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where can spirituality and science meet?

Migrated topic.
A behavioral and social scientist might argue that spirituality in that sense is an important evolutionary advantage for the individual and for the social networks they rely on..the individual will be more accpeting of the natural cycles that exist all around them..like death and birth..they will be happier and probabily more stress free and in turn, healthier..they will feel more a part of something than a part of nothing..

This is why religion persists. If a kind of personal spirituality fills the void left by leaving faith based religious view points I am totally fine with it. I think lots of people in modern times have this kind of spirituality and much less of blind religious faith. It makes sense to me why because many religions are being shown to be wrong about many things and rational people see through it because we know so much more now.

I guess I should say I am rather anti religious and I think the world would be better off without it. But its not that I don't not like religious people I have many friends family and co workers who are very religious. I just don't like the irrationality and sheer blood shed caused by religion. Also its just simply not true most of the time which bothers me from a moral honesty perspective.

A world without religion I think would require some kind of personal sense of meaning for people to not be depressed and unhappy and feel like life is pointless. If that importance and meaning comes from something that is called spiritual I am ok with that even if it turned out not to be true. As long as it didn't become another religion...

People are saying i'm dogmatic..
I'm not. U are. With your science crap.

I wouldn't say your dogmatic just deeply confused about how science works. I tried offering you explanations for things that you clearly were missing the point about but you never replied or even acknowledged anything being said (and it took a while to write). But you just kept repeating the same phrases over and over again. Debating in that way is a waste of peoples time and that can create frustration (thats only reason some peoples responses toward you have been more hostile then normal plus the whole cancer thing is a touchy subject). Although I choose to ignore it now...

Are you MOP again?? :d :d :d Thats a joke and if your not MOP you won't get it but others will :d :d :d

So...

Going one step further, would molecules be conscious? Since after all they are the result of a chemical reaction, as are plants and higher life formes, everything continues to feed off something else independently.

What prey tell is feeding upon us?

What about Atoms then? They are animate, distinct and interact with others of their level of manifestation in specific and distinct ways. Do they have a form of communication? Are they conscious?

Exactly.

It's all relative to what level consciousness has attained. No right, no wrong. Just where I/you/It are at any particular moment.

Sorry to pick out your phrases Saidin 😉 but you summed it up nicely and briefly the point where I begin to diverge from more spiritual mindsets. We've discussed this many times before so I am mainly replying to everyone else who agreed with you :)

What I am specifically diverging from is this universal consciousness type reasoning. Maybe later I can explain why but first lets get into it (again 😉 )

Consciousness certainly is the big :?: when spiritual issues get brought up and the meaning of life etc. I am not going to claim that science understands how consciousness comes about because it doesn't. What science has shown us however is that aspects of the state of our brain functioning are involved in creating some of our conscious experiences. We know there is a connection.

People with brain injury are proof of this, people with mental illness are proof of this, psychedelic drugs are proof of this connection. There could be more to consciousness then our brain activity don't get me wrong I simply don't know. We can speculate about what that might be too and people should I think because it creates hypothesis that can be ruled out or proved correct. But what I think I know is that there must be a connection. There is no other acceptable and meaningful explanation for the data.

I think it works something like this...Consciousness is an emergent property of organized matter. I am sure that matter could take a form anatomically and biochemically different and still be conscious if the conditions are right. If we meet another intelligent species from another planet they will probably be different physiologically. But none of the individual parts are conscious. If we cut out neurons and throw them into a nutrient medium and do experiments on them they aren't conscious. They are responding the way they always do chemically (except that the environment has changed and this can give incorrect results but this is only one method people use to study this stuff). But my point is that no individual cells are conscious. No atom is conscious. No plant is conscious. No fungal network is conscious.

So then what is consciousness? I hate to use a computer analogy because they are often missing some major things although AI people will say they aren't but I think they are wrong for reasons I don't know enough about thats just my opinion right now. Consciounsess is kind of like the software of the brain. It depends intimately on the hardware (matter). So then all consciousness is is matter organized temporarily in a particular way. This is why non conscious individual cells can come together to make something that is conscious. This is why a rock is not conscious. This is why an atom is not conscious. Because it doesn't have the hardware arranged properly to be conscious.

Evolutionarily we can thus explain how aspects of consciousness slowly evolved. We can explain why other animals have aspects of consciousness like us and see the differences too. I think consciousness requires a certain kind of hardware although we don't know the details about what that hardware needs to do. We do see these anatomical differences too and the evolutionary relationships among them. Its quite clear then to me the difference between an unconscious organism like a plant and a conscious organisms like a human or monkey is all in the biochemical machinery and what it evolved to do. I think we will find more and more organisms are conscious and self aware in many unique and interesting ways but they need a certain kind of hardware that organisms that are definitely unconscious don't have.
 
"think it works something like this...Consciousness is an emergent property of organized matter."

I would agree with that..
But what I keep thinking is that everything that comes into being seems to build off of other things..things sort of exist and then combine to extend themselves to other things..they become more complex..and eventually something as complex as "conciousness" the way you are referring to it immerges..

But thinking in terms of holographics, I get the idea that something that immerges in a higher state of order is sort of a more complex holographic from of what preceeded it..so there must be a direct link that goes all the way back to even something as singualar as a molecule or even atoms, that can be seen as the analogy(on that level) of what we today call "conciousness"..

I am not saying that it would present itself the same way becasue it is something of lesser complexity..maybe not as self organizing..but there is still information transer..and that really is what seems to be going on with higher levels of order like in humans as well..the more complex the information tansfer the more self organizing things seem to become..thats is why I said that these things(molecules, atoms etc) seem to at least have communication..I dont know what else to call it..

I would just call it conciousness, but I think I would then be extending the word to describe a system that you might not extend it to..
 
I also think that the idea that conciousness is something that immerges out of a state of higher complexity and is temporal makes it seem even more special and sacred...it's like surfing the perfect wave..dropping in on a nice glassy face and riding it out all the way to end..not taking one second of it for granted..There is no past, no future, there is only that one moment and in it, everything is perfect.
 
A well fleshed out and valid position on consciousness burnt. Yes you and I have had this discussion on a number of different threads. :lol: Your position makes sense, and could quite likely be the way it is. As you know, I happen to disagree with you, and here's why.

Going back to Ken Wilbur (sorry, been using him alot as I recently read a couple books of his and they seated concepts well in my mind), and tying in nicely with what Citta said above, we find that we are just one system in an ocean of different and interconnected systems. How do we separate ourselves in the cosmic melange, when our atoms, molecules, bodies, species, planet, solar system represent one layer upon another, one system interating with another?

Our existence seems to be made up of different systems that transcend and include eachother in ever greater expressions of complexity.

Atoms transcend and include quarks
Molecules transcend and include Atoms
Cells transcend and include Molecules
Organisims transcend and include Cells
.
..
...

New levels of organization come into being with unique properties, which cannot be boiled down to their constituent parts. A new level of being has been created, a new level of awareness/consciousness of how the universe is constructed. The previous level has been transcended, yet those of that level are included in the new form. Transcends and includes. If you destroy a rung on this ladder, all "higher" organization fall apart, but all "lower" stay the same. For instance, say you destroyed all the cells in the universe, then everything that is organized by cells would also be destroyed, but you would still have atoms and molecules.

Wholes depend upon parts, but not the other way around.

This is evolution, whose basic drive is to increase depth. This is the self transcending drive of the Universe, to go beyond what came before, yet to include what went before, and thus increase its own depth. Each level has its own depth which increases as complexity increases. Therefore molecules have more depth than atoms, cells more than molecules, plants more than cells, primates more than plants, etc...

Consciousness is what depth looks like from the inside of a system. At each level, consciousness realizes itself more and more, comes into manifestation more and more. It is the emergent property of the universe. Since every level has some sort of depth, every level has some form of consciousness.
 
endlessness said:
yep... consciousness like a standing waveform, a dynamic pattern arising from the unity of the life processes.. An emergent property of complex systems :D


Yes! I like that description..
So now think of this waveform as a species...every species has something that preceeds it, an ancestor, and that ancestor has ancestors etc..basic evolution..

So what is that atoms and molecules etc have that are like the ancestors of conciousness?...This is the best way I can relate to what saidin is saying here..becasue I know that most people think of conciousness as it arises in higher animals..

I have to think of it that way..that is the only way that it works for me..you canot talk about evolution ONLY in the sense of biological evolution..the theory applies everywhere..so even conciousness must have a something akin to a relative in lower states of complexity..
 
yeah thats right, so we come to the realization that EVERYTHING is conscious or alive, which is certainly true at least to some extent... But then again there IS a difference between what we usually call life and other things, so what IS that difference? (I ask because I also dont know... Its hard to define)
 
Aye, that is a good and valid question!

Consciousness and Life...

Perhaps life begins when consciousness coalesces enough of itself to begin what biologists would consider life, and then further evolves from there. Life becomes an emergent property of the universe, as well as an evolution toward greater consciousness. The levels of complexity go up and down the scale infintely.
 
So I was laying there last night in usual fasion:wink:..sort of peering into hyperspace, wndering where the heck it fits in?..what is hyperspace?..

How does it relate to conciousness?..it always feels to me like hyperspace IS conciousness..like it's build from it..it can't come into being without it..

There seems to be alot of information there that is directily related to biological life..now I dont really know what I am saying here..but even if hyperspace stems from neurological activity..what does that really say about it?

Everything has something else at it's core that "births" it..just as atoms for molecules, and those molecules from biological lifeforms..and so if conciousness(human conciousness) is a standing waveform that is an immergent property of a complex system..than when and where does hyperspace fit in/come into being?
 
What hyperspace seems to be for me (note: seems) is an infinite source of information. Where all information comes from, really. And that everything in existence is connected to each other through the consciousness of the mind. But if that is a truth, and not just a feeling created in my mind because I am tripping balls I don't really know. But nevertheless, the feeling of importance while being in there is so great, so profound. It shivers through my body and mind, and it is so real, so authentic...
 
soulfood said:
Science to me is very spiritual, because nothing is more beautiful and inspiring than what is here and now.

That's my kind of holy :)

I'm a devout atheist, and because of that I just dont like the word spirituality. It simply implies that there is something "supernatural" going on that science can never explain, because it is 'magic' or whatever.
I see what you are saying though, every time I open a textbook or look into a microscope I am just awestruck by the complexity and beauty of nature in its raw natural form.

To sum up, spirituality and science should never mix, spirituality is something that people may be allowed to 'believe in', but it should never influence a person's decision making abilities or the lives of others. From my point of view, in this day and age, religion causes more problems than it solves.
Thats my 5 cents.
 
What exactly do you mean by spirit?
Like in the context of 'he has a great fighting spirit!'
or in the context of 'when we die our spirits go do heaven!'
?
I love how people use the word spirits all the time, but when you ask them why they believe that they do have a spirit (even non-religious people) their like uuuuh. I dont know.
And i was guilty of that.
 
thats something ive been thinking about lately while on psychedelics. when (or how) does "I" become "ME". I'm sure that I am not me. "I" has a purpose but "ME" doesn't know what it is. only when the 2 meet does thought actually construct something with answers.
 
soulfood said:
I believe your spirit is what you truly are within. Opposed to a personality which is who you are on the outside.
This is why science and spirituality clash. There are no set definitions for things like spirits, they shift from person to person and they can't really rationalise or justify what they are to any detail or how they work. Science deals with measurable data and spirituality deals with fairly vague ideas, definitely not something you can measure if every person gives you a different definition.
 
fractal enchantment said:
what is hyperspace?..

How does it relate to conciousness?..it always feels to me like hyperspace IS conciousness..like it's build from it..it can't come into being without it..

There seems to be alot of information there that is directily related to biological life..now I dont really know what I am saying here..but even if hyperspace stems from neurological activity..what does that really say about it?

Everything has something else at it's core that "births" it..just as atoms for molecules, and those molecules from biological lifeforms..and so if conciousness(human conciousness) is a standing waveform that is an immergent property of a complex system..than when and where does hyperspace fit in/come into being?

I think you answered your own question there.
Hyperspace is a result of you being conscious, therefore your brain created it.
What does that say about it? - It says that it is a hallucination, likely created by over stimulation of serotonin receptors.
It is an attempt for your mind to process why there is excess & different chemical profiles in the brain, causing stimuli to appear different. It also lights up the limbic system which makes it seem more profound and meaningful.
hope thats what you were talking about. Just keepin it real. :p
 
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