Activity

@michaelmckinney1951

Responding to

The article was open minded and made the arguments for universal consciousness well, but the way I read it, he was showing that he was listening, but in the end, not agreeing. So I didn’t repeat that part but I don’t think it’s fair to say I dismissed it. But, no, I don’t have anything to add to it. I don’t think us picking apart an article is the best way to proceed.

You ask the question, “how can any<one> know that?” That’s at the heart of this discussion. For me, science is the default position. I keep in mind however that Hume could not solve the problem of skepticism, that at some point you have to accept some truths and move on, or you will be paralyzed while looking for perfect data. I think a scientist will accept the “testimony” of a dying patient as data, but they shouldn’t accept the patient’s interpretation of the data as the final conclusion. A good scientist wouldn’t do that out of having a grudge, but out of knowledge of how individuals report experiences in a non-scientific way, reporting not just their physical sensations and measurable responses but also their cultural interpretation of the feelings. It’s hard not to do. Try explaining how much pain you are in without comparing it to something like stabbed with a knife or hit with a hammer, or explain colors without referring to a rainbow.

For me, I’ve just shifted my culture. I used to get wonderful feelings of community and universal awareness in church. We talked about our ancestors and thanked our “creator”. We explored how we felt about life by discussing characters in stories. I still do all of those things, I’m just not limited to the stories of one particular collection, and when I’m done with the discussion, I don’t tell anyone that those characters were once real people in history, because, umm, they aren’t. Community is now everywhere for me and “miracles” happen all the time. Their “source” is a quantum field that created space/time and evolved into planets with conscious beings on them. That’s what I tune in to.