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

[Cathar1950]

I did enjoy Bernee's idea of spirit.
it reminds me of when I speak of memory but that might be due to my being influenced by Whitehead and Hartshorn.

I got drunk with Marshall McLuhan at a conference in 1978 or 79 in Canada.
We kept splitting pitchers of beer.
Does that count? We were spirited.

[bernee51]

I did enjoy Bernee's idea of spirit.
it reminds me of when I speak of memory but that might be due to my being influenced by Whitehead and Hartshorn.

Thanks Cathar. I have this 'understanding' of what I believe to be spirit...my problem is getting my thoughts on the matter to sound coherent. Perhaps this is because for so long the very term 'spirit' has been asscociated with god and religion. The difficulty I find is meshing the idea with not only a non-religious schema but also an atheist one.

There obviously is a very long history of humanities search for 'spirit' which I believe accounts for the establishment and evolution of religious belief. At one level I accept that 'spirit', like god, is a concept developed over time by the human mind in order to give answers to the question of our existence. On another, though, I see it as a meme-like entity in its own right which we all contribute to and draw upon. It is the structure and process of our existence singulary and jointly with the various levels of society.

Any suggestions as to how to make this a little more coherent would be appreciated.

I got drunk with Marshall McLuhan at a conference in 1978 or 79 in Canada.
We kept splitting pitchers of beer.
Does that count? We were spirited.

Was that when he said ...

"Appetite is essentially insatiable, and where it operates as a criterion of both action and enjoyment (that is, everywhere in the Western world since the sixteenth century) it will infallibly discover congenial agencies (mechanical and political) of expression."

[joer]

QED thanks for the pleasant greeting. I’ll put your writing in quotes. You write:

The point I feel most strongly about is related to the capacity of the human mind to invent convincing metaphysical constructs. You must know that literature is brimming over with works of fiction that, even without any pretense of being real, nonetheless creates a kind of reality for countless readers. There's always a sense in which it is impossible to fully divorce such stories from reality and I think this is an inevitable consequence of the way the mind handles all information that it receives.

It’s funny your prelude so eloquently composed seems to initiate a lack of conviction of anything that may come from the human mind. And yet in the next line it seems as if it was composed to direct this lack of conviction to the belief of most people in some kind of “Spirit”. What precludes your preamble from applying to any mental construct you may present in which you imply a “reality”? I mean it seems like you would be undermining any argument you might want to make stand up to the test of consideration. For even the consideration is cast into doubt by, “the capacity of the human mind to invent convincing metaphysical constructs.”

Let's not forget that I'm arguing that the popular kind of "spirit" most people would recognize is an exclusively internal mental construct...

So any way QED I understand what you’re trying to say. I just don’t understand why you would undermine the discussion so much at the onset.

I'm not altogether sure what you mean by "Let's see".

I wanted to see the thought experiment, by which you could dispel the notion that,
"Spirit", I'm sure, is something some people imagine drips out of every pore of a "holy place" (like a Church, Shrine or perhaps, graveyard)
Now that you’ve presented it I see what you meant. I didn’t find it very impressive but that probably is based on two things. One, the notion you were dispelling really has nothing to do with the concept of “Spirit” that I was thinking of. That is a concept of Spirit that underlies everything you see or experience in your everyday waking reality, not a hocus pocus archaic type of concept of ghosts and special places, or objects where abnormal spiritual energy oozes from.

And second thing is the example you gave where the observer can’t make the distinction between a film set and reality. Also I’ve never sensed that type of apprehension in a graveyard either in the day or on a dark foggy foggy night. So it was difficult for me to relate to your thought experiment in any convincing fashion.

Anyway thank you for sharing that with me.

This tells me quite clearly that people are prone to over-reading certain cues from their environments -- so while you might wish to argue that we really do pick up on spiritual presences in some genuine instances, I would need far more persuading than I would if these feelings were not so readily synthesizable.

Actually your thought experiment doesn’t tell me “that people are prone to over-reading certain cues from their environments”, because as I mentioned it wasn’t a realistic enough example for me. If that’s what you believe, spiritual presences are “Ghosts”, I can understand your need for more persuading. I don’t think I could ever be persuaded to believing in Ghosts.

The “spirit” I’m talking about is as of yet immeasurable and yet all the more just as real as the physical manifestation of you or I. I can give you real examples of my experiences of spirit and yet I don’t expect you QED to believe in them or find a lack of other explanations for them, but to me they are just as real. I believe one of the biggest corroborations of the existence of spirit in my experience is the action of prayer and the manifestation of the results petitioned for. I had my doubts in God at a young age (11 years old). And I was quite willing to put my doubts to the test. Over and over again.

It began when I was at my wits end one day looking for something I had misplaced. My Step-mother of Hispanic descent suggested that I pray to St. Anthony, who according to her, would help people find things that were lost. I had no belief or confidence what so ever that this would work. But I prayed anyway. Quietly in my own mind as I looked for this thing I prayed full of doubt, “OK St. Anthony if your real help me find ________.” I keep looking and after a short while, minutes actually I found it. I said to myself mentally, “No way, that wasn’t St. Anthony I just found it coincidentally.”

So I continued on not really believing in St. Anthony and believing in but being unsure about God. I repeated this scenario a number of times and at a certain point it began to dawn on me “Now this has happened coincidentally a few to many times. Could it be that there really is a St. Anthony in some form that is helping me find this stuff?” I started to pay attention to the process. And when I prayed it was a little more in earnest now. I started to notice that when I prayed a short time afterward a thought would enter my consciousness as to where to look. And I noticed that this particular thought was unusual. It many times had no logical connection to my thought process. I learned how to focus in on the specific thought after I prayed that was an “answer to my prayer”. I began to be able to identify and wait for it. I was quite amazed at the process and repeatedly tested it. I also found out many times I doubted the answer and didn’t follow up on the results only to find out later it was right!

I have now over the course of over forty years witnessed the fruits and results of prayer in my own life. And I have no qualms about praying for anybody and almost anything (an long as it is something good and not bad). Now of course I know everyone of those things could have another explanation and recounting my experiences for you QED will not convince you either. All I can say my friend is put it to the stringent test, over and over again. Until you see what I tell you is true. But you have to be open and sensitive to the origin of your thoughts.

Sincerity or not, it seems that when all possibility of coincidence is eliminated, prayer has no measurable effect. This, I understand, has been the finding ever since prayer studies were first carried out.

See previous answer.

But there strikes me as being a incoherence in this question of prayer anyway -- as some will insist on the regularity and lawfulness of nature as evidence for a supreme law-giver, while on the other hand they will claim that suspensions of those same laws (in answering prayers and creating miracles) should also count for the same.

The incoherence you are seeing is because of your lack of ability to conceive of the congruence of nature and God. And that there are aspects of nature that we haven’t tied down yet. And that praying is perfectly natural. The healings, the finding of things the power of positive suggestion are perfectly natural things as is the creator and co-existent being in the very nature of those things.

If it weren't for the many instances of the human imagination over-reading the world like this I wouldn't be giving you such a hard time over your claims.

If it wasn’t for your lack of imagination to move your mind beyond the set of your humanly recognizable knowledge and singularly dimensional extrapolation and deductions based on that knowledge set you’d be able to move your mind further in divergent realities.

You've got me there. Those things that are not concretely explained are legion yet there is much that is explained. These data-points all lie on a particular curve and the more that are filled-in the clearer the shape of the curve. At no point does it deviate in a way that suggests any anomaly that can only be explained by a higher intelligence. I'll grant you that it's not clear where the start of the curve lies but that, at the most radical, is only amenable to a deistic interpretation.

But yet you don’t take into account that any point on that curve could have an infinite number of curves running through it simultaneously. And at any given moment in time how do we know which curve that point is pertaining to or where that curve is going? Factor in the multidimensional capacities of that same point and determine which dimension it’s pertaining to at any particular moment of reality and perhaps you’ll be approaching the reality of that point.

I appreciate that we've probably been exposed to very different backgrounds. The vagaries of psychology, human perception and counter-intuitive statistical outcomes are undeniable features of the world we both inhabit. It's very hard for me to see the need to go much further than these things to understand the way most people interpret the world. It's not for the want of trying that I cannot join-in with all the celebrations.

Oh well!

Marshall McLuhan wrote:

The spoken word was the first technology by which man was able to let go of his environment in order to grasp it in a new way

.

I wonder why so many fail to see that we must continually do that. Constantly renewing our understanding of our reality.

Who's to say how it should be interpreted? Not, I think, by those who have shown grave misunderstandings of the mechanisms of nature already.

And who are those? The physicists who fail to reach beyond current understandings and mental constructs of reality to find new conceptual frames of reality or the believers in a GOD that encompasses ALL possible current conceptions of reality and an unlimited possibility in the concurrent creation of new realities?

Peace be with you QED and all my other friends here.

[QED]

I got drunk with Marshall McLuhan at a conference in 1978 or 79 in Canada.
We kept splitting pitchers of beer.
Does that count? We were spirited.

That counts for plenty... I'm green with envy This reminds me that I need to get hold of a copy of "The Medium and the Light - Reflections on Religion".

[QED]

It’s funny your prelude so eloquently composed seems to initiate a lack of conviction of anything that may come from the human mind. And yet in the next line it seems as if it was composed to direct this lack of conviction to the belief of most people in some kind of “Spirit”. What precludes your preamble from applying to any mental construct you may present in which you imply a “reality”? I mean it seems like you would be undermining any argument you might want to make stand up to the test of consideration. For even the consideration is cast into doubt by, “the capacity of the human mind to invent convincing metaphysical constructs.”

OK, let's say we both have a "reality" We'll call yours J and mine Q. We might also like to justify our realities to each other if challenged to do so. Now, J includes the belief that prayers are answered when we need help finding something lost. This means that there's a spiritual communication channel and something on the end of it that knows where lost things can be found and is willing to help. Q, on the other hand, includes the belief that no such system is in place -- and that the human mind is on its own, but not altogether helpless in such matters.

Now you seem to want to apply my observation that people are prone to invent convincing metaphysical constructs to Q. How does this work? Where is the metaphysical explanation? Q simply has it that the human mind has evolved to the point where it is capable of knowing it has lost something and has a variety of ways of finding it again.

I find it really difficult getting over in something less than a book just how much of your type of apparently metaphysical experience can be explained by the architecture and operation of the human brain. These explanations are not metaphysical, they are codified through neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. But on a non-technical level I can point to concrete examples of the unwarranted hold that superstition has on that same organ -- take for example the fact that many airports omit gate number 13 and that some aircraft have no aisle number 13. Of course however, when it comes to practical issues, people still fly on Friday the 13th.

I owned-up myself to having "unlucky socks" despite being confident that they were just socks with no cosmic significance other than that which taken root in my head. I really do have to press you into responding to this and the other kinds of thought experiments I have presented which strongly point to us creating convincing metaphysical structures that we nonetheless know have no reality outside the minds of the perceiver.

I wanted to see the thought experiment, by which you could dispel the notion that,
"Spirit", I'm sure, is something some people imagine drips out of every pore of a "holy place" (like a Church, Shrine or perhaps, graveyard)
Now that you’ve presented it I see what you meant. I didn’t find it very impressive but that probably is based on two things. One, the notion you were dispelling really has nothing to do with the concept of “Spirit” that I was thinking of. That is a concept of Spirit that underlies everything you see or experience in your everyday waking reality, not a hocus pocus archaic type of concept of ghosts and special places, or objects where abnormal spiritual energy oozes from.

And second thing is the example you gave where the observer can’t make the distinction between a film set and reality. Also I’ve never sensed that type of apprehension in a graveyard either in the day or on a dark foggy foggy night. So it was difficult for me to relate to your thought experiment in any convincing fashion.

OK, so I might have presented a rather Disneyfied version of spirit. But you often mention the masses of people who believe in spirit as a real component of the world. I don't mind betting there's a huge number of those believers who would not be so refined in their beliefs as you. I kind of lump myself in with all those other people because I do get spooked when the environment matches those that I have been conditioned to expect worrysome things to happen in. This doesn't tell me that there are spooks or whatnot, but it does tell me a great deal about the propensities of the human mind. Another thing I can be sure of is that I am typical of the model (standard issue human being).

So I know how it goes for humans and it goes that metaphysical notions are both readily synthesizable and compelling. I also know why this is so from the broad spectrum of research into psychology and from the study of those processing shortcuts (some might call bodges) that evolution has endowed upon our minds.

It's kind of fun sharing our takes on all this though, so I'll give you another one of my "supernatural explained" stories. This time it's by Al Seckel -- a close friend of the late Physicist Richard Feynman:

Once we were talking about the supernatural and the following anecdote involving his first wife Arline came up. Arline had tuberculosis and was confined to a hospital while Feynman was at Los Alamos. Next to her bed was an old clock. Arline told Feynman that the clock was a symbol of the time that they had together and that he should always remember that. Always look at the clock to remember the time we have together, she said. The day that Arline died in the hospital, Feynman was given a note from the nurse that indicated the time of death. Feynman noted that the clock had stopped at exactly that time. It was as the clock, which had been a symbol of their time together, had stopped at the moment of her death. Did you make a connection? I asked NO! NOT FOR A SECOND! I immediately began to think how this could have happened. And I realized that the clock was old and was always breaking. That the clock probably stopped some time before and the nurse coming in to the room to record the time of death would have looked at the clock and jotted down the time from that. I never made any supernatural connection, not even for a second. I just wanted to figure out how it happened.

Actually your thought experiment doesn’t tell me “that people are prone to over-reading certain cues from their environments”, because as I mentioned it wasn’t a realistic enough example for me. If that’s what you believe, spiritual presences are “Ghosts”, I can understand your need for more persuading. I don’t think I could ever be persuaded to believing in Ghosts.

Sure. I think ghosts are "busted" by the fact that almost everyone these days carries a cell-phone with an integrated camera.

The “spirit” I’m talking about is as of yet immeasurable and yet all the more just as real as the physical manifestation of you or I. I can give you real examples of my experiences of spirit and yet I don’t expect you QED to believe in them or find a lack of other explanations for them, but to me they are just as real.

Yes, well please forgive me for thinking that I can see a misperception on your part when it comes to the answering of prayer. Your anecdote presents a golden opportunity for the "background processing" of our sub-conscious to supply the assistance you sought (once it had been suitably enabled). There is a book titled 'Blink - The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking' by Malcolm Caldwell. In it the nature of this hidden thought process is revealed in the results of numerous psychological studies.

I'll give you a curious example of how this has affected me: Almost every evening when I'm in a room with a digital clock, I find myself glancing at the clock at precisely 22:22 The clock can be anywhere up to the extreme periphery of my vision and I can be doing virtually anything at the time -- usually watching TV, reading a book or using a computer. I once googled 22:22 and found a number of other people discussing the exact same phenomenon. The key to the mystery is in the split architecture of the reptilian and mammalian sections of the brain when the optic nerve feeds the same data to both regions. So in effect there is a parallel process going on -- which is why we still see movement "from the corner of our eye" when concentrating on something else. Caldwell explains how the subconscious process is hidden behind a wall of sorts, yet presents its results in ways that we can access without really knowing how. I think this is how unintentional puns emerge -- for some people it can be a positive affliction! In the case of 22:22 the digits form a distinct pattern that I guess is triggering some kind of "significance threshold".

Now of course I know everyone of those things could have another explanation and recounting my experiences for you QED will not convince you either. All I can say my friend is put it to the stringent test, over and over again. Until you see what I tell you is true. But you have to be open and sensitive to the origin of your thoughts.

I would say that it's not for the want of testing. As a "standard issue human being" I've often wondered if there's a "guardian angel" watching over me when everything seems to come together to some happy outcome. But this, I'm quite sure, is a manifestation of pattern recognition. It's slapping a label on particular set of circumstances when they're identified. When things aren't so well aligned we don't have a handy label (we don't tend to wonder whether the angel has lost her concentration). We just don't consider outside influences. People no doubt interpret negative alignments in a similar way -- perhaps attributing serial misfortune to evil spirits or whatever. You must already know how readily we "see faces" in everything -- as a result of the extra significance such a pattern has. We are not linear processors of information -- if we were, we would see everything in everything.

Now here I am presenting superstition as a misconception of our experience of the world and you would like to impress upon me your refinement of the view. But the fact remains that Cargo cults are a well-recognised feature on the terrain of the human psyche. It still seems to me as though a crop-circle believer is trying to persuade me that 1% of the circles weren't made with ropes and planks.

If it wasn’t for your lack of imagination to move your mind beyond the set of your humanly recognizable knowledge and singularly dimensional extrapolation and deductions based on that knowledge set you’d be able to move your mind further in divergent realities.

Well I realise there's a lot of fun to be had out there. But are we running before we've properly learned to walk? Maybe it's being too methodical, but there are some obvious puzzles I'd like to see worked out first. Take the problem of consciousness for example. I think some people look at the problem and say "well this looks like it's going to be impossible to solve without introducing a supernatural element -- so we can take it as read that there is a divine connection here.". I wouldn't agree with that approach at all. If that is typical of all our evidence, (an absence of understanding) then I don't think we should be drawing conclusions on the basis of our ignorance.

I would love to know if you were to pick up that book (Blink) if you would come away from it with your own particular interpretation -- for instance, that it was God who whispered into the ear of the fire chief telling him to get his men out of the building that appeared only to have a small kitchen-fire -- when in fact it was a major blaze in the basement below which caused the entire ground floor to collapse moments after the chief called everyone to safety

[Greatest I Am]

God may reside on and within the wavelength of telepathic thought. He uses this wavelength to communicate with us. This telepathic communication is what I call "in the spirit"

Regards
DL

[McCulloch]

God may reside on and within the wavelength of telepathic thought. He uses this wavelength to communicate with us. This telepathic communication is what I call "in the spirit"

Telepathic thought has not been shown to exist. Wavelength is a measure of how long a particular wave is. I think that it is rather imprecise to talk about wavelengths with regard to telepathic communications.

You have claimed to have direct communication with God. How are we to take that? I can think of three ways:

1. You could be lying.
2. You could be deceived, crazy, self-deceived or something like that.
3. You could be right.

From where I sit, meaning no offense, I really cannot determine which is true.

[joer]

QED, I want to thank you for this erudite post. It is a pleasure read and I view it as a wonderful gift of honest sharing. Thank You very much.

OK, let's say we both have a "reality" We'll call yours J and mine Q. We might also like to justify our realities to each other if challenged to do so. Now, J includes the belief that prayers are answered when we need help finding something lost. This means that there's a spiritual communication channel and something on the end of it that knows where lost things can be found and is willing to help. Q, on the other hand, includes the belief that no such system is in place -- and that the human mind is on its own, but not altogether helpless in such matters.

Now you seem to want to apply my observation that people are prone to invent convincing metaphysical constructs to Q. How does this work? Where is the metaphysical explanation? Q simply has it that the human mind has evolved to the point where it is capable of knowing it has lost something and has a variety of ways of finding it again.

O.K. lets take a look at this. Because you seem to imply that Q’s explanation of this snippet of reality (Finding by prayer) is lacking in metaphysical explanation, lets take a look at it.

First lets see what we mean by metaphysical.
Metaphysical may refer to:
 Metaphysics, a branch of philosophy dealing with the ultimate nature of reality
Metaphysics
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the nature of reality, being, and the world.[1] Its name derives from the Greek words μετά (metá) (meaning "after") and φυσικά (physiká) (meaning "those on nature"), "those on nature" referring to those works on nature by Aristotle in antiquity.[2] Metaphysics addresses questions such as:
 What is the nature of reality?
 What is humankind's place in the universe?
 Are colors objective or subjective?
 Does the world exist outside the mind?
 What is the nature of objects, events, places?

If you accept this understanding of Metaphysical for our purposes of discussion here, We see that J’s perception of the nature of this snippet of reality (finding by prayer) and Q’s perception of the nature of this snippet of reality (finding by variety of ways) are two different metaphysical explanations of the nature of the same reality. Furthermore Q’s reiteration of J’s perception of reality is lacking in it’s assumption of understanding that nature as J has perceived it. Under J’s perception it doesn’t have a spiritual channel with something on the end of it. J continually finds this lack in Q’s ability to understand J’s metaphysical explanation of the nature of this reality as completely pervading and coexisting within and without the physical material reality that Q observes. Q continues to refer to “the something on the end” as an object rather than an all pervading multidimensional energy and more. What Q fails to see or at least recognize in his descriptions is that J’s reality contains Q’s metaphysical explanation with in the set of it’s possible solutions. But J’s set of solutions also contains other possible solutions. In fact J sees (finding by prayer) as one of the “variety of ways” Q refers too, but doesn’t expect that Q would entertain that notion.

I find it really difficult getting over in something less than a book just how much of your type of apparently metaphysical experience can be explained by the architecture and operation of the human brain.

True and not inconsistent within my own realm of explanations.

These explanations are not metaphysical, they are codified through neuroscience and evolutionary psychology.

“neuroscience and evolutionary psychology” that’s one of the major problems of J’s and Q’s understanding of each other’s reality. While J recognizes both their explanations of the nature of reality as metaphysical. Q believes his is based on “a nature reality” that is more “concrete” “solid” “recognized” “meaningful” “realistic” because it is based on currently recognized scientific theories. While J sees those same aspects as transient conceptual frames of reality. They stand up to scrutiny (within their own parameters of testing) now but will they a hundred years from now? Time will tell.

But on a non-technical level I can point to concrete examples of the unwarranted hold that superstition has on that same organ -- take for example the fact that many airports omit gate number 13 and that some aircraft have no aisle number 13. Of course however, when it comes to practical issues, people still fly on Friday the 13th.
I owned-up myself to having "unlucky socks" despite being confident that they were just socks with no cosmic significance other than that which taken root in my head. I really do have to press you into responding to this and the other kinds of thought experiments I have presented which strongly point to us creating convincing metaphysical structures that we nonetheless know have no reality outside the minds of the perceiver.

Which is exactly the same thing the same thing I see about your convincing metaphysical structures. And you say “that we nonetheless know have no reality outside the minds of the perceiver”. But if you consider the amount of minds who perceive my perception of reality and who perceive your perception of reality , I would guess we would end up with about 90% to 95% believing in both our perceptions of reality here in the USA. So the statement “that we nonetheless know have no reality outside the minds of the perceiver.” Which you present as if it discredits my preception of reality actually is probably supportive of both our realities. I think you may be underestimating how many people actually believe in Prayer.

OK, so I might have presented a rather Disneyfied version of spirit. But you often mention the masses of people who believe in spirit as a real component of the world. I don't mind betting there's a huge number of those believers who would not be so refined in their beliefs as you. I kind of lump myself in with all those other people because I do get spooked when the environment matches those that I have been conditioned to expect worrysome things to happen in. This doesn't tell me that there are spooks or whatnot, but it does tell me a great deal about the propensities of the human mind. Another thing I can be sure of is that I am typical of the model (standard issue human being).

Again I think you may be overestimating yourself. You say “Another thing I can be sure of is that I am typical of the model (standard issue human being).” But if you consider at least here in the USA 90% of the “standard issue human being” believe in God like I do and 10% don’t like you do. I would venture to say in this instance, I would be more representative of the “standard issue human being”. Another consideration I see off the top of my head is that there is more likely a higher percentage of Britons that still carry remnants of the “ghost fear” of their Anglo Saxon ancestors than do the Americans with their amalgamated racial and cultural make-up.

So I know how it goes for humans and it goes that metaphysical notions are both readily synthesizable and compelling.

Exactly.

I also know why this is so from the broad spectrum of research into psychology and from the study of those processing shortcuts (some might call bodges) that evolution has endowed upon our minds.

Well that’s one metaphysical opinion.

It's kind of fun sharing our takes on all this though, so I'll give you another one of my "supernatural explained" stories. This time it's by Al Seckel -- a close friend of the late Physicist Richard Feynman:

That’s a good story. And of course that’s a very logical explanation. But did Feynman actually ask the nurse if that was what she did? (Check the time of death from the suspected broken clock). That part wasn’t in the story and it is one step I would have of course verified. People always hate it when I double check their work. They take it as a slight to there abilities. But I’ve found from experience that double-checking can often reveal different results. Since a young age I have tested what I’ve been told. Even if it didn’t make sense to test it. I’ve always figured if it’s true it should stand-up to the test. Thus my suggestion you should test Prayer but also specifying that one of the parameters of the test is sincerity. If Q can’t perform the test with sincerity then of course the results would be skewed.

Yes, well please forgive me for thinking that I can see a misperception on your part when it comes to the answering of prayer.

No problem Q I understand that is your position. While I disagree with your perception of prayer being answered I greatly admire your presentation, wealth of experience, breath of knowledge and the quality of human being that you appear to be. Truly Q, that alone makes me want to stand along side you and support your positions. It’s just the veracity of my beliefs, combined with the results of my testing, and the personal experience of so much that is consistent with the important historical content and backing of the multitude of teachings and schools of thought , that I’ve haven’t found any arguments debunking those beliefs that have been strong enough to overcome all of the possibilities that I may be and the sense that I am on the right path. Full well knowing that what I find down this path in time will in no way resemble what I believe now. I have no illusions about that.

Your anecdote presents a golden opportunity for the "background processing" of our sub-conscious to supply the assistance you sought (once it had been suitably enabled). There is a book titled 'Blink - The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking' by Malcolm Caldwell. In it the nature of this hidden thought process is revealed in the results of numerous psychological studies.

I would love to know if you were to pick up that book (Blink) if you would come away from it with your own particular interpretation -- for instance, that it was God who whispered into the ear of the fire chief telling him to get his men out of the building that appeared only to have a small kitchen-fire -- when in fact it was a major blaze in the basement below which caused the entire ground floor to collapse moments after the chief called everyone to safety

I’ll take a look at the book Q. I usually take things at face value. So if the fire chief says if was a hunch or an intuitive action. I’d probably take it as that. If he said he saw an angel and the angel pointed the way out. I’d be in awe, I’d be in wonder. I’d want to know more details and see the conviction of his words. BUT I would not discount that possibility. And the reality of it for me would be determined by what I considered was the veracity of his experience as conveyed by him AND if any others corroborated it. I’ll let you know what I think about QED. Thank you for the invitation.

I'll give you a curious example of how this has affected me: Almost every evening when I'm in a room with a digital clock, I find myself glancing at the clock at precisely 22:22 The clock can be anywhere up to the extreme periphery of my vision and I can be doing virtually anything at the time -- usually watching TV, reading a book or using a computer. I once googled 22:22 and found a number of other people discussing the exact same phenomenon. The key to the mystery is in the split architecture of the reptilian and mammalian sections of the brain when the optic nerve feeds the same data to both regions. So in effect there is a parallel process going on -- which is why we still see movement "from the corner of our eye" when concentrating on something else. Caldwell explains how the subconscious process is hidden behind a wall of sorts, yet presents its results in ways that we can access without really knowing how. I think this is how unintentional puns emerge -- for some people it can be a positive affliction! In the case of 22:22 the digits form a distinct pattern that I guess is triggering some kind of "significance threshold".

I understand what your saying about the 22:22 and “significant threshold”. Have you ever read “The Hundredth Monkey”. I don’t think it’s anything supernatural in this case but it can be uncanny at times. I’ve had a similar experiences looking at numbers on the odometer of my car and waking up at specific predetermined times right before the alarm rings regardless of when I’ve gone to bed. What if the clock is behind you so you can’t see it out of the corner of your eye. Would you still turn and see it at 22:22. I would speculate that you would be close to the same time and it wouldn’t indicate something supernatural.

I would say that it's not for the want of testing. As a "standard issue human being" I've often wondered if there's a "guardian angel" watching over me when everything seems to come together to some happy outcome. But this, I'm quite sure, is a manifestation of pattern recognition. It's slapping a label on particular set of circumstances when they're identified.

I wonder if you’d be willing to test some more? The thing is in most of your examples of “spirituality” it seems really objectified with old object images of spirituality and biblical religion. Also you portray anything to do with spirituality or praying as supernatural. If you’d be willing to try this, I know I’ve mentioned it before last year and your were adverse to it. But perhaps as a gesture of good faith (now there’s an unintended expression for you).

Think of what your doing as something natural as if you expect to get some results. Some outcome from your tests. The sincerity ONLY needs to be at the level of THE POSSIBILITY of it being real. No acknowledgement that it actuality IS REAL. That’s not necessary. Take a real case example for testing. That’s important to consider the veracity of the results. Think of something that’s been something of a question for you, an enigma, something real in your work. It can be small or big, but something you REALLY don’t know the answer to. Something that’s important to you to solve, or find, or discover. Pray something like this in your mind with your thoughts. “If You are real help me find this thing out.” “I don’t really believe in You and I feel real silly praying to something that doesn’t exist but to humor my friend J I’m sincerely asking you to help me discover (find or solve) X.” "If you are real I thank you for any help you can give me on this problem.”

Now the hardest part of praying Q is learning to detect the answer. It will manifest in different ways and they all can be explained away by methodologies you are well aware of. The most common way is a thought ever so gently entering your consciousness. And sometimes it’s really off the wall, so much so your inclination will be to discard it before you recognize it’s value as a solution to your problem. Watch for that. The other way is you will begin to see stuff serendipitously occurring all around you in your waking reality that will seem to be focusing you on something. It will have a common denominator that only you will recognize. You may see it in books. Others conversations with you. In a magazine. On a bus billboard. In the veins of a leaf. The bark of a tree. You know all this stuff. It’s the pattern recognition you were talking about. But this pattern will hold something new for you. And now the other tricky part. It may not give you an answer to the question you asked. BUT it may answer something else in your life that has been bothering you.

So there you have it Q. the test. Now you repeat the prayer. BUT not over and over again repetitiously. You repeat it when ever the question rises to the fore in your consciousness and you have the strongest desire for an answer to it. So when you do pray you pray in earnest. (Sincerely)

So when ever you feel you’ve spent enough time on the test. When you sense that you have your answer or it's no use praying anymore. Let it go. Repeat with different goals, As simple as finding your favorite pen or as hard as discovering the nature of a subatomic particle. You decide. The more sincere you are the better. Remember the sincerity should include “I don’t really believe this is going to work, but I’m trying it anyway” if that’s what’s in you at the time of prayer. If you have any interesting results or want another perspective on the results let me know. Thanks Q.

Well I realize there's a lot of fun to be had out there. But are we running before we've properly learned to walk? Maybe it's being too methodical, but there are some obvious puzzles I'd like to see worked out first. Take the problem of consciousness for example. I think some people look at the problem and say "well this looks like it's going to be impossible to solve without introducing a supernatural element -- so we can take it as read that there is a divine connection here.". I wouldn't agree with that approach at all. If that is typical of all our evidence, (an absence of understanding) then I don't think we should be drawing conclusions on the basis of our ignorance.

I agree but I also would think we shouldn’t put so much faith in our transient scientific reality. I believe that would be an indication that someone was ignorant of or ignoring the fact that, that reality is constantly changing, which is the same mistake that organized religion makes when it puts to much faith in it’s crystallized dogmas.

[QED]

At the risk of us sounding like an old pair of back-slappers, your last post was like a breath of fresh air. Let me assure you though that I do devote a considerable amount of thought and effort to testing the world for manifestations of anything apparently metaphysical. I happen to

[Greatest I Am]

God may reside on and within the wavelength of telepathic thought. He uses this wavelength to communicate with us. This telepathic communication is what I call "in the spirit"

Telepathic thought has not been shown to exist. Wavelength is a measure of how long a particular wave is. I think that it is rather imprecise to talk about wavelengths with regard to telepathic communications.

Agreed.
The only other way I could think of to express it is to say that the either before the big bang was occupied by this all encompassing entity made up of available particles. Even more confusing. But this is why God is every where, He was already there before the bang.

You have claimed to have direct communication with God. How are we to take that? I can think of three ways:

1. You could be lying.
2. You could be deceived, crazy, self-deceived or something like that.
3. You could be right.

From where I sit, meaning no offense, I really cannot determine which is true.

I know.
If only I could work miracles, then I could prove my experience. God is a dick in the sence that He gave me duty but no foolproof directions on how to be believed.
Knowledge is supposed to give power. Not in this case.

I can only point to my writings s proof of sanity.
I can only say that there is no profit here in a lie.
I can only swear to what I believe and what other witnesses have experienced.

Regards
DL