A Scientific Basis for Spirit

[The Grand Nudger]

Gee whiz Rhytmn, why should you feel that you need to 'give me' anything?

I mean think about it. I post my thoughts on a forum as "Food for Thought" for anyone who might be interested.

Yet, here you are acting like if you give my thoughts any merit at all you'd be somehow supporting me personally.

It's truly unfortunate that Internet forums tend to be like this. Everyone is at 'war' trying to prove their views are right and everyone else's views are wrong.

It's just food for thought, that's all.

Is it always going to be like this? You make a thread called "Scientific Basis for Spirit" and then when your proposal is criticized and someone asks you to demonstrate things which you are consistently taking as a given (or even insisting are givens) you complain that they're being a big old meanie? Always at war, always to prove their POV right. No, I'm asking you to provide what you made mention of in the title.

Yes. I do believe I can ignore my own thoughts if I chose to.

You don't have to leverage belief here, that's a falsifiable proposition. It can be tested, with proper protocol, and you can get results. (I'd be willing to bet that there's some researcher somewhere that would be thrilled to have you volunteer to be a subject in exactly this sort of experiment)

The very presence that I can't simply make go away by pure will.

There might just be a reason that we don't have conscious access to the kill switch of our own consciousness. It might not be a good idea...take a look at the decisions that people make around you.

Personally I believe in free will, but I'll probably get laughed at for believing in that too.

You're entitled to that, I'm only mentioning that science doesn't operate on beliefs. If you're going to refer to something and call it a scientific basis for this or that, it has to be scientific.

[Epimethean]

The only "scientific" proof of anything we're getting from Abra is that he likes to expound on whateverness but doesn't like to be questioned about it.

[reverendjeremiah]

Now im glad I still have him on ignore. I checked out his OP....yup....still as bat shit as ever.

He sounds like Time Cube

http://www.timecube.com/

Perhaps we can get a few more to ignore him after this thread

[Abracadabra]

You're entitled to that, I'm only mentioning that science doesn't operate on beliefs. If you're going to refer to something and call it a scientific basis for this or that, it has to be scientific.

Well, if you were able to perform this experiment on yourself at all that would pretty much guarantee that you at least have the free will to chose to do the experiment. Moreover, actually doing the experiment would demonstrate that you have free will to selectively ignore at least some thoughts. Surely you had some success with this experiment.

Someone who could not ignore any thought that crosses their field of awareness would surely be a grave danger to themselves and to society don't you think.

I've certainly had strange thoughts cross my mind that I not only didn't follow up on, but would not want to be associate with having followed up on.

I selectively ignore thoughts an a daily basis. So for me the concept of free will is a given. It's been proven to me experiment after experiment on a daily basis for my entire life basically. Not even intending to do these experiments on purpose.

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The only "scientific" proof of anything we're getting from Abra is that he likes to expound on whateverness but doesn't like to be questioned about it.

I didn't claim to prove anything. All I did was propose a very ancient experiment that you can personally do for yourself. I gave my personal conclusions that I got from having done the experiment. Your conclusions may differ.

And evidently they do.

[The Grand Nudger]

See, again, your definition of free will and mine may be worlds apart. It's a loaded concept.

"I selectively ignore thoughts an a daily basis"-clearly But does that mean that you aren't having them? Does that mean that you can turn off thought itself? I haven't seen any reason to conclude that this is the case.

I've tried meditation (I've tried much, much more than meditation btw)..just doesn't do it for me.

[Cyberman]

I gave my personal conclusions that I got from having done the experiment. Your conclusions may differ.

And evidently they do.

Wow - how very scientific. "Yes, gentlemen, my calculations clearly show that a line connecting a planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times, in accordance with the conservation of angular momentum. You, however, may get different results and arrive at different conclusions; thus proving that I am right."

'Cos that's what Real Scientists do, right?

[Abracadabra]

See, again, your definition of free will and mine may be worlds apart. It's a loaded concept.

"I selectively ignore thoughts an a daily basis"-clearly But does that mean that you aren't having them? Does that mean that you can turn off thought itself? I haven't seen any reason to conclude that this is the case.

I've tried meditation (I've tried much, much more than meditation btw)..just doesn't do it for me.

I see your point.

No you can't turn thoughts off. But that's irrelevant to the point of this experiment.
This hypothesis was never to proclaim that you could.
The hypothesis was simply that you can choose to ignore thoughts.
The conclusion is that you must then be something other than thoughts.

At least that's the conclusion I accept from this experiment.
A conclusion that I actually believed in before even conducting the experiment.
Just the same this experiment vividly shows that it's clearly possible.

So nowhere did I say that you can turn thoughts off.
I simply said that you can ignore them.
Therefore you must not be your thoughts.

You must be something other than your thoughts.

That's the conclusion that I take away from this experiment.

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I gave my personal conclusions that I got from having done the experiment. Your conclusions may differ.

And evidently they do.

Wow - how very scientific. "Yes, gentlemen, my calculations clearly show that a line connecting a planet to the Sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times, in accordance with the conservation of angular momentum. You, however, may get different results and arrive at different conclusions; thus proving that I am right."

'Cos that's what Real Scientists do, right?

I'm not asking you to accept my conclusions.

This is why I proposed an experiment that you can personally do on your own.

You are more than free to conclude from it whatever you chose.

I'm just sharing that from this experiment I conclude that I am not my thoughts.

Your meditations may vary.

[Cyberman]

Yet you proposed it as a scientific basis for what you define as spirit. One of the key features of science is that the experiments not only must be repeatable by everyone but the conclusions resulting from those experiments must be observable as well. The whole point of experiments is to eliminate ambiguity. It's no good my performing your experiment and getting a totally different result, because it proves nothing.

(ETA: Incidentally, another key part of the scientific method is peer review, in which your experiments and conclusions are tested to destruction. This in diluted form is what you're experiencing now.)

[The Grand Nudger]

No you can't turn thoughts off. But that's irrelevant to the point of this experiment.
This hypothesis was never to proclaim that you could.
The hypothesis was simply that you can choose to ignore thoughts.
The conclusion is that you must then be something other than thoughts.

It might be more accurate to state that you can ignore some thoughts. You clearly cannot ignore those functions of your brain which are required to sustain you, and some level of consciousness is required to oversee that (at least in humans, due to our biology). I fail to see how you've determined that because you can ignore passing thoughts, that consciousness is not comprised entirely of thought.

So nowhere did I say that you can turn thoughts off.
I simply said that you can ignore them.
Therefore you must not be your thoughts.

You didn't claim that you had reached a state of awareness, but no thought (a pretty amusing sentence..you must have a different definition of "aware" than I do)? How did you achieve that, if you didn't turn them off? Why can't you turn off your thoughts anyway, if you are something external to them?

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-Relevant link.
"Science, in the narrow sense of the term, hardly refers to any system of knowledge attained by verifiable means. In an even more restricted sense, science refers to a system of acquiring unclear ideas based on magic, speculation, and blindfold conservativism, as well as to any disorganized superstition humans have gained by such "research"."
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Science

[Abracadabra]

You didn't claim that you had reached a state of awareness, but no thought (a pretty amusing sentence..you must have a different definition of "aware" than I do)? How did you achieve that, if you didn't turn them off? Why can't you turn off your thoughts anyway, if you are something external to them?

You do bring up interesting thoughts Rhythm.

Actually, if you are an being that is external to your brain and you 'turned off' these thoughts and when and did something else for a while, when you came back to them and turned them back on again, they would appear to be precisely where you had left off.

So if you are a being that is external to your brain's thoughts you could potentially be turning off your thoughts all the time and never even be aware of it. (ha ha)

It's amazing what's actually possible when considering these types of things.

In fact, maybe that's why we need to "sleep". These external spirit need some way to take a periodic break from this game.

Interesting thoughts.

Isn't it weird that thoughts themselves can imagine such outrageous ideas?

If thoughts were solely the product of a secular pile of atoms, why is it that they can come up with ideas that are so estranged to that very essence?

That thought alone is pretty darn weird. (ha ha)