h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I am not saying that philosophy is bad...it just that there was huge hype when Ayers went from being an atheist to a thiest as if it was something to rock the very foundations of athiesm...hardly just some old bloke coming to an ill-informed conclusion about why were are physically here...i.e. he couldn't understand evolution and whatever 'big bang' theory there is at the moment.

I am hardly going to take the views of some theoretical navel-gazers conclusion on scientific theory and his conclusion that we could only be here be some supernatural means.

You never know maybe Ayres was joking us. I have quoted before him saying with respect to saying grace, that he said he was not happy to say things which were untrue, but quite happy to say things which he considered meaningless.

To be honest I know very little about the bloke. But as far as I'm concerned him being a philosopher is about as meaningful evidence worth bothering with, as scientists who say they believe. Such stuff will be pounced upon by the likes of Vicky as something spectacularly meaningful, but for everyone else it's just an amusing footnote.

Thanks to Effers for fighting my corner while I was gone.

Philosophy is conceptual analysis. How do you analyse "supernatural" and make it consistent with everything else we believe. Never met anyone who managed it yet.

Noggin

Hey, I'm back. In no particular order:

Ayer deciding to believe in God doesn't mean that philosophy is worthless or anything of the kind. Philosophy, like science, is a thought process. I have not read Ayer but I imagine that holes in his logic would be identifiable (although perhaps not easily) and the thought process would ultimately undermine his false logic.

I'd like to go back to a phrase used by someone, I can't remember who, a couple of pages ago. I was going to quote it but the conversation has moved on a lot since then. Anyway, someone alluded to people who believe in 'woo-woo' (there may not have been a hyphen) stuff. What does this mean? It leaves me with the distict suspicion that there is some sort of idea of 'that which I have decided to attatch no chance of credibility' because I can't imagine any better defintion. This leads me to the anxiety that stuff which sounds very outlandish and silly is being dismissed purely because it sounds very outlandish and silly. Disregard all the mumbo jumbo which surrounds psychics. Bear in mind that there is mumbo jumbo which surrounds, for example, the healing of tumours. Now we know perfectly well that tumours can (sometimes) be treated medically, but we also know that there are various methods of 'treatment' (I think I'm talking to a sympathetic audience on this one) which are rubbish peddled to the desperate to make easy money. So hear is my position. We do not dismiss treatment of any medical conition (including those science currently regards as being incurrable) by investigating what is already on the market in terms of cures, but rather by investigating the illness itself and how it works, how it does it's damage and how it may be stopped. Likewise, I suggest that rather than dismissing the idea of a sort of post-corporeal existence on the strengh of all the shisters who make money out of the idea, let's eximine the body, the brain and, gruesome as it may sound, persist with exloring near death experiences and so forth to try and answer what is, after all, one of the most intruiging questions still open to science.

I know that as a species we are all now much more scientifically savy than the victorians but I can't help fearing that we are allowed to dellude ourselves that we know it all and that everything we don't know must therefore not be true. Let's keep assuming we are ignorant and keep asking questions of absolutely everything. We get more answers that way.

benjamin I think you are taking woo woo a bit too seriously. I think it's quite a funny, poking fun phrase at......? well woo woo stuff I suppose? I think it's a 3dotsism



You're most welcome Nog.

Oo. Dire Straits...

...
on ITV and BBC they talk about the curse
philosophy is useless theology is worse
history boils over there's an economics freeze
sociologists invent words that mean 'Industrial Disease'


The problem with 'woo-woo stuff' is that it all too often does NOT sound outlandish and silly. If you can stand it, read or listen to some of the convoluted, fine-sounding phrases issued by some of the 'holy' men and theologizers, past and present. At first glance the words seem to make sense; seem perfectly reasonable, intelligent, articulate and so on, but when all the undefined terms are defined, and the fine-sounding intellectual phrases are deciphered, what you end up with is... 'woo-woo stuff' -- utter balderdash, as a previous generation might say.

As for those who believe in 'woo-woo stuff', they may do so for a variety of personal reasons, from simply never having had the opportunity or desire to think things through for themselves, to developing the 'industrial disease' of self-delusion, likely arising from fear of their own mortality.

By all means, keep an open mind. That's what true science is about, after all. But keep in mind keeping an open mind requires skepticism, not credulity; inquiry rather than certainty; rationality, not blind faith.

Besides, I rather like the term, 'woo-woo'. It's Daffy Duck-ish

poke fun at woo~woo stuff lol shame on you .

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In other words, when you apply philosophical methodology to theology..

Noggin

I think what makes woo-woo, woo-woo, is taking things *literally*. I know yesterday I was quite disparaging about the bible, but I actually really love some of it; I love the poetry of the language of King James version. Myth and story are fundamental to most human societies and culture. They help us understand our feelings/emotions and historical context and cultural traditions, much like novels, poems and films can do. But the moment one starts ascribing the literal existance of transcendant entites, somehow interacting with the natural world, you make woo-woo.

Effers, on your last post, I agree

I think that's sort of what I was tying to say.

It's not religion that I see as the problem, but then I see religion as sets of stories. It's those who see them as literal examples and statements of fact who skew things from reality... Well, my reality...

<>

! Oh amazing! That doesn't mean you've "studied theology"! We don't have RE here, but I doubt very much that it's at all rigorous.

May I claim my UE English mark of 95% (equivalent of GCSEs) as a degree in literature?



Vicky

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Dear Effers,
It's your besetting fault, assuming you know my mind better than I do! I find Ayers an amusing footnote myself! Even more amusing, is that I discovered his experience via a link from the home of angry atheism, h2g2...

Vicky
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A16172507

An interesting article, especially for the sceptics
http://www.metanexus.net/Magazine/ArticleDetail/tabid/68/id/5253/Default.aspx
and the original article I saw.
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/atheists01.html

Read those articles and I cant say Im suprised many people who have come close to death have had a good long look at their lives and changed things.

A study I heard about today was saying how partners bad habits or even just unintentional bad influence can have a massive effect on their spouses health. Its little wonde to me that people "given another chance at life" whether by dint of medical intervention or "miracle" dont have a spring clean of their lives.

Besides the divorce rate these days is fairly high isnt it!



There's nothing conclusive to say what NDEs are the Doctor interviewed inferesthat all thinking is done in the cerebrum when its well known that the brain can relocate functions if some parts of the brain are damaged or out of action. Not only that not everyones brain works in the same way, left and right handed peoples brains are well known to be "wired" differently.


Both articles are compsed entirely of well researched anecdotes with no experimental evidence.

Notice only a few of the cardiac arrest patients had NDEs.

If you knew one hundred peolpe who went into a room and 78 said there was nothing in there and 12 said they saw who would you put your trust in?

one love

cant type cant count

Yes blicky; I was thinking of saying I'd put my trust in the 10 who had been abducted by aliens.

Isn't that how it all started?

sh! We're not supposed to know!

I have to drop in at this point however, for all my agreements and joking around, that I do believe that there is *something* going on that we dont quite know about. Wether it's a little like noises we cant hear with human ears but have developed machines to find or what (and by that I mean some people can catch a little of whatever it is, and we haven't made the machines to measure it or analyse what it is or means yet) I dont know and dont care to specualte too strongly upon.

ghosts? spirits? god? Post death souls? Pre birth souls? higher/other beings? I quite like Phillip Pulman's version of a glittering dust of intention that is in the very air and the more aware and creative and full of intent beings become or objects are created, the more they focus this relatively chaotic, random energy. That's the closest to my feelings... I dont feel there is nothing beyond what we can see, smell, measure and document, and i dont blame people for a) trying to explain it within their own frames of reference and b) some people feeling they know enough about it to try and pass on the information to others. I DO blame people for letting themselves get so carried away with their theories (For or against mind!) that they feel they have a right to tell people what they are or are not allowed to think for fear of being branded a fool or a doomed soul... I will share my thoughts on that which I cant be certain, but to call anyone else a fool, dismiss their ideas outright because they are 'delusions' or attack someone's belief is a little unsympathetic and I think shows a lack of empathy for why a person may feel that way.

Of course if someone honestly wants me to listen to a scientology sermon without giggling then they'll have another thing coming, but if they wish to give me a concise summary of why they feel the idea works for them, I'm happy to play in my own head and assume they know what they are doing. Publicly denouncing them achieves nothing but proving myself to be narrow minded and dismissive of others.



I fireporoofed the Matt!

Yeah lol but if what if it was 78 who said the saw something and 12 never .

There may well be 'other explanations' about hearing voices etc other than schizophrenia etc.

The thing is you look at these explanations and you find they were proposed BEFORE we under schizophrenia etc.

In the same way that a few thousand years ago people had other ideas about how what we were made of before we understood atomic theory...no one holds onto these out-of-date theories but people still hold onto out-of-date theories when it comes to more 'woo-woo' stuff. Why? Is the question I always ask. What is so bad about reading and understanding how the mind works? Well two reasons 1) it's difficult to understand for a lot of people and 2) it isn't as romantic, it's easier to make money out of and it moves one closer to realising that when we die we die...and people don't raelly want to thing that.