reply to post by LesMisanthrope
No apologies necessary. White Sage is commonly burnt in smudge sticks by New Age Native American wannabes to banish negative energies. Stupid of me to
assume others would know that.
I'm not sure if denying insurmountable evidence to the contrary of your beliefs is rational, but I guess it depends on how you look at it.
There is absolutely no evidence you will find to my beliefs for I have offered up nothing (at least in this thread) which can or has been disproven.
What I have done is looked at the available evidence and though my own logic and beliefs based on experience have come up with one that is contrary to
what many in mainstream science (though not all) believe may to be ‘unlikely’. Why? Because the very nature of science discourages most with
theories of which there’s no way yet known to prove, few are willing to challenge ideas which shake the very foundations upon which most of science
is built (especially is it is hard to get ‘solid’ evidence), and like most of us the majority of scientists are simply following status quo or
working on a practical level with stuff that we already know.
You are made entirely of energy and empty space. Energy which not only zaps across space and time, but also responds to conscious thought. The one
thing that has been
proven is that the reality your senses perceive is as remote from true reality as it could possibly be. And yet you don’t
believe that there is something remarkable that society as a whole is somehow missing? It has been hypothesized that there isn’t actually a sharp
divide between the quantum world and the macroscopic world, it’s just we are do not as yet have the technology to measure the macroscopic effects
the quantum world has on our perceived reality.
So when I break it all down…..
We (and everything around us) are merely energy – proven. This is the same energy that responds to conscious thought – proven. This energy is not
bound by the concepts of neither time nor space as we perceive them – proven
…….It become imho
illogical to completely discount many of the core teachings which are shared by not only the New Agers, but by many other
belief systems through the ages. These are not new theories on the whole; they are simply rehashed old ones.
I’m not going to deny for a second that there are not a large number of scam artists operating within the New Age genre. But hey that’s life. You
see it everywhere. Its acceptance of many different beliefs also leaves the New Age world wide open to many people who may well be better off under
professional psychiatric care. But at least it keeps things interesting.
My beliefs are (almost
) entirely rational when compared to the evidence we have available at present.
If one gets depressed at the thought of man not possessing any superpowers or being special in any way, by all means, he should curb his
depression with delightful thoughts. If one fears being compared to "meat computers," then one doesn't have to make that comparison. I for one,
cannot see anything in that comparison at all. A computer is something that sits on my desk, completely void of instinct, emotion and love. But
denying the facts in favour of keeping man on his pedestal, merely because anything else is too difficult to swallow, is not only irrational, but
wishful thinking.
If you believe the prevailing opinion as expressed in the OP, what you are essentially doing is limiting (whether rightly or wrongly) human potential
to the physical constructs of the body. Emotions – humor, fear, love – all are merely preprogrammed responses and are essentially no different to
a computer. Your computer has instinct – its software. It has a body – the hardware. Now if your computer was in fact an advanced robot it would
seem as full of life and emotion as you do.
If in 50 or
less years when computer technology has advanced to be at least as intelligent than humans, will it (once it’s been uploaded with
the correct software) also classify it as being ‘conscious’ or does being a computer made of flesh and bone somehow confer some special properties
that those made of metal and plastic do not have?
