Bugs

Not that much. And I didn't inject it.

I agree with your warning at the end - don't try this at home folks.

However, I think you really prove my point here. If you take that much K your brain must be overwhelmed by the stuff. I doubt if even God could get through.

Philosoft

Okay. Understand, explanations usually explain a limited amount of stuff, for good reason. What epistemological good is an explanation that passably explains literally everything without any way of knowing whether it's true? Why bother looking for an intermediate explanation when you already know the ultimate one?

Anti-Materialist

Ah - but it is evidence to suppose reincarnation is possible. That is a good starting point. It is justification for further research.



You say intuition should not be trusted. However, your intuition tells you that the Ketamine talking to God experience is just a hallucination. Should that be trusted?


You say it is neurologically explainable. Please explain it to me from a neurological perspective. Do you believe we carry this extra "God" personality around in our heads at all times, but it only comes out when we have a nasty accident or take Ketamine?

Bugs

It is not evidence to suppose reincarnation is possible. Not at all. Please read my review of Stevenson’s book to see why I say that.

No no no NOT my intuition. Occam’s Razor! How many times do I have to say that – do you really not understand the principle?

I believe it is entirely possible. Culturally we have “God” thrust upon us our whole lives. It is hardly surprising some people see things under hallucination that they interpret as a religious experience. It can be explained by natural means. God is the milk fairy in the story.

Anti-Materialist

Ah, but the God hypothesis could be very useful to science. It could lead to much further explanation.

For example, you could ask yourself this:


If I was God, and I was going to create a spacetime continuum, how would I construct the individual pixels of space time? (space-time moments) Second guessing God could lead to a number of useful intuitive leaps. These intuitive leaps could then be tested. When they turn out to be wrong - you go back and find a different intuitive leap. Science depends very heavily on intuitive leaps - followed by as much verification as possible.


Here is another example. I think this universe looks like it was designed to sprout life. As such, I think that we are likely to find life in even the most unlikely of places - pretty much anywhere you find water, carbon, and energy.



This would be tested by looking for signs of microbial life in Martian soil - and under the ice sheath of Europa.

Anti-Materialist

Ah ha! - but now you are making an intuitive judgement call.

You are saying the unnecessary entity is God. I could just as easily say the unnecessary entity is this extra God personality hiding out in our heads.


If he is hiding out in my head, why doesn't he show himself a little more often? Surely, If I am carrying around mulitple personalities in my brain there should be sort of evidence for it in daily life? You are making the intuitive judgement call that this God personality is there, but is hiding out. That seems intuitively right to you. That seems crazy to me.

Bugs

Now you’re making a straw man. I didn’t say anything about a “God personality hiding out in our heads”. I said that people fit what they see (hallucinations) to their cultural beliefs (belief in God).

This is not intuition. It is just not making stuff up, like you seem to do.

Please re-read my example explaining Occam’s Razor. You don’t seem to have understood it.

Anti-Materialist

Look - when people undergo the Ketamine talking to God experience they go through a specific set of steps. If they take the right amount of ketamine, to be zoned out for the right period of time, then they wind up talking to God and going over their life review.

At this point, when they are talking to God, that means they are talking to something. Either it is a personality inside their heads, or it is a personality outside of their heads.

You prefer the God personality inside the head explanation, right? That is what I am talking about.

Jinto

Or it is not a personality, but rather a projection of their expectations of God (one of the reasons why when people talk to God he almost never disagrees with them on some major point of their worldview). There's no extra mind there, just their hearing what they expect to hear.

Anti-Materialist

And Bugs, I do understand your post. It isn't that complicated. I just don't agree with your conclusions.


Occams Razor requires making an intuitive judgement call about what constitutes an unnecessary entity. I don't see God as an unnecessary entity. If I was retro-engineering a car, I wouldn't try to figure out how the car works by thinking that this car created itself. I would ask myself why this car was built, what it was built for - that sort of thing.

The God hypothesis could be very useful in retro-engineering reality. For instance - should faster than light travel or communication be possible?

If you were to create a playground for your children, you would want to make it such that they cannot get out of the playpen until they are big enough to take care of themselves. But, once they are big enough to take care of themselves, then you would want them to be able to do so.

If we speculate that there might be a God, and that this God might have wanted for his/her/its creations to be able to contact each other at some point, then that might lead us to think there might well be a way to have faster than light communication.

If, some day, we discover such a technique, then that might constitute weak evidence for our hypothesis that the universe was created.

It would still just be weak evidence. I am not sure how you would ever get strong evidence for God.