 'ideas'.

That is the cooperation in God’s design in the co-creation of our reality. By excluding woman from their rightful place as co-creative beings with us (men) we have been blocking out the reality that God is differentiated into different free-will cooperating co-creative personalities in the actualization of all created reality.

Really? And here I was thinking it was just a reflection of the patriarchal monotheism that established itself during the agrarian age after the matriarchal goddesses of the horticultural societies were superceded.

It begins to dawn on us after the valiant struggle of women, especially in the last few hundred years, for rightful recognition of their place in the world, that we have been missing the influence that their distinct feminine personality can add to the resolution of so many problems in the world. And being as that we’ve been told by God that we’ve been created in GOD’s image both male and female, we are now realizing that the error in our perception of GOD as a strictly male figure has led to a lopsided male dominated vision of the world. Now with the feminine vision being introduced by women into the leading sphere’s of influence, some of us can see great promise in this corrected vision of humanity and how it affects our vision of GOD.

As you note...Problems that are perpetuated by patriachal society - especially the monotheisms where HE is a god and IT isn't.

NOW finally we can see God as female again! And it’s about time.

God then should have no gender.

But to me the point is moot as it is all myth anyway.

But what’s more important is that it reminds us of the cooperative nature of creation. This aspect of the image of God (cooperation in creation) is repeated in almost everywhere we look. Men and women cooperate in the co-creative nature of God when they join to create new life in the life of their child. Just as God , the Holy Spirit and Jesus are co-creators of a Universe. So we begin to see we are NOT just created in the imagine of God because we’re men. We are in the image of God because we are co-creative as men and women. And in all of nature we find this balance of co-creativeness, participation as various aspects of a phenomenon. Everything has it’s function. The positive charge of a proton, the negative charge of an electron, the neutrons, neutrinos, quarks, etc. all play a co-operative role in the existence of everything.

Yes nature is certainly awe-inspiring, especiall y given there is no need or reason for a god to be involved.

It speaks volumes of human consciousness that it can gain 'peace, security and contentment' from a concept.

It’s not just from the concept but also the faith “experience”.

That's true. The 'faith experience' can have that effect but is not a necessary precursor

So - as I have said previously - god is subjective to the individual. Beleive strongly enough and it really, really exists because in that belief everything is explained.

Not exactly. As I just mentioned the faith “experience” can give the person a sense of objective verification of their subjective reality. And in "belief" everything is not explained BUT there is a “hope or promise” that in GOD the true explanation exists.

Again the 'faith experience' is not necessary for "hope or promise" of an understanding of the nature of being.

[QED]

The world should be interpreted to the standard of excepted norms. BUT scientists or those who interested in finding out new things OR who are looking for new evidence to support old concepts SHOULD keep the skeptical attitude toward rational scientific explanations of things. They should do this in order to avoid missing that new perspective that brings new understanding of old phenomenon, because it was too quickly relegated to an accepted rational explanation or school of thought.

Agreed.

For example if this wasn’t done, how would we have gotten the Scientific explanation the "Old Hag" syndrome? I’m sure it was by someone questioning the given explanation of “being targeted by demons” that led to our current explanation of the sleep disorder. Just as in the future by questioning the current explanation we may arrive at a BETTER explanation of the Sleep disorder and thus a better treatment for it.

Thanks to this, the penny has finally made its painfully slow descent through my mind. I now see what you've patiently been trying to get over to me.

And so our conceptual frames of references evolve mentally even as we do physically. And as we do so there is also knowledge of our underlying “spiritually” that many of us have, that is evolving also.

So something that might have be identified as a complex psycho-neurological disorder is, in fact, a disorder of spirit. Too bad the cures in the past were so rough on people OK, but seriously, this is where the "holistic" approach comes in. Treating the "whole person" rather than suppressing the symptoms. Sure, I'm a firm believer in that, but here "spirit" is that bundle of mental states again. Discounting Neurophysiological damage or hereditary defect, we can suspect sleep disorder to be rooted in over-anxiety or any other "unhealthy" mental states. But when we get into such deep waters, I always like to (and let me know if you think this is wrong) return to the humble paramaceum and its naturally selected propensities to react to external stimuli.

This return to the modus operandi of the first "living" organisms serves to wipe the board clear of layer upon layer of distracting and inconsequential psychological spaghetti that represents the human mind. After a few billion years of steady evolutionary upgrades, the organism is still reacting to external stimuli only now we have a complex network of conditional responses. Somewhere in all of this you seem to want to inject something special. I would have said something that can't be understood in terms of a systematic theory of meaning.

But because the penny has dropped, I want to propose the only injection point that I can see available. The interesting thing is that I think it has to be way back in the parameceum and in it's molecular chemistry. One level deeper actually, as the principle of natural selection that orders those molecules stems from "natural" logic. That logic must be what's special

Thanks for serving-up a hearty feast for thought joer

[Curious]

...As far as I know, we have 4 dimensions

Vertical
Horizontal
Depth
Time

Would it not be possible for another dimension which I will call the "spiritual dimension" that exists in the same point

The dimension of time you cannot feel, taste, smell, hear or see. The spiritual one, you can also not feel, taste, smell, hear or see...
Objective measurement might be verifiable, but never by your self.

Strange that you should say "you" do not feel the spiritual. You appear to believe that observation has greater validity than experience. Subjective experience is the only thing you can ever really be sure of. Your conclusions might be entirely erroneous, but the experience is real.