Einstein
Scientific American shows that when people are presented information contrary to their worldview, the emotional brain responds, irrationally.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=13&articleID=000CE155-1061-1493-906183414B7F0162
So, with that in mind, I’d like you to rationally take a look at this evidence and determine your own conclusions.
“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
Descartes
“What truth?” “That you are a slave, Neo. That you, like everyone else, was born into bondage... kept inside a prison that you cannot smell, taste, or touch – a prison for your mind.”
- The Matrix
“Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.”
- Aldous Huxley
In 1960, Howard Temin proved that DNA and RNA transfer goes both ways and was awarded the Nobel prize for this discovery. John Cairns later discovered not only that, but the transfer also goes both ways between the RNA and proteins.
DNA <-> RNA <-> Protein
We know that different proteins create and induce different emotional states. This is mainstream medical knowledge.
DNA <-> RNA <-> Protein -> Emotion, Belief, etc.
Here is the part that most people have trouble with. As the chain has now been proven to go both ways all the way down the line to the DNA, would it not be plausible for emotional states to ALSO create and induce different protein production?
DNA <-> RNA <-> Protein <-> Emotion, Belief, etc.
This has been theoretically proven as well; smiling for long enough will FORCE your body to create endorphins. These studies are easily googleable. This model would also support AND entirely explain the placebo effect, among other things like…
Mirin Dajo
Dajo was able to be pierced with a sword with no harm or bleeding. He even submitted to medical scrutiny and let doctors take x-rays while swords were piercing through his body, this was not a trick or optical illusion.
Ironically, he died from an aortic rupture after 10 years of performing (for some reason his ability did not kick in)
The Human Water Fountain (yes those are hoses through his chest)
Kuda Bux can see with his eyes sealed.
Jansenist Convulsionaire Miracles
http://www.pureinsight.org/pi/print_version.php?id=806
Three volumes of miracles published by an investigator from the Paris Parliament, also seen by prominent minds of the century such as Voltaire, and even inspired David Hume to do a piece on miracles.
http://www.soci.niu.edu/~phildept/Dye/HumeOfMiracles.html
"With our modern, Western belief system we will either totally ignore this extremely anomalous situation or say something to the effect 'There must be a simple explanation that just wasn't available to the people of that time.' There is no way that our scientific community would admit that we just do not understand the physical dimension in which we live. Arrogance cannot admit ignorance."
Are we actually unconsciously the conscious creators of our very existence?
http://www.woyano.com/view/4701/The-Biology-of-Beliefs
Perhaps!
7thdirection
8 Comments
BTW, Mirin Dajo was examined twice by a panel of 200 doctors and none could explain what was happening. They performed x-rays as well, and the metal is clearly showing going through his chest. Professional magicians admit that what he did was not a trick and that he had somehow actually done it.
http://jennapetersen.vox....4cd500d414163ded685e.html
I know you're not a big fan of prayer, but Dajo claimed he had repeatedly prayed for a way to "show God to the world." he prayed for this for hours a day for a number of years before he was able to do this.
Also, the Jansenist miracles were seen by millions of people and I dare Randi himself to get on the sharp end of a spike and have a multi-hundred pound weight dropped from 20 feet up onto his chest. (back then, there were no elaborate machineries capable of producing this as fakery) People having swords and spears bounce off their bodies? Hundreds of people were hired just to make sure women were not improperly exposed when they fell under a trance.
Read the scientific american article again! ;)
Oh, on the contrary. I am a major league fan of prayer (you may have to go read a lot of my previous posts to understand the extent to which I am a believer).
But I don't believe in magic. Except when John Sebastian is singing about it....
Magic is always instrumental to some end. The belief that casting a spell, reciting an incantation, wearing a talisman, etc., will have some specific desired effect. That is magic. It is in this sense that praying for something -- anything -- is magic.
Religion developed when people were able to disassociate their behaviors from their intentions. When we worship God not to pacify Her, but to express our love or our wonder, that's religion. When we pray to Godnot to get something, to achieve something, but to open ourselves in a loving relationship with Her, that is religion.
When we do a dance so it will rain, that's magic. And when we think praying will make our loved ones well again, that's magic too. It is certainly a very understandable human desire to believe such a thing.
But let's call it what it is.
http://www.woyano.com/vie...01/The-Biology-of-Beliefs
The Russians also did an experiment with their Olympians. They had one group spend 100% of time training, another spent 75% training 25% visualizing, another 50/50 and the last 25% training 75% visualizing. At the 1980 Winter Games in New York, their fourth group showed the greatest improvement followed by group three, two and one, in that order.
Both of these fit into your category of magic, for they are only imagining a desired end. Yet the results speak for themselves. I don't think this is all mystical mumbo-jumbo.
"No theory of reality compatible with quantum theory can require spatially separate events to be independent."
- J.S. Bell
Time is the illusion in our dimension. Taken this way, the Russians had observed a future reality where they were performing their movements perfectly. The body knew the intention and could more easily go about achieving what it wanted since it had the mental future (which is not separate from our reality on another dimensional level) to attune to. When people make clearly defined goals they are much easier to achieve, that's exactly what Anthony Robbins' motivational material is all about. You've offered no explanation for how a man can see without his eyes, have a sword pierce through vital organs with no harm, or thousands of verified "miracles" by a skeptic investigator from Parliament along with intellectuals Voltaire and David Hume; calling in a skeptic who "always has an out" or dismissing it to an impossibility as magic does not offer any explanation or refutation...
Furthermore, I would NEVER say that (for instance) positive thinking has no effect on health or healing or on the proper functioning of the human immune system. All that's been pretty well documented.
But your previous posts extend this idea well beyond psychosomatics to the realm of metaphysics.
Hey you know AdGuy always gets the last word! ;)