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The story was told here, unspun:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/backroom/804648/posts?page=4578#4578
Sorry it goes on so long. I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Still interested? Anyway, it's been a good experience to write this --even more fun than reading it, I'm sure. ;-`

On human imagination and human imaginings... part 1 of 2

To betty boop and all:

Ms. boop has already written about our conscious selves - distinct from our physical selves - conceptualizing in words. I've attempted to expound upon our imagination and imaginings. (I'm calling our ability to imagine "imagination" and what we imagine "imaginings.") I'm basing my logic upon a principle of purpose, a principle which is basic to the theorists of evolution, as well as to those who regard the creativity of God (and a principle maintained by those who hold to both theories in large part). One example of the very many applications of the principle of purpose made by evolutionists are logical conjectures about why a presumed hominid has no tail, but has longer legs than it's presumed anscestors. Like the evolutionist researchers, I'm not fettering this principle of purpose to the exclusivist error of objectivism and logical positivism. Instead, I utilize my reasonable freedom to use both objective and propositional logic.

Ms. boop says that she encountered two angels and heard God speak to her, within a vision or dream. She speculates that such spirits, noncorporeal to us, may extend themselves in time but not space. She uses her experience as an example to illustrate that the human conscious is not merely a measurablly physical item.

I don't seek to repeat her observations, but to comment on her reflections of them. I believe her experience was actual, but what if it were "just" a "figment of her imagination?" How is it that a merely physical animal, as complex as a human is, can wonder at all, about existences alternate to the physical? Is this indicative? Even if betty's mind were playing a trick upon her or if she concocted her dream volitionally, how is it that humans may speculate so, in our dreams, visions, fairy tales, science fiction --or a even our most realistic novels? Nevermind the apparent futility, what an essentially odd thing that is for an animal to do, however developed by... well... however "we animals" have been developed. If we are thoroughly physical beings, consisting only of something called matter and only functioning based upon its "calculations" (an easy model to resort to, since it is based upon the calculating physical models we create) how incongruous to the level of insanity to be so imaginary with our minds!

Let us all discipline ourselves to stop it, then. Stop the silliness! Just say "No. I'm not going to imagine things, anymore." Try it for awhile, as an exercise in applied self physicality. It should come natural to 100% physical beings. I'll wait for you....

Graham Chapman's Colonel

You are giving us physical beings a bad name with this silliness!

The truth is, behavioral researchers have done such experiments, even resorting to sensory deprivation chambers, in order to separate them from the stimulation of imagination. The result becomes hallucination (imagination emerging from its controls).

Reader, you don't regard your imagination as unreal, do you? It's belongs to you, after all, a critical aspect of who you are. And isn't the use (purpose, I'd say) of your imagination always to deal with real matters on some level, even if what is imagined is an utter fantasy, for the purpose of entertainment? If you failed the test of trying not to be imaginative, try it the opposite way. Can you think of something totally unrooted in reality? What could be a priori unreal? You might want to give yourself a few days to discipline yourself to do that. But, to picture such a thing would be analagous to trying to divide by zero, now wouldn't it? And even so, let's say you have no idea of what an imagining is about; it certainly is a real imagining, nevertheless.

And another indication of the reality of the imagination: What has man ever created that was not created from his imagination (his imagination integrally involved, in the process)? What indeed. Even when the level of our creativity is very basic. If your computer is not plugged in, you imagine that you may plug your computer into the wall socket and that it should then have electricity; so if you want, you do just that, creating an electrical circuit with your computer. Name something physical that man intentionally crafts that he does not in some way imagine, as he creates it. (A third test, in the task of objectively disproving the reality of one's imagination. Please find any "cracks" in what I may call this objective, empirical, self-evident reality of human imagination and a basis in reality for every imagining.)
Surely, the imagination is a trait disctinct from what we know of basic, calculating "intelligence," since it is not required in order to survive, as the thriving of so many animals inform us.

I'm not an avid reader of philosophy, so I'll dash through that library and pull out a couple primers, while hoping not to topple the shelves: I'm sure most will agree that a human's consicous or sentience implies his reality. In turn, a perfectly objective observation of something "outside of us" indicates its reality. But further, is it not to be said that what a man may imagine indicates at least something about the existence of things outside of his direct observation, as well (...things which another man may observe or not and which may be either well or faultily imagined)? If not, what happens to the principle of purpose, here? Even if an imagining is off the mark, does it not indicate some validity about the natures of things at play in what we imagine?

So, if an imagining cannot exist without being informed by reality, it must carry information about the nature of reality with it (even though imaginings can be so very fanciful, compared to what is necessary for living beings to survive and thrive). But then, why do we take a bit of reality and imagine with it, even when we don't have physical experience with what we imagine? Reasoning the way an evolutionist researcher does when he finds bones, teeth, hair, etc.: What is the purpose of the human imagination and what does that in turn tell us about ourselves?

Please come back and read the second part of this little two-part essay, and I'll get to the point.

If we are thoroughly physical beings, consisting only of something called matter and only functioning based upon its "calculations" (an easy model to resort to, since it is based upon the calculating physical models we create) how incongruous to the level of insanity to be so imaginary with our minds!

Er, I just want to point out that matter is a useful construct but our physical existence consists of waves. Space/time itself is but a quality of the extension of field, which I assert is a wave phenomenon.

We are not even sure how to explain mass; hopefully, the Fermilab tests will confirm the existence of the Higgs field/boson.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one. - Albert Einstein

PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number 579 March 5, 2002 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and James Riordon

A MATTER-WAVE INTERFEROMETER FOR LARGE MOLECULES has been devised and demonstrated for the first time. For many years scientists have studied the proposition that things we normally think of as particles, such as electrons, should also have wave properties. Indeed studies of beams of electrons, neutrons, even whole atoms, have confirmed that particles can be viewed as a series of traveling waves which diffracted when they pass through a grating or through slits. These waves could even interfere with each other, resulting in characteristic patterns captured by particle detectors. In this way, in 1999 Anton Zeilinger and his colleagues at the University of Vienna demonstrated the wave nature of carbon-60 molecules by diffracting them (in their wave manifestation) from a grating (Update 453). Now the same group, using a full interferometer consisting of three gratings with wider grating spacings and a more efficient detector setup, observe a sharp interference pattern. Moreover, because the beam of particles used, carbon-70 molecules at a temperature of 900 K, are themselves in an excited state (undergoing 3 rotational and 204 vibrational modes of internal motion), it should be possible to study the way in which an atom wave, or in this case a macromolecular wave, becomes decoherent (that is, loses its wavelike character) because of thermal motions and other interactions with its environment. Thus this type of interferometer experiment will be useful in studying the borderland between the quantum and classical worlds. The researchers (contact Bjorn Brezger, bjoern@brezger.de, University of Vienna) are aiming to study the wave properties of even larger composite objects, mid- sized proteins. (Brezger et al., Physical Review Letters, 11 March 2002; see also www.quantum.univie.ac.at)

General introduction for lurkers: The Standard Model and the Higgs boson

Well, I'm not sure what to comment on. I found Boop's story interesting. What I'd want to know was all of the things she had been reading and contemplating prior to this experience. What had she been supercharging her brain with?

Like the story of the guy discovering the benzine ring, (I can never remember the details like names anymore - too much stuff) if one fixates on something long enough, one will dream about it. If we are going to start taking dreams of evidence explaining reality . . .

Going back to the thread this came from was more interesting though, and reminds me of why I have all but quit writing.

You say things like,

Like the evolutionist researchers, I'm not fettering this principle of purpose to the exclusivist error of objectivism and logical positivism.

Oh, so you're fettering it to the subjectivist error of undemonstrable inclusivity? You Beg the Question it is an error, you Beg the Question of existence of that which has no demonstrable existence.

So the thread contains statements like,

the public face of Western Science would drop its insistance upon neutrality toward the existence of a Vastly Superior Intelligence, of God, the evidence being so massive, crushing, overwhelming.

Of which, without that error of subjective inclusivity, there would be no evidence at all. To consider it evidence of a Vastly Superior Intelligence, of God one must presuppose the existence of that very being. It is a Smuggled Premise that must exist before it can be considered 'evidence' of a 'Vastly Superior Intelligence.'

If the evidence were so overwhelming, then the issue wouldn't be in dispute. What it is, is a breakdown in logic, in reasoning, that permits the Smuggled Premise, the Begged Question, to be an unexamined premise upon which the conclusion that reality and life 'must be' created by God depends. This breakdown in reasoning you termed, the exclusivist error of objectivism because to remain objective means that you have to admit there is no such evidence.

One thing that I have had pounded into my head here is that logic and reason take a back seat whenever it is a choice between them and belief and faith. In that sense you're right, objectivity will always be considered error ridden. It is an either/choice, because the two will always conflict.

To get down to brass tacks, it is the reason (there's that word again!) for the debate that reveals what is truly happening here. To quote Phaedrus again (and I'm not picking on you Phaedrus, you just happen to state the issue so well in the thread) We forget that the womb of Christianity spawned modern science.

Only by chance, not by reason. The fallacy here is post hoc ergo propter hoc : The name in Latin means "after this therefore because of this". This describes the fallacy. An author commits the fallacy when it is assumed that because one thing follows another that the one thing was caused by the other.

It was the womb of Christianity that kept Europe in the horror of the Dark Ages for a millenia. It only when Aquinas made the mistake of trying to logically prove the existence of God and reintroduced the world to Aristotle that science advanced. The fact of the matter is it was logic and reason, not religion that are the parents of science.

Religion has fought every scientific advance, every step along the way. Just as it does today, fighting evolution, cloning, stem cell research, certain medical procedures and all the rest that will be commonplace 100 years from now. It will just be the people that could have been saved today, that will lose. And why this opposition to science? The issue is actually control. And the means to that control? Morality.

What is the chain of logic that motivates creationists? If evolution is proven correct, God is disproven, and society will suffer as people will no longer feel obligated to follow Christian morality. And this has proven true over the ages, the more science advances the less people do feel obligated to follow Christian morality.

When Nietche observed that 'God was dead' what he meant was, the moral influence of the concept of God was falling away from Europe. This proved true and would have proven true whether Nietche said it or not. That Napoleon was Nietche's inspiration demonstrates this fact.

The next typical objection is that the loss of God resulted in Marxism, and the horror that it has brought. What is conveniently forgotten is that with the loss of the influence of religion and the rise of capitalism Marx was trying to keep alive the principle of Altruism, since it was dying as a religious principle. Marx tried to create a philosophy of altruism without the God demanding it, but on 'scientific' principles. That he abandoned logic in the exercise is why it is such an abject failure. Rather than being 'scientific' it is about as unscientific as one can get.

Thus we have the desparate situation in the US today. One the one hand we have the failed socialist altruists on the left, and the dying religious altruists on the right. In the middle of this is the abandonment of the principle that truly makes America the great nation it is, although that is being murdered by the altruists on both extremes: Capitalism.

See, the laws of logic, reason, science and economy are laws that cannot be broken without having adverse results in reality. The fact is Capitalism cannot survive in an altruistic society, it is either/or. If the principle of serving others is primary then Capitalism is 'selfishness' by definition. As someone here recently wrote to me, selfishness is evil. Period. End of discussion. You go to hell. His arrogance was truly amazing. What he didn't realize he was also saying was that Capitalism is evil.

The reason why this is significant, especially here, is that 'religious conservatives' and 'left wing socialists' have more in common than they think. They differ on issues but not on fundamental philosophy: Altruism. This is why, if you do a Google search on 'social justice,' as left wing a concept as one can have, the first twenty hits will be the Catholic Church. Thus, the conservatives and liberals are in a secret pact with one another. They actually justify the existence of one another. They are two peas of the same pod. They are just arguing details. One wants to control your uterus, the other just steal from your pocketbook. Both want control. Both use the same justification, you don't own yourself, you are obligated to society.

The only true opposition to this is Capitalism. Capitalism, by its very nature, is logical, dependent upon reason, and moral. Moral in the sense it can only operate in the truth, that only correct actions will have correct results, and if one wishes to follow it, one must take the right actions. The moral principle than one works for one's own personal gain is in direct opposition with the altruistic principle that one is obligated to place others first.

I was listening to some preacher on the radio in this town recently and he was talking about how some of us reserve that last 5% of ourselves for ourselves and our own selfish desires, and that last 5% is what God really wants, so that one is wholly in the service to others. In other words, you cannot do anything for yourself, only for others. Thus one is a complete slave to others. This is in utter contradiction to the principle of Capitalism, which holds one is responsible to oneself, for oneself.

The contradictions inherent here, as in all altruism, is the real issue. And this brings us back to the importance of creationism to all this. Creationism is the rejection of science in favor of belief, logic in favor of faith. The twisting and the convolutions that creationists have to go through to seek to attempt to prove the unprovable utterly destroys the concepts of logic, facts and reason in the process. The same inability to see the fallacies inherent in creationism is the same inability to see that 'religious altruism' furthers, strenghthens and empowers the 'secular altruism' of the socialist left.

This is demonstrated by the supposedly 'compassionate conservative' President Bush coming up with a budget increase beyond anything seen in years. Giving $14 billion to Africa to fight AIDS just as the leftist liberal Bono from U2 wanted is a perfect example. Bush granted the moral high ground to the left, and thereby undercut the very Capitalism that this nation is dependent upon to survive. He will have given away the moral high ground already when they come to him with the next hike in the minimum wage. You must give to others who need it. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. Altruism, religious obligation, communism. It is all the same.

This is why this nation is slowly dying and why nothing anyone does seems to change it. It is because both sides, right and left, reject logic, reject reason, and reject Capitalism. They are just two different kinds of altruists. They are only arguing about which part of the pie to control, not that there should be no control at all. Only true Capitalism asserts that. There are very few such Capitalists now. Everyone is afraid of being called 'selfish.' Being selfish being evil and all.

So we have secular altruists and religious altruists and their only point of disagreement is whether the source of the alruistic mandate is God or the state. This is where the creationism/evolution debate comes in. It determines how they divide the pie. As I have said before, even if proven true, creationism would have no practical effect. It would add nothing to science at all. Evolution actually explains how we can modify animal breeds to our purpose. It has actually been proven by the systematic breeding of farm animals.

And this brings me back to this thread. I see so many statements from ignorance. A typical example is the assertion there are no transitory forms between species. This is a specious argument, since each species is a species itself while in transition. The answer has been defined away in the assertion. Like some stated that scales and feathers are different from each other, which is precisely not true. Feathers have been shown quite precisely, and exactly how, to be modified scales. But since evidence, logic, and reason play no role, such fautly assertions are made endlessly. With no logic, no amount of discussion can convince anyone otherwise.

The heart of the creationists argument is, If evolution is proven false, creationism must be true. Faulty logic again, proving one wrong doesn't prove the other true. Each must prove itself. It is logically impossible to come up with a concept of a Supreme Intelligence creating everything, creating life, from the pure observation of the natural world. This is proven by the fact that evangelizing is necessary. If an Supreme Creator were so obvious then one wouldn't need to tell the gospel to anybody, they'd already know. That difference in languages creates differences in concept of Diety proves that it is a projection of man, not an objective fact. Vishnu, Allah, Jehovah, the Tao, on and on and on. All have the same source. All come from the human mind. They are conceptual handles for the inexplicable.

And to go back to Boop's Dream. Even if true, it would have no practical effect. Couldn't build a house with it, couldn't build a fire. Nothing. On its own it has no meaning, only within a context that this experience proves something which proves something else which means the Bible must be true. It is circular reasoning so blatant that it is silly.

But the issue here isn't to prove anything, it is to destroy reason. Let's be very clear on that point. Only by destroying reason can one defend the irrationality of Altruism and dethrone Capitalism as selfish evil. Having said that, when you succeed don't be surprised when the USA falls, for just as logic was the mother of science so too it was the father of Freedom. If one studies the philosophy of the founders, not just their religious views, one finds that they held that Reason was the gift from God that made men Men. As Ethan Allen said, 'Reason is the only Oracle for man.' Not your dreams, not my dreams, not Boop's dreams, Reason.

We are coming to crossroads in the not too distant future and the choice will be between Capitalism or Altruism. If we don't turn from the road we are on the United States of America will become a failed experiment. If we don't see that Altruism will not work, cannot work, is irrational, is illogical and is the philosophical opposite of Capitalism then we are doomed. You won't have to read Atlas Shrugged to get it, you will live it.

Maybe interesting to some, maybe not, but here...

So, if an imagining cannot exist without being informed by reality, it must carry information about the nature of reality with it (even though imaginings can be so very fanciful, compared to what is necessary for living beings to survive and thrive). But then, why do we take a bit of reality and imagine with it, even when we don't have physical experience with what we imagine? Reasoning the way an evolutionist researcher does when he finds bones, teeth, hair, etc.: What is the purpose of the human imagination and what does that in turn tell us about ourselves?

On human imagination and human imaginings... part 2 of 2

(As I explained in posts between my part 1 & 2, I am speaking of the principle of purpose, but not necessarily in terms of teleology --thought I am not making the arbitrary mistake of ruling out ultimate purpose. I am speaking of this principle as one in common between evolutionist and creationist research in order to detemine why attributes of living beings exist, as a clue to origins and understanding how life fits together in the here and now. For "purpose," one could substitute, "functional relationship," or "orientation" between a being and all with which a being interacts, or which in any way is a part of its environment.)

So, with that in mind, what is the purpose of the imagination? What does that tell us about our environment and about ourselves?

Imagination, why?: In order for us to understand what exists and to interact and function with what exists, volitionally and creatively. And why do we imagine, exactly what we imagine? Because those things we imagine, are rooted in reality and matter to us. I think that just about all readers will agree that the environment that we navigate by means of our imagination includes the physical world around us, so I won't go on about that. But certainly, in the "imagining of our hearts" all sorts of matters are felt and considered, accurate and inaccurate, matters having to do with not only "material" things, but with other beings and events and a panoply of abstractions and emotions about it all. If I'd start to describe that, I'd loose all but the most gracious reader and I may have to reach for the aspirin bottle myself, even if I did have a good sleep last night.

That's nice. Then, what is the whole reality upon which our real imagination reflects? Well, I'll ask it this way: What kinds of things constitute the fulsome or holistic set of realistic imaginations that you have? If your imagination is a reflection of reality (accurately or not, from one moment to the next) and your imaginations deal not only with what you experience as physical reality, what is the rest? Is the rest to be declared "unreal" simply because you have no direct experience with it, while someone else may have? Even when imagination is used by a scientist for the purpose of formulating his next physical experiment, he needs his imagination to get to the truth. Clearly, we need our imaginations, in order to understand as much reality as we may, as well or as faultily as we may. Clearly, this reality includes matters with which, in one way or another, we are beyond having objective experience, at the time we imagine them -- or we would not have had the abilty to conceive of the experiments we have thus far made, to determine what we have found. I won't say there aren't other uses, but this one I'll emphasize: Whether by postulate or by a wild imaginary swing of intuition, imagination is for meeting what is beyond our previous experience and comprehension.

So, we need our very real imagination, in order to grasp real things beyond our objective experience --because they matter to us.

Now, what are the things that matter most, to us? Clearly, what is most important to you is what relates to you. So what is most relational to you? Now I'm getting to your empirical dream/vision/experience, ms. boop. To beg the question, it dealt with spiritual beings, beings not of our space/time/energy. But as you best among FReepers know, these two 'characters,' real as I believe them to be, were not the subject or chief substance of your vision any more than the house slave was the essense of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," that you memorized. The subject and essense of this opus done with betty b's real conscious self, and her real imaginative heart is a person, abundantly clear -- and one who claimed not only to be a person but who claimed to be PERSON.

Oops, did I just beg the question? But, how much did I, to say that? betty says that she had an experience which her conscious self knew to be real. Her consciousness is very well practiced in distinguishing between reality and fantasy and this was so real and experiential to her conscious self that it would be dishonest for her to deny it. Her consciousness is an objective reality, and her imagination is too, and both testify to her that this was empirical in the realms of what each deals with. Furthermore, it made perfect, functional sense to her after the experience ended, though she doesn't comprehend every single facet of it (just the way we don't comprehend every single facet of anything else we experience).

To go a step further, did this experience effect what most matters to betty, what is most relational to her? That's what she says and she's the one who had the experience.

Now, others have had similar experiences and the problem is that not all of these experiences are consistent with each other. By testimony, these such experiences have been with various kinds of messengers and voices and many messages have been at odds with many others, a major breakdown. But there is a set of these experiences which are consistent with each other and which are a part of a system of understanding which would say that counterfeit spirits also exist, which will also effect humans directly. (Further, there are many other evidences and corroborated testimonies which have supported this particularly consistent set of experiences and understanding, and no evidences which disprove it.)

Why would the part of betty which deals with maintaining what she knows and separating this from what she does not know (conscious) and the part of her which deals with reflecting upon what is relationally most important to her (imagination) tell her that she had a real, knowing, and unique experience about exactly what is most important to her?

As we have heard from many witnesses, there is a person... the person... I should really just say, there is PERSON (as Descartes should have appreciated, calls Himself "I AM THAT I AM"). He claims to be THE CONSCIOUS, THE IMAGINATION, who fills heaven and earth, yet is not of this world, who is beyond beginning and end, and who is beyond our comprehension but (listen scientists) who claims to reveal and convey His matter to those who accept it. Ever wonder as I used to, what in the Sam Hill this "glory" is, that seems such a word of self-aggrandizement and megalomania by this Deity, when we are told in something called the "Holy Bible" that all of what we do is only to be of and for God's glory? Megalomaniacal? Hardly. Glory means "matter" in ancient Hebrew -- a good dictionary will say "weight." In the Bible, when God's glory is addressed, it is concomitant with pure light. This insertion of meaning would tell us that since all is His, as betty b's dream attests, we are only in our thoroughly right conscious mind and only have the right, fulsome framework for the functions of imagination and all that is "us" when we accept His substance in the picture (all of the picture). His is the very substance of being by which we were created to relationally commune, individually as certain as a child is from his parents, and collectively as certainly as a bride is of and for her husband and vice versa.

How would the relationship between CONSCIOUS and our conscious, IMAGINATION and our imagination connect? Directly maybe? I'd say so. Stuff like physical "matter," energy and ultimately perhaps even time would just get in the way of this kind of relationship, though it is affirmed in this relationship that the bridge to the physical world was thoroughly crossed as well, glory to God.

Sigh. There, I did it, I blurted out the gospel... shoot... well something about the nature of the good news, anyway.

The Righ Stuff

We may believe and know as a much underrated empiricist with direct much direct experience named John ben Zebedee emphasized again and again, that God is CONSCIOUS BEING and has all the right PRETERNATURAL STUFF (GLORY) and accepting Him and His experientially conveyed data beats the alternative, to say the least. Furthermore, like us (whodathunkit?) what He creates, He creates from His IMAGINATION, a very real imagination creating a whole bunch of stuff that is very real on a whole bunch of levels, in a whole bunch of ways, but a bunch of stuff that is consistent and has integrity, as He is and has.

There exists no other 'philosophy' which deals with every bit of who we persons are and every bit of what we relate to and how, and which is not disproven but maintained by every kind of study (all kinds of humble and intellectually honest study). The truth is out there. The truth is here. Truth happens.

So, it is wonderful and important to study how fossils lay in the strata of the earth and how DNA is processed and what the implications of this may be, and so it is, to study the levels and interplay of the great dance within the Russian dolls of quantum mechanics, and of what layers and substances make up man himself, but what "matters" most?

Well, what mattered most in betty b's dream?

There is a subjectivity upon which all our objectivity depends.

Arlen - unspun

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PS: In addition to conscious and imagination, I've referred to "intention," in the above (volition, will) as have others. But, I haven't found much treatment of human consicience in this thread (thought I haven't read every bit of it). There is a thread running in FR about God, morality, and human conscience -- Morality: Who Needs God -- more on the many traits of man, having to do with his spiritually relational life, meant for the relationship that matters most.