http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativism

Interesting. The other side of the coin is, of course, absolutism...As I understand it all "True" religions, including scientism, advocate absolutism.

I think most scientists accept the dominance of philosophy over science, so they are not adherents of scientism, and therefore are not absolutist. Personally, I am a technologist. Technology is the art and science of knowing how to do things. It's action oriented, but based on learning. As such, it (interestingly) subsumes even philosophy, which in that (relativist) framework becomes the technology of "how to think about things". Is this personal arrogance or just novel thinking?

BEFORE THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE--the cradle of awe and sin
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I presume there was once a time--perhaps until about 1,000,000 years ago--when this earth was inhabited only by animal-like beings. No one that we would relate to as a human being walked this earth. This was long before the appearance of the Neanderthals and the Cro Magnons. At that time, only the strongest, physically and mentally, survived to propagate their genes.

As I understand it, all beings of that time were driven to act according to their survival instincts. There was no fear of hell or hope of heaven, or conscious respect for life, per se. Thus there were no feelings of guilt, fear of punishment, awe or hope for any kind of future, and no sense of sin. In short, there was no religion of even the most primitive kind, including superstition.

Even today, aimal beings seem not to care about their history, nor do they plan, consciously, for their future. They appear to be able to live in what William Olser called "day-tight compartments" of the now. Depending on their circumstances, this now can be one of hunger, restlessness and panic, or one of rest, peace and contentment.

=================
As I understand it, consciousness as we know--initiating the beginning of sin--began to evolve with the coming of: It seems to me that it was some kind of un-refined religion--like a spark of consciousness--in one form or another, that first bridged the gap and made all the difference between what it means to be an animal being or a human being and set us on what we now call a quest for the spirit along, "the road less travelled."

I must check how James A. Michener handles this in his book, The Source.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(novel)

In short: No consciousness. No history. No sin. And no possibility for any kind of redemptive living.

I think this makes some fallacious assumptions.

Sin is a construct of religion; morality is, in fact, hard-wired into humans because it is evolutionarily advantageous to behave in certain ways - it makes people less prone to kill themselves, makes people woo people to get into their pants , and act in ways that are advantageous to the species. This is not perfect in everyone.

Scientists are methodological naturalists - they assume in their research that the natural world is all that exists, whether they think that or not . (For the record, I, as many other scientists, take that a step further - I am a metaphysical naturalist, which means I think the natural world is the only thing to exist. I am an atheist.)

Consciousness is only beginning to be studied right now, but there is such a thing as consciousness - have you ever heard of the mirror test? Only a small number of any animals can recognize themselves in a mirror.

People do, in fact, recall the past. Superstition has lasted ever since humanity was evolved.

There is no such thing as 'scientism'. Metaphysical naturalism, perhaps, but science continually questions itself, which is the only way it can grow at all .

K, you write: "... but science continually questions itself, which is the only way it can grow at all."

Good to read your comments. The religion to which I belong--one from the reformed tradition--loves the scientific approach to life. It encourages questioning, and on-going reforms.

Sin has by those who limit themselves to religious association become relevant to religious nature.
However the nature of religion is the nature of humanity.
If one does not live with the awareness of their nature, (in this case your belief that morality is hardwired) then sin is the ignoring or ones true nature and the misuse of potential.

As you said: This is not perfect in everyone. would tend to accept sin or the unconscious awareness of nature and self morality as natural.
I would put it another way. The morality that exists within nature is perfect. Choices are not always surrendered to the perfection of nature but to the accepted known concepts of imperfection as being normal and the best of nature as it can be understood at the conscious level of the observer.

There is a difference in conscious awareness of reality and the choices that are made from evolving states of conscious awareness.

Those that make choices from fear and a contracted sense of self as opposed to love and an expanded sense of self tend to produce vastly different results.

I think that is a very interesting way of looking at things Rick. I think the goal of most of science is to either obtain knowledge about something or to cause an effect. I suppose human advancement really comes from learning about something and then knowing how to replicate it to further our own chances of survival.

Rick writes: Interestingly, we get our word 'technology' from the Greek for any craft, art or skill. Carpenters, like Jesus, were called 'technons'.

Rick it is interesting that you acknowledge the dominance of philosophy. I am sure you must be aware that there is such a thing as the philosophy of religion.

And also political philosophy and philosophy of ethics.

From:
The Second Coming of Christ
The resurrection of the Christ within you.
Paramahansa Yogananda

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh. (Luke 6:45)

A good heart will express itself in good actions; evil feelings will express themselves in an evil way. The use of the word heart by Jesus is esoterically significant here. The great master and exponent of Yoga, Patanjali, says that it is the heart or chitta, the feeling aspect of man's consciousness, that has to be controlled in order to attain God-realization. (Yoga Sutras 1:2: "Yoga chitta vritti nirodha--Yoga (scientific union with God) is the neutralization of the modifications of chitta."
"Blessed are the pure for they shall see God.")
As the moon reflected in a pot of whirling water looks distorted, so also the blessed image of man's true nature as the soul is distorted when reflected in the sensation-disturbed mental waters of the bodily consciousness. Patanjali says that when, by meditation, the waves of sensations are stilled, then the pure blessedness of the soul can be perceived.
Experiences invading the mind do not create disturbance of restlessness until the heart, or feeling, is touched. If all experiences remained within an individual as academical knowledge, they could not hurt or bind him. It is the heart, with it's duality, that becomes intimate with all experiences by having feelings of attraction or repulsion for them.
If an individual observed his life's experiences as one unaffectedly watches motion pictures, he would go from this earth a free master. Instead, the heart through likes and dislikes binds an individual to the wheel of birth and death and mortal suffering. The heart therefore is the archives of an individuals life in which he stores his treasure of good or evil. The good person who is accustomed to do good actions and have good thoughts stores good habits in his heart, and his words and actions reflect that goodness. An evil individual, by evil actions, creates evil habits and a liking for evil in his heart; and when he speaks or acts, evil is expressed therein.
Thus, the good or evil entering a mans brain does not automatically make him good or bad; but when that stimulus lodges as feelings of attraction or repulsion within his heart, then it will manifest accordingly as good or evil.
Man lives in an atmosphere fraught with evil, but no evil experience or perception can influence him to evil unless he absorbs the evil as a liking for it in his heart. That which comes out of the heart of man declares and affects him rather than that which merely goes into his brain as knowledge.
("Research indicates that the heart is far more than a simple pump. The heart is, in fact, a highly complex, self-organized information processing center." report Rollin McCraty, Phd., and his associates in Science of the Heart: Exploring the role of the Heart in Human Performance. Boulder Creek, California: Institute of HeartMath, 2001.
"Traditionally, the study of communication pathways between the 'head' and heart has been approached from a rather one-sided perspective, with scientists focusing primarily on the hearts responses to the brains commands. However, we have now learned that communication between the heart and brain is actually a dynamic, ongoing, two-way dialogue, with each organ continually influencing the others function. Research has shown that the heart communicates to the brain in four major ways: neurologically (through transmission of nerve impulses), biochemically (via hormones and neurotransmitters), biophysically (through pressure waves) and energetically (through electromagnetic field interactions). Communications along all these conduits significantly affects the brains activity."
"Neurocardiologists have found that 60 to 65% of the cells of the heart are actually neural cells, not muscle cells as was previously believed," explains child development expert Joseph Chilton Pearce in a 1999 interview in Journal of Family Life (Volume 5, Number 1). "They are identical to the neural cells in the brain, operating through the connecting links called ganglia, with the same axonal and dendritic connections that take place in the brain, as well as through the very same kinds of neurotransmitters found in the brain. Quite literally, in other words, there is a 'brain' in the heart, whose ganglia are linked to every major organ in the body, to the entire muscle spindle system that uniquely enables humans to express their emotions."
"Our emotional-cognitive brain has direct, unmediated neural connections with the heart," Pearce reports. He explains that the brain "makes a qualitive evaluation of our experience of this world and sends that information instant-by-instant down to the heart. In return the heart exhorts the brain to make the appropriate response...In other words, the responses that the heart makes affect the entire human system." Thus, these scientists conclude, though the brain supplies the heart with perceptions, it is the heart, responding to the reports of the brain, that sends positive or negative instructions back to the emotional reactive centers in the brain (and, through hormones released into the blood stream, to the entire body).)

This is news to me.

Me too...

LMAO!!!

The studies described in this section probe several of these communication pathways, looking specifically at how the brain responds to patterns generated by the heart during positive emotional states. The first two studies focus primarily on neurological interactions, demonstrating that the afferent signals the heart sends the brain during positive emotions can alter brain activity in several ways. In the first study, we find that cardiac coherence can drive entrainment between very low frequency brainwaves and heart rhythms, thus further expanding our understanding of the physiological entrainment mode described in the previous section. In the second study, we learn that coherent heart rhythms also lead to increased heart-brain synchronization. The implications of these findings are explored in the third study, which shows that in states of high heart rhythm coherence, individuals demonstrate significant improvements in cognitive performance.

Taken together, the results of these studies demonstrate that intentionally altering one's emotional state through heart focus modifies afferent neurological input from the heart to the brain. The data suggest that as people experience sincere positive feeling states, in which the heart's rhythms become more coherent, the changed information flow from the heart to the brain may act to modify cortical function and influence performance. These findings may also help explain the significant shifts in perception, increased mental clarity and heightened intuitive awareness many individuals have reported when practicing the HeartMath techniques.

The final two studies in this section are concerned with energetic communication by the heart, which we also refer to as cardioelectromagnetic communication. The heart is the most powerful generator of electromagnetic energy in the human body, producing the largest rhythmic electromagnetic field of any of the body's organs. The heart's electrical field is about 60 times greater in amplitude than the electrical activity generated by the brain. This field, measured in the form of an electrocardiogram (ECG), can be detected anywhere on the surface of the body. Furthermore, the magnetic field produced by the heart is more than 5,000 times greater in strength than the field generated by the brain, and can be detected a number of feet away from the body, in all directions, using SQUID-based magnetometers (Figure 12). Prompted by our findings that the cardiac field is modulated by different emotional states (described in the previous section), we performed several studies to investigate the possibility that the electromagnetic field generated by the heart may transmit information that can be received by others.




Figure 12. The heart's electromagnetic field--by far the most powerful rhythmic field produced by the human body--not only envelops every cell of the body but also extends out in all directions into the space around us. The cardiac field can be measured several feet away from the body by sensitive devices. Research conducted at IHM suggests that the heart's field is an important carrier of information.

http://www.heartmath.org/research/science-...art/soh_20.html

How much should I be screaming 'BULLSHIT!' at this? Because it looks like bullshit to me.

Could you be a bit more specific?

That would explain the heart chakra.

Hahaha!!! You are heartless, Rick! Good one, though!

Just out of common sense I ask this question: How would such a primitive organ in the evolutionary scale (even bugs have a heart) find a way to comunicate itself with its most advanced counter-part?

Don't all cells communicate via neuropeptides and receiver sites?
Ever had a gut feeling, or better yet ever had the experience of being physically ill due to emotional stress, turning thought into physical sickness?

News? In what way.

THE STORY OF THE HEART
BTW, years ago, on the CBC radio, our public radio network, I heard a medical doctor, who is also a writer, talk about a book he had written on the history of medicine. He pointed out that, until fairly modern times, physicians had no idea of the nature and function of lungs and their connection with the brain and the heart. They thought of it, the heart, as being the single organ directly associated with breathing, which comes to us from the gods, or God.

HISTORY OF CARDIOLOGY
http://books.google.ca/books?id=Mgl9G8oU1I...lOqgv_8#PPA6,M1
Keep in mind that, generally speaking, the ancients had little or no interest in understanding what we call physiology. The ancient Egyptians valued the heart for its spiritual and mystical qualities. It was the repository of the soul. On the death of the body, they looked on the brains as a simple form of waste to be taken out in bits and pieces, through the nose, and discarded as garbage. Aristotle thought of the brains as a lubricant. In other words, for him the brain was nothing more than three pounds of snot. The way some of us use our brains perhaps Aristotle was right

It wasn't until the late 1200's, at the university of Bologna, when Mondino de Luzzi (1270-1326) taught a serious course in human anatomy. Interestingly, he was assisted by Alessandra Gilliani, a woman.

This is interesting: William Harvey (1578-1657) while he was student of medicine at the University of Paduah--from which he graduated in 1602--discovered, no thanks to his teachers, how blood circulates in the human body. To pass his final exams time he had to accept the erroneous teachings of the ancient Greek physician, Galen. Even when he published his great work on physiology in 1628 he faced severe attacks by the traditionalists. Full credit for his discovery did not come until after his death.
Which, regarding the nature of some brains, goes to prove the snot-theory

THE HEART IN LITERATURE AND POETRY
BTW, because many ancients, and not so ancient, actually believed that the air (spirit) we breathe goes directly into the heart, the heart and the spirit were considered to be one. Thus came about expressions such as sweetheart, bitter heart, hardness of the heart, soft heartedness and even courage--from the French for rage of the heart.

Those are examples of mind over matter. How we see ourselves has tremendous influence over our overall corporal health. a psychological form of placebo effect.
Expressions such as "gut feeling", or "thinking with your little head" don't hold any empirical value in modern science that I know of. They are linguistic expressions based on our ancestor's phychological perceptions about the human condition. Product inventions of the thinking brain, and not the other way around.

Scientifically.

So in essence the body being a product of mind, by example reflects the reality of mind. Feelings such as gut feelings are a reflection of the feeling mind?
Scientifically as you know it, the term "mind over matter" is a product of Fact.

What about cellular communication?

Psychology then as you know it, is not an empirical science, but a product invention of the experience of mind.

Are neuropeptides as a part of cellular communication not a part of modern science?

Another question, in response to your original question:

Which was posted after this information was posted...

Research has shown that the heart communicates to the brain in four major ways: neurologically (through transmission of nerve impulses), biochemically (via hormones and neurotransmitters), biophysically (through pressure waves) and energetically (through electromagnetic field interactions). Communications along all these conduits significantly affects the brains activity."

What is common sense as dictated by science?

Let's say a scientist studies color but is color blind, or in your case, stands by a definition of science that ignores anything scientific if it is not known to him by familiarity. Does science then by its own accord stand as an individual invention of psychological determination or does it stand independent of independent reckoning?
When science is unfamiliar or science is not democratic is it no longer science? Is there a 100th monkey effect to the acceptance of certain aspects of cognitive reason in order to make it real, or does it become real before it is universally accepted by democratic process.

I'll use a simple example. I met a Doctor on an flight from Florida who engaged me in conversation. We were talking about the stubborn beliefs that often keep people from being open minded about new things. He said to me that history shows that people are very stubborn about change and about accepting anything that was new to the science of medicine.
By example he spoke of an unknown student doctor who had come up with the idea of sampling cervical cells to predict certain kinds of cervical cancer, and when he proposed the idea to his superiors at the university he was studying at, was laughed out of the room.
The young doctors name was Georgios Papanikolaou, and his procedure is now called the pap smear and is standard procedure in testing for cervical abnormalities.


There is another example in the form of a story which you reminded me of, since you asked the question after the information was posted.

A ship appears on the horizon of a small island and non of the natives see the ship except for the native shaman. Because the natives are so self absorbed in their own reality their senses are not attuned to the reality of the ship, but the shaman who has spent his life opening himself to broader waves of thought and insight has a keener subtle sense of perception than the others. The shaman says there is a ship on the horizon but no one sees it.
Now if we equate science as you know it to the natives who do not see the ship does this mean science as you know it incapable of knowing the ship?

The obvious answer would be no, unless your science is genetically predisposed to evolutionary sensory perception and projection, or as you put it a product invention of the thinking brain.

Science then must be greater than individual science and evolutionary science. It must be the science of all sciences known and unknown, and a true scientist could not deal only in absolutes unless an absolute has been determined to be unchanging and eternal.
So far the only thing determined to be eternal is God, but science can't seem to find a system of measure to qualify or deny God.

So Science as you know it seems to be subject to relative definition determined solely by your psychological determination and any democratic agreement based on similar recognition of your psychological profile.

Through the autonomic nerveus system all major organs of the body are in constant communication with each other as necessary in order to maintain homeostais, or metabolic equilibrium. But that's communication at its most basic form. Even a body in coma maintains this communication. Your posts are suggesting that this communication between organs are at the human thinking level? If this is so, I don't agree with you.
As far your comment on science, I understand science to be all method of aquiring knowkedge that is reproducible under controled conditions.
Your example of the invisible ship is a farely good one in reference to all phenomena not yet known through this method of aquiring knowledge that is out there still to be discovered through the evolution of science. And there is simply no way of knowing if there will always exist an invisible ship in the future of science. From the standpoint of science, your proposition of a perfect science is nothing but an exciting, provocative fallacy? I hope not.

I think consciousness at the human level is experienced differently, meaning the human thinking level is not finite, or defined other than by supposition. In this case I wasn't under any interpretation that the human organs were part of a community of independent thought tho the studies implied the existence of a neural network.
What this does suggest is that the neural network that is part of the physiology of being human may not be confined simply to the brain but that humanity, or being human exists far beyond the limits of the fleshy matter between the ears.

Whether you agree with it or not, is not necessarily an immutable science.
I can surely understand an opinion.


Your language reveals the underlying reality of that which exists regardless of current technologies. That in itself is tantamount to the reality that science does not accept current values and their associated discoveries as an absolute measure of any kind, but a temporary system of measure in which one moves outward into the potential more.
Just as a man who returns home each night after work is not defined by the past days if he can be something different each day, neither should one define science by its days or by the measure of its day in thought or control. There is always someone with a new thought and someone who will break another's rule.

Optimism is sometimes judged at as an impediment or a defect rather than an integral part of humanity.

I'm reminded of the drive by statement carelessly thrown out with out much conscious awareness..


Statements of judgment followed by big question marks...
I'm pretty sure science is not defined by its emotional content.

DIALOGUE WITH ATHEISTS:
http://www.scienceagogo.com/forum/ubbthrea...r=25385&fpart=4