Originally posted by Tiberius
Light IS energy. All energy exists in the form of particles (and particles can have wave-like properties).
So you say . . . I disagree. The only thing you can say for certain about energy is that it's the capacity to do work, period. No one has ever observed energy itself when its expended doing work, that is exactly why it's defined the way it is. You see the
result of energy, but you cannot see energy. Therefore neither you nor anyone else knows what energy is, only what it can do. So I maintain that light is an oscillating luminescence that carries energy, and whose magnitude of energy is reflected by its frequency.
Originally posted by Tiberius
There is absolutely no reason to presume that what happens with the body and brain in meditation is anything other than completely mechanistic and understandable through physical laws. Indeed, there are a number of reasons to suspect just that.
There is the standard materialist position. I am familiar with both the physiological evidence and the experience of meditation, and I say there is no reason to assume it is "mechanistic and understandable through physical laws" unless, that is, you are already to committed to the materialist view.
You are doing what every materialist I've ever run into does, and that is to study only one side of the subject. They are full of facts about science, but don't know squat about meditation or the history of the enlightenment experience. That doesn't stop them from speaking like they are an authority.
Originally posted by Tiberius
When I said that the soul/heaven hypothesis had been proven irrelevant, it is clear when looking at the context and place in the paragraph, I was referring to the ORIGINAL version of these, which saw the afterlife/heaven as literally being outer space and the soul as being a physical gas-like substance that could have been weighed or captured in a jar. Please read the opinions of others and do not "skim" over them and mistakes of understanding like this should be easier to avoid.
Nonsense. I misunderstood and skimmed over nothing. I did not criticize what you said about the soul etc. for the reason you just listed, but rather because because you offered pagan beliefs as typical of metaphysics. I said, "You cite pagen beliefs as representing the metaphysical, and then compare that to modern science. Well, I could cite alchemy as representing science and play the same game."
My point was, again, that you know the science side but you don't consider it worth your time to understand the part of metaphysics that has some weight to it. I agree that there is a lot of silly stuff being claimed. In my opinion, all the talk about communicating with the dead (pets even!), supernatural claims, other such stuff is nonsense. But just like there are pseudo-scientists, there pseudo-metaphysists. When you represent all of metaphysics by the stupid ones, that is not a fair or accurate representation.
The subject of this thread is physical and
metaphysical, not physical and superstitious. If we are going to debate the possibility of their interaction, or even that the metaphysical exists, at least do a little homework and read the best representatives of the metaphysical. Try Meister Eckhart, Kabir, the Sufi Ni'matullahi, the metaphysics of Socrates in
Phaedo (IMO, the greatst of all the dialogues), the Hasid Israel ben Eliezer, Teilhard de Chardin, readings from the Greek Philokalia, Confucius, Brother Lawrence, the dialogues of the Buddha . . .
You know, come to a discussion either with a well rounded view, or with the willingess to learn. How can you "assume" things about a subject you've not investigated?
