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Question on Intelligent Design
- Thread starter Unveiled Artist
- Start date
shawn001
Well-Known Member
You keep using the term "higher level of consciousness." I have no idea what your definition of that really is, to begin with, as its well known its altered state of conciousness, heightened state of consciousness, or lowered States of conciousness. Meditation is an altered state of consciousness and a lot of its benefits are well known in science, which you haven't begun to touch on or have shown you actually understand them..
"People often ask how I got interested in the brain; my rhetorical answer is: 'How can anyone NOT be interested in it?' Everything you call 'human nature' and consciousness arises from it."
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
The article below is about drugs causing a 'heightened state of consciousness' by altering brain chemistry.
Psychedelic drugs induce 'heightened state of consciousness', brain scans show
Psychedelic drugs induce 'heightened state of consciousness', brain scans show
Since you mention the Budda studies a lot, its funny you don't mention the Dr doing them and his research.
RICHARD DAVIDSON: ADVANCING THE STATE OF MINDFULNESS
"Dr. Davidson has learned much about how meditation affects the brain by studying gamma waves, an indicator of brain plasticity (which refers to the brain’s ability to form new connections between nerve cells). In the average person, gamma oscillations typically last less than one second—but in experienced meditators, they last much longer. Recent research has also shown that these waves are more prevalent when we focus on positive emotions. For longtime meditators such as Buddhist monks, they persist even during sleep."
"
Meditation Meets Molecules
Meanwhile, other pathbreaking work in meditation continues under Dr. Davidson’s leadership—especially with regard to how it can affect our DNA. “After one day in intensive practice, we can actually detect alterations in gene expression,” Dr. Davidson reports. Of particular importance, meditation has been shown to reduce expression of genes that promote inflammation—a finding that has far-reaching potential for improving health, given that inflammation is implicated in everything from heart disease and cancer to arthritis, allergies, and kidney failure.
Dr. Davidson understands that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to meditation. “There are hundreds of types of practices,” he says. “What’s best for one person is not best for another. Individuals need to find the strategy that works for them and stick with that.”
Of course, there are many meditation researchers out there as well. But few can rival Dr. Davidson.
https://www.rewireme.com/wellness/richard-davidson-advancing-state-mindfulness/
Milton Platt
Well-Known Member
I read this definition "The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." From Discovery.org. It's another way of saying there is a first cause for natural life rather than it happening randomly.
If I did not know anything at all, a blank slate to any knowledge, and just a human being walking around earth, then I see this huge building with individual bricks. I have no language, no concept, and no way to properly analyze what I see and even more complex how it came to be.
If you saw this building, you'd immediately think someone built it so there must be a First Cause. Yet, life isn't caused by an origin but formed by already pre-existing things.
If someone came and built the house, they are not the first cause. They just made it into a shape we identify as a house. The bricks were already there. It was just moved to creation of one thing of illusion (house doesn't exist) to another.
1. So, one I don't understand how there is such a thing as a First Cause. Can you explain that to me by how I can see a building and conclude the building itself (the actual blocks) did not exist until I started putting it together?
2. Then two, there is Intelligence. Not only does there need to be a cause, it needs to be intelligent? Is that another word for, the cause need to be something that can make a pattern?
For example, if the bricks were spread on the floor, it's no longer what we call a house. So, people disregard it as a lump of bricks. But when it's built into a house, then they find value into it.
3. Why do you find value in intelligence (or pattern?) and not that things exist in and of itself?
A lump of bricks is just as valuable (if we, again, had no definition of reference of what that means to us humans) than the house it is made from. That, and it's an illusion to think there is such thing as a house built by nature.
4. So are you guys looking far more into a pattern that does not exist from nature's perspective?
All I said above has nothing to do with god. It is just asking how there is a first cause, what does it mean, and the definition and function of it being intelligent.
5. If there was a god or creator (Entity that creates without referred to any specific religion), that adds some more confusion to my head. If there is an entity, what is the nature of this entity?
7. If you were to describe First Cause other than it being, well, the First cause, how would you describe what it is?
Then go a bit further.
8. How in the world did you come up with the First Cause being a Who?
Take your time. I do want answers to these questions from both creationist, non-creationist, and those in between.
I don't know anything about evolution and never was into it. What I do know but would like to go to our local museum since it was there that we came from water. So, I'd like to explore that more. But again, that doesn't mean there is a first cause just a place of origin.
If everything has to have a cause, then there cannot be a 'first cause".
Unveiled Artist
Veteran Member
????
Nothing had a cause so there is no first cause. Everything formed, shaped, collided, and all of that from pre-existing things that we call planets, plants, animals, and humans. From the farthest star in the galaxies to the ant that keeps climbing up my wall.
What is the purpose of needing a first cause?
Spiritually, what does that do for people?
godnotgod
Thou art That
'Altered state of consciousness' is a gross misnomer. In reality, the ordinary everyday mentality is the altered state, highly conditioned, so much so, that one does not know he is conditioned, and accepts his conditioning as 'reality'. The default state of consciousness, that is to say, our natural unaltered way of seeing the world, is unconditioned and spontaneous. This state of mind is what the Budha called 'Original Mind'. But due to social indoctrination from birth, we lose sight of this original mind, and conform to society's notion of reality, which was handed to them from generation to generation. Mostly, this has to do with moral behavior*. We formulated the notion that man, at root, is barbaric and selfish, and must be controlled at all times. Thus, the Social Contract Theory. Higher, or Awakened Consciousness says that selfishness, greed, and avarice are conditioned over our true nature, which is actually a very good nature. And so the mystic is intent upon subduing his social indoctrination and awakening his Original Mind, which is the enlightened mind, and which sees through the facade of ordinary 'reality' as bogus.
Altered consciousness via drugs is still within the realm of conditioned mind, and are ultimately rejected by the authentic spiritual practitioner.
Meditation for its own sake is a valid approach, but is only employed for certain beneficial side effects, such as you have described. But in terms of Higher Consciousness, it alone is insufficient. It is only the intuitive pathway to the transformative spiritual experience we call Nirvana, Enlightenment, Satori, etc. So while it is true that there are 'hundreds of types of meditative practices', there is still only one Reality. Buddhists talk about the 10,000 paths to enlightenment, and Hindus talk about the saltiness of the sea being the same everywhere.
But you have pointed to just enough info to indicate that consciousness is what defines the material world, and not the other way around.
*It was morality which Confucius was most concerned about, while the mystic Lao tse pointed deeper to man's original nature. The Taoist metaphor for this natural state is The Uncarved Block, being a blank piece of wood prior to the carver (ie society) putting the first mark into it.
And when Yeshu told the Jews:
'Unless you turn and become as little children, you will not enter into Paradise'
He was saying that unless man turns away from society's dualistic moral teaching of good vs evil, and turn inward to his true, original nature, he will not realize true happiness. Children, in their natural state of mind, tend to see things without passing judgment over them. IOW, they simply see things as they are, rather than how our social indoctrination dictates how they should be according to moral codes.
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shawn001
Well-Known Member
"'Altered state of consciousness' is a gross misnomer."
dictionary.com
"
altered state of consciousness
noun
1.
any modification of the normal state of consciousness or awareness, including drowsiness or sleep and also states created by the use of alcohol, drugs, hypnosis, or techniques of meditation.
the definition of altered state of consciousness
"Altered consciousness via drugs is still within the realm of conditioned mind, and are ultimately rejected by the authentic spiritual practitioner."
This is clearly your own made up statement.
So there are no "authentic spiritual practitioners" in the Navajo religion for hundreds of years? Who defines an "authentic spiritual practitioner" in the first place because it seems to be you and you don't have that authority.
"In reality, the ordinary everyday mentality is the altered state, highly conditioned, so much so, that one does not know he is conditioned, and accepts his conditioning as 'reality'. The default state of consciousness, that is to say, our natural unaltered way of seeing the world, is unconditioned and spontaneous. This state of mind is what the Budha called 'Original Mind'. But due to social indoctrination from birth, we lose sight of this original mind, and conform to society's notion of reality, which was handed to them from generation to generation. Mostly, this has to do with moral behavior*. We formulated the notion that man, at root, is barbaric and selfish, and must be controlled at all times. Thus, the Social Contract Theory. Higher, or Awakened Consciousness says that selfishness, greed, and avarice are conditioned over our true nature, which is actually a very good nature. And so the mystic is intent upon subduing his social indoctrination and awakening his Original Mind, which is the enlightened mind, and which sees through the facade of ordinary 'reality' as bogus.
IOW,
“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” — Mark Twain
Our Brains Are Wired for Morality: Evolution, Development, and Neuroscience
"
ABSTRACT
Psychological and neuroscience research both tell us that morality, our mental ability to tell right from wrong in our behaviors and the behaviors of others, is a product of evolution. Morality has been passed on through the course of evolution because it helps us to live in large social groups by enhancing our ability to get along and interact with others. “Building blocks” of morality, such as sensing fairness, experiencing empathy, and judging others’ harmful and helpful actions, can be observed in infancy, before a child’s social environment would be able to have a strong influence. Specific parts of the human brain are involved in moral reasoning – both the kind that happens very quickly and the kind that is thought out. Damage to certain parts of the brain can dramatically alter moral judgment and behavior. Although human morality has been passed down through evolution, it is also dependent on the culture in which we grow up. What humans consider to be moral behavior varies from culture to culture and also varies across time.
Our Brains are Wired for Morality: Evolution, Development, and Neuroscience
godnotgod
Thou art That
Did you hear what I said? I said that what most of mankind considers to be the "normal state of consciousness or awareness", is, in reality, an altered state of consciousness. Why? Because our so-called "normal state" is a highly conditioned state that has become so commonplace that we think it to be the default state. It is not. The default state is that state of consciousness one awakens to from the conditioned state. The conditioning we live under is literally a powerful spell, a hypnotic state, which keeps man in delusion, without him knowing it...at least for a very long time, until, one day he senses that something is not quite right with his 'normal' state of consciousness. Up until that moment, he is in the Hide phase of the cosmic game of Hide and Seek. After that moment, he embarks upon the Seek phase of the game. But unbeknownst to him, That which he is seeking is precisely what is causing him to seek!
*****
Waking Sleep
"The third state of consciousness is experienced when man awakens from physical sleep and plunges at once into the condition called "identification." Identification is the essence of the third state of consciousness. In this state, man has no separate awareness. He is lost in whatever he happens to be doing, feeling, thinking. Because he is lost, immersed, not present in himself, this condition, the
third state of consciousness, is referred to in the Gurdjieffian system as the state of "waking sleep."
Man in this state is described not as the real man but as a machine, without inner unity, real will or
permanent I, acted upon and manipulated by external forces as a puppet is activated by the
puppeteer.
For many people, this concept of waking sleep makes no sense at all. They firmly maintain that,
once they "wake up," they are responsible beings, masters of themselves, fully conscious, and that
anyone who tells them that they are not is a fool or a liar. It is almost impossible to convince such
people that they are deceiving themselves because, when a man is told that he is not really
conscious, a mechanism is activated within him which awakens him for a moment. He replies,
indignantly, "But I am fully conscious," and because of this "trick of Nature" as Ouspensky used to
call it, he does become conscious for a moment. He moves from the third room to the threshold of
the fourth room, answers the challenge, and at once goes to sleep again, firmly convinced that he is
a fully awakened being.
So, in the Myth of the Mad King, it makes no difference how often the king's ministers tell him that
he is living in the cellar instead of his palace. He will reply, and really believe his reply, that the
cellar is his palace and that they are the mad ones for suggesting that it is not. It was exactly this reaction that Plato described in his account of the prisoners in the cave (which is
actually a variant of the Myth of the Mad King). Suppose, says Plato in his Republic (Loeb edition),
that one of the prisoners in the cave, whose only impression of reality is derived from watchingshadows on the walls, escapes into the world outside. Suppose he is of an altruistic disposition and returns to tell the other prisoners of the bright and varied world that lies beyond their prison. Suppose he announces that all things they have ever seen are merely shadows. Will they welcome that message? Not likely! There will certainly be laughter at his expense and it will be said that the only result of his escapade up there is that he has come back with his eyesight ruined. Moral: it's a fool's game even to make the attempt to go up aloft; and as for the busybody who goes in for all the liberating and translating to higher spheres, if ever we have a chance to catch and kill him we will certainly take it.
The fact is that man in the third state of consciousness is in a situation from which it is hard to
escape. He does not recognize the state as waking sleep, does not understand the meaning of
identification. If anyone tells him that he is not fully conscious, he replies that he is conscious and,
by the "trick of Nature," becomes conscious for a moment. He is like a man surrounded by
distorting mirrors which offer him an image of himself that in no way corresponds to reality. If he is
fat, they tell him he is slender. If he is old, they tell him he is young. He is very happy to believe the
mirrors for they save him from that hardest of all tasks, the struggle to know himself as he-really is.
Furthermore, this sleeping man is surrounded by other sleeping people and the whole culture in which he lives serves to perpetuate that state of sleep. Its ethics, morality, value systems are all based on the idea that it is lawful and desirable for man to spend his life in the third room rather than in a struggle to enter the fourth. Teachings that exhort men to awaken, to adopt a system of values based on levels of being rather than material possessions are distrusted. Theoretically, in the United States at least, what are loosely called "spiritual values" are accepted as valid, but practically they do not carry much weight."
excerpted from: The Master Game, by Robert deRopp
godnotgod
Thou art That
I am referring to synthetic drugs, such as LSD, and the like, and their mis-use.
Peyote as used in the Navajo community is a natural psychedelic and considered a sacrament which the participant prepares for.
Laboratory drugs used with the intent of gaining instant spiritual experience is considered illegal in the spiritual community. How many stories have we heard of abuses of these drugs on the streets of America by deluded youth, some even leading to death. The high priest of LSD, Timothy Leary, met with an ignoble death. I say this with complete authority.
*****
.
Risks and Revelations
All this evidence leads to the conclusion that these drugs, so different in chemical composition,
operate through a common mechanism and bring into action a capacity present in the human psyche
but not ordinarily used. This capacity can be defined as the power to transcend temporal limitations,
verbal definitions, the limitations of name and form. When P. D. Ouspensky was gathering the
material for his chapter "Experimental Mysticism" in A New Model of the Universe, he too used
psychedelic drugs (mainly opium). He expressed the essence of his experience in a single sentence:
"Think in other categories." This is the hallmark of the state of higher consciousness. Somehow
these chemicals release the awareness from certain fetters that ordinarily bind it. The doors of
perception are cleansed. The taste of the infinite is obtained. The isolated awareness, imprisoned in
the illusion of its ego-sense, is suddenly liberated from its fetters. Ecstasy is the result, for ecstasy
means nothing more or less than standing outside of oneself. A man dies at one level and is reborn
on another.
Now we return to the starting point. If this self-transcendence is in fact the highest prize life has to
offer, if this jewel can be obtained by the taking of certain drugs, then why should any reasonable
person deny himself this experience? The Mystic Way is, by all accounts, hard and long. How much
easier it is to break open the locked doors of the secret chambers in the psyche by chemical means.
We may suspect that the taking of psychedelic drugs is depraved, realize vaguely that it constitutes a
kind of spiritual burglary, a criminal activity on the spiritual level, a stealing of something that one
has not earned. So what? A generation reared to rely on labor-saving devices can hardly be blamed
for hoping that the insights laboriously earned by saints and mystics may be acquired without effort
by the simple process of swallowing a pill. Nor is this attitude confined to contemporary man. There
have been members of earlier, more ruggedly reared generations, who showed just as much
enthusiasm for the easy rapture afforded by psychedelics. Thomas De Quincey, the English opium
eater, was eloquent on this subject.
Here was a panacea, a pharmakon nepenthes for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness,
about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered. Happiness might now
be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstasies might be corked up in
a pint bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down by mail.De Quincey, of course, was referring to laudanum (tincture of opium), which is a far from ideal
drug for inducing changes in levels of consciousness and does not properly belong in the group
called "psychedelics," being, for most people, only an analgesic (pain reliever). But De Quincey's
delight over his discovery of the effects of opium is paralleled by that of contemporary investigators
over those of LSD, mescaline or psilocybin. Being familiar with the vocabulary of Oriental
mysticism, these explorers sing praises of bottled samadhis or encapsulated satoris and eagerly
spread the word that a short cut exists and that the efforts made by yogis, Sufis, mystics and magi to
break into the triple-locked fourth room were needless. All that these seekers had to do was to
introduce into their metabolism certain chemicals and all locked doors would open by themselves.
Their view is summed up by a saying of the opium smokers of India: "If heaven can be obtained for
a pice [i.e., a penny], why should you be so envious?"
This may seem a reassuring message but is not a correct one. The high ends of Creative Psychology can no more be attained by taking drugs than the high ends of art can be achieved by slopping paint about at random. There are those who insist that such slopping is art. There are those who insist that pill swallowing can lead to higher consciousness. Both are wrong.
However, this much can be said in favor of the psychedelics. If they are taken under the right
conditions, with proper preparation, under the supervision of one who knows how to guide the
explorer in the territory he will enter, they can, on occasions at least, be of some value. They can
challenge the traveler saying: "These are the mountain peaks. They really exist. Now make up your
mind. Are you strong enough, persistent enough to try to climb them?"
When the psychedelics offer this challenge they are performing a valuable function. By awakening
the traveler to his own inner potentialities, they provide him with a game worth playing, a task
worth undertaking, a pilgrimage on which it is worthwhile to embark. Furthermore, they offer
valuable clues to one who wishes to understand his own inner chemistry. They spotlight certain
processes and thus make it easier for the experimentalist to recognize the mechanisms involved.
When he fully understands how certain effects are produced, he can learn to initiate them at will
without the use of drugs.
This is the lawful use of the psychedelics. (No reference is intended to human laws designed to
regulate the use of these substances. ) It is physiologically lawful to obtain information about the
workings of one's own organism by any means that does not damage the organism or render its
possessor a slave to the procedure in question (physically dependent on a drug, for example). It is
psychologically (or spiritually) lawful to obtain such information as part of a Me game, the aim of
which is realization of higher states of awareness. It is not spiritually lawful to take psychedelics
merely for "kicks" or to use them as substitutes for the special kind of inner work that alone can
produce lasting results. Those who use the drugs in this way suffer a penalty imposed not by flat-
footed tax collectors disguised as "narcotics agents," but by the impartial forces that regulate a
man's fate. The penalty takes this form: he who misuses psychedelics sacrifices his capacity to
develop by persistently squandering those inner resources on which growth depends. He commits
himself to a descending spiral and the further he travels down this path, the more difficult it
becomes for him to reascend. Finally the power to reascend is lost altogether.
Robert deRopp: The Master Game
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godnotgod
Thou art That
No. Again, what the ordinary mind sees as 'reality' is an illusion, and you can't beat an illusion, because it doesn't exist in the first place. We feel a need to 'beat reality' because we think it to be real, and act upon it, and the result is suffering. The thing to do is to square with the illusion and see it for what it is. Then it's over. To dance with it is to invite it in and to perpetuate it.
Our brains are wired for morality via social indoctrination and learning. IOW, morality is a LEARNED response. But all one need do is to glance at the ongoing sad state of the world to see the outcomes of morality in action.
I think you are confusing morality with ethics and virtue. So what's the problem with entertaining and nurturing morality? I turn to the Chinese for this:
"When a concept of The Good is formed, a corresponding concept of Evil has also automatically been formed. Having formed Evil, The Good must now combat Evil, as dictated by the principles of The Good. In combating Evil, one only makes Evil stronger. Therefore the sage never does moral good"
A modern example of how this works is our involvement in the Middle East wars, and the Evil so created via our doing moral 'Good'.
*****
When a truly kind man does something, he leaves nothing undone.
When a just man does something, he leaves a great deal to be done.
When a moralist does something and no one responds,
He rolls up his sleeves in an attempt to enforce order by force.
Therefore when Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is kindness.
When kindness is lost, there is justice.
When justice is lost, there is ritual.
Now ritual is the husk of faith and loyalty, the beginning of confusion.
Knowledge of the future is only a flowery trapping of the Tao.
It is the beginning of folly.
Tao te Ching, Ch 38
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shawn001
Well-Known Member
"the conditioning we live under is literally a powerful spell, a hypnotic state"
Not according to brain waves which you point out with meditation all the time.
We are in Beta our normal waking state.
I have been doing hypnotherapy for over 20 years and have studied it with top experts out of Stanford, UNC and other experts in England. I know what it is and its effects.
We're done, I can't nor do I want to keep up when your not on target, making stuff up as you go to support your own beliefs and putting your own and others mystical pseudoscience spin on everything as if they were facts, they are not. Good luck with your "Experimental Mysticism" but I am not buying it.
Not according to brain waves which you point out with meditation all the time.
We are in Beta our normal waking state.
I have been doing hypnotherapy for over 20 years and have studied it with top experts out of Stanford, UNC and other experts in England. I know what it is and its effects.
We're done, I can't nor do I want to keep up when your not on target, making stuff up as you go to support your own beliefs and putting your own and others mystical pseudoscience spin on everything as if they were facts, they are not. Good luck with your "Experimental Mysticism" but I am not buying it.
godnotgod
Thou art That
So what? What does this have to do with the fact that we are socially indoctrinated from birth; a social indoctrination that creates a 'self' called 'I', which is simply the accumulation of imagery, memories of past experiences, titles, and reinforcements from peers and others. This 'I' is a product of the past. IT DOESN'T EXIST! This state of Identification is fiction, revealed as such upon a true awakening onto the next higher center of consciousness, that of Self-Transcendence. There is article after article describing the radical changes that higher states of consciousness have on the brain.
I don't care how much hypnotherapy you do or how many experts you work with: fact is, you know nothing of higher states of consciousness beyond Identification, which you yourself are caught in, and don't even know it.
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shawn001
Well-Known Member
"An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”"
“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”"
godnotgod
Thou art That
Yes, I know that story. But truth is, there are no 'two wolves'. There is always only the One Reality, playing itself as 'two wolves'. It's your journey to find out why.
godnotgod
Thou art That
Certainly. And that's because there is no attainment of Enlightenment, nor an attainer of Enlightenment. There is only Enlightenment itself.