• NEW! LOWEST RATES EVER -- SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE VERY BEST PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+, eight years young! For a low subscription fee, you can download the ad-free version of The Paracast and the exclusive, member-only, After The Paracast bonus podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, the continuation of interviews that began on the main episode of The Paracast. We also offer lifetime memberships! Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! You can sign up right here!

    Subscribe to The Paracast Newsletter!

Rosemary Ellen Guiley

Forums New posts

Free episodes:

starise said:
Looks like really rapid blinking to me.I can't look her in the eyes and have enough time to see them before she blinks. I was just curious what it could be . Stoned maybe, tired is usually not super rapid blinking is it? I can't say it's nothing, might be trivial but it's something and struck me as odd. Make of it what you will I guess.
Click to expand...
Her contacts may be bothering her.
 
In regards to the word supernatural, to quote Inigo Montoya, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. "

Definition of SUPERNATURAL (Merriam webster):

1: of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil

2 a : departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature
b : attributed to an invisible agent (as a ghost or spirit)

There's no such thing as "supernatural" anything. No thing transcends the laws of nature. But there are known laws, there are laws unknown to the
average person, & there are laws currently unknown.

Man in general, and western man in particular, in relation to what is known versus unknown, knows nothing. True science is nowhere close to knowing all the
intricacies of this wonderful play of light, of forces.

Direct experience is the endgame. Words, though very important, can never give an accurate representation after a certain point. By their very nature their bits, pieces,
segregative, never giving a complete picture of the whole.

As I've said in previous posts, there's ways to find out about all of this directly, to your own satisfaction, and that others can replicate. You could do worse than check out this guy:

Nan Huai-Chin and William Bodri
UFOs May Be Proof of Extraterrestrial Life, But the Laws of Cultivating Mind Still Apply

But no one wants to put the time in that these disciplines take to find out for themselves. Like I always say to my students, "everyone wants six pack abs, but
no one ever wants to do what it takes to get them".

I agree with Chris on that point. It's work to find these things out. You got to put in your time, and pay your dues. You're not going to get the ultimate answers in a book,
on an internet chat forum, or from some guru. All they do at best is open the door. you've got to walk through it.

Other than that, if we just do nothing but talk, take heresay as fact, and give opinions, then we deserve to know nothing.
 
spookymulder said:
As much as I love folklore, which may be the reason to my acceptance of paranormal reasons behind unexplained phenomena I do admit that it carries a lot of baggage. At the risk of detailing this thread...I've been meaning to post this thought for some time...if a person on the level of brain greene or lisa randell (spl?) came out with a mathmatical equation that made paranormal explanations a plausible answer...something on the level of einsteins explanation on gravity which from what I understand wasn't proven until two years ago but accepted as probable in the accompanying years would any of you guys be more open to it (paranormal explanations)
Click to expand...

But then it wouldnt be a paranormal explanation.
 
I'm a materialist

The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
Click to expand...

Obviously, modern reductive and eliminative materialists are allies in believing, as pre-20th century materialists did, that science has always confirmed and will most probably always continue to confirm the basic hypotheses of materialist philosophy: that is, first, that all reality is essentially a material reality and that therefore, second, no supernatural or immaterial reality can exist
Click to expand...
 
mike said:
I'm a materialist
Click to expand...

Well everything in manifested reality is made of matter Mike, just levels of it haven't been identified yet, with gross physical matter only making up 4% of what we can see. Consciousness is immaterial. You sure you're not a physicalist?
Do you consider consciousness to be a byproduct of the physical brain?

Materialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Excerpts from the Wiki. Fascinating stuff. Well worth a read:


"In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter or energy; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance, and reality is identical with the actually occurring states of energy and matter.

To many philosophers, 'materialism' is synonymous with 'physicalism'. However, materialists have historically held that everything is made of matter, but physics has shown that gravity, for example, is not made of matter in the traditional sense of "'an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure, and motion do actually subsist'… So it is tempting to use 'physicalism' to distance oneself from what seems a historically important but no longer scientifically relevant thesis of materialism, and related to this, to emphasize a connection to physics and the physical sciences." Therefore much of the generally philosophical discussion below on materialism may be relevant to physicalism.

Also related to materialism are the ideas of methodological naturalism (i.e. "let's at least do science as though physicalism is true") and metaphysical naturalism (i.e. "the physical world is all that exists").

Contrasting philosophies include idealism, other forms of monism, dualism, and pluralism."



George Stack distinguishes between materialism and physicalism:
"In the twentieth century, physicalism has emerged out of positivism. Physicalism restricts meaningful statements to physical bodies or processes that are verifiable or in principle verifiable. It is an empirical hypothesis that is subject to revision and, hence, lacks the dogmatic stance of classical materialism. Herbert Feigl defended physicalism in the United States and consistently held that mental states are brain states and that mental terms have the same referent as physical terms. The twentieth century has witnessed many materialist theories of the mental, and much debate surrounding them."
—George J. Stack, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Some modern day physicists and science writers such as Paul Davies and John Gribbin have argued that scientific finds in physics such as quantum mechanics and chaos theory have disproven materialism. In their 1991 book The Matter Myth in the first chapter titled The death of materialism they wrote:


"Then came our Quantum theory, which totally transformed our image of matter. The old assumption that the microscopic world of atoms was simply a scaled-down version of the everyday world had to be abandoned. Newton's deterministic machine was replaced by a shadowy and paradoxical conjunction of waves and particles, governed by the laws of chance, rather than the rigid rules of causality. An extension of the quantum theory goes beyond even this; it paints a picture in which solid matter dissolves away, to be replaced by weird excitations and vibrations of invisible field energy. Quantum physics undermines materialism because it reveals that matter has far less 'substance' than we might believe. But another development goes even further by demolishing Newton's image of matter as inert lumps. This development is the theory of chaos, which has recently gained widespread attention."

— Paul Davies and John Gribbin, 'The Matter Myth', Chapter 1

"Some critics object to materialism as part of an overly skeptical, narrow or reductivist approach to theorizing, rather than to the ontological claim that matter is the only substance. Particle physicist and Anglican theologian John Polkinghorne objects to what he calls promissory materialism — claims that materialistic science will eventually succeed in explaining phenomena it has not so far been able to explain. Polkinghorne prefers "dual-aspect monism" to faith in materialism."

Double-aspect theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thanks for clarifying your position Mike.
 
mike said:
I'm a materialist
Click to expand...
Then what would you call your experience? As I would suggest that your experience was anything other than outside of what is defined as natural. That is, unless you were to define ET as naturally occurring. By your very own definition, you could not have possibly experienced ET, however, apparently you have. As a material, reductionist, you would almost have to admit that your experience would most likely be stated as delusional. Are you sure that you’re a materialist?
 
And the models confirm it, look around your room.
Everything is explainable via materialism
The sun, the atmosphere the clouds every single expression of biology, all fit inside this model.

In addition we have a comparative trend

Once was we thought women were were magic, how else do you explain babies
Once was thought the sun was a god, and rode a chariot across the sky
The list goes on an on, all of them replaced by materialism and science.
 
S.R.L. said:
Then what would you call your experience? As I would suggest that your experience was anything other than outside of what is defined as natural. That is, unless you were to define ET as naturally occurring. By your very own definition, you could not have possibly experienced ET, however, apparently you have. As a material, reductionist, you would almost have to admit that your experience would most likely be stated as delusional. Are you sure that you’re a materialist?
Click to expand...


As far as my experience is concerned, ive given the honest answer

I dont know

What i havent done is invoked a supernatural explanation
 
Everything in the universe is explainable, we dont need to invoke supernatural or superstitious answers to fill in the gaps, better to say "i dont know" and keep looking.

And indeed history confirms the trend, bit by bit science has replaced superstition and ignorance with knowledge.

We now know the stars are suns like ours, not the campfires of the dead.

I stand by this process, the alternative is to suck on the teat of ignorance and remain intellectual infants

(This discussion brought to you by science and technology)
 
mike said:
And if you want to believe the stars are the campfires of the dead, and the internet runs on pixie dust, thats yours
Click to expand...

Mike, I've never put words in your mouth. So stop trying to put words in mine. I never said either thing. Are you going to stay civil or not. I'm talking to you like an adult.
 
From my perspective, it's one thing to say that there may be aspects of our reality that we haven't confirmed yet, I have no problem with that at all, it's quite another to say that there are aspects of our reality that we will never be able to explain or even prove whether or not they exist. To say that is to essentially give up and adopt a why bother attitude. If there is no such thing as the supernatural, if everything is within nature, then we should be able to someday prove that it exists and eventually understand it. We've observed and confirmed many different aspects of our reality that are both counter intuitive and extremely difficult to observe, why should this be any different?
 
Muadib said:
From my perspective, it's one thing to say that there may be aspects of our reality that we haven't confirmed yet, I have no problem with that at all, it's quite another to say that there are aspects of our reality that we will never be able to explain or even prove whether or not they exist. To say that is to essentially give up and adopt a why bother attitude. If there is no such thing as the supernatural, if everything is within nature, then we should be able to someday prove that it exists and eventually understand it. We've observed and confirmed many different aspects of our reality that are both counter intuitive and extremely difficult to observe, why should this be any different?
Click to expand...

You're actually right. The problem is that the proof people here seem to desire, is exclusively from a western scientific paradigm. Western science actually covers quite a bit of it. All I'm saying is that it doesn't cover all of it. There are other paradigms. and you can verify and reproduce them, just not to the satisfaction of your average mainstream scientist (at present). That's what I should have clarified.

But I absolutely agree. Everything will eventually be explainable. Just not always in the way that people currently desire. It would be interesting to see the various sciences 300 years from now.
 
Muadib said:
From my perspective, it's one thing to say that there may be aspects of our reality that we haven't confirmed yet, I have no problem with that at all, it's quite another to say that there are aspects of our reality that we will never be able to explain or even prove whether or not they exist. To say that is to essentially give up and adopt a why bother attitude. If there is no such thing as the supernatural, if everything is within nature, then we should be able to someday prove that it exists and eventually understand it. We've observed and confirmed many different aspects of our reality that are both counter intuitive and extremely difficult to observe, why should this be any different?
Click to expand...

Quoted for truth
 
When I look around, what I perceive is visible matter, which is comprised of atoms. If I didn’t know any better, I would tend to think that everything around me is solid.

Materialism is a very good thing. It’s given us all sorts of wonderful stuff. However, materialism cannot explain what the ninety seven percent of the Universe is made up of. Materialism cannot explain the paranormal. And I don’t think that ET can be proven to exist, thru use of the scientific method.

Perhaps a materialist could explain to me: Where the very beginning was? What was here prior to this Universe? And what was there prior to that Universe? Does anyone seriously think that material/reductionist science can solve these questions? As infinity is just a nice word for saying..., we’re unable to grok any further, as it’s the end of the line for human comprehension. As if materialists were able to answer these questions, I would suggest that they would truly have super natural powers.
 
S.R.L. said:
When I look around, what I perceive is visible matter, which is comprised of atoms. If I didn’t know any better, I would tend to think that everything around me is solid.

Materialism is a very good thing. It’s given us all sorts of wonderful stuff. However, materialism cannot explain what the ninety seven percent of the Universe is made up of. Materialism cannot explain the paranormal. And I don’t think that ET can be proven to exist, thru use of the scientific method.

Perhaps a materialist could explain to me: Where the very beginning was? What was here prior to this Universe? And what was there prior to that Universe? Does anyone seriously think that material/reductionist science can solve these questions? As infinity is just a nice word for saying..., we’re unable to grok any further, as it’s the end of the line for human comprehension. As if materialists were able to answer these questions, I would suggest that they would truly have super natural powers.
Click to expand...

I would argue that just because materialism hasn't explained it yet, doesn't mean that it never can. You wouldn't know that visible matter is comprised of vibrating atoms if it wasn't for materialist science. If ET isn't supernatural, meaning that it's part of the natural world as infoman said, then I absolutely believe that it can be explained through the scientific method eventually, just look at how we've observed and explained many things that we once struggled with.

As for your questions, we've mapped the entire state of the known universe up to something like 0.1 (actually a lot closer, but I'm simplifying here) seconds after the big bang using materialist science. What was here in the beginning is a daunting problem to be sure, but there's no reason to suspect that it will never explained. Traditional cosmology speculates that in the beginning there was a gravitational singularity, in which the temperature was so high that the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force) were all bound together as one. What was here prior to the universe, perhaps nothing, perhaps another universe, nobody knows at this point. I don't think that means we'll never know, we just don't know now. I see no reason to throw up our hands and declare these questions to be unanswerable, that gets us absolutely nowhere. It's a daunting mystery to be sure, but if it were easy to explain, then I suspect it wouldn't be half as interesting as it actually is. The thing is, we have to give it time, and using half baked ideas like demons or djinn or gods or whatever to fill that explanatory vacuum that we humans so abhor doesn't get us any closer to the truth about what these things are or how they operate, it's simply invoking the supernatural at the limits of our knowledge. It has never been correct in the past and there's no reason to suspect that it will be in the future.
 
I’m not suggesting that anyone should throw up their hands. It’s just a simple fact that humans can only comprehend so much. That’s why the word “infinity”, was created. As it seems to fill in a huge, missing blank. There’s some iou’s out there owed to science, that have been past due for almost six decades. Perhaps one day they’ll decide to pay up.
 
Back
Top