Citta,

You never answered my previous questions. Here is another for you, do you have a PHD in physics?

My nipples excrete caramel.

Are you at all skeptical of this? Be honest.

The argument you are leading the question to is a logical fallacy, appeal to authority. Citta made valid criticisms in his last post, regardless if he has a phd in physics or not, so if you care to argue why his criticism doesnt stand, please do so, but asking for credentials doesn't really add to the discussion.



And where in your argument are you taking in account the possibility of optical illusions, subjective misinterpretation, self-suggestion, hallucinations and so on? Just because someone at some point senses or sees a plant spirit, it doesn't necessarily make it real. Maybe plant spirits are just misinterpretation of different perceptual phenomena. Or even if plant spirits exist, what if us humans cant sense them? Or even if they exist and it is theoretically possible to sense them, what if a lot of people think they are seeing them and yet they are just subjectively mistaken, and only a very mall percentage of the people that claim to sense them, even amongst "shamans", are actually seeing them? Thats why I think benz's questions are incredibly relevant, what is plant spirit and what is the evidence we have that it exists?

Plus, benzyme didnt say plant spirits absolutely dont exist, he asked for a definition and evidence. Saying he sounds like a blind man refuting something that exists doesnt really fit with the discussion, first of all because he didnt absolutely refute anything, and secondly because your analogy supposes plant spirits are just as real as eyesight (burden of proof is on you), and lastly, equating him with a blind man seems unnecessarily offensive.

I answered your questions. I gave a pretty clear answer as to why I consider Amit Goswami and the others as bullshiters and what evidence says they are. Did you read the post? And no, I don't have a PhD in physics yet, but I am already a physics student working my way up there =)

I also think you should read gibran's post regarding wrapping things up in quantum mechanical terms (good post gibran2!).

the sense of sight is ubiquitous in humans; the ability to perceive 'plant spirits' is not.

Sorry for the late reply...

You insinuated that taking DMT should lead people to certain conclusions...you acted surprised that people had a different outlook than you despite taking dmt ("perhaps it isn't the spirit molecule for some" ). What I was saying is how could you possibly know how dmt affects anyone but yourself? So there's no sense in saying, "and all you guys have taken dmt?" because all you're saying is...well, DMT does this for me, so it should do this for you, which is dogmatic (at least in the context you applied it). It was really an aside...just something to take note of.

Sorry for the late reply, life happens. I am going to have to go back and re read the semantics, just to be sure I touch on everything I have not as of yet.

One thing that does come to mind is Emotto, I have googled him and the only thing I can find is his method being questioned. Does anyone know of a 'properly conducted experiment' that demonstrates contrary results to Emotto's findings?

Snozz- I get your point and take note of it. However, for me, what drew me to DMT was the commonality in experiences. Now, granted, if I have an encounter with Ganesh (whom I knew nothing about until I encountered him) and someone else has a similar encounter I do not expect nor am I implying the result of the encounter is going to have the same effect on each individual, however the fact remains that the encounter happened and it is not uncommon for people to encounter Ganesh or a previously unknown to them 'deity'. It just surprises me that people can come to, or try and maintain a purely objective perspective to the DMT experiences. I would definitely like to have a greater understanding of that particular subjective perspective- Newtonian Science is supreme.

Citta: As far as Amit Goswami is concerned, I think you need to dig a little deeper into the supplemental research of others that he draws upon to forge his theories upon the nature and theory of everything.

I would recommend a closer inspection of the works of Kurt Godel and Alfred Tarski.

Gibran2: what post is Citta talking about

There really isn't much more to be said. He is using strange and anti-intuitive facts about the quantum mechanical world to draw conclusions that sounds good to the layman, but that cannot be drawn conclusively with the evidence at hand. I don't really think it is me that needs to check out Amit Goswami (as I have done), but you that perhaps need to read and learn some more quantum mechanics (assuming, no offense intented, that you have not done so already) to see that his claims are not bullet proof, and not conclusively supported by the field he uses to draw them from.

And for everyone I would recommend using a little of your time to watch these nice videos:

Open mindedness
Critical thinking

It really sums up a lot of what I am trying to say in these matters in a lot better way than I am able to articulate myself.

Enjoy and have a nice day =)

Thanks for the video links!

There’s one thing in particular in the “Open-Mindedness” video that I found irritating:

At about 4:32, the narrator says “When I say I don’t believe in something, …all I’ve said is that I’ve not yet been presented with persuasive evidence for it.” (The graphic shows the character saying “I don’t believe X”. I find this to be a very strange stance to take.

First of all, how do we define “persuasive evidence”? Persuasive evidence to me might not be persuasive to the narrator and vice versa.

Second, there are many phenomena, both of the natural sort and the “supernatural” variety, that have no persuasive evidence one way or the other.

For example, a recent thread questioned whether or not we might be “Sims” – simulated beings in a simulated universe. There is no “persuasive evidence” to suggest that we are Sims, so the narrator would say “I don’t believe we are Sims”. Yet there is also no persuasive evidence that we are NOT Sims. So the narrator would say “I don’t believe we are not Sims.” So what exactly does the narrator believe? What is the narrator saying?

There is no persuasive evidence that God exists. There is also no persuasive evidence that God does not exist (of course, it all depends on how you define “God”). So the narrator would say both “I don’t believe God exists” and “I don’t believe God doesn’t exist”.

I could go on and on, but I’ll give just one more example: There is no evidence that the “primacy of matter” paradigm is correct, and there is no evidence that the “primacy of consciousness” paradigm is correct. So the narrator would say both “I don’t believe the primacy of matter paradigm is correct” and “I don’t believe the primacy of consciousness paradigm is correct”.

It seems to me the narrator really isn’t saying anything at all with respect to his beliefs. The fact is that we all believe things for which we have not been presented sufficient evidence. And for many “X”, the appropriate response isn’t “I don’t believe X”, but rather “I don’t know if X is true or false”.

Fair points, gibran. I didn't come to think of it that way before you gave me the heads up. Thank you. I do agree though, many times the most appropriate and intellectually honest position is that of "I don't know" =)