Encephalon

Thank you very much. I appreciate the support because I am currently being taken to task for being mean-spirited in my advancement of clarity. Hopefully, I haven't offended everyone.

Thank you. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/burden-of-proof.html When an idea or theory is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, it no longer bares the burden. My god, Immortal, you could make money driving professors insane! Universities could hire you to make unpopular professors blow a gasket, and then they could deny them tenure!

Fuck you!

well now you've given me reason to feel guilty for being a meanie! But please read my post; this whole thread came about because people with insufficient intellectual integrity to support their own arguments persist in making one unsupportable claim after another. We're not talking about regular vanilla or french vanilla. The precedent we are setting is one in which people can come in here, lie about their credentials, disseminate falsehoods, and then scream "Victim!" when others challenge their BS. Cat could have chimed in whenever she wanted to and told Immortal to get his scientific shit straight, but she saw fit to slap me on the wrist for being insensitive. Is there any clearer evidence of where our priorities are? I was in the military when Reagan came in and stupefied the nation, dumbed us down and destroyed the public school system even more than it already was, and believe me, we were a lot happier, and a much more courteous before all this happened. it's really chilling.

I don't believe that was the true point he was making, Ralis. He was making a tongue in cheek argument that I didn't think his post was worthy because he was too young, not educated enough, he suffered too much exposure to the Internet, and didn't regard the scientific establishment as an unimpeachable source. All of this is irrelevant and obviously so to anyone paying attention to the thread; if you're going to make a point, no matter how contentious, you bare the burden of proof. This includes knowing your subject matter enough to be credible and not lying about your level of expertise. If this point bounced off his forehead then it probably was a good idea that he abstained from posting. It's clear that if it's a choice between maintaining an amiable online environment or keeping falsehoods from being disseminated, many TTBs seem willing to tolerate absolute nonsense if it keeps everyone happy and soft and warm. I look back at the history of humankind to see the havoc wrought by falsehood and superstition and I shudder to find that "making nice" has subordinated the respect and love for truth. I'm entirely aware of the Zen adage that says "Truth spoken in anger is not truth," and I am well-versed in the union of wisdom and compassion, but I think we're dealing with an entirely new level of collective delusion, where aggressive ignorance and intellectual irresponsibility have become normalized in the service of "kindness," not just in TTB but throughout culture. This brand of kindness I'll pass on.

BFD!! What could possibly be going through your head that would attach any significance to this point? I didn't think this was possible but you've just scaled another height of pettiness. Unbelievable.

Yeah, I would, especially after hearing you say this - "Real levitation and en mass god self realization will be seen at the same moment. Centripetal force (from Latin centrum "center" and petere "to seek"[1]) is a force that makes a body follow a curved path: it is always directed orthogonal to the velocity of the body, toward the instantaneous center of curvature of the path. alteration of spin face of monopole(s) didn't mean to hijack this thread. The(s)makes monpole both about bindu and is an 'S' curve like the area of greatest density issue point of Holy Cow Tao"

People who post arguments that veer so far out of the scope of accepted scientific consensus, such as religious arguments against evolution, bare most of the burden for this "abrasive atmosphere" as you call it, especially when they presume to know more than they actually do. The burden of proof falls on those who make the claims. If people aren't up to the task, it is almost always a sign that they aren't in command of their material. There's no excuse for this, no matter how "nice" they are.

Dear new person - This is a grossly uninformed question. Please note that this forum is not meant to be an alternative to your own reading and independent study. It can be an amazingly cool place for sharing ideas though.

One unfortunate side effect of having to put up with superstitious cult members and would-be Revolutionaries of Reigning Paradigm (who never made it past high school) is that for every one of them posting in TTB there are perhaps dozens of truly bright and credentialed souls with a sincere interest in Taoism, and they come in here looking for likeminded folk and find people living in the Stone Age and it's "Hasta la vista, baby!"

Was Barbra Steisand a cannibal? Did Mark Twain invent the internet? Was Eric Clapton ever a member of the Italian mafia?

I'd really like to stay on task if that's ok. The original question is "How old were you when you first got regular access to the Internet?" An example of an answer would be "I was 38 when I first acquired regular access to the internet." Thanks.

Right. We reactionaries feel so threatened by pseudoscience that we suffer bouts of paranoia. It couldn't possibly be that some people cultivate scholarship as a tool of refining an authentic engagement with the world, including a spiritual engagement? Every few months, just when we think we can't possibly be more astonished, people like yourself make their entrance. They proclaim a mastery of certain bodies of knowledge but have never set foot on a college campus or signed up for a library card. And when confronted by educated people who have the temerity to engage your arguments, the strongest defense you can summon on your behalf is to brand them as narrow-minded and psychologically impaired. At this point, you're doing us a favor by granting us the opportunity to see how deluded the era of the Internet can allow people to become.

You're a more astute observer than I am. I've met plenty of New Age folks, the kind who adore metaphysics because it's easier to study than physics, who have been raised within a teleological framework - all manner of pantheisms and panentheisms, east and west - and have no sympathy for or resonance with christian fundamentalists. I first thought he was part of this crowd, hapless but with no malice. I suspect Torus693 is on a simialr mission given his Jehovah's Witness background and his unintelligible stirrings of the mud.

Thanks everybody for posting your suggestions. Very helpful indeed. S.

Thank you Immortal, for posting links to videos produced by the Moody Bible Institute and the Moody Institute of Science, a fundamentalist Christian group that espouses creationism and biblical inerrancy. It's interseting that you failed to disclose the source of this video and that you seem to have such an astonishingly low regard for what we are trying to accomplish here at Thetaobums. You are not the first fundamentalist to come in here and muddy the waters with your religious propaganda, but you did seem to effectively mask your intentions behind the disguise of a young and foolish New Ager. Thanks for the entertainment. I hope you get what's coming to you. http://ncse.com/book/export/html/1737

?? I would agree with you that left-right polarity offers little explanatory power. It is a false dichotomy. But would I, or any of my college-educated peers, or any of my professors replace it with the conspiratorial model you've described? Hardly. Most of us firmly believe that the polarity is between the top and bottom, not between left and right. Class conflict offers a far more plausible explanation, and you don't have to be a raging marxist to see the desparity of wealth and power and the antagonisms created by it. Class theory also has the benefit of hundreds, even thousands of years of historical analysis behind it, so I don't think it's plausible that the post baby boomer generation, armed with the internet and allegedly freed of corporate media, has in one generation successfully performed a wholesale coup on hundreds of years of western academic tradition. I would also suggest that your decision to not even list traditional class theory as a viable analytical tool for social conflict is in itself a sign of just how successful the ruling/corporate class has been in completely eliminating the subject of class stratification from American discourse. To even bring it up publicly is to risk ostracism, even though a class or marxist analysis is considered one of a handful of legitimate social theories in universities outside of the US. Cheers, comrade!

I can appreciate your need for entertainment, but coming in here and regularly pushing the limits of absurdity should be a warning sign to you that your life has reached the critically boring stage.

I am in complete agreement with you Steve F, and may even plagiarize you're succinct comments for future use. Unlike some other members who have gone off on unusual tangents or have been banned for psychologically disturbing patterns of thought (I won't name names), Immortal4Life seems to be harmless enough and has enough lucidity to construct sensible sentences. But I still disagree with virtually everthing he's ever posted. I think his anti-science agenda is an unconscious one that naturally stems from the absence of a formal background in hard science, which explains his inability to engage in written rapport with other members or share anything about his alleged academic career. I'm amazed that TTBums haven't gotten tired of it yet. I know some think I should be raked over the coals for being such a meanie, but when the snake oil salesman comes to town, we have a right to speak up.

There is liberal outrage. Read the alternative press - Mother Jones, The Nation, In These Times, Pacifica Radio - all these voices are seething by the betrayal. The so-called "Liberal Media," what conservatives regard as just about everything except the Washington Times, Fox News, and Regnery Publishing, and what progressives, and I, call "mainstream media," are dutifully performing the same function they've performed since Day One of corporate-owned print and TV media; cheerleading for the establishment, no matter who's in office. I don't believe that a truly progressive candidate could ever be elected to High Office in this country because we're becoming more of a plutocracy - rule by the rich - than a democracy. I'd love to see your sources about NWO sponsored Manchurian Candidate themes. There is one thing we can definitely agree on; we get our information from radically different sources. Post, ten minutes later - I just googled " Obama New world order manchurian candidate" and sure enough, a shitload of material, about 118,000 pieces, came up in support of your argument... and virtually every source was written by conspiratorial or hard-right voices. This only proves that you subscribe to these sources. I think I'll continue to stick with journalists and news sources that explain the Obama presidency in terms of the ongoing corrosion of government by monied institutions and raw power politics. The day I see your sources speaking in concert with mine, perhaps I'll broaden my field of plausibility. I do think 9/11 was an inside job, however.

I sign off with Wilber and try to cite him where I can. I agree with Gerard too; these practices are for those in a monastic environment or for modern adepts who are committed to practice and regular retreats. I've leveled some pretty fierce criticisms of Non in the past but I question the wisdom of singling him out for the purpose of introducing this subject matter. He suffers enough already.

I also believe this is central to the argument. While we should maintain our indebtedness to Maslow for taking the radical course of studying highly successful, or self-actualized, beings, I think we still have a lot to learn about human nature by studying our most wounded brethren. Dr. Gabor Mate has some very interesting and enlightening observations about human nature through his work with people suffering from addiction. Heritable traits and moral and ethical education aside, the way human beings are treated in their young and formative years is proving to be a more important factor, insofar as early childhood experience affects brain tissue still in development.

Here's what I think about this discussion - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCn3W38iGXk&feature=related