Phil wrote:I'm not going to defend all scientists - I'm sure there's some dreadful science going on out there - but let's get real. Alternative explanations?
1) For alternative explanations, read Descartes.....for a start.
2)
The Easter Bunny didn't invent a vaccine for small pox, that was a scientist last time I looked. (And sure, not a very nice person by all accounts.) It was a scientist who stopped my toothache. It was a scientist that designed the computer I'm working on etc...etc..
I know the Americans have taken to it but pragmatism was ever a weak argument. Do you really need me to spell it out for you?
3) You are also talking about cures, I am more concerned with prime causes.
4)The trouble with computers is that they can't rise to your level, you must sink to theirs. Hence being shackled to computers is causing a serious degradation of the human mind. I had a relative who commented when her children had reached the age of 5, that "they were old enough now to have a decent conversation with". I was dumbstruck. I am even more dumbstruck by anyone who feels elevated communicating with a computer.
5)
lazy thinking and lazy writing; nonsense dressed as intelligent debate.
Have you read Descartes yet? Have you played Final Fantasy or Dungeons and Dragons video games? I would need to call on these and much more in order to explain the role intuition has in thinking. Carl Jung once had a conversation with a Native American in which the American observed/accused Jung and white men in general of "thinking with the head" instead of "with the heart". Now, I am not talking about sentimental notion of heart and nor was he. What he means is the kind of thinking that takes place in one's deeper mind in, one might say, the heart of one's being. This kind of thinking is accessed intuitively. One's deeper mind collects and processes all one's experiences of all kinds and creates an understanding of the world from this accumulated experience. When you use your deeper mind e.g. you are able to make your own unique moral decisions without reference to any philosophical tomes or without having..........I am trying to explain this in just a few paragraphs and I'm realising just how hopeless it is. I am in fact writing a book about this. Anything less than a book cannot provide adequate explanation.
6)
you have a hard sell. That's why I say lazy writing.
I do not believe in 'selling'. If there is truth here, if it is indeed a good product, it will sell itself. I would go so far as to say I quite specifically refrain from 'selling' as I have no wish to influence what people think about my ideas. The reason I post articles here is that the comments/challenges help me to clarify my ideas and other subsidiaries which I need not go into.
7)
Good scientists use evidence for this. Your writing, while challenging conventional thought (nothing wrong in that) uses absolutely no evidence
This pre-supposes that the scientific method is the only valid method. Scientists love to use this circular game of demanding that everyone plays by their rules.
