"the majority of people do not care about origins even as they live in cultures fundamentally shaped by beliefs about origins."

How true this is and how disturbing. If there is no God, then sex ed classes should be values free. If there is no God, then abortion does not kill a living, spiritual being. If there is no God, then no culture can be judged by another (because there can be no transcendent right and wrong). I could go on, but I would bore everyone.

"The science in his ideas is good...This does not mean that it is right but that it is testable"

That seems fair enough to me. So why was he shunned in the scientific community? Because he suggested that people may really be able to sense when they were being stared at? Did I properly infer that? Hmmm. We've all had that experience. I think it should be tested. There may be very mechanistic reasons for something like that. It could be that we hear something very small and realize there is something out of place in the evironment. It could be something more spiritual. Science may not be able to answer that, but it could possibly answer if people really do know.

Something I've long questioned is how people find each other. For example, there have been studies (ok this was many, many years ago when I was studying psychology/communication and I don't know what follow ups have been done) that have shown that women who have been abused will choose abusive men with whom to associate when turned loose in a public setting like a bar. Now, how do they know? How do they zero in on a certain type of male? If they were asked they would undoubtedly say he seemed like a nice guy. They don't know they are going after abusers. And before anyone says anything really whacked like they must want to be abused, let me say that there are patterns in their relationships that are "normal" and to get something different would entail expecting something different. Even children who've been abused have been shown to act up until their parents finally lose it (when their parents are getting help to change their behaviors) because it's what is expected and they are on some level not comfortable with the change...it's just not normal. My point/question is how do these women single out these men? Is it body language, is it a spiritual connection? What? But science should study it. It might help people break out of destructive patterns. And knowing if and why people seem to sense if they are being watched might be impt also...So why was Sheldrake banned? Correct me if I misread you, mynym.

"It is heresy"..."how similar in some respects are the scientific and religious establishments"
Hmmm. Science does sound like religion, doesn't it. As I've said before, the white coated ones are the new priesthood. They are just as human (complete with envy, pride, hatred, self-interest, as well as good points, as the rest of us)
Anna Venger | Homepage | 05.24.06 - 5:54 pm | #

"Because he suggested that people may really be able to sense when they were being stared at? Did I properly infer that?"

Yes, it seems to strike some as "magic," although I suppose the ability of pigeons to know and find their way across vast distances on the supposed biological basis of their bird brains isn't. There are empirical facts here that can be verified, even about things that those who imagine a universe of billiard balls call "magic." Note that trying to observe the sense of being stared at in the aggregate makes it another small effect like the placebo, yet still statistically significant. But there are probably some people who have it in more significant ways.

My point/question is how do these women single out these men? Is it body language, is it a spiritual connection?

Is there a difference? Can you have a spiritual connection without language or language without spirit/meaning? Given the fact that there are a host of mannerisms and communication methods that people use they're probably making use of them to fall into habitual patterns. Most of the time it seems that people's desires are shaped by the masculine and the feminine, so if something evil like abuse gets linked or associated to either then their desires can be perverted against their own happiness or life itself. When most people are asked what they want they may answer money or this, that, and the other thing. Yet when they are asked why they want this or that then they finally get back to happiness or fulfillment, which is the end that they want the thing to serve as a means to. So one would think that happiness is what people desire and so why would women choose to be in situations in which it would seem that they know they will be unhappy. It is probably because we are perfectly capable of desiring legitimacy more than happiness. And in their case legitimacy is linked to being feminine, which for them has become linked to being abused, and so the vicious cycle turns and burns as they tend to choose the same types of masculine forms/souls to abuse them. They don't truly desire the abuse, our desires are just easily perverted.

On legitimacy:

Because we are spiritual-social beings, the human desire for legitimacy may be even more basic than the desire for life itself: Sometimes, some persons want to die; but no one ever wants to be illegitimate. Illegitimacy, par excellence, is an ascription no one attributes to himself: Even the person guilty of a grave moral sin or crime — a Judas, a Lady Macbeth, a modern mass murderer — views himself not as an illegitimate person but as a legitimate sinner or criminal.
In short, legitimacy is to us what water is to fish: the milieu in which we, as spiritual beings, live— and hence notice only when we are deprived of it (by others). Revealingly, when we deprive others of legitimacy, we tend to blind ourselves to the subject’s situation as he experiences it:
We insist that his situation is caused by his condition, not by our definition. Indeed, no sooner do we perceive an illegitimate actor’s situation as due to our own doing than the negative ascription quickly loses its legitimacy and disappers.

I had read a book recently on body lang. There is much we do with our bodies and facial expressions to expose our real thoughts and feelings that we don't even know we're doing and that others couldn't necessarily identify but "know" intuitively. Over half is strictly nonverbal, add in inflections of tone, and very little is just words. At one time I thought people knew each other more spiritually. Now i wonder how much really is spiritual. I think people might identify and know others by more mechanistic means. Still, that doesn't rule out a spiritual connection of sorts. I just think some of these things are more testable than I previously thought.
Anna Venger | Homepage | 05.24.06 - 10:18 pm | #

At one time I thought people knew each other more spiritually. Now i wonder how much really is spiritual.

What is it that you think the spiritual is, exactly?
mynym | Homepage | 05.24.06 - 11:25 pm | #

I guess when I think of something solely spiritual, I am thinking of things known that could not possibly be known by physical means. I've had a few of those in which I've sensed something before it happened or known something I shouldn't have without access to any external clues, but those experiences are very rare indeed.

Most of the time, spiritual, physical, emotional, and intellectual forces all intermingle and it would be difficult to separate them, dissect them. No doubt intuition is a mixture of educated guess, proper reading of body language, knowledge of human nature and dependence on spirit. We are, after all, spirit, soul and body and they cannot be separated without great detriment to a person. Take away body and we're in heaven (or hell), take away soul and we're in a vegetative state at best. I guess we can't take away spirit, and I suppose if we did we'd be merely beasts (or mere products of blind chance).

Don't pick on me much here. These are not well developed theories, just impressions drawn on the fly in trying to synthesize past experiences and thoughts. Feel free to reason it out with me if there's anything worth the time in this comment. Otherwise, we'll just move on.
Anna Venger | Homepage | 05.25.06 - 8:50 am | #

I guess when I think of something solely spiritual, I am thinking of things known that could not possibly be known by physical means.

All I would note is that if we begin by defining the spiritual as "not physical," which is the way it has come to be defined in modern times, then we should not be surprised that any increase in knowledge in modern times will supposedly result in a "spirit of the gaps" and so a so-called "God of the gaps" also. Why? Because we will come to call all of our knowledge physical as it is impossible to prove a negative claim like "not physical." As can be known in cases like Sheldrake's, in the worst case scenario in which all the empirical evidence seems to favor a union of the spiritual and the physical those who want to call things physical will be able to argue that we should just wait until we can become more comfortable with our own rationalizations again.

The physical will always be all that can be proven and the spiritual all that cannot be, not because that is what the evidence shows but because that was the original act of will back along the chain of reasoning by which "proof" is defined as being something physical, not spiritual.

It seems to me that if fundamentally spiritual and spirited beings wanted to design a way to deny their own form of existence in a way that dissolves all form then this sort of reasoning would seem to be it. Although it is more than Darwinism, it is Darwinian reasoning and even proponents of Darwinism call it a "universal acid." (Although unfortunately they never seem to apply it to their own forms of inanity.) The only interesting thing about it to me is that so many seem so suprised that all the evidence and supposed "proof" that they can find favors a "physical" answer. For example, it is said that embryos develope as the result of "morphogenetic fields." Is that physical? In the end it seems it does not really matter because if we use reasoning in which the spiritual is defined in contradiction to the physical while being put on the negative side of the equation, "Spiritual = not physical" then it is impossible to prove a negative. That should not be surprising, no matter the vast amounts of empirical evidence of things having a spirit to them combined with our own characteristic knowledge of symbols and signs, etc.

In the end, the full application of "spiritual = not physical" reasoning finds its own end in a denial that words or signs written in any medium actually have any "spirit"/meaning/purpose because would you just look at all the supposedly "physical"/factual/objective evidence that they do not.

Otherwise, we'll just move on.

It seems to me that you were intelligent enough to begin trying to mix the spiritual and the physical into a union, so I don't know why you'd want to run off. Perhaps their separation is an illusion or a deception even if it seems like a useful heuristic with respect to knowledge to pretend that they can be separated. It seems to me that we'd have to go all the way back to what it is we are "really" talking about if we say spiritual or physical. Perhaps we would say that the physical is defined by the Newtonian view of the Cosmos as billiard balls in motion, yet even there we come across what seem to be metaphysical notions given the metaphoric "laws" that metaphorically "govern" over the billiard balls, which seem suspiciously spiritual. After all, is God playing pool?
mynym | Homepage | 05.26.06 - 11:53 am | #

Flying back and forth through time like that is what made me believe that I could find an answer to it in the theoretical, in quantum physics and the like.

Ideas of faith, mystery, understanding and accepting that there is no understanding sometimes (but that which is god's) may embrace and include ideas of science.
I have come to expect them and look forward to more and more assurance from understanding of the physical world.
Complex modern physics leads to some very spiritual interprtations of what can be known.
Nancy Willing | 05.28.06 - 7:27 pm | #