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Is there a reason we should care about his belief regarding this? Putting aside that smart people in one realm are often quite irrational outside of their exper

Is there a reason we should care about his belief regarding this? Putting aside that smart people in one realm are often quite irrational outside of their expertise, e.g. Isaac Newton being super dedicated to alchemy, Jack Parsons at JPL believing he could summon demons, there is also a quite obvious limitation to this line of evidence. I have very good reason to believe I'm going to survive the next five minutes. That doesn't mean I'm going to "survive" in the sense that we care about regarding why religions draw people in, that is, even conclusive proof we survive past bodily death doesn't make us immortal. An immaterial soul that lingers to experience more stuff for another 20 minutes hardly makes a difference, but even if we can conclusively prove near-death experiences are real, that's all we'd be proving. Same thing with the ontological argument. Even if you can convince yourself the universe must have some kind of intelligent creator that made it on purpose, that does not imply this creator has any kind of human-intelligible personality and monitors or cares what we do, let alone that it must be the Christian creator or any other specific religion's idea of what a god is. Ironically, my wife put on just this morning an episode of Rick and Morty in which Morty gets trapped in the Roy game and Rick has to go in and convince everyone they're in a video game and are really part of a larger reality, which was meant to be a parody of religion. That is, their universe truly did have an intelligent creator, but they were NPCs in a video game and the larger reality is they were really a 14 year-old boy in the real universe. We have no particularly good reason to prefer a priori Christianity versus Hinduism versus we're all 14 year-old boys trapped in a video game just because we're convinced we have a creator and some part of us survives death in this particular simulation. Notably, the real Morty is still going to die in the real world.

ffhhj 3y ago
> Is there a reason we should care about his belief regarding this? The scientific method proposes begining with conjectures, have Gödel's afterlife hypothesis been disproved? Could it be disproved? Can it trigger thoughts in an intelligence? Are those thoughts valued?
- zvmaz 3y ago
  You can posit the existence all sorts of entities as "hypotheses that have not been disproved". See for instance Russell's teapot [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
nprateem 3y ago
What's your point exactly? Oh I see, should we care. I don't. You can reason it either way. As for alchemy it's a meditative practice that makes sense if you understand it. Where the external alchemists went wrong was no one told them what the symbols meant so they thought it was a physical transformation of base metals rather than of consciousness, which is what it is. In fact, the alchemists aimed for direct spiritual knowledge, not faith. From that perspective it's perfectly rational.
- 7thaccount 3y ago
  What does your second paragraph even mean? I don't mean to come across as disrespectful btw. I just honestly don't understand what you're trying to convey.
  - nprateem 3y ago
    It means there's a meditation that is supposed to provide direct spiritual realisation. As this involved a transformation of consciousness, it was known as alchemy - change. However, historically the instructions were kept secret and shared using coded language. All that philosophers stone business, changing lead into gold etc. But they were just symbols which basically refer to sexual energy and consciousness. Here's an example of some of the symbology from the Taoist tradition: https://www.mantakchia.com/inner-alchemy-level-iv-lesser-enlightenment-of-kan-and-li/ https://www.mantakchia.com/inner-alchemy-level-iv-lesser-enl... So, as far as someone like Newton was concerned, a quest for direct spiritual experience rather than just belief makes sense. Some of us just have to know. This experience - raising the kundalini underpins most major religions IMO. A simple look on reddit should convince you this is a very real phenomenon [1]. Gopi Krishna is the canonical case illustrating the dangers, which is likely one reason the meditation was kept secret. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/kundalini/wiki/warnings https://www.reddit.com/r/kundalini/wiki/warnings
    - ziddoap 3y ago
      >A simple look on reddit should convince you this is a very real phenomenon [1] Interesting, for sure, but some reddit wiki is not convincing in any shape or form.

ffhhj 3y ago

> Is there a reason we should care about his belief regarding this? The scientific method proposes begining with conjectures, have Gödel's afterlife hypothesis been disproved? Could it be disproved? Can it trigger thoughts in an intelligence? Are those thoughts valued?

zvmaz 3y ago
You can posit the existence all sorts of entities as "hypotheses that have not been disproved". See for instance Russell's teapot [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

nprateem 3y ago

What's your point exactly? Oh I see, should we care. I don't. You can reason it either way. As for alchemy it's a meditative practice that makes sense if you understand it. Where the external alchemists went wrong was no one told them what the symbols meant so they thought it was a physical transformation of base metals rather than of consciousness, which is what it is. In fact, the alchemists aimed for direct spiritual knowledge, not faith. From that perspective it's perfectly rational.

7thaccount 3y ago
What does your second paragraph even mean? I don't mean to come across as disrespectful btw. I just honestly don't understand what you're trying to convey.
- nprateem 3y ago
  It means there's a meditation that is supposed to provide direct spiritual realisation. As this involved a transformation of consciousness, it was known as alchemy - change. However, historically the instructions were kept secret and shared using coded language. All that philosophers stone business, changing lead into gold etc. But they were just symbols which basically refer to sexual energy and consciousness. Here's an example of some of the symbology from the Taoist tradition: https://www.mantakchia.com/inner-alchemy-level-iv-lesser-enlightenment-of-kan-and-li/ https://www.mantakchia.com/inner-alchemy-level-iv-lesser-enl... So, as far as someone like Newton was concerned, a quest for direct spiritual experience rather than just belief makes sense. Some of us just have to know. This experience - raising the kundalini underpins most major religions IMO. A simple look on reddit should convince you this is a very real phenomenon [1]. Gopi Krishna is the canonical case illustrating the dangers, which is likely one reason the meditation was kept secret. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/kundalini/wiki/warnings https://www.reddit.com/r/kundalini/wiki/warnings
  - ziddoap 3y ago
    >A simple look on reddit should convince you this is a very real phenomenon [1] Interesting, for sure, but some reddit wiki is not convincing in any shape or form.