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Payton
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Does any such research exist?
Payton said:Does any such research exist?
chickenz said:Suppose hypothetically that reincarnation was real. Now, how you would even begin an experiment to research its details?
If you can come up with one, good for you. Even ignoring expense and ethical issues, I certainly can't.
jarednjames said:Easy. No ethical issues required...You'd need accurate records of people's lives and then you'd simply check what people report about their 'past lives' against those details.
ryan_m_b said:With respect I disagree, we can't assume something is true and go looking for the evidence.
By this I mean that if we had evidence that a percentage of people had knowledge of previous peoples lives that itself would be the observation requiring investigation.
It wouldn't itself be evidence for reincarnation because we have not demonstrated that the knowledge is passed through reincarnation.
The only way to investigate such things is to develop all our sciences and wait to see if there is any mechanism in existence for life after death
Non-sense. If we had to wait until technology developed to investigate we wouldn't get anywhere. It's by investigating we develop. Computers didn't just jump into quad core existence.
Of course, until our technology is capable of doing so, we may not be able to answer it fully. But that doesn't stop us investigating and producing theories.
GUS said:There was some program about a boy who knew his past life and the director of the program took him to his past life village thousands of km away and it was exactly as he described or something.
After all - all our consciousnesses are is a collection of electrons rattling around - so its not that great a leap to make that such complex organisations of electrons could exist without being tied to matter.
Did scientists insist that? Or was it a general belief?Nothing any sensible scientist would touch at the moment of course but then they insisted the world was flat at one point.
Anyway even if they did scientifically prove the existence of non material intelligence religion would still be bollocks.
GUS said:I think it is possible science will prove we have something akin spirit one day
but it would be in the realms of quantum mechanics, organisation of light and electro magnetic waves into coherent patterns or something
After all - all our consciousnesses are is a collection of electrons rattling around - so its not that great a leap to make that such complex organisations of electrons could exist without being tied to matter.
they insisted the world was flat at one point
ryan_m_b said:How could you possibly know that?
jarednjames said:Of course, this is on the assumption that child couldn't possibly have visited and/or researched the place. Along with a whole host of other possibilities for how the knowledge of the place could come to exist.It is a great leap, as it is observed no where.
Did scientists insist that? Or was it a general belief?
GUS said:I don't know - it depends whether you consider some of the ancient greeks scientists, certainly they also proposed that the Earth went round the sun and that it was also a globe - but there was debate about this and experiments to prove it so in a way I consider them the first scientists.
What I mean is things that were once viewed as impossible by science are now viewed as fact or at least possible.
The great oppression of science by religion means that to even consider the existence of consciousness without matter is bound to be rejected out of hand .
Complex patters of electromagnetic wavs may be somewhere out there even if we haven't observed them.
I think there's lots of things in the universe that we still know very little about - dark matter for instance
- and quantum physics does seem to show the universe behaves in irrational ways (at least from the physicists I have spoken to such as my stepmother - I am trying to improve my maths at the moment to deepen my own understanding which I am the first to admit is limited).
There are a lot of things in the universe we have not observed - and when you get right down to it what is matter - what are neutrons, protons, gluons , quarks etc actually made of - are all particles waves as well ? Does matter even exist ?
That's philosophy, not physics.That would make all physical things kind of an illusion anyway and the idea of consciousness without matter moot . This is a welcome discussion but... I have a lot of work to do .
Jack21222 said:Eratosthenes of Cyrene proved that the Earth was round, and even gave a pretty accurate measurement, within a few percentage points of the true number. And yes, he was one of the first scientists. So, contrary to what you stated, scientists have never insisted that the Earth was flat.
Many pre-Socratic philosophers considered the world to be flat, at least according to Aristotle.[17] According to Aristotle, pre-Socratic philosophers, including Leucippus (c. 440 BC) and Democritus (c. 460–370 BC) .
Name some.
I can't make sense out of this statement at all.
Almost certainly, but what do you mean by that?
Subatomic particles ARE waves... and particles at the same time. This is de Broglie's theory, and if he were alive, I'm sure he wouldn't be happy with this Carver Mead character.
To steal a quote from Dara O'Briain, "Science knows it doesn't know everything, or else it'd stop. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean you get to fill in the gaps with whatever fairy tale most appeals to ya."
Quantum Mechanics behaves in a very rational way. There is a set of rules which everything follows. You can't get any more rational than that.
Take a class in Quantum Field Theory and get back to us.
That's philosophy, not physics.
GUS said:Incorrect.
http://www.mse.berkeley.edu/faculty/deFontaine/flatworlds.html
The Greek belief that the Earth was a sphere was the result of an preceding dialectic.
going back to the ancient Greeks the idea that the Earth went round the sun was an anathema to them including many Greeks who you have just said you considered scientists. Although it wasnt until much later the geocentric model was discredited, Hypatia was perhaps the first to suggest otherwise.
A more modern example is : Time travel - regarded as impossible by many scientists but regarded as possible by some such as Ronald Mallett. The fact that these ideas have been taken seriously enough to warrant any sort of debate at all amongst the scientific community (including the likes of Stephen Hawkin) is in stark contrast to the one way ticket to the looney bin it would have won him 130 years ago.
Im pretty sure the idea of quantum teleportation of information would have seen like magic to some earlier scientists as well - come to think of it if youd proposed the existence of mobile phones to Eratosthenes of Cyrene he probably would have considered that a wild fairy tale.
Its pretty self explanatory really.
I mean that consciousness is to the best of our understanding (which is poor) a complex interplay of electrons in the brain. Therefore it is possible that other complex structures of energy in the universe might represent a form of intelligence, though they the way such complexity arises and is generated may be different.
Yes I am aware of that. However some scientists have suggested that particles do not exist at all - are in fact purely electro - magnetic fields that appear to be particles .
Ill see your Dar O'Briain and raise you a John Dewey
: Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. ~John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, 1929
Yes but the rules are not rational, , at least according to my friends (two of whom are proffesional physicists ) , like a particle being in two places at once until you observe it. They all assure me that quantum physics is very curious indeed Schrödinger's cat and the observation affect being the most obvious. At the very least its a contraversial area. Still its great you understand it so well.
Really - so you know what quarks are made out of ? Pray tell and pass the info on to this guy - you may save him years of research :
http://blogs.uslhc.us/but-what-are-quarks-made-of
There's a HUGE difference between imagination within the confines of science, and the wild mass guessing that people like you do.
Jack21222 said:
Aristarchus from Samos (250 BC) - Theorized the "radical" view that the Earth and all the Planets revolve around the Sun: The Heliocentric model. The model was not accepted because it contradicted the "Great" Aristotle and predicted parallax;
Time travel isn't shown to exist (except for forward), so you cannot use this as an example of something where science said couldn't exist but does. I'm also not 100% convinced that time travel was ever considered "impossible" by science. Again, these are things that science has never said "this cannot happen."
No, the first part of your sentence has apparently no connection to the last part of the sentence, except the physical proximity of the words.
There you go again, making up fairy tales to fill the gaps in your knowledge.
Fields perhaps, yes. Probably not electromagnetic fields. You can't hope to explain gluons in terms of electromagnetism. In any case, I can't see how this can possibly be related to anything in this thread. It sounds to me like you wanted to throw out some pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo, and you felt that "electro-magnetic fields that appear to be particles" sounded like a good phrase.
There's a HUGE difference between imagination within the confines of science, and the wild mass guessing that people like you do.
Those rules are perfectly rational, they're just not intuitive. Quantum Mechanics is NOT a controversial area. At all. It hasn't been controversial for decades. It's one of the most well-tested theories in the history of science. Where's the controversy?
Do you want to address what I actually said, or do you want to just keep putting words in my mouth? If you just want to put words in my mouth, I don't need to be here, you can just argue with whatever fictionalized version of me your imagination can come up with.
ryan_m_b said:How could you possibly know that?
Our consciousness is an emergent property of brain electrochemistry. The idea that we are just electrons rattling around is massively oversimplified to the point of ridiculousness. There are no examples of patterns of electrons floating through space with no relation to matter, even if there was we could detect it.
I advise you read The Relativity of Wrong, an essay by Isaac Asimov. If to the best of our knowledge and measurements the world was flat then it is sensible to say it is flat. Though its an urban myth that people thought the world was flat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth
GUS said:Surte Ryan - but my IP adress has been banned an its a bit of a fiddle to find a working proxy server so I cannot promise an ongoing debate.
jarednjames said:Your IP address has been banned but your account hasn't?
You should contact the admins.
ryan_m_b said:Ok my main contention is the point about electrical activity and thought. Whilst I agree that sentient life could possibly arise in non-Earth like conditions (cores of gas giants? surface of Neutron stars?) I'm not sure that the electrical activity can be solely attributed as thoughts. If you took the neurons away (and somehow the signal continued, perhaps because you are replicating the conductivity with synthetic components) I'm not convinced that we have enough evidence to say that the mind would still be there
And also how this relates to reincarnation?
jarednjames said:You'd need accurate records of people's lives and then you'd simply check what people report about their 'past lives' against those details.
Deepak Chopra and the crackpot Institute of Noetic Sciences? That DOPS group is not mainstream science.dm4b said:I believe that's what these guys are attempting to do:
http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/
Evo said:Deepak Chopra and the crackpot Institute of Noetic Sciences? That DOPS group is not mainstream science.
dm4b said:Also, are you implying anybody that does anything outside "mainstream" science is a crackpot? If so, that sounds about as dogmatic as a christian fundamentalist.
The OP is asking if any science is being done on reincarnation. Did you really expect it to be in the "mainstream"?
I think the link I provided is as close as you're going to get. If you know something better, post it up.
jarednjames said:I'm sorry, I missed the part where PF discussed anything outside of the mainstream. Perhaps you could highlight exactly where that's allowed in the rules?
It's just a group of people doing paranormal research due to an edowment to the University to pay for it. It doesn't mean it's endorsed by the university.dm4b said:Um, the research is being performed by the University of Virginia. The folks you mention are sponsoring lectures by Jim Tucker. Were you digging for something?
No, I'm not implying they're crackpots, just that they have listed crackpot sources. Makes me wonder what they consider sound science.Also, are you implying anybody that does anything outside "mainstream" science is a crackpot? If so, that sounds about as dogmatic as a christian fundamentalist.
Evo said:It's just a group of people doing paranormal research due to an edowment to the University to pay for it. It doesn't mean it's endorsed by the university.
No, I'm not implying they're crackpots, just that they have listed crackpot sources. Makes me wonder what they consider sound science.
BTW, thanks for the link.
dm4b said:Sort of ironic since we're on the 2nd page of a thread entitled "science of reincarnation"
dm4b said:There's no doubt that the Institute of Noetic Sciences investigates things that are way outside the mainstream of science.
But, I think if you have an honest look into them, you'd find that in many cases they apply the scientific method, as best as it can be applied to subject matters like these. Edgar Mitchell - it's founder - has tried to make sure that happens as best as possible.
And, in the real world, when you give somebody money/funds, you suppport/endorse them, whether you publicly say so, or not. People don't give away money lightly.
dm4b said:I believe that's what these guys are attempting to do:
http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/