You don't even have to do that, you simply have to create a new religion and the money and authority will flow.
But that wasn't the question. The question was Are your possibilities created by religion or provided by education and wealth? So unless your religion provides you with a livelihood then its the education that opened your possibilities for advancement as far as employment and economically. Why not? There are people who have money and go to live in the provinces of Cambodia just so they can live in a wooden hut and feel 'satisfied'. I say satisfied because they are quite content living in a hut but then again they know they do not have to stay there.
My possibilities are created by me. What I am is defined by my philosophy. That may enlarge to include the Secret, if it works. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I do it to visit my friends. So no, its not like being a hippy. Usually its a meal, exchanging gifts or recipes and some gossip.
No Sam you were born into your religion and you were born into your class. You worked hard to achieve your education and success there was no magical thinking involved in all that hard work. I see no difference between your visits with friends and spending the night with a khmer family in the provinces myself and others do it all the time, it is not a sign of spiritual advancement.
What hard work? Oh you mean my education and traipsing around the globe? I'm a diletante philosopher with brains and luck. I don't consider any of it as work. There is no magical thinking involved in having a philosphy of life. I am a religious person, this is who I am. Why do you do it?
Well then you are naturally gifted Sam, an even more appropriate example of how your religion has nothing to do with your success. But if you were naturally gifted and couldn't read or write or were forced to earn your keep with some form of manual labor you wouldn't be traipsing around the world. You are still denying that there are practical reasons why you are where you are and positive thinking nor wishful thinking had anything to do with it. You are a religious person, yes that is who you are. But so what? It is a part of your life that hasn't given you the basics. Its an enhancement fine but so are other philosophical points of view once adopted and lived by. I am sure the buddhist finds as much satisfaction as the rationalist. I do not consider philosophy magical thinking, its simply a pre-packaged way of thinking that you are not supposed to doubt. Philosophy is supposed to make you think which means its also supposed to make you doubt, consider, re-consider and look clearly and rationally at the world. If your religion works for you then that is fine, but I have seen The Secret dvd and its the worse kind of magical thinking. Its there to pass on nonsense to those who are desperate for some type of change in their lives, people who are vulnerable and I find that wrong. Not to mention the fact that its used to make wacky cults and their leaders more rich. Did you read through the ABC interview with the producer? Its a few pages back. Read that and tell me if it sounds as if there is concern for anything else but money. Its equivalent to christian evangelists claiming to sell small pieces of the shroud of turin telling the people that they will be 'blessed' by it. Or worse selling them tap water and telling them that it was blessed by the preacher and will bring them luck or good health. Look at what the dvd promises. Its mostly MATERIAL and PHYSICAL benefits. Sam: Why do you do it? When I am invited by a Khmer friend to go for a weekend or a week to visit their family in the provinces I go.
I don't buy into cults and such, but the idea of psychosomatic control is hardly new. ... I just wondered why you thought it was hippy like/
Well good Sam. The Secret is a farce and they hide their intentions under spurious notions of scientific fact, psychosomatic control doesn't really enter into what the Secret is promising. Unless of course you believe that if you 'think' bills or worry about bills they will automatically arrive in the mail (something they say in the film)
You're awfully cynical about people's motives. If I am to understand you correctly, you do not believe that the good doctor, in all his wisdom, in everything he has researched and written, actually believes in what he is doing. You believe he is doing it just to take advantage of people and to make money? What are the products he is pushing? What is the source of his commercial empire? I have to admit, if you held up Dr. Depak Chopra as an example of this? I would have to particularly agree with you. His thesis was presented in his first couple of works, but then has been repeated in so many subsequent works, it has become nauseating. This still does not negate the basic message. If you could, please analyze this presentation of double slit experiment, and tell me what has been presented here that is false. I am very grateful that you have taken you time to consider this topic and have lent us your expertise in this field. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEzRdZGYNvA
Dr. Hagelin works for the Maharishi University of Management. As I understand it, that school happens to be an extremely profitable institution, although if I'm wrong about this please cite some info. I have a hard time believing that Dr. Hagelin, with the education he has, can truly believe that entanglement works in the way he claims. Even undergrads studying quantum physics for the first time can see through the fallacies, and the obvious paradoxes that would arise if Dr. Hagelin's assertions were true. I was certainly able to point out many faults with these sorts of claims back when I was an undergrad, nothing's changed since then, except my knowledge is now at a depth where they'd have a very tough time BSing me about any of this stuff, even if they resort to making claims about advanced subjects like String Theory. So either Dr. Hagelin knows the whole thing's a sham and he's just milking it, given that he mostly panders to a very receptive audience and it's easy for clever people to take advantage of them. Or, he truly does believe in the ideas he promotes, in which case I have to question why he's being dishonest and doesn't outright come out and say that he thinks quantum physics needs to be changed to fit with his views. Chopra is an extremely controversial figure, and very much disliked within the scientific mainstream. From what I understand, it was being on Oprah Winfrey's show that made him famous, not anything he contributed to the world's body of scientific knowledge. But you have to understand that charlatans are very good at riding out the storm even when they get caught in the act of cheating, otherwise they'd never get as far as so many of them do. Look at Silvia Brown, the supposed psychic Montel Williams likes to have on his show. She made an ass of herself on national TV by wrongly claiming a couple's missing child was dead (later turned up alive and well, far away from where she told the police to waste their time searching). After that particular screwup, CNN did a nice expose of her past work which showed she's full of shit from top to bottom, but she still has legions of followers who think she really is a psychic (for a psychic, she sure says some incredibly moronic things from time to time). You've probably heard of Uri Geller before. For the last 30 years or so, the man has been travelling the world performing essentially 3 basic magic tricks, and claiming that he's using psychic abilities, not trickery. He's made a killing off it too, by the way, lives very comfortably on an estate in England these days. Every now and then over the years, he's been caught cheating in one way or another, and magicians have been complaining that even as a magic act he's not very good at all. Yet time and time again he gets the crucial media exposure he needs to attract new suckers into his circle, people who are unaware of his past screwups, many of which are available on Youtube these days (he actively goes out and sues people trying to expose him all the time, it helps keep his f*ckups out of sight). The snake is a tough creature to kill. I'm so glad you finally asked about this one. This part of What the Bleep forms the core of their argument, it's the foundation on which the rest of the movie is built and justified, and the base from which it all topples to the ground when this foundation is removed. I've already established some very impure motives in the production of the film, I can just as easily establish basic fallacies in their attempts at scientific arguments. The first part of the double slit illustration is good, possibly it could even be called "very good", more videos like that should be made for demonstrating actual science. That's part of the movie's goal anyhow, as even the harshest critics agree- the movie starts out seeming very normal and plausible, as if it actually were a movie about science education and quantum physics. Then as the viewer gets drawn in to what seems like a plausible discussion, the movie producers gradually start adding in all kinds of kooky ideas of their own, until eventually the end product is completely different from what they started off with, and instead it makes a great promotional video for Ramtha. The problem is at 3:50 of the video you linked to. Here they claim that if we "peek" at one of the two slits to see which one the particle goes through, it destroys the interference pattern. The way the cartoon is drawn, they show a human eye looking at the slit, but not actually interfering in any sort of way. The way they illustrate this sequence, one would think the particle just magically knows it's being looked at by a conscious being, deciding to collapse from a wave back into a single particle just to throw the observer off. In truth, it wouldn't be an eyeball looking at the slit, but either some sort of super-sensitive detector that can tell when a particle passes through it, or else a means of blocking the slit would be employed so that you know all particles are going through the other slit. When you block one of the slits, you directly interfere with the particle that's trying to go through both at the same time, causing its wave to collapse. When you use a detector instrument to see if the electron is passing through one of the slits, this detector also directly interferes with the particle, and again this is what causes the wave to collapse. Finally, if you want to go back to the case of the eye and ask what happens if you could make an eye tiny enough to see subatomic particles, the answer is that eyes can't see things unless light bounces off those things first, and it's well known that bouncing light off a particle is just another means of directly interfering with it. So yeah, there you go, total 100% dishonesty from the makers of What the Bleep. At the very least, the film could have made it clear that there remains no laboratory evidence to date that human consciousness has any effect on quantum measurements. If humans could control the outcomes of quantum events in the way What the Bleep and others suggest, not only would it violate the uncertainty principle at the very heart of quantum physics, but such an effect could be tested very easily in physics labs around the world, and the results would be so simple, compelling and indisputable, that it would be absolutely impossible to explain them away as lucky coincidences. They could have presented it as a personal conjecture which would hopefully be either proved or disproved at some point in the future, after extensive testing. Instead they chose to present it as if it were a well-known scientific fact that every physicist was aware of, and only a few of us cowardly materialists have found the courage to accept the truth.
You mean second world, if you are talking about Mexico in comparison. That would be the point of the comparison, SAM. Under the theistic regime before, it was. Much like Mexico, in significant ways. Increasingly under the influence of politically powerful theists afterwards, it becomes. Mexico makes a pretty good comparison, except that Mexico had many advantages denied Russia (starting with climate), and these have to be allowed for. Unless there is. Quite often, there is.
stop lying i've said and done nothing of the sort feel free to quote the alleged assertions failure to do so would.............. however, your responses to eso...... ....incessant and desperate attempts to smear the poor fellow, necessitated a response from me......i mentioned the fact he was the recipient of a ..... The Awards were named by an independent founding committee to honor Jack St. Clair Kilby, Nobel Laureate 2000, who invented the monolithic integrated circuit, the "chip that changed the world." The Awards recognize individuals who make extraordinary contributions to society through science, technology, innovation, invention and education. The Kilby International Awards were named one of the top 116 awards in the world in 1999, following a five year study of over 26,400 awards worldwide by the International congress of Distinguished Awards. perhaps not much but worth something ranting about personalities, qualifications etc is simply trolling when one has a study that could be considered in its own merits. who really gives a shit who the author is? obviously you do
my thoughts on the study.... yet you natter about beliefs i detect an obvious agenda to tar and feather which is why i choose not to support or criticize the study ja, i am smart like that now lets look at you... in order to dismiss as junk, it is expected that you are knowledgeable about what you are actually dismissing. yet here you are begging for an interpretation from someone who had already professed ignorance about the subject matter so what say you? wanna take another crack at reviewing the study? you are qualified to do so yes? perhaps something like..... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ...that? /snicker ja east jeru, 1983 siddhis up to no good i'll have the siddhis know if they interfere with my moods without permission, i will hunt em down like wild animals. then i will sue mum for invasion of privacy and a violation of sanctity of self as an aside i have and will not watch the secret i managed the first few minutes of bleep and then deleted it from hd dont get me wrong tho i love crackpottery as much as you do but not this garden variety garbage. /sneer more sophistication please
Looks like the critique you posted does a perfectly good job as is. You don't need to argue over every detail in these kinds of papers- if you can find just one issue that throws the whole conclusion into doubt, there's no need to discuss anything further until that particular issue is resolved. For me, one of the biggest issues is the whole study's conclusion is based on such dubious foundations. They (I assume) attempted to model what crime in Washington should have been during their "study", then they showed that actual crime was lower (again, assuming their crime stats actually came from the police this time). If I was a professor delivering critiques on this paper before it gets submitted for an attempt at publication in a serious scientific journal, I would stop them right at this point and wouldn't even consider going further until they addressed this issue to my satisfaction. I'd insist that I want to see what happens when they take their crime model, with the exact same methods for choosing all the values and parameters to plug in, and apply it to multiple other cities from various time periods around the world. In my personal case, I have a decent background in probability and stats, but I'm not a statistician, and I don't know the pros and cons of every modern analysis technique. If I was seriously interested in discrediting such a study, and on first glance I couldn't find any faults with the paper and found the stats went beyond my technical knowledge, the next thing I'd do is refer it to a respected individual in the field who could check it over and let me know if it looks valid. If they said it all looks good, including the methodology used in the study itself, the next thing I'd check is to see what attempts they've made to present it to the wider scientific community, and what the scientific community's response is. In this case, I don't have to take any of these steps, since a) It's easy to spot flaws in this study, suggesting it's probably more of an attempt to impress laymen lacking scientific backgrounds rather than the scientific community itself b) I'm not looking to disprove anyone's spiritual beliefs, just to set the record straight for anyone claiming that respected science labs around the world have compiled mountains of evidence backing these beliefs. Despite all my doubts, for all I know maybe the TM movement is right and I'm wrong. I'd have to see some overwhelming evidence before I'd ever acknowledge that, and from the way they talk and make it seem so easy and obvious, I can only wonder why they haven't been able to do that. Like I said, you could choose not to believe in radio, but then it would be easy to make you look stupid. It should be the same with these newage science claims, if they're really true.
not shabby at all i also like your restraint, civility, open-mindedness and whatnot welcome to sci and i hope you stick around Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! apologies for the crap rhetoric
