"Me Swami! Oh, Oh, reply to me, Swami!" So many to please...
i think this is the fallacy known as downplaying :P if you don't want to respond to the posts that offer up real challenges to your way of thinking and arguing, then say so and don't try to belittle me for asking you to. if you don't mind responding to that kind of challenge, then get on it and stop picking on people who lack your particular ability. there are several people on this board who are, at least, your mental/logical equal, and who will happily assert and argue that your insistence on logic *alone* is hooey. respond to them, not Joe 14-year-old and his space alien dreams.
(that is such an awesome band name)
The hand-on-the-hot-stove test works in a lab 100% of the time. The eyes-in-the-back-of-the-head phenomena; if it exists, is slippery and clearly in another catagory.
this gets into an interesting notion. the instincts i mentioned are all very direct and involve primitive lizard and mammal parts of our brain, and they have clear survival value. the third brain, what Tom Robbins called the flower brain, is the neocortex, a large and 'unnecessary' (from a survival POV) section the is dense with neurons and stores memories and connections. could this part of the brain house its own kind of instinct, a growth instinct, a spiritual instinct? or perhaps we have simply 'forgotten' some of our instincts - i, for one, am capable of ignoring a heat that i know is not hot enough to damage my hand. perhaps we just 'lost track' of our other instincts because they weren't as obviously useful as reason, somewhere along the line. *shrug*
anyway, as to being clearly in another category - when this works for me, there is a marked similarity to pulling my hand off of a stove. my (three) eyes focus on them before i think about it; it's something my mind or my godchild or whatever wants to do. the resonance sets in without any effort on my part; i just acknowledge it and don't start doing something else with my mind. maybe it sounds like hooey; it's just me observing myself, i could be wrong. but it feels like a natural movement of the consciousness, unplanned, instinctual, 'genuine.'
I would agree with this if true, but believe the programming is part of human culture myth and therefore does not fit your assumption.
could you elaborate on this? i'm not sure what you mean by 'human culture myth.'
4. The "not being looked at" results were WORSE than chance. Average that in with the results of "being looked at" and it is very close to a random result.
why would you average those two figures? they're the results of two different tests. half of my apples rotted in 6 days; half of my oranges rotted in 14. the average time for my apples to rot is therefore 10 days. nope. the negative result in the not-looking test could result because the being-looked-at had no stimulus to respond to and was just guessing, while the positive result in the looking test resulted from their being a stimulus to respond to. in fact i think the two results go together pretty well.
do you believe in the existence of quarks?
Irrelevant.
just saying 'irrelevant' doesn't prove it was. if you believe in the existence of quarks, it is because of an experience you've had (reading about it in a book or hearing about it from someone, i wager). i have had experiences of 'paranormal' phenomena and abilities. however, if i held you to the same standard you are trying to hold us to, i would not accept your assertion that quarks exist unless you (personally) could provide me with a test i could perform to prove it to myself. but you can't, because you know beans about quantum mechanics. which is fine. i believe you when you say quarks exist because i've heard it myself more than once. in lieu of the personal resources to test a phenomenon scientifically, we ALL accept its existence based on bald assertion and belief in the authority of others who claim direct experience. you believe in quarks, i believe in quarks and esp.
we don't have to be scared of proving their existence
Real phenomenon exist independant of emotional state.
oh? are you saying love isn't real? are you asserting that fear isn't real? i contend that they are much more real to me than quarks or my car's pistons.
anyway, i would rather have said that we don't need to busy ourselves trying to prove the existence of blah to doubters. i'm not scared of doubt; i think it's a lot better than blind acceptance, but not half so good as genuine faith forged in the fire of the Real. what i meant was that, rather than try to explain this to you a million different ways even though you can never legalize shrooms or fund a center for practice or radically reshape society so children can start practicing before they get rigid, i could be sitting in a practice center working on it with my Siblings in the Sun and making the world freaky and cool. my lifeforce will end up going towards assuaging the perpetual doubts of perpetual doubters, one at a time, which is less interesting but currently more important.
We have never got close to the theory part because we first need observable phenomenon on which to base it.
*ehhhhhhhhhhh* <- buzzer
that's old-fashioned, Baconian inductivism. Science hasn't worked that way for 100 years and change. scientists FREQUENTLY have a theory they are trying to find data to support. most breakthroughs happen because scientists know something must be happening based on other phenomenon, but struggle to invent a test or equipment that can demonstrate it absolutely. the theory often precedes the proof. read some about the philosophy of science; it's a trip. most good science gets done by egomaniacs hell-bent on getting a reputation for themselves, who devote their whole careers to proving something they know is true but can't prove fnord.
dinner time! feed your mind, or your chest will hollow.
farfiegnugen
-------------------- in peace,
just footsteps
http://www.whyvegan.org
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