If quantum events are not deterministic, are not preceded by any cause, then wouldn't our universe be much more chaotic than it is? Stars would appear from nowhere, cows would fall from the sky, people would wink in and our of existence, matter would come into and out of existence anywhere at any time. Big bangs could happen at any time...

Ahh, but a materialist point of view contends that we are nothing more than biological machines. We are controlled by our genes, and nothing more than complex robots, preprogrammed with markers that will create certain circumstances and events in our lives. Materialists will eventually be able to determine what will and will not happen to a person, irrespective of thier decisions. That is very unsatisfying to me. Since everything is determined by chemical reactions in our brains, all experience becomes programs that can be known, all emotions just become meaningless sequences of events that lead to predictable reactions. Where is our individuality now? It makes us nothing more than robots, slaves to our biology, a cog in a souless machine.



Not sure if this is the same thing you are talking about, but every cubic centimeter of empty space contains more energy than the total energy of all the matter in the known universe. Empty space is not so empty after all.

If you find the time to watch the documentary I linked you to, you will realize that scientists have for quite some time now been dictating to the masses how one should behave, and live one's life.



Okay, so you support that side of the debate but you're staying on the fence until what you believe is proven.



That is precisely the reason why so many people do not believe in God in the first place. They believe God should be subject to man's laws and act accordingly i.e. save us all from "evil."



Now we are just arguing semantics. You've misunderstood my point. What I'm saying is...take a thick brick wall for example. Say you need to get through that brick wall. There is no way around it. It's a rock solid barrier that blocks your path. You take what tools are available to you. First you cut into it with an automatic, diamond-tipped ceramic saw blade. Then you take a sledge hammer and use brunt force to knock those cut sections loose.

After hours of exerting every bit of energy you have you make it through. You're exhausted, sweaty, and dirty. Every one of your labor induced blisters on your fingers is open and bloody from the intense friction of work. All I am saying is that the apparent physically intrinsic solidarity of that wall is a complete illusion. It is not solid at all. There is not even a hint of a solid, and that is how all matter is. Your eyes could not see passed the wall, and you could not walk through the wall because you were made for this illusion.

That is what I mean when I said we see that which is not there. Science at least to me has unmasked the nature of matter which is spiritual by definition. My definition of spirit is simply the unseen next level (without any religious connotations) so to speak that science is always one step behind. Maybe Buckminster Fuller's words can better explain, if not well I give up...I blame the limitations of language.

"Everything you've learned in school as "obvious" becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines."

"Today 99.999 percent of the search and research for everything that is going to affect all our lives tomorrow is being conducted in the realm of reality nondirectly contractable by the human senses." R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)

"The almost totally invisible, nonsensorial, electromagnetic wombsheath of environmental evolution's reality-phase into which humanity is now being born — after two million years of ignorant, innocent gestation — is as yet almost entirely uncomprehended by humanity. Ninety-nine and nine tenths per cent of all that is now transpiring in human activity and interaction with nature is taking place within the realms of reality which are utterly invisible, inaudible, unsmellable, untouchable by human senses."

"Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable." R. Buckminster Fuller

This is why the universe can form from nothing. Anyway the initial state could have been complete chaos. Order and organization is an emergent property of this chaos. From completely chaotic systems patterns can emerge. This can even happen in computer programs.



Our genes are also influence by what we do and where we grow up and how we grow up. We are not fully preprogrammed and determined. I think we have the ability of free will and this was a tremendous advantage of our minds. Other animals could have it too.

Where you see a meaningless machine in materialism I see liberating individualism.



A solid is just a property of matter. There are plenty of forms of matter that are not solid. Atoms are mostly 'empty' yes but that doesn't matter. The universe is made of matter. Empty space is not empty.

What are the properties of this spirit? What you call spirit science calls matter. But I think spirit is a bad word because it implies supernatural limitless can do anything properties. Everyone calls things spiritual but they never bother detecting of defining the properties. When science does and discovers new forms of matter they don't consider it spiritual.

Yes, and that solid property of matter is what people have used since the beginning of time to dismiss anything conceived that is unseen. Science has become mystifying in that scientific progress relies almost entirely on sophisticated instruments to detect what we cannot directly detect with our senses. If a scientists were to go back in time to medieval Europe and demonstrate modern technology it would be indistinguishable from magic to them. They would attribute it to spiritual powers.

To put it bluntly the properties of material are immaterial. That is why I say matter and spirit are synonymous.

But its not magic. That's the point.



Well then your spirit is really matter. If you accept that then your spirit isn't really a spirit at all in the traditional sense of the word. You should also come to accept that there are some limits to this spirit then. You should also realize that this spirit is an unintelligent thing that doesn't give two hoots about whether or not any of us blow up with our star.

It's magic with a logical explanation.



No, you see there will ALWAYS be the unobservable/unmeasurable next level under the microscope that is theorized to explain what we can see. You are wrong, the spirit is infinite. Man will NEVER unmask reality completely. That is a point made very clear by the well known philosopher Immanuel Kant, and his argument still stands perfect far past his lifetime 1724-1804. He stated that man has no logical reason to assume that his 5 senses serving as biological scientific instruments could ever detect the fullness of reality let alone come anywhere close. He broke it down very simply.

1)We perceive Phenomenon meaning our experience/interaction of and with things, events, life, matter etc.
2)We have no logical reason to assume that we can ever break through phenomenon to what he coined as the Noumenon (Things, events, matter etc. as they are in and of themselves INDEPENDENT OF OUR PERCEPTION).

We have a very specific and definite idea of what a green apple is for example, but we really have no logical reason to assume that our idea of what an apple is, is anywhere near 100% correct. Even with all of the scientific technology available to us that can detect/measure phenomenon that we cannot directly detect or observe with our own eyes we cannot justify making such a leap of faith needed to assume that what we see is the complete big picture. Man is a very arrogant creature indeed to say he has mastered the heavens, and examined all things when he can barely understand the inner workings of his own being.

Go ahead and try to beat his argument, if you succeed you will be the first.

"Are we really that much smarter than the creatures around us?"

I don't think so because our genetics are not harmonious with this planet.

"I don't think there is anything..."

There is nothing and everything. Anything is a glimpse of any possibility everything could be.

You can have a picture that is 100% correct without being complete.
Like if you correctly make the prediction that it will rain tomorrow and you forget to mention the tornado's.

You are missing the point of Immanuel Kant's argument. Predictions fall under perception of Phenomenon NOT Noumenon. That is not to say that our perception of reality is not useful because it is. Our brains are the same (we're all on the same brain stew drug trip) and our senses are the same so our observations are useful in communicating to each other what we experience, but we cannot break through to the Noumenon with sober minds. Personally I think we do with entheogens. The naysayers dismiss entheogens saying oh they're just chemicals, trips aren't real. I say to them what do our brains consist of? A fatty soup of Chemicals, of course! I guess none of this is real either then if you want to follow that line of thought.

Well assuming Kants argument is true then psychedelic experiences don't change anything either. Meaning they don't show you something thats more true because you can't know.

I honestly dont' care much for defeatist philosophy. Press on with science it solves problems who cares what the philosophers muddle about.

But psychedelics could show you a higher order of truth, but it in itself would not be the whole truth as there are always higher orders of truth beyond what we can know. Just another layer of the onion.

I love you burnt. You are so consistent even when you cannot support your ideas logically. A fundamentalist in every sense of the word.

Psychedelics do change things. They free us of our default perception of reality. If that is not a change I don't know what is. You may be right that it is no more true than this earth trip we're on, because the psychedelic experience still falls under perception of phenomenon, but one thing is for sure. Entheogens provide us with otherworldy, awe-inspiring visions, and they are a source of life changing enlightenment. A higher level of truth? Yes, I totally agree with Saidin.

No, i'm not missing the point of kant's argument. I just happen to disagree.

I think we are perfectly capable (with or without chemical aid) to know reality itself. The fact that knowledge is a representation of something and not the thing itself is no valid objection. It is even a pretty meaningless point.

The fact that knowledge and perception are naturally flawed are also not a real problem.

Even if we are just a brain in a vat, plugged into the matrix, we are still capable of knowing things about our reality.

Awareness and knowledge of something is (if we leave metaphysical speculations out of the picture) a more complex phenomenon than it seems and more complex than western philosophy has for a long time, thought it was.
Knowledge and awareness are based on reflexes or automatic reactions to specific impulses of the senses.

Horses can walk, the minute after their birth, wich means that there is something, wich isn't knowing how to walk itself, that's innate to those animals. If that innate thing is being triggered, out of these simple reflexes something emerges that grows more and more complex each second. Something that contains meaning that starts to be more and more refined and articulated.

The thing is that the horse can walk.
The remarks of kant and others are as futile as telling a tennisplayer that he's not truly aware of the ball itself, or that the ball looks completely different under a microscope and has all these hidden dimensions unknown to him, while the tennisplayer is able to hit the ball without constantly looking at it. He knows where the ball is at what time and he knows where the surface of his racket is at the same time.
Even that the space and time are complex dimensional properties that are part of something wich we don't know or understand are no valid objections here.

That knowledge is functional is not a banal thing at all. Knowledge isn't MERELY practical. The very essence of knowing and understanding is functioning itself. We always can know what we need to know and we can explore all those other dimensions by manouvring through them and functioning in relation to them.
The tennisplayer can become a scientist, and at that time his knowledge is also limited to what he practices.

My point is that pragmatism is not limiting knowledge to a method that simply hasn't failed thus far. If you look at it like that you only see the results themselves. The very room in wich something that works takes place is pivotal.
The horse can walk, the tennisplayer can hit a ball, because something functions within a specific realm that defines the meaning of it.
The realm of counsciousness is like a system of coördinates.

A smokedetector has a system of coördinates that only has to coördinates; 'yes' and 'no'. This is the entire realm of it's 'counsciousness'. It cannot know of any other meanings then yes and no, then 'smoke' or 'no smoke'.
So if it where a being, it would very accurately know if there was smoke or not. Yet it wouldn't know of any meaning outside of this. The hazards of fire, etc.
Does that mean that it's functioning is just a matter of coincidence?
No ofcourse not.
Within the range of it's use, it needs everything it needs to know.

This is where i also have to disagree with burnt.
Philosophy is of vital importance, because it is about the source of our knowledge and it's validity itself. Even if philosophy wheren't practical (the computer is an invention of philosophers, the system of coordinates was an invention of descartes, every mathematics is invented by philosophers: pythagoras, descartes, aristotle, thales, etc.)it would be important; it is simply ennevitable.

The scientist who doesn't ask philosophical questions is not even hypothetically possible.
Because, like i mentioned earlier, all knowledge, meaning and counsciousness emerges out of the reflexes of our brain, we cannot escape from the nescecety of meaning, of ethics and questions about our reality.

The fact that you are here in this world means that your brain is constantly forcing all kinds of meaning, ethics and values upon you, from wich you cannot ever run or hide.
A world without philosophical thinking is truly unimaginable, because therefore we would have to imagine a world without ourselves.

If you were a brain in a vat, or plunged into the Matrix, yes you are capable of knowing things about reality, but there is a higher order of truth which you cannot know. The world outside the vat, or what is real when not connected to the Matrix. Kant's argument holds.

All knowledge ALREADY exists. It does not emerge out of the brain, we discover what ALREADY IS. We can only discover deeper layers of the already existing reality, it is there but we cannot as of yet percieve or conceptualize it. Therefore Kant's argument still holds.

2 things. First, my definition of knowledge is a more active definition. The world exists, but knowledge and awareness about it emerges.
Like knowing how to walk. An infant doesn't know how to walk. It has to learn this.

Secondly, kants argument only holds if it becomes a futile argument; that we can not know everything.
But that's hardly a denounciation of human knowledge.
Ofcourse we cannot know everything.
But we CAN know everything we need to know.

The tennisplayer can hit the ball.
It's not just luck and it's not just a result.
Within the framework of the game, that's what his counsciousness is aiming for at that time. That's the whole point.

So within the framework of our life, we can know all that fit's within the framework. That framework is what gives it meaning and value.
All that falls outside of the scope of our comprehension also has no meaning to us, so no meaning is lost.

You can denounce the framework, but then you denounce life itself.

But what about knowledge or awareness that is not learned? Your example of a colt walking right after it is born. It has had no time to learn this, no time to become aware of this. How is it then that they are born with the ability to walk? There is a higher order to things which we cannont percieve. We see this kind of thing thoughout nature, an innate understanding of things without the acquisition of knowledge or learning.

I never said anything about it being a denunciation of human knowledge. All I said that all knowledge already exists. We don't discover anything new we just discover what already is. You support Kant's hypothesis by saying that of course we cannot know everything, but then say that makes it irrelevant. How can something be true and irrelevant? Also how do you support the notion that we CAN know everything we NEED to know? How do you or anyone know what needful knowledge is?

Scientific materialists believe that we CAN know everything. That it is just a matter of time before we find the right equation, the right solution, the right experiment. There is a finiteness to existence, and someday we will have all the answers. Kant's argument is that that is impossible, that there will forever be a higher order of things that we cannot percieve. Everything changes, nothing stays the same, that is a fundamental law of existence.



We cannot know all that fits into the framework, because we do not know what the framework looks like, our perception is forever limited. YOU are what gives it meaning and value. All that falls outside the scope of YOUR comprehension has no apparent meaning to you, but that does not prove it does not have meaning to others, therefore no meaning is lost.

I'm not sure where your conception of denouncing comes from. I don't think I or anyone else has denounced anything. The arguments put forth here in this and other threads is that you cannot prove an objective reality. Whatever is, is, but you cannot prove it one way or ther other. That is not a denunciation of the exquisiteness that we call life, it is an admission that in reality we cannot truly know anything because there will always be orders of existence of which we are not aware. What appears to be true today, may prove to be false tomorrow. There is no way to say for sure.

I am not a fundamentalist. I just am not overtly open minded because there is deception everywhere in the world. I am skeptical until there is evidence for something. The psychedelic experience has shown and taught me a lot about myself, the world, and society but my conclusion from those experiences is that there is no god or magic spirits and such experiences take place in the mind much like psychosis except with many qualitative differences.

I admit I am weak in making philosophical arguments. I look at things from a more scientific perspective, which makes me the opposite of fundamentalists. If reasoning is philosophical I prefer when it leads to testable hypotheses.

fun⋅da⋅men⋅tal⋅ism [fuhn-duh-men-tl-iz-uhm]
n.
1) A movement or point of view characterized by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views.
2) strict adherence to any set of basic ideas or principles

ma·te·ri·al·ism (mə-tîr'ē-ə-lĭz'əm)
n.
Philosophy The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.

phi⋅los⋅o⋅phy   [fi-los-uh-fee]
n.
1) the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct.

Fundamentalist fits your method of argument and principles pretty closely from what I've read. This is not a value judgement, it is just a definition of the position you have taken in regards to various arguments presented here and in other threads. You look at things from a strictly scientific perspective, with rigid adherence to those principals, and often with intolerance to other points of view. That is not the opposite of fundamentalism, it is the definition of it.

Materialism is your philosophical view of the world. Note the word philosophical, it is an idea, a mode of thought or belief. It is how you choose to percieve and study the world. There are other philosophies which engage in a rational investigation of the truths and principals of being and knowledge, but you dismiss them out of hand because they do not confrom to your particular materialist perspective. This is a fundamentalist approach to materialism.

When I said I love you, I meant it. It was not meant to be sarcastic in the least. We live in a world full of perspectives, and I have honestly learned much from you. Materialists are the ones most likely to uncover the physical mysteries of the universe in which we live, and if done in an ethical manner, improve the lives of everyone. But you cannot, and will not discover all the answers to the mystery. There is another side of existence which you cannot, or choose not to accept as possible because your philosophy will not allow you to do so. That is fine, belief in something greater than ourselves is not necessary. But acknowlede that everyone else's perspecitves are just as valid as your own, as long as they do not hurt anyone. If you claim the right of your own subjective experience to validate your world view (no matter how many others conform to the same philosophy), then you must accept the right of everyone else to do the same.

Hmmm...it seems Saidin said pretty much what I was going to say.



I think you mean to say that we are perfectly capable in your words of knowing the reality of what is inside the vat that contains your brain, not what is outside the vat.



It is a real problem if you want accuracy, which is what science strives for.



Excellent points, and very well written!

Science is the only way to answer some of the questions we have posed in various threads. How can any other knowledge gathering method even attempt to understand what happens to the mind when one smokes dmt? One can use dmt and clearly see what it does. But to understand why it does that and how it does what it does only science can answer that question. I adhere to scientific principles because I know how to use them to get answers.

I am intolerant towards superstition yes. But that is because superstition is a plague on our world. It is something I am fundamentally opposed to. Maybe that makes me a fundamentalist in that I fundamentally oppose many spiritual and religious world views. It harms me not in the least however neither morally nor mentally.

I guess I don't mind being called a scientific fundamentalist. As science changes and new evidence grows I can change with that. Religious fundamentalists don't do that. There is a distinction here that is important. You must understand that science is not just some body of knowledge but a way of thinking. I fundamentally support that way of thinking.



Its not about choosing. I could choose to believe in a god and a heaven and a hell but that wouldn't make it true. I could choose to believe in a grand spirit that is intelligent and guides all life and existence but that doesn't make it true. I could choose to believe in these things called atoms and subatomic particles but it doesn't make them true.

What makes it true is evidence. There is evidence for matter. There is no evidence for spirits.

I dismiss so called rational philosophies that are not materialistic because they lack evidence. If they lack evidence they are just pure speculation. If they have evidence please present it. That's all I ask people for is evidence for why they have their spiritual views. That evidence usually boils down to "I believe it because I experienced it" which I have tried to show over and over is not a way to find out the truth. Its an interpretation not an answer.



What is the other side of existence? What are its properties? I don't accept a spiritual explanation of such a place because there is no evidence for it. We can speculate about other universes or other dimensions and they may be there. But we cannot say if they are there unless we have evidence for it. But that doesn't mean they are or aren't there we simply don't know. We can rule that they must be there if there are gaps in our understanding of our universe that only make sense if they are there.

If I accept that the subjective experience of everyone is valid then I have to accept the schizophrenic who sais he is hearing voices from god that told him to mutilate his children as perfectly fine. Although you said that everyone's views are valid as long as they don't harm anyone but that simply cannot be avoided with such logic. Where do you draw the line? There are thousands of examples of how peoples views on the world their perceptions on the world and their beliefs about the world are destructive violent and hateful even if they proclaim love at the same time.

How can we stop such madness and violent superstition? The only way is through a scientific understanding of the world to show the falsehood in such beliefs and that they are nothing but lies perpetuated by madmen and hippocrites throughout the ages.