Wayfarer

All due respect I don't think you're seeing it through their eyes. Because (I guess) you don't have s religious view, you don't see how those who do s...

the idea that I like is that it turns out 'the aliens' are propagating themselves by sending out information rather than physical starships. Won't giv...

One point about optical illusions is that until they're pointed out, you don't know they're illusions. But there are also illusions which you know are...

Jung was gnostic. So you don't study Jungian psychology, you're initiated into it. Agree - that's why I referred to the idea of 'unconscious competenc...

True. In fact I found Freud's theoretical schema of the mind completely inadequate - as did Jung, of course. But Jung is hardly studied in the Univers...

I think that such things as visual illusions and unconscious desires exist along a continuum. Desires, intentions and beliefs are intertwined with per...

It's a detailed argument, and this fact doesn't undermine it. Besides, the top seven countries in that graph have been subject to civil wars and/or in...

That might be true of many of the individuals recruited to Jihadist causes, but it also might be the case that terrorist ideologues are motivated by t...

It's simply not fact. Physical things are describable by physics - up to a point - conscious subjects are not. This fundamental misconception invalida...

oh I spun it out in the original. I'll post a link later.

Have you ever done the 'blind spot' test? It's very simple - draw two dots on a piece of paper then move it towards your face - at a certain point one...

That is a very good observation and an excellent post.

Is that so? I had thought that this is the very thing which the Libet experiments cast doubt on. When you study adult learning, you learn that gaining...

What you're saying is true, but what it says to me is that 'the ego' is not in control of the show. I think that is why, for example, in Eastern disci...

Whoever would be unaware of human fallibility? That would never happen, would it? The streets must be teeming with people who reflect on their fallibi...

rather similar concept to chirality.

if you were the kind if critter that eats tobacco it would be something you ate, instead of something you smoke.

That's exactly what the book I mentioned said. What a labour, though - took him 40 years to write it. I think in classical culture, there was relation...

http://a.co/io6f3rV My reticence about 'day dreaming' is probably more a reflection on the unending series of CGI-based 'superhero' movies from Hollyw...

Actually, that is not so. 'A conscious life-form ' is a subject, in our case - we assimilate the information from an object, but we also interpret it ...

I wrote a sci-fi story once - never got published anywhere - about a scientist who discovered that there was a code embedded in the CMB. He gathered a...

I would say so, but it's important to understand the meaning of 'imagination' appropriately. Not as merely a kind of day-dreaming or imagining scenes ...

Well, I think that's a nonsense claim, and not at all supported by anything you have said.

then your initial claim, that Christianity invented the doctrine used to justify terrorism, rests on a rather slender reed, doesn't it?

Ah yes. Might have learned to dodge there, too. The ancient Syrians were said to be expert dodgers, but of course we'll never know. ;-)

What does that have to do with the claim that Mohammed was influenced by Augustine's City of God?

You didn't answer any question. You speculated that Islam might have been influenced by Augustine's City of God. Do you have any actual facts to suppo...

Not at all, I think you're a very clear thinker and one whom I often tend to agree with. With regards to the point - have a look at Alfred Russel Wall...

I presume this is from 'the City of God'? Do you know if Augustine had been translated into Arabic at this time, or if Mohammed read Greek? I think it...

I see that as Obama's effort to recover from W's warmongering and foolish adventurism, but let's admit we live on different planets and be done with i...

yes. But among the consequences was the rise of ISIS and the dimunition of both the will and the money to intervene in the Syria quagmire where it rea...

just like Saddam Hussein,right? That said, I agree with many of the points you make. Earlier in this thread I was arguing that western governments are...

Only since Gödel's theorem. Neils Bohr dealt with that in his 'principle of complementarity'. It was so important to him that he included the Tao symb...

As I hope I have made clear in this and other threads, I'm not a Christian apologist, so bear that in mind. But I think the idea of 'conscience', and ...

I think he's over-rated. I struggled with Being and Nothingness as an undergrad but in the decades since I have got to understand him a little better....

As do I! But it's like a 'working title'. Recall 'the simile of the raft' - that the Buddha's teaching is like a raft, put together out of 'grass, twi...

I admired his pluck in the Resistance, and I also admired him for turning down the Nobel for literature, but overall I detest Sartre.

I identify with it, but I don't attend it. I conduct a solitary, self-maintained meditation practice which is guided by those principles. If I lived i...

Anything before Nietszche.

No, I don't believe that. I don't believe anyone 'has' a soul. If the word has meaning (and it's an 'if'), it's because it refers to the totality of t...

That is the meaning of 'samsara'. You ought to study more philosophy and purge yourself of the materialist nonsense your culture has stuffed into you.

Well I suppose you're articulating a very big issue there, for many people. I do fully accept that evolution occured - I have no sympathy for any form...

The issue for a lot of people, like myself, is that we cannot accept the proscribed dogmas. I was raised Anglican, and I think still I have a lot of A...

Well, if it means Infinite Free Beers it can't be all bad. ;-)

Well, remind me not to buy you any beers.

I think evolution is a biological theory. It is about 'how species evolve'. The fact that it has now become a de facto 'theory of everything' is, in m...

If I bring home six beers and put them in the fridge, and I see my son take three, I 'comprehend perfectly' that there's three left. Is that the kind ...

Mind your temper. 'Knowing that there might be a solution to an equation' is a far cry from claiming that 'reality is perfectly comprehensible'.

I think 'Jehovah' is really pretty much the same meaning as 'Jupiter'. The name 'Jupiter' is derived from an Indo-european root, namely, 'Dyaus-Pitar'...

Well, you're the one who did say: So, if reality is perfectly comprehensible, then surely you must understand everything, mustn't you? Doesn't the fir...