S
Sciborg_S_Patel
To answer the question - experience is paramount as the evidence from our qualitative experience is enough to gut materialism of any prominence, as one can see by reading Clifton's Empirical Case Against Materialism.
From there, and going into anthropology, I do think it's a shame that the possibility of Psi among "primitive" cultures is ignored. I wonder if this is in part a reactionary defense of colonialism - after all it fees like it's only now that we're seeing more exploration of Eastern philosophy in Western academia. (Credit to Bruce Greyson who noted the logic of Nagarjuna when discussing NDEs.) After all, if these cultures have nothing to add to our knowledge it becomes more acceptable that they've been wiped out (Native American genocide) or diminished (pre-Buddhist Nepal). And in the present we'd have to ask whether bulldozing away these cultures in the name of "progress" would be in our best interest if we're really interested in understanding how the world works.
But I think Jim's comment about how mediumship should be studied by physics without the assumption that it's all fake gets to a deeper psychological insight. If - and it's admittedly a BIG IF - we have to accept whole vistas of reality accessible only via qualitative (ritualistic, meditative, etc) methods then suddenly the sum of what we know about reality is miniscule. The criticisms that legitimate skeptics (as opposed to materialist cults like JREF & CSICOP) like myself have raised - which have existed at least since the materialist Democritus realized sensory aspects of nature would remain unexplained [if everything is just mindless matter] - could no longer be ignored.
Naturally the aforementioned pseudoskeptical cults can't have that, given their social engineering goals of ridding the world of anything that could hint at God. Hopefully the notion of an immaterialistic science can take root and we can genuinely seek to understand what is and is not real.
Of course as we live our lives some times we have to take a chance of things, like a healing ritual can aid us in repairing physical/mental health. People shouldn't be dissuaded from such reality gambles just because of the shaming Mean Girls style tactics of the pseudoskeptics.
From there, and going into anthropology, I do think it's a shame that the possibility of Psi among "primitive" cultures is ignored. I wonder if this is in part a reactionary defense of colonialism - after all it fees like it's only now that we're seeing more exploration of Eastern philosophy in Western academia. (Credit to Bruce Greyson who noted the logic of Nagarjuna when discussing NDEs.) After all, if these cultures have nothing to add to our knowledge it becomes more acceptable that they've been wiped out (Native American genocide) or diminished (pre-Buddhist Nepal). And in the present we'd have to ask whether bulldozing away these cultures in the name of "progress" would be in our best interest if we're really interested in understanding how the world works.
But I think Jim's comment about how mediumship should be studied by physics without the assumption that it's all fake gets to a deeper psychological insight. If - and it's admittedly a BIG IF - we have to accept whole vistas of reality accessible only via qualitative (ritualistic, meditative, etc) methods then suddenly the sum of what we know about reality is miniscule. The criticisms that legitimate skeptics (as opposed to materialist cults like JREF & CSICOP) like myself have raised - which have existed at least since the materialist Democritus realized sensory aspects of nature would remain unexplained [if everything is just mindless matter] - could no longer be ignored.
Naturally the aforementioned pseudoskeptical cults can't have that, given their social engineering goals of ridding the world of anything that could hint at God. Hopefully the notion of an immaterialistic science can take root and we can genuinely seek to understand what is and is not real.
Of course as we live our lives some times we have to take a chance of things, like a healing ritual can aid us in repairing physical/mental health. People shouldn't be dissuaded from such reality gambles just because of the shaming Mean Girls style tactics of the pseudoskeptics.
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