You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
In the age of youtube there is no excuse to be ignorant on any topic. Some people choose to not be informed, or they value political information lower than other things.
We can't force people to be engaged with politics. We need to fix the system. When the US was formed there were 30,000 citizens per representative. Today there are 700,000 and climbing. The constitution required increasing the number of representatives as the population increased. Then FDR (that fucking cunt) stopped it.
I believe things would come back in line if we kept increasing the house of representatives as the constitution required.
More representatives means more discord in government. When the government is unified the people are in trouble.
Not to mention is raises the cost of corruption. More politicians to bribe.
Sorry, that would be suicide for conservatism. Look at state legislatures. They have proportional representation. That means big cities dominate them. Who runs the big cities in virtually every state? Dems. Thus it's a struggle for rural areas as cities grow to counter that. It's hard enough to get a conservative Senator when the whole state has a chance.
1, most people don't give a shit about their local or state politics. That means that their local and state politics will be filled to the brim with incompetents and/or puppets. If people cared, it would be far, FAR easier to "take control" of a city council and state governing body. "muh work and family obligations" ok, then don't expect great representation. This is reason #1 why our govt is almost wholly corrupted and/or incompetent - good people didn't participate/care about the politics that matter for 4+ decades.
2, when the above is working as it should, then that state govt is the best representation of the people and should decide the two senators who will represent that body/state in the US Senate. This is how our govt is supposed to work, and how it was until 1913. The 17th amendment fucked us, potentially irreversibly. It created a class of quasi aristocrats beholden to their own celebrity/wealth than to the state, much like medieval courts of old.
Carl was a good man but very likely overconfident in his belief that the scientific process was the only way to get to the truth.
To ignore all instinctual and spiritual knowledge and wisdom is arrogant at best.
Yes, culture has been dumbed down, our instincts have weakened and academia has become muddled, but honing your ability to connect to spiritual wisdom is a very real thing.
Ironically, in his push for scientific materialism he aggravated the very problem he feared.
There's a subset of the population who just wants to be told what to do. The world is big and complicated and scary, and if you lack the constitution to push through the unknown, then you're going to look to institutions to do the pushing for you.
If those institutions are rooted in Christianity, then you're going to get a social conciousness that values the individual as a son or daughter of God and you're going to get a very very sophisticated view of free will. Both of which are strong bulwarks against tyranny.
But if you root your institutions in a world view which says that we are all jumped up apes who came about by accident, then all meaning in life becomes relative and the collective good supercedes individual good.
It's based in Critical Theory. In theory, it's best to be guided by rationality. Problem is exactly as you say. With the decreasing Bible following population, they simply replace it with something else. The newest religion is SJW Marxism.
I'd argue it's not in your best interest to do that on a rational basis, bla blah but it's hard to do and takes time. This is why I say pragmatically it's hard to make work and often doesn't.
Using the science of THAT time, I would like you to prove to us that invisible radiation and invisible radio waves exist. You can’t because the scientific equipment to do so did not yet exist.
Pro tip: At any given time, science may be unable to prove that invisible forces exist, yet these forces still do exist.
It was just proven last year that the human brain reacts to changes in magnetic fields (equal in strength to the earth’s magnetic fields) despite the fact that most people are not consciously aware of this ability. However, some people who grow up in primitive hunting cultures seems to have a better “sense of direction” than those of us who grow up in hi-tech societies.
Yet, when someone reports being connected to spiritual energies and knowledge, you, in your high-tech arrogance, claim they are imagining it or lying.
Consciousness literally occurs at a quantum level and scientists are unable to fully explain the many mysteries of the mind. And we are talking about minds granted unknown powers by millions of years of evolution.
Pro tip: Life, itself, tends to seek out any energy or information in its environment that will assist in its survival. If some of that information is wisdom lying in a quantum consciousness energy field, it will find a way to access that information.
Yes, religions have been used to manipulate or control people throughout history but the spiritual pursuit of knowledge is very real.
Religion neither predicted nor proved radiation or radio waves - nor would it ever if left to its own devices. But the cumulative buildup of knowledge through the scientific method did and always will.
Science is shared, revelation is a first-person experience.
I have little doubt that I could find millions of people who say that they received word from the divine, but you would dismiss as either fake, false, or demonic because it doesn't line up with your version of divinity.
Religion is organized spirituality and is often used as a control mechanism by those in power. Religious institutions often become corrupted and their leaders will sometimes try to stop individual members from pursuing spiritual truths on their own. Stop trying to conflate religion with spiritualism.
If you want to understand how a spiritual connection to the universal unconscious can generate scientific knowledge, go read up on Tesla and see how he explained where he got many of his ideas from.
If you want to understand how consciousness is a prerequisite for the existence of the material world read up on the ideas of the leading quantum physicists from 100 years ago.
This is a fallacious appeal to authority. Physicists of 100 years ago were not authorities on consciousness - what's more, those studying consciousness today are still likely just scratching the surface of what's going on inside that grey matter in our headspace. I will remain skeptical of everything that emerges in this field.
Tesla was not an expert on 'spiritual connections', which are non-scientific by definition.
Stating nonsense as facts and name dropping Tesla and quantum physics is neither authoritative nor persuasive. It is however quite reminiscent of Scientology.
I am not am not scientologist and despite you being able to label my rhetorical technique (appeal to authority) you are still a simpleton moron compared to people like Tesla, Schrodinger, Planck, Bohr or Heisenberg.
Just because you can label a rhetorical technique does not mean that that rhetorical technique isn’t effective or true. You have very little understanding of theoretical physics or neurology. You have no vision, imagination or openness.
You live in a very sad world inside that little head of yours full of rotting meat.
Perhaps you can explain to me the name of the migratory bird scientist who discovered the earth’s magnetic fields.
Then explain to me which electric eel scientist discovered how to project electric energy out of its body.
Then, explain which bat scientist discovered the sonics and mathematics used for echo location when hunting at night.
Also, which fern discovered photosynthesis in a lab?
You see evolution helped animals and plants “discover” and make use of invisible energies and information despite the fact that human scientists had no idea about those invisible energies and information at one time.
As humans, we also benefited from that evolutionary process and we also have the ability to sense invisible energies and the information encoded in those energies.
From a lurker: Great comments and insight, thank you.
I didn’t believe in spiritual energy or anything several years ago, now I’m completely opposite. It is very real and watch you say about brains evolving over millions of years is accurate and amazing.
I too, was once a “scientific materialist” who wanted to use evolution to explain everything rationally in order to reject spiritual thinking.
However, if you really understand and have faith in the tremendous power of evolution, then you should end up with more faith into the hidden powers of the human mind and spirit.
We are not just bio-chemical entities that came into existence by accident.
Life also exists at the level of physics.
We are physical entities (as in the sense of physics) that can connect to all the energies and knowledge of the universe both discovered and undiscovered.
Using the science of THAT time, I would like you to prove to us that invisible radiation and invisible radio waves exist. You can’t because the scientific equipment to do so did not yet exist.
Pro tip: At any given time, science may be unable to prove that invisible forces exist, yet these forces still do exist.
The fallacy here is that this argument is universally true (what we call a trivial proposition, like "a = a").
We can replace the "invisible radiation and invisible radio waves" with "flying pink elephant fairies" and therefore validly claim that "hey, we just don't have the tech yet, doesn't mean they don't exist". Which is true! But we've gained no knowledge by this (just like we already knew that "a = a").
You addressed one of my arguments with some accusation of logical fallacy.
Will you pretend that you learned nothing from my other arguments?
As lifeforms that have evolved over millions of years, we seem to be able to access instinctive and spiritual knowledge that we often end up verifying using an intellectual/scientific methodology.
Your faith in the scientific process does not invalidate the knowledge and faith of others.
You may lack faith in the ultimate powers of the human mind and spirit, I do not.
I believe that your lack of faith limits you. God bless.
You addressed one of my arguments with some accusation of logical fallacy.
Will you pretend that you learned nothing from my other arguments?
Hmm? So I just re-read your previous post to make sure and that's indeed the only argument you made, I didn't skip anything. You were simply repeating the same argument ("we haven't found out everything yet, therefore anything goes") reiterated with different examples, so there was no need to address each example but only the argument itself.
As lifeforms that have evolved over millions of years, we seem to be able to access instinctive and spiritual knowledge that we often end up verifying using an intellectual/scientific methodology.
This is your original assertion in other words, just in case you respond that I didn't learn anything from it :)
Your faith in the scientific process does not invalidate the knowledge and faith of others.
Faith? No no. I have zero faith in Physics. The only reason Physics is valuable is because it is practically useful, demonstrably consistent and correct in its predictions. If one day Physics can't do that, it's off to the bin.
You may lack faith in the ultimate powers of the human mind and spirit, I do not.
I believe that your lack of faith limits you. God bless.
At the end, it's not about you and I believe. It's about what actually is. That's the whole question. What actually is? And what's the toolset to approach it? One toolset is religion (or in older terms, we can call it philosophy) and the other toolset is science. One is verifiable, the other is not. That doesn't mean that you are not free to choose whatever you want. It's only a problem if one of those choices doesn't lead anywhere.
No, you ignored one of my best arguments. I said that the human brain can sense invisible energies at subconscious levels despite the fact that most of us are not conscious of that sensory equipment.
One of those energies humans can sense is magnetic field energy. The “non-scientific primitive” members of our species sometimes actually develop that ability to connect to the earth’s magnetic field because it is an important taught part of their culture as it helps them survive.
Last year, the scientific process was finally used to prove that the human brains can react to magnetic fields.
So based on your faith in science, three years ago, if I told you that some human beings may sense magnetic fields based on the observation that, some people have a better “sense of direction” than others, you would call me a fool. You would claim that those primitive hunters just have better cognitive mapping abilities rather than being able to connect to sensory equipment that for most of us is disconnected from our conscious awareness.
Today a number of people claim to be able to communicate with animals, including some of those primitive hunters who instinctively are able to track animals after connecting with their tracks. Again, you will claim that they are imagining things or that they’re lying rather than taking what they’re saying as having some basis in reality.
Now, are some of these animal communicators charlatans looking to take peoples’ money? Yes some of them are. But some of these animal communicators are doing things that most scientists can’t explain and don’t even want to look into.
It seems that autistic scientists, who don’t know who’s lying to them and who are not lying to them, have just decided they can never have faith in anything that any other human tells them. Therefore, if a human reports something to them that is not verifiable via current scientific method, that human must be either:
raver9876 is absolutely correct about this. Spiritual is a word that has been boxed up and packaged through the years. There is scientific evidence to what this pede is talking about. The CIA even has a training program involving it that they still utilize today. There are a lot of things invisible to the human eye that the conscious mind can perceive. Some scientifically provable (magnetism, vibration, etc.). Some not yet scientifically proven.
If a dog could understand english....you wouldn't be able to explain the color red to him. He couldn't comprehend or even be able to imagine what you are trying to describe.
No, it's still the same argument. Since you've taken the trouble to type all that, I shall explain it in detail as well.
if I told you that some human beings may sense magnetic fields based on the observation that, some people have a better “sense of direction” than others, you would call me a fool
No. I'd just ask for proof. Since now proof exists, isn't everyone happy about it? You're happy, I'm happy, everyone's happy. But note that the existence of proof is what was the prerequisite for this all around happiness.
Again, you will claim that they are imagining things or that they’re lying rather than taking what they’re saying as having some basis in reality.
Nope. I will simply ask for proof. If for example tomorrow some guy goes to the forest and talks to a pack of wolves and they make him king and comes out with them following like dogs, well, I'd be very much inclined to consider it as strong evidence. That's an example. I'm sure there are other things that count as strong evidence.
Generally, it's so very easy to persuade me for the existence of many many things. All I ask for is proof, according to a specific set of rules that I acknowledge as the means of providing said proof.
have just decided they can never have faith in anything that any other human tells them
Yes. Absolutely. Only proof counts, words are cheap. If one has the goods, one needs to display them.
Therefore, if a human reports something to them that is not verifiable via current scientific method, that human must be either:
A) Imagining things or B) Lying.
You forgot the obvious C) Wrong. You don't need to be neither malevolent nor naive to be simply plain wrong.
Do you see what a sad philosophy that is.
The caricature you project as a philosophy and attack, is sad indeed. But that's a stawman nobody needs to defend. The scientific philosophy is really simple: No proof, no cookie.
Dude, you're talking to a guy who's arrogant as fuck - despite that I suppress it when it comes to interacting with non-shitty people. Don't worry though, I'll be happy to accommodate your nauseating reduction to absurdity, because you're so not special that the arguments are practically commoditized.
So I'll tell you a story about adults. Us in the smart human territory have this thing called epistemology. It's a very daunting and slippery discipline for people on the first quartile of the intelligence distribution, so it's expected that you are not aware. That's fine, I am a philozoist.
One of the basic tenets of ... oh sorry I got carried away. Let me rephrase.
"if no proof be, no claim of be be true"
It's a little differently phrased in the original but I'm confident I'm translating this well for your level. In any case, feel free to ask for clarifications, you're so cute.
Yep. You notice this when the only argument people ever bring up is argument from authority. "But all the scientists say X. Why don't you agree with X?"
or "98% of scientists think X is true. Only religious nutjobs who think dinosaurs had saddles believe this kind of stuff. You don't want to sound like one of those, do you?"
All of this is social manipulation, not scientific argument.
Any study about differences in IQ between races is already banned. Many of the gatekeepers of science journals said they'd do everything they can to discredit it.
The shitty thing is, prior to today's environment nobody was caught up on racial crime rates etc. It's only because the SJW Marxists put it front and center do we even research this or share the data.
The scientific process is only good as the people running it.
Sagan was a pure academic, which is totally fine, the problem is modern academics have been tainted by spiritual demagoguery, not the religious kind, but the leftist social justice kind. Where the system is designed to ignore or marginalize all actual evidence and forcefully rationalize spiritualistic beliefs that "white men exploit the world" "people of color are victims" "gender isn't real", etc, etc....
Academia should not be tainted by things that are purely unacedemic, if we are to make all the great advancements we have since the industrial revolution, we must preserve academia as strictly fact based, non political, non spiritual, it needs to rely solely in the tangible and provable. If people wish to supplement it with religious teachings that is absolutely fine, but we cannot intermix the two if either are to survive.
Yes he should have, but it was probably more by design than arrogance: I bet when he wrote this, he was envisioning 'The Right' as being the problem, not the Left, which is where it is clearly happening.
He failed to realize the average person isn't "enlightened" by natural phenomena at a level where only high math can tell the story. It's fine if you personally want to decouple from religious metaphysics but that doesn't mean the average person can, or will want to. I think if Carl had continued to live and see what some of these predictions would end up doing, he'd have come back towards religion on the spectrum.
Wasn't he also one of the primary people who hard pushed for entangling culture and science? The two might have some influence on each other but it does both of them a grave disservice to try to make them one in the same. For science to work best it needs to be independent.
I think his goal to make the average citizen more educated about science was worthwhile. I have a lot of respect for him in a lot of ways. But when I look at the sorry state of science today, I can trace a lot of it back to Sagan and his colleagues manipulating the media and setting the awful standard that has been followed since then among so many so-called climate scientists.
Exactly, they were actually quite brilliant, Beavis and Butthead were so fucking stupid that their writer was actually damn genius, you can't just stumble onto that level of stupidity by shear luck, Same with Dumb and Dumber....
Sagan completely missed the point of either of them.
His last book and a great one. Carl and James Randi were friends - James is the worlds’ most famous skeptic and used elegant experiments to disprove ridiculous claims - plenty of content on youtube. The difficult part is watching people see the evidence and still deny it.
the most important thing we can do is make sure our children have an interest in history and philosophy. The Marvel Comics and the Harry Potter stuff is like sugary candy that can be fine now and then, but it is not the nourishment the mind and soul needs.
And Sagan was talking about the Shirley MacLaine crowd of his day. When he speaks here of "consulting horoscopes" and "clutching crystals" that is not metaphor, it was the literal truth.
What does the rest of next paragraph first sentence say? "We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial..." Who is we?
Books like this aren't eerie because of accurate predictions. They are eerie because they are their in plain sight truths to their plans laid out for us.
It is almost as if he sought to turn "science" (or something he named and masqueraded as "science") into a sort of culture or religion or similar, which is extremely damaging to figuring things out - science is a tool and an approach, one that among other aspects assumes and requires in certain regards honorable and benign intentions, honesty, benign cunning and insight, wisdom, etc. of the involved parties, and it does not create and foster such circumstances, it instead depends on them. And there are other fundamental issues reg. this.
And I am not convinced that he made a prediction and didn't intend to help spread information about methods on how to damage and destroy the USA and other countries in the West. And I suspect he intentionally misidentified in this description the situation, causes and other parts for the purpose of misleading the reader greatly.
What he wrote was prescient. But if he were still alive, Sagan would undoubtedly be part of the mass of voices drowning out objectivity and celebrating ignorance, superstition, and lowest common denominator programming.
“into superstition and darkness... a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
Yeah, in reality we just imported all the people who already live like that. It’s so dumb listening to people like Lebron and Jamie Fox have their totally ignorant history lessons celebrated.
Even though he, and that book,were basically anti religion, that is right on. But I think it happened because of anti religion, science replaced religion as authority: being a human endeavor, science was soon hijacked by human agendas. That leaves only nervous chatter.
No he's not and it's not off. Sagan was huge on critical and free thinking. What he's talking about is a reference to people not being able to control their own lives or futures anymore.
lmfao! Wrong. ~2.2 million Americans will die~ Somehow Fau Xi literally made China Virus models less accurate than global warming models. An imprewsive feat in its own right.
Do you know who he even was ? The man was a highly revered astronomer, cosmologist and astrophysicist to name a few a areas of his expertise. You could fill up an entire post of his awards and scientific achievements. You don't have to agree with everything he says under the epitome of free and critical thinking but to slander him like that is plain out wrong.
I would recommend reading the above book in its entirety as referenced from the OP. Further I suggest reading "Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium" which contains a lot of his essay's. He was also inspired through works from Thomas Jefferson during the age of enlightenment for example. Before his death he was quoted saying that he was an agnostic and freethinker.
I read those things as token placeholders to what we know to be superstitious an silly, and would be universally recognizable/relateable when you are getting the gist of what he was saying. I don't think he was being literal.
The key to a successful revolution is an educated middle class...... THREAT ELIMINATED!
And to limit education choice.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
In the age of youtube there is no excuse to be ignorant on any topic. Some people choose to not be informed, or they value political information lower than other things.
We can't force people to be engaged with politics. We need to fix the system. When the US was formed there were 30,000 citizens per representative. Today there are 700,000 and climbing. The constitution required increasing the number of representatives as the population increased. Then FDR (that fucking cunt) stopped it.
I believe things would come back in line if we kept increasing the house of representatives as the constitution required.
More representatives means more discord in government. When the government is unified the people are in trouble.
Not to mention is raises the cost of corruption. More politicians to bribe.
100% agree. Senators should be appointed by the states and should guard the rights of the states.
Sorry, that would be suicide for conservatism. Look at state legislatures. They have proportional representation. That means big cities dominate them. Who runs the big cities in virtually every state? Dems. Thus it's a struggle for rural areas as cities grow to counter that. It's hard enough to get a conservative Senator when the whole state has a chance.
Two different but coupled issues:
1, most people don't give a shit about their local or state politics. That means that their local and state politics will be filled to the brim with incompetents and/or puppets. If people cared, it would be far, FAR easier to "take control" of a city council and state governing body. "muh work and family obligations" ok, then don't expect great representation. This is reason #1 why our govt is almost wholly corrupted and/or incompetent - good people didn't participate/care about the politics that matter for 4+ decades.
2, when the above is working as it should, then that state govt is the best representation of the people and should decide the two senators who will represent that body/state in the US Senate. This is how our govt is supposed to work, and how it was until 1913. The 17th amendment fucked us, potentially irreversibly. It created a class of quasi aristocrats beholden to their own celebrity/wealth than to the state, much like medieval courts of old.
Carl was a good man but very likely overconfident in his belief that the scientific process was the only way to get to the truth.
To ignore all instinctual and spiritual knowledge and wisdom is arrogant at best.
Yes, culture has been dumbed down, our instincts have weakened and academia has become muddled, but honing your ability to connect to spiritual wisdom is a very real thing.
Ironically, in his push for scientific materialism he aggravated the very problem he feared.
There's a subset of the population who just wants to be told what to do. The world is big and complicated and scary, and if you lack the constitution to push through the unknown, then you're going to look to institutions to do the pushing for you.
If those institutions are rooted in Christianity, then you're going to get a social conciousness that values the individual as a son or daughter of God and you're going to get a very very sophisticated view of free will. Both of which are strong bulwarks against tyranny.
But if you root your institutions in a world view which says that we are all jumped up apes who came about by accident, then all meaning in life becomes relative and the collective good supercedes individual good.
“Jumped up apes”
Good one, I like that phrase.
It's based in Critical Theory. In theory, it's best to be guided by rationality. Problem is exactly as you say. With the decreasing Bible following population, they simply replace it with something else. The newest religion is SJW Marxism.
I'd argue it's not in your best interest to do that on a rational basis, bla blah but it's hard to do and takes time. This is why I say pragmatically it's hard to make work and often doesn't.
That lies on the premise that you can demonstrate said "spiritual" existence.
Let’s go back 200 years.
Using the science of THAT time, I would like you to prove to us that invisible radiation and invisible radio waves exist. You can’t because the scientific equipment to do so did not yet exist.
Pro tip: At any given time, science may be unable to prove that invisible forces exist, yet these forces still do exist.
It was just proven last year that the human brain reacts to changes in magnetic fields (equal in strength to the earth’s magnetic fields) despite the fact that most people are not consciously aware of this ability. However, some people who grow up in primitive hunting cultures seems to have a better “sense of direction” than those of us who grow up in hi-tech societies.
Yet, when someone reports being connected to spiritual energies and knowledge, you, in your high-tech arrogance, claim they are imagining it or lying.
Consciousness literally occurs at a quantum level and scientists are unable to fully explain the many mysteries of the mind. And we are talking about minds granted unknown powers by millions of years of evolution.
Pro tip: Life, itself, tends to seek out any energy or information in its environment that will assist in its survival. If some of that information is wisdom lying in a quantum consciousness energy field, it will find a way to access that information.
Yes, religions have been used to manipulate or control people throughout history but the spiritual pursuit of knowledge is very real.
Religion neither predicted nor proved radiation or radio waves - nor would it ever if left to its own devices. But the cumulative buildup of knowledge through the scientific method did and always will.
Science is shared, revelation is a first-person experience.
I have little doubt that I could find millions of people who say that they received word from the divine, but you would dismiss as either fake, false, or demonic because it doesn't line up with your version of divinity.
Religion is organized spirituality and is often used as a control mechanism by those in power. Religious institutions often become corrupted and their leaders will sometimes try to stop individual members from pursuing spiritual truths on their own. Stop trying to conflate religion with spiritualism.
If you want to understand how a spiritual connection to the universal unconscious can generate scientific knowledge, go read up on Tesla and see how he explained where he got many of his ideas from.
If you want to understand how consciousness is a prerequisite for the existence of the material world read up on the ideas of the leading quantum physicists from 100 years ago.
This is a fallacious appeal to authority. Physicists of 100 years ago were not authorities on consciousness - what's more, those studying consciousness today are still likely just scratching the surface of what's going on inside that grey matter in our headspace. I will remain skeptical of everything that emerges in this field.
Tesla was not an expert on 'spiritual connections', which are non-scientific by definition.
Stating nonsense as facts and name dropping Tesla and quantum physics is neither authoritative nor persuasive. It is however quite reminiscent of Scientology.
I am not am not scientologist and despite you being able to label my rhetorical technique (appeal to authority) you are still a simpleton moron compared to people like Tesla, Schrodinger, Planck, Bohr or Heisenberg.
Just because you can label a rhetorical technique does not mean that that rhetorical technique isn’t effective or true. You have very little understanding of theoretical physics or neurology. You have no vision, imagination or openness.
You live in a very sad world inside that little head of yours full of rotting meat.
Appeal to authority is not a 'rhetorical technique'. It's a logical fallacy.
I really don't follow. What's the "spiritual" method of determining the existence of radio waves?
Gosh, not sure.
Perhaps you can explain to me the name of the migratory bird scientist who discovered the earth’s magnetic fields.
Then explain to me which electric eel scientist discovered how to project electric energy out of its body.
Then, explain which bat scientist discovered the sonics and mathematics used for echo location when hunting at night.
Also, which fern discovered photosynthesis in a lab?
You see evolution helped animals and plants “discover” and make use of invisible energies and information despite the fact that human scientists had no idea about those invisible energies and information at one time.
As humans, we also benefited from that evolutionary process and we also have the ability to sense invisible energies and the information encoded in those energies.
From a lurker: Great comments and insight, thank you.
I didn’t believe in spiritual energy or anything several years ago, now I’m completely opposite. It is very real and watch you say about brains evolving over millions of years is accurate and amazing.
Thanks.
I too, was once a “scientific materialist” who wanted to use evolution to explain everything rationally in order to reject spiritual thinking.
However, if you really understand and have faith in the tremendous power of evolution, then you should end up with more faith into the hidden powers of the human mind and spirit.
We are not just bio-chemical entities that came into existence by accident. Life also exists at the level of physics.
We are physical entities (as in the sense of physics) that can connect to all the energies and knowledge of the universe both discovered and undiscovered.
The fallacy here is that this argument is universally true (what we call a trivial proposition, like "a = a").
We can replace the "invisible radiation and invisible radio waves" with "flying pink elephant fairies" and therefore validly claim that "hey, we just don't have the tech yet, doesn't mean they don't exist". Which is true! But we've gained no knowledge by this (just like we already knew that "a = a").
You addressed one of my arguments with some accusation of logical fallacy.
Will you pretend that you learned nothing from my other arguments?
As lifeforms that have evolved over millions of years, we seem to be able to access instinctive and spiritual knowledge that we often end up verifying using an intellectual/scientific methodology.
Your faith in the scientific process does not invalidate the knowledge and faith of others.
You may lack faith in the ultimate powers of the human mind and spirit, I do not.
I believe that your lack of faith limits you. God bless.
Hmm? So I just re-read your previous post to make sure and that's indeed the only argument you made, I didn't skip anything. You were simply repeating the same argument ("we haven't found out everything yet, therefore anything goes") reiterated with different examples, so there was no need to address each example but only the argument itself.
This is your original assertion in other words, just in case you respond that I didn't learn anything from it :)
Faith? No no. I have zero faith in Physics. The only reason Physics is valuable is because it is practically useful, demonstrably consistent and correct in its predictions. If one day Physics can't do that, it's off to the bin.
At the end, it's not about you and I believe. It's about what actually is. That's the whole question. What actually is? And what's the toolset to approach it? One toolset is religion (or in older terms, we can call it philosophy) and the other toolset is science. One is verifiable, the other is not. That doesn't mean that you are not free to choose whatever you want. It's only a problem if one of those choices doesn't lead anywhere.
No, you ignored one of my best arguments. I said that the human brain can sense invisible energies at subconscious levels despite the fact that most of us are not conscious of that sensory equipment.
One of those energies humans can sense is magnetic field energy. The “non-scientific primitive” members of our species sometimes actually develop that ability to connect to the earth’s magnetic field because it is an important taught part of their culture as it helps them survive.
Last year, the scientific process was finally used to prove that the human brains can react to magnetic fields.
So based on your faith in science, three years ago, if I told you that some human beings may sense magnetic fields based on the observation that, some people have a better “sense of direction” than others, you would call me a fool. You would claim that those primitive hunters just have better cognitive mapping abilities rather than being able to connect to sensory equipment that for most of us is disconnected from our conscious awareness.
Today a number of people claim to be able to communicate with animals, including some of those primitive hunters who instinctively are able to track animals after connecting with their tracks. Again, you will claim that they are imagining things or that they’re lying rather than taking what they’re saying as having some basis in reality.
Now, are some of these animal communicators charlatans looking to take peoples’ money? Yes some of them are. But some of these animal communicators are doing things that most scientists can’t explain and don’t even want to look into.
It seems that autistic scientists, who don’t know who’s lying to them and who are not lying to them, have just decided they can never have faith in anything that any other human tells them. Therefore, if a human reports something to them that is not verifiable via current scientific method, that human must be either:
A) Imagining things or B) Lying.
Do you see what a sad philosophy that is.
raver9876 is absolutely correct about this. Spiritual is a word that has been boxed up and packaged through the years. There is scientific evidence to what this pede is talking about. The CIA even has a training program involving it that they still utilize today. There are a lot of things invisible to the human eye that the conscious mind can perceive. Some scientifically provable (magnetism, vibration, etc.). Some not yet scientifically proven. If a dog could understand english....you wouldn't be able to explain the color red to him. He couldn't comprehend or even be able to imagine what you are trying to describe.
No, it's still the same argument. Since you've taken the trouble to type all that, I shall explain it in detail as well.
No. I'd just ask for proof. Since now proof exists, isn't everyone happy about it? You're happy, I'm happy, everyone's happy. But note that the existence of proof is what was the prerequisite for this all around happiness.
Nope. I will simply ask for proof. If for example tomorrow some guy goes to the forest and talks to a pack of wolves and they make him king and comes out with them following like dogs, well, I'd be very much inclined to consider it as strong evidence. That's an example. I'm sure there are other things that count as strong evidence.
Generally, it's so very easy to persuade me for the existence of many many things. All I ask for is proof, according to a specific set of rules that I acknowledge as the means of providing said proof.
Yes. Absolutely. Only proof counts, words are cheap. If one has the goods, one needs to display them.
You forgot the obvious C) Wrong. You don't need to be neither malevolent nor naive to be simply plain wrong.
The caricature you project as a philosophy and attack, is sad indeed. But that's a stawman nobody needs to defend. The scientific philosophy is really simple: No proof, no cookie.
Dude, check you inner liberal and stop speaking nonsense padded with big words. Come back when you've relaxed and I shall entertain you.
Dude, you're talking to a guy who's arrogant as fuck - despite that I suppress it when it comes to interacting with non-shitty people. Don't worry though, I'll be happy to accommodate your nauseating reduction to absurdity, because you're so not special that the arguments are practically commoditized.
So I'll tell you a story about adults. Us in the smart human territory have this thing called epistemology. It's a very daunting and slippery discipline for people on the first quartile of the intelligence distribution, so it's expected that you are not aware. That's fine, I am a philozoist.
One of the basic tenets of ... oh sorry I got carried away. Let me rephrase.
"if no proof be, no claim of be be true"
It's a little differently phrased in the original but I'm confident I'm translating this well for your level. In any case, feel free to ask for clarifications, you're so cute.
Ummm, isn't it like "hey guys, he's using arithmetics, wow"?
It's obviously an analogy. Arithmetic is mundane, elementary logic (should be) mundane.
Science isn't science anymore. It's just as much a superstitious cult as the next. Science is the opiate of the arrogant
Yep. You notice this when the only argument people ever bring up is argument from authority. "But all the scientists say X. Why don't you agree with X?"
or "98% of scientists think X is true. Only religious nutjobs who think dinosaurs had saddles believe this kind of stuff. You don't want to sound like one of those, do you?"
All of this is social manipulation, not scientific argument.
Oh I know right? Not far off from saying "If you don't believe X, you're going to fry in Hell like a heathen because the priest says so."
Don't go against what Father Scientist says!
Any study about differences in IQ between races is already banned. Many of the gatekeepers of science journals said they'd do everything they can to discredit it.
The shitty thing is, prior to today's environment nobody was caught up on racial crime rates etc. It's only because the SJW Marxists put it front and center do we even research this or share the data.
The scientific process is only good as the people running it.
Edit: This video is more relevant than ever.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/wSNeq7tgno5P/
Sagan was a pure academic, which is totally fine, the problem is modern academics have been tainted by spiritual demagoguery, not the religious kind, but the leftist social justice kind. Where the system is designed to ignore or marginalize all actual evidence and forcefully rationalize spiritualistic beliefs that "white men exploit the world" "people of color are victims" "gender isn't real", etc, etc....
Academia should not be tainted by things that are purely unacedemic, if we are to make all the great advancements we have since the industrial revolution, we must preserve academia as strictly fact based, non political, non spiritual, it needs to rely solely in the tangible and provable. If people wish to supplement it with religious teachings that is absolutely fine, but we cannot intermix the two if either are to survive.
He missed the point of Beavis and Butthead.
I guess he didn't need TP for his bunghole.
Thank God Mike Judge was based and an artist.
He picks on Dumb and Dumber and Bevis and Butthead, but those were both largely there to ridicule stupidity.
He almost figured it all out. But refused to acknowledge God out of his own arrogance.
Yes he should have, but it was probably more by design than arrogance: I bet when he wrote this, he was envisioning 'The Right' as being the problem, not the Left, which is where it is clearly happening.
The Left in 1996 would be considered far right today.
He failed to realize the average person isn't "enlightened" by natural phenomena at a level where only high math can tell the story. It's fine if you personally want to decouple from religious metaphysics but that doesn't mean the average person can, or will want to. I think if Carl had continued to live and see what some of these predictions would end up doing, he'd have come back towards religion on the spectrum.
Sorry but Sagan was one of the pioneers of abusing science for political ends. His entire legacy is tainted IMO.
Yep, one of the earliest AGW spouting mouthpieces.
Wasn't he also one of the primary people who hard pushed for entangling culture and science? The two might have some influence on each other but it does both of them a grave disservice to try to make them one in the same. For science to work best it needs to be independent.
I think his goal to make the average citizen more educated about science was worthwhile. I have a lot of respect for him in a lot of ways. But when I look at the sorry state of science today, I can trace a lot of it back to Sagan and his colleagues manipulating the media and setting the awful standard that has been followed since then among so many so-called climate scientists.
Beavis and Butthead was great.
Dumb and Dumber was great.
Exactly, they were actually quite brilliant, Beavis and Butthead were so fucking stupid that their writer was actually damn genius, you can't just stumble onto that level of stupidity by shear luck, Same with Dumb and Dumber....
Sagan completely missed the point of either of them.
A sad fact is that the very people he is talking about have no idea of what he is talking about or that he is talking about them.
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His last book and a great one. Carl and James Randi were friends - James is the worlds’ most famous skeptic and used elegant experiments to disprove ridiculous claims - plenty of content on youtube. The difficult part is watching people see the evidence and still deny it.
the most important thing we can do is make sure our children have an interest in history and philosophy. The Marvel Comics and the Harry Potter stuff is like sugary candy that can be fine now and then, but it is not the nourishment the mind and soul needs.
Uh.... prophet?
Huhhhhuhhhuhhhhuhhhh... I like money
So, can you take me to the time machine?
And Sagan was talking about the Shirley MacLaine crowd of his day. When he speaks here of "consulting horoscopes" and "clutching crystals" that is not metaphor, it was the literal truth.
We’re turning into Idiocracy
Demon Haunted World is a good read.
"Do not worship me. Find real role models. Read a book." - Justin Beiber
He lost me at "Dumb and Dumber".
Americans are fucking retarded. Especially non-white Americans, with an average IQ around 85.
how prescient. intones there are more time travelers among us than we know.
seriously, the hair on my arms stood straight up as i was reading this; the man was looking 20+ years into the future and freakin' nailed it.
What does the rest of next paragraph first sentence say? "We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial..." Who is we?
Books like this aren't eerie because of accurate predictions. They are eerie because they are their in plain sight truths to their plans laid out for us.
It is almost as if he sought to turn "science" (or something he named and masqueraded as "science") into a sort of culture or religion or similar, which is extremely damaging to figuring things out - science is a tool and an approach, one that among other aspects assumes and requires in certain regards honorable and benign intentions, honesty, benign cunning and insight, wisdom, etc. of the involved parties, and it does not create and foster such circumstances, it instead depends on them. And there are other fundamental issues reg. this.
And I am not convinced that he made a prediction and didn't intend to help spread information about methods on how to damage and destroy the USA and other countries in the West. And I suspect he intentionally misidentified in this description the situation, causes and other parts for the purpose of misleading the reader greatly.
“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom god is waiting for you” - Werner Heisenberg
OK, but Dumb and Dumber is freaking hilarious
Hey dont go after beavis snd butthead. Mike judge is the best
What he wrote was prescient. But if he were still alive, Sagan would undoubtedly be part of the mass of voices drowning out objectivity and celebrating ignorance, superstition, and lowest common denominator programming.
Wow. That is eerie close to reality. Loved Sagan.
Sagan knew the ins and outs of science but he was a fool on the true meaning of life and the immaterial things that make us human.
A broken clock is right twice a day though.
Agreed, hence common core, dumb down America for easier control. This strategy Has been repeated through out history over and over again.
“into superstition and darkness... a kind of celebration of ignorance.”
Yeah, in reality we just imported all the people who already live like that. It’s so dumb listening to people like Lebron and Jamie Fox have their totally ignorant history lessons celebrated.
Imo this is missing one important thing - the dumbing down of america through drugs and poison in the food and medical supply.
Even though he, and that book,were basically anti religion, that is right on. But I think it happened because of anti religion, science replaced religion as authority: being a human endeavor, science was soon hijacked by human agendas. That leaves only nervous chatter.
*Almost nailed it.
No he's not and it's not off. Sagan was huge on critical and free thinking. What he's talking about is a reference to people not being able to control their own lives or futures anymore.
Yea those covid models were way better than horoscopes
This made me laugh
lmfao! Wrong. ~2.2 million Americans will die~ Somehow Fau Xi literally made China Virus models less accurate than global warming models. An imprewsive feat in its own right.
Do you know who he even was ? The man was a highly revered astronomer, cosmologist and astrophysicist to name a few a areas of his expertise. You could fill up an entire post of his awards and scientific achievements. You don't have to agree with everything he says under the epitome of free and critical thinking but to slander him like that is plain out wrong.
I would recommend reading the above book in its entirety as referenced from the OP. Further I suggest reading "Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium" which contains a lot of his essay's. He was also inspired through works from Thomas Jefferson during the age of enlightenment for example. Before his death he was quoted saying that he was an agnostic and freethinker.
Where did I say he was warning of socialism. FFS you're a shill
I read those things as token placeholders to what we know to be superstitious an silly, and would be universally recognizable/relateable when you are getting the gist of what he was saying. I don't think he was being literal.