Scientism

[Eric the Green]

(10-31-2019, 08:48 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(10-30-2019, 05:25 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: See through the dominant worldview!









The 10 dogmas of scientific materialism
Scientists remain shackled to dogmas of a materialistic worldview. These dogmas include the following:

1. Everything is essentially mechanical.
2. All matter is unconscious.
3. The total amount of matter and energy is conserved.
4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same forever.
5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.
6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.
7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not “out there,” where it seems to be, but inside your brain.
8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.
9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.
10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

None of these claims are actually scientific. Rather, these are philosophical beliefs grounded in an outdated science. Dr. Sheldrake goes on to illustrate how each of these dogmas has its own shortcomings, point by point.
https://www.space.news/2016-09-01-the-10...futed.html

1. OK. I took a college course in philosophy, and I was able to conclude that even if the material universe can be reduced in theory to the interaction of sub-atomic particles, understanding of complex phenomena by deriving the behavior of large objects from a deterministic study is impossible. Philosophical materialism may be reality, but we lack the means (and always will!) to understanding many important things. 

2. Matter is unconscious. Even in a conscious body, much that goes on is done without conscious thought. The liver detoxifies what we take as food without us having to think of what is going on, and the immune system attacks pathogens without obvious mind. White blood cells act much like protist cells -- independently and without mind. A protist cell is incapable of thought. 

The thing to realize here is that consciousness is not restricted to "conscious thought." It is not rational, for starters. That's just a western belief. Western beliefs are as false as other beliefs. We just are used to assuming them.

We have a subconscious too. If we are conscious, where did this come from? The belief that it came from unconscious matter is just a belief, and a very implausible one. Consciousness can only come from itself. Materialism offers no explanation whatsoever. Sheldrake quotes Terrance McKenna who said that explanation amounts to, "give us one free miracle, and we scientists will explain the rest." That miracle was the notion that everything and all the laws came into being in an instant without any explanation.

Quote:Unless one is a medical specialist or biologist whose focus is an organ other than the brain, the brain is the most interesting organ of a person. Certainly not the liver, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach, intestines, lungs, or whatever. In our practice we do not think of an internal organ unless it is pained due to disease or injury. 

This is one of the biggest misconceptions we have. Western people, unless they are new agers, are blind to the fact that they are conscious throughout the body, and that many organs also have nerve ganglia which are mini-brains. The heart is actually our center, not our brains. We do not dangle down from our brains. The whole body and its entire environment is needed to explain human behavior. We are not skin-encapsulated egos. But that's what western society has come to believe in the last few hundred years. The Enlightenment worldview is a horrible scam, whatever it may have gotten right about human rights.

Quote:3. E = mc^2, which explains how nuclear fusion in stellar interiors generate the heat that we feel and the light that we see, as well as some other energy. In our sun, two protons that strike despite magnetic forces trying to separate them transforms one of the protons into a neutron and a positron, the positron quickly striking an electron that has a magnetic charge attracting a positron; an electron and positron obliterate each other in the formation of energy as photons.  The proton and neutron  then join as a deutrerium nucleus and get really stabilized as an alpha-particle (a helium-4 nucleus). 

That explains the process, but what Sheldrake points out is that the sun is self-organizing, and our science does not explain this. Gravity is not understood, and neither are the forces that hold atoms together. Where does this enormous energy inside atoms come from, and what is it? Nobody knows. God is as good an explanation as mechanical force; in fact a better one. Cause and effect is reductio ad absurdum, and explains nothing.

Quote:4. The laws of nature do not exist for our convenience, but we know some of them by instinct. Without them the universe would be incomprehensible chaos in which anything would be possible, like 2+2  can be something other than 4. Mathematical and physical laws are generally quite rigid.

What explains the fact that they vary, then? Math is a good and useful language, but it's all based on assumptions that the world is measurable, which it is not.

Quote:5. Nature is purposeless unless one has some sort of God (or gods) attached.

As Thales said, Nature is full of gods. Without spirit everywhere, nothing would exist. Evolution proves that Nature is purposeful. It shows clearly that it is moving toward greater consciousness and complexity, as Teilhard de Chardin showed.

Quote:6. Cultural identity is a consequence of upbringing. Were I raised in certain environments I might have very different tastes in music. It is not the partial German ancestry that causes me to find J S Bach awesome. It is also obvious that nobody born before Bach started creating music could ever be under his influence. 

This is not a direct response to dogma #6, but I don't think it's correct. Anyone can learn to appreciate Bach and Beethoven etc. This guy shows how:



"No-one is tone deaf." "Classical music is for everybody"

Plato was right; beauty is inherent. We only need to remember what we already know.

Quote:7. It is our senses that give us information that our brains process. All of us process similar information somewhat differently. "Mind" is a philosophical construct.

This is mere dogma. Nobody has proven this scientifically, so why do you believe it? Senses are also just objects in our minds. Nothing can be proven to exist unless it exists in someone's mind! All the evidence we collect exists in our minds. The philosophical construct is "Matter." Even materialists today realize that consciousness is the "hard problem" that exists and which they can't explain. It is not a construct. Without consciousness, you don't exist.

Quote:8. True to the extent that we do not share those memories with people who can relate to them. Many memories are irrelevant to those who think such lore absurd or boring. Much of life is the obliteration of bad and useless memories. 

I do not keep a diary. My life is not that interesting. 

I choose to believe instead that memories are forever, at least somewhere in the recesses of our minds.

Quote:9. Telepathy is often best explained as body language. 

Telepathy has been shown to exist by the scientific research which mainstream scientism hides and denies. It cannot be explained at all except as spiritual.

Quote:10. There is obviously more to medicine than surgery, pharmacology, and rehabilitation. Those are essential. I am a poor candidate for psychological treatment on some matters because most of my issues are philosophical.

Well, that is certainly true if you believe in these dogmas If your issues are philosophical, it may be an opportunity for you to expand beyond what scientism or any other belief has taught you. In any case, curiosity is always available, and it is a path to greater awareness beyond what we have been taught. What we have been taught is what restricts us all and screws up our lives. We have all been victims of our education and our brainwashing. We are all possessed and crippled by these and other dogmas and ideologies. I have much to learn still, and to integrate the new age worldview is the huge task that still begins, even after one has seen beyond the old age worldviews that we were taught.. But is it a great frontier to explore

If you read or listen to Sheldrake, he demonstrates that these 10 dogmas are not the result of any scientific study. They are simply beliefs. We don't have to believe them. And Sheldrake points out that science today can only be renewed by ditching this out of date worldview, which most people here on this forum still assume to be true, without any basis whatsoever.

It is our choice what to believe. It is our choice to open to the truth we already know. What are we pretending not to know?