Tarrot cards/tea leaves/fortune read

[Phanerothyme]

quite Halevan.

 

The tarot is a useful tool for introspection and self analysis as it throws up common and ambiguous archetypes (in the Major Arcana at least, the Minor Arcana is just really 4 suits of cards) for consideration and interpretation.

 

Sort of like random psychoanalysis.

 

Bumblees do fly, and no scientist has ever proved they don't, because they self evidently do. Bumblebees wings generate leading edge vortices that allow them to keep their wings oscillating with the minimum energy expenditure, but they are very dependent on fine weather to fly well. Fine weather not only increases the bees temperature, but the high pressure means the air is more viscous and hence the leading edge vortex effect is more pronounced.

 

back2basics - I am in complete agreement with your comments thus far. I think people fear losing their great mysteries enormously.

 

To my mind the best way to learn about something, like an unexplained phenomena, is to perform an experiment.

 

The experiment is mankinds fundamental tool of discovery. It has yielded every single thing we have. It has even yielded better methods of experimentation!

 

Anyone, faced with uncertainty over the truth of a certain proposition, can devise and conduct a simple experiment that would pass peer scrutiny.

 

Like the dust on Moon Maiden's lens that could have been a glimpse of a ethereal guardian. We will all see what we want to see. No-one needs to prove their reality to anyone else, and since reality itself is a function of your mind, all realities can coexist simultaneously. Some realities, however, take up a lot more time to maintain than others.

 

No wonder agreeing any code of ethics is like trying to herd cats, when we are all actually living in quite separate realities.

 

And Bell's nonlocality theorem has been proven, repeatedly. This is science doing what it does best - just coming up with something that outstrips the paranormal. Triggering simultaneous action over infinite distances with no time lag at all.

 

The technological uses for this are already starting to be felt with the gradual emergence of quantum machines could represent a revolution in technology, much as the microprocessor has revolutionised the world in the last 20 years.

 

Now that to me is magic.

 

For an understanding of everything paranormal, and how it affects us as human beings if we do not understand it, have a look at cargo cults. That tells me everything i need to know about belief in religion and the human mind.

 

For a deeper understanding of what "god" and "spirits" actually are, take a look at "The origins of consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind."

 

And read Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson. If you think you have an open mind, this book will prove you wrong. I think i have an open mind, and it still proves me wrong everytime I open it. He is the anti-guru.

 

Thats enough late night rambling for now (Ed.)

[Jamie]

Dearest Phanerothyme,

 

But there is magic and mystery inside us and all around us ... and science and logic and mans critical mind will never grasp this ...

 

I think of mans 'critical / logical mind' ... as looking at the universe though a telescope ... and thinking that what you see is what is there ... not stopping to consider the medium of the telescope and it's place in the universe.

 

I think modern science very much assumes the telescope to be a seperate entity to the thing it observes ... now there's a thought!

 

Of course ... I can't possibly prove any of this magic and mystery stuff to you *smiles* ... and it's not something you can approach via the intellect.

 

More of a 'feeling' thing ...

[Phanerothyme]

Originally posted by Jamie

Dearest Phanerothyme,

 

But there is magic and mystery inside us and all around us ... and science and logic and mans critical mind will never grasp this ...

 

I think of mans 'critical / logical mind' ... as looking at the universe though a telescope ... and thinking that what you see is what is there ... not stopping to consider the medium of the telescope and it's place in the universe.

 

I think modern science very much assumes the telescope to be a seperate entity to the thing it observes ... now there's a thought!

 

Of course ... I can't possibly prove any of this magic and mystery stuff to you *smiles* ... and it's not something you can approach via the intellect.

 

More of a 'feeling' thing ...

 

Dear Jamie,

 

you say science and the critical mind will never grasp the magic and mystery - but what is magic and mystery if not something that science and the critical mind has yet to understand and grasp.

 

what is it, inherently that prevents science and the critical mind grasping the fullest picture of reality possible.

 

There is a very neat experiment you can do which shows you the difference between faith in science, and faith in hocus pocus, mumbo jumbo, invisible friends in the sky and all that razzmatazz, and it is this:

 

Find the highest ceiling you can, and from it suspend a large, very heavy lead plumb weight level with your head; something in the region of 50kgs should do it. Use an appropriate length of strong piano wire and a free swinging pivot at the top to minimise friction.

 

This is actually a scientific intrument that can be used to measure he rotation of the earth, called Foucault's Pendulum.

 

Now walk up to the weight until the tip of your nose touches it. Grasp the weight and keep it touching your nose; take three steps backwards and let go. Don't move your head.

 

The weight will swing away from you.

 

Now what does your magical or mysterious or scientifically inexplicable belief system tell you about what will happen next?

 

My scientific belief system tells me that if I move my head one inch forward, I am going to get a flat nose as they weight swings back to almost precisely the same position as when I released it.

 

No amount of magic, prayer, telekinesis, mind over matter, tantric breathing, zen trances or contemplating mandalas is going to let me move my head forward eight inches forwards without splashing my headopen like a ripe melon.

 

I can do this experiment once, a thousand times, ten thousand times, and never come to injury.

 

Mysteries and magic are emphatically not inexplicable to science in any way. It's just that the scientific explanations for the cosmos can seem devoid of mystery or magic to the uninitiated.

 

I am not arguing that science is somehow the cold objective eye of reason - it is not, although it aspires to that. And it is because of that aspiration that it is so successful in revealing knowledge about the occult (literal meaning).

 

If science couldn't explain things, and one of the umpteen flavours of mystical belief could, then our world would be functioning according to those principles, not the scientific principles that we gaily take for granted every day of our life.

 

The more we understand the universe, the weirder it gets. It gets, in my opinion, a whole lot weirder than even the weirdest fringe cosmological philosophies, and we never have a complete picture.

 

But it is an IMAX picture of reality, rather than the camera obscura view from mystically rooted belief systems that are simply a hangover of the development of conciousness out of an animal mind.

 

Scientific method is a reality tunnel like every other belief system. But tellingly, it is the only method that actually delivers results (not always good) on a measurable scale.

 

If if there is something to the notion of 'gods' and 'spirits' why would you leave the investigation and assimilation of knowledge about such potentially world shattering concepts to any kind of belief system that ascribes responsibility to 'mystical agents' without even questioning what these 'mystical agents are'.

 

The moment someone builds a magically driven powerstation that requires only a single sherbet lemon to operate, or banishes war from the face of the earth through the power of meditation, or someone successfully curses all paedophiles so their bits drop off, or crime is eradicated by the power of prayer, then I will sit up and pay a bit more attention.

 

Until then, it is all entertaining mumbo jumbo that says more about the nature of our minds than the universe.

 

And when someone does do something remarkable, repeatedly and provably, science will be well on its way to creating workable models of this behaviour. And then we will all be using it to travel through dimensions, stop time, curse and cure people, change our shape, perform impossible yogic feats etc.

 

But don't hold your breath. Unless you are able to do so for a very long time (which some people can do, but as you will notice, they do not tend to do a lot of running around when they are holding their breath, that would be in defiance of scientific knowledge.

 

And the other incomparable advantage of science is that the whole point is to prove it wrong the entire time. Everyone likes to prove someone wrong, and science thrives on this.

 

It means that ideas are tested to destruction before being absorbed into the canon of scientific knowledge. And once absorbed, their position is far from safe as some PhD student discovers cold fusion in his shed can turn the whole thing on its head.

 

Nothing else works like this, nothing responds to the evidence like science.

[back2basics]

"What I cannot get over is your persistent desire to dis mine and thousands of other peoples experiences because you have read about lots of tests and completely dis-regard all possibilities."

You see throughout this thread you have made claims about me that are just not true, where as i have made statements that are (for sake of argument) that are accepted as fact by the majority of GREAT minds in the world. I don't 'dis mine' thousands of peoples experiences at all. What i do is look at the cases where these peoples claims have been tested and found to be explainable by natural phenomena. Also moon i seem to remember you implying you cast a spell on some people in a Hospital that were treating a member of your familiy, am i correct?

Phanerothyme i bloody love you in a totally heterosexual way Moon i refer you to his answer about the bees it's what i was going to say. Also a great example of what science actually is, that is what i was coming back to do.. but once again you explain it most eloquently

I has a friend in School, he claimed to have seen a ghost of his dead grandmother. He case was written up in a book (i forget the name and publisher). For the book he was taken for a polygraph (lie detector test) and passed it, so his story was put in the book. He later admitted to everybody he was lying, and it was basically a cry for help. This is one of the reasons people make these bizarre claims, obviously financial profit is another.

I was reading an article today on horoscopes. Apparently these people who write them, earn more that serious column writers. Because they sell papers. When you do polls, very few people actually take horoscopes seriously, it's just some form of escape, wishful thinking. But i find it very sad that the world we live in values charlatans more than fact.

 

But i don't want a world without magic or mysticism. I think a world without them would be a very boring and clinical place. Thats why i like learning tricks, and i would never tell my kids Santa doesn't exists. It doe play a part in the world, but it should NEVER overlap in to reality as it is now.

[Jamie]

Dear Phanerothyme,

 

When I say "science" ... I am indeed refering to the critical mind of man that holds one thing to be seperate from another (including itself).

 

There is no logical or reasoned answer as to why logic and reason will never grasp that which is behond logic and reason.

 

There is much much more to being human than logic and reason.

 

I am NOT advocating any belief system here or indeed 'gods' 'spirits' and 'mystical agents' (not to say that these do not exist).

 

I use the words 'magic and mystery' for that which cannot be known via our critical minds.

 

Belief in anything you don't have personal experience of is plain self deception.

 

 

 

However .....

 

I do have direct first hand experience of stuff that is way behond the scope of my logical and critical mind to explain.

 

I have experienced these phenomena more directly and more vividly than I experience my critical mind at work.

 

I cannot and would not want to 'prove' anything to you or anyone else.

 

People should find out for themself and never take anyone else's word for it.

 

 

 

Science is flawed .....

 

Science attempts to map out and explain reality without considering itself in the equation.

 

It is an abstraction from reality ... a map ... and not the thing that it attempts to describe.

 

The relationship between map and actual terrain is not so clear cut as one may at first assume (all kinds of feedback scenarios exist).

 

Where is the dividing line between map and terrain ... is there one!?

 

 

 

 

Final words .....

 

Use the force Phanerothyme !!

[back2basics]

Jamie what you are describing by this whole map/abstraction from reality stuff is not at all science. What you are describing is science being subjective, a science that attempts to describe or prove something from from a subjects point of view. The subject being the scientist trying to take measurements.

 

What you are saying people should do is trust nobody, and find out for themselves. That is a subjective methodology, prone to your own misconceptions and ideologies. Which is why this line is so wrong ; "Belief in anything you don't have personal experience of is plain self deception". You must never beleive something just because you have had first hand experiance in it.

 

Science does not work like that at all. You are of course correct to say that in some things we are limited by the scope of our minds. But that has NEVER stopped science. I gave a good example but because you seem to like Subjective methodologies you seem to have skipped over it, as it does not fit the conclusions you want.

 

We could never have conceived Black holes, it's as counter intuitive as somebody saying ESP is real. They were and still are beyond logic and reason. But because Objective methodologies were used we not only decided that they exist before we could actually observe them, but we can cross check it using completely unrelated methods. It so happens now we have observed them. If we had JUST observed them, no scientist would say with even 90% certainty that they do exist. We would have to use other tests, to confirm it.. even though our own eyes have observed them.

 

Science goes so far down the objective route that it knows that even what our eyes tell us exist should not be trusted. As our minds may be filling in the gaps. These methodologies are literally hundreds of years old, nothing new.

 

"Science attempts to map out and explain reality without considering itself in the equation" it's not without considering it's self, it's without considering the basic assumption humans have made, that constitute science. This is a philosophical view point, one that is taken in to account, but of course one than can never really be answered definitively (like all philosophical questions).

We know science works because it works. We know we are going down the right path because the PREDICTIONS (not observations, calculations or measurements) have been right in the physical world. Now of course you can use the old Philosophical view that EVERYTHING we view is the creation of our own minds, but lets leave that for the Matrix and not real life

[alert_bri]

Excellent post b2b - got a lot out of that...

 

Now of course you can use the old Philosophical view that EVERYTHING we view is the creation of our own minds, but lets leave that for the Matrix and not real life.

 

Isn't that an important point though? Have you ever had a lucid dream b2b? If you had, didn't you wonder at the incredible detail your mind could generate and you have the total and absolute belief that your surroundings were 'real'

 

I think I can see where you're coming from - I'm just not going to put all my eggs in the scientific basket - so to speak - isn't scientific theory just made up stuff to fit the observations scientists have? and aren't those theories always being refined and adjusted as new evidence is gathered and indeed new theories made up?

 

p.s. did you see the prog with James Randi last night and the guy who could paint pictures of future events? what did you think?

 

[back2basics]

The human mind can dream up all sorts of things, that seem real. Which i why it should not be trusted.

 

But we have to trust it to a certain extent, we have to trust that our minds isn't making everything up. Lets take DNA as another example. We thought for many years that certain illnesses etc were genetic. We had some proof because family members would die of the same thing. So one day we discover DNA, and the we try to reverse engineer DNA to work out what each strand means. Once that was done we can test our conclusions by testing more and more subjects who have died, have red hair or what ever. It all adds up.

 

So the ONLY argument is that we are making it all up. That the only reason DNA testing works is because our minds created the methodologies and results to fit what we believed. Well if thats true, then the people who are dying of illnesses they hold the DNA marker for are not really dying. We are imagining it, we cannot be imagining the markers (or their correlation to the disease) because we have seen so many people die that now it statistically impossible. So if these people are not dying we must question our very existence, when you start doing that it's what is called Nihilism, and you may as well just not do anything. Don't kill yourself because you cannot, your not even alive. Why even post, your not really posting, i am not responding etc.

[Jamie]

Dear B2B,

 

Science is activity of the human intellect (something that people *do*) ... how can it be anything other than subjective ?

[Siân]

I'm never sure why it is that when things don't go 'right' in tarot readings / religion or any other paradigm it disproves the whole belief system. If that's the case then science should have been dismissed years ago as a way of looking at things - cos I don't think I saw one science experiment in school go the way it was supposed to.

 

Of course the science teacher could always explain why it didn't work and what SHOULD have happened but hey the teacher wasn't making excuses (like the clairvoyant or tarot reader) cos it's science so it must be the only true way of looking at the world

 

Personally I see science as being limited - it explains how but not why. I love the word "why ?"

 

PS - I don't know if I've understood you Moon but I took what you were saying about the bumble bee to be a reference to something I was told once :

 

according to the current laws / theories of aerodynamics bumble bees shouldn't be able to fly.

 

Not having studied the subject I have no idea if this is true - the friend who said it has a PhD in aeronautical engineering. Mind you he added :

 

but there are also lots of theories flying around about how how they do

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

:rolleyes: