Who Parked The Moon?

[BenDhyan]

Apart from Adam appearing awkward and bumbling in the limelight, I am not aware of anything that would cast technical doubt on the successful landing of Curiosity at the target. Clearly NASA would still be processing the early data, so he was not yet in a position to provide a definitive answer to the some of the technical questions he was being asked, though he should have made arrangements beforehand to have all the specialists present who may have a more up to date picture, but as we saw, he was lost when he called for them without success

[Belligerent Savant]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

All plausible circumstances, and as the 'lead engineer', his role may have been more supervisory and less technical, hence the lack of detail in his replies.

My primary issue though is that he presented far more like a salesman with mediocre improv skills than an engineer (lead or otherwise).

All moot, in any event. NASA -- and by extension, Establishment Science -- will have its adherents and detractors, as with any religion.

[DrEvil]

^^Pet peeve alert!

Science is not a religion!!!!1111!one1!!

To clarify: science is the art of gaining new knowledge through experiment and testing. Religion is the art of believing crazy shit with no proof whatsoever. They're the exact opposite of each other. If religion had a shred of rigorousness to it then more people would believe in Santa Clause than God. Most people have at least seen Santa.

Also, writing Establishment Science with capital letters makes it sound like it's some secretive cabal jealously working in lockstep to guard the approved narrative, while in reality it's a whole bunch of regular people who have science in its many forms as a profession. It makes about as much sense as talking about Establishment Carpentry.
They're also probably the only secret society who publish everything they do.

[identity]

^
LOL

[BenDhyan]

To clarify: science is the art of gaining new knowledge through experiment and testing. Religion is the art of believing crazy shit with no proof whatsoever. They're the exact opposite of each other. .

That's a bit harsh DrEvil, there is shoddy scientific practice as there is shoddy religious practice.Truth is both genuine scientific and religious practice lead to the gaining of new understanding through experiment and testing, difference is, science is mainly objective understanding, while religion is mainly subjective. Subjective understanding that comes about through religious practice of course can not be understood by objective methodologies, it really is a matter of 'suck it and see', it can not be conveyed or taught to another by conceptual means.

[DrEvil]

I honestly don't think I was being harsh. Snarky, absolutely, but not harsh. I genuinely think that all religion is plain wrong, invented by humans who didn't understand the world around them. It's all superstition, a socially acceptable mass delusion. I could take any religious text and replace all the mentions of a deity or prophet with 'Napoleon' or 'Bozo, Clown of Doom', and people would think I was clinically insane as soon as I opened my mouth, but somehow, as long as I stick to the names that have been around for a while I'm perfectly sane.

Here's the first six verses of Genesis to illustrate:

[1:1] In the beginning when Bozo created the heavens and the earth,
[1:2] the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from Bozo swept over the face of the waters.
[1:3] Then Bozo said, "Let there be light"; and there was light.
[1:4] And Bozo saw that the light was good; and Bozo separated the light from the darkness.
[1:5] Bozo called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
[1:6] And Bozo said, "Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters."

As you say, science is the business of objective understanding, and when it comes to understanding how the world around us works that's really the only valid measure. Subjective understanding is just that - subjective. It can be anything that gives meaning to the person reaching that understanding, while having no value whatsoever for a different person. In religion there is no absolute "this is how it is" (plenty of people think there is. That's how we get ISIS and dominionists), while in science (being hyperbolic) there is. Two plus two will always equal four, while "what is God" will have an infinite number of equally valid answers, depending on the person being asked. Religion is useless for gaining any true understanding. At best it's a comfort against a universe that really doesn't give a fuck.

[BenDhyan]

You've lived a sheltered life, religious practice involves much more then mere belief, it is about accelerated evolution to my humble understanding. There are higher states of mind than waking state 'I' consciousness, and it is these higher states that religious practice is meant to develop.

If you have ever had a vivid dream where your dream self is off somewhere having an extraordinary experience while your mortal body is sound asleep in bed, your normal awakened mind's 'I' state is presently dormant, how does that work? It clearly is not your waking state 'I' having the oob experience, it is a self awareness higher than the physical body's ego mind. It is possible for some who meditate in the religious sense, to develop a mind faculty whose self awareness is other than the normal awakened mind's self awareness. Of course this higher mind's self awareness will not necessarily have any interest in this physical space time world. But most people when awake are so overcome by the apparent reality present to the physical senses, imagine it is the final word as to what reality is, and thus they get stuck there...maya.

ps. I hope this is not triggering,,,

[Belligerent Savant]

.
Great stuff, Ben D. Thanks for sharing your perspective.



DrEvil - alot can be typed on this topic (perhaps for another thread, though I'm sure I covered variations of my perspective on the topics of religion and science in prior threads over the years), but I agree with a fair amount of your sentiment. Much of organized religion consists of man-made concepts and language, easy to dismiss when interpreted literally, but there is much more to spirituality -- rather than organized religion -- than can be interpreted by a materialist stance. Bibles also have their share of insightful messages along with the facile/easy to dismiss passages.

Likewise, while the ideal of science is, as you convey, "the business of objective understanding", we know that science can also be quite subjective and biased, vulnerable to agendas with ulterior motives.

In both instances, when Man get their dirty mitts into the mix, the results are often muddled and altered to fit subjective and often relatively primitive ends.



[Numerous fixes to typos while attempting to post this via a stupid 'smart' phone]

[Sounder]

Thanks Ben

Dr. Evil wrote...

To clarify: science is the art of gaining new knowledge through experiment and testing. Religion is the art of believing crazy shit with no proof whatsoever. They're the exact opposite of each other. If religion had a shred of rigorousness to it then more people would believe in Santa Clause than God. Most people have at least seen Santa.

Science is to Scientism as Spirituality is to Religion.

While science aspires to be objective, scientism cares only about proving the assumption. (Glyphosates do not cause cancer and vaccines risk/reward profile is very positive.) Likewise, religion replaces a direct yearning of the soul for authenticity with dogmas that serve to mediate an individuals relationship with the divine.

Both Scientism and Religion serve to impose social (fear based) conformity strictures on the range of possible expressions of the individual.

They make like they oppose each other, but they are more the same than different.

[Elvis]

While science aspires to be objective, scientism cares only about proving the assumption. (Glyphosates do not cause cancer and vaccines risk/reward profile is very positive.) Likewise, religion replaces a direct yearning of the soul for authenticity with dogmas that serve to mediate an individuals relationship with the divine.

I like those terms. Science purports, desires, to be objective, but there's no such human thing as objective consciousness. "Divine" or no divine.

Edit: I'm not "against" science at all, just trying to be aware if its limits.

[mentalgongfu2]

I give thanks for the various voices in this thread.

Dr. Evil, while I agree with your "Pet Peeve alert" comment, your subsequent replacing of Bozo into Genesis does nothing for me. In fact, I think it does a disservice to your point.
I find that to be one of the more poetic and potentially enlightening portions of the Bible. The story of the Big Bang, in religious terminology. (leaving aside remaining portions wherein woman is created, twice! because the first chick wasn't subservient enough).

While religion has been and continues to be abused for many horrible purposes in our world, I find such examples as the Bozo or Spaghetti Monster to be overstretched as well as unhelpful. Religion exists because there is something beyond the pure physical science that we must seek to understand. To borrow a lyric from The Police, we are spirits in the material world. Even if you should disagree with this assertion, at least religion, broken as it may be, has a moral component. I am reminded of a line from Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, which is deliberately placed near the famous quote of the explosion of the first atomic bomb, "I am become death, destroyer of worlds," attributed of course to Shiva from the Vedas if I recall correctly. Not having the source material before me, and google being a pain to navigate on this topic, I cannot produce a direct quote, but as I recall, the scene ends with Felix Hoennikker, creator of Ice Nine, asking "what is evil?"

That is science for you. Free of all moral constraints. It does not even occur to Felix that technology capable of complete world destruction in a single blow has any moral component whatsoever. While I am well aware that morals may exist free of religion, it is nonetheless the main vector in our society for this concept. And science, unbridled, seems to seek to break all restraints of such ideas and do things simply "because we can."

Apologies if I went OT. I would extrapolate further, but I am sorely in need of a nap before I go to work.

[Sounder]

Also, to deny the existence of the divine because religion contains some ridiculous expressions of understanding of the divine would be like denying the value of science because some people do bad experiments.

My brother, who I trust, saw a black triangle, up close, back in the early 90's. His impression was that it was our tech, rather than off world. If this tech exists, then the current Atomic model has been superseded, and that is something the wider public should know about so as to be able to participate.


https://metro.co.uk/2019/04/18/us-navy- ... l-9246755/

[Pele'sDaughter]

Spirituality is the quest for deeper meaning within ourselves and the universe itself. Religion was invented to take advantage of this human quality in order to facilitate domestication programming, thereby insuring subservient humans are looking in the correct direction. One is a natural progression while the other is a tool of control. Anyone who doesn't understand this runs the risk of being subject to manipulation and distortion.

[DrEvil]

Thanks for all the considered replies to my diatribe.

Just to be clear, I don't think religion is all bad all the time, and I don't think science is all good all the time. Both systems involve people, and people are.. people. The main difference is that one system produces tangible results, the other is mainly a tool of social control.

I think the message of Jesus has a lot of wisdom in it, I just don't see why it should be necessary to buy into the whole package to use that wisdom. Same with the ten commandments: I don't believe in God, but I still think it's a good idea to not go around killing people. Most of those messages are just common sense things repackaged into a system of social control. I like the message but I reject the system. I also don't trust people who need to be threatened with eternal damnation to behave themselves.

As for the more general "spirituality", I honestly think that's just a side effect of our existence in this universe. Ultimately it's just chemical reactions happening in the brain. That doesn't mean we can't enjoy it or take comfort in it, just that we shouldn't put too much stock in it for discerning some greater truth. As far as I'm concerned there is no such thing. We're here by dumb chance, enjoy it while it lasts and find whatever meaning that makes sense to you, but don't expect some big payoff at the end. It's all dust in the end anyway.

An old poster (can't remember who) put it best: The universe is fifty billion light years across and every inch of it will kill you in seconds. That's how much the universe cares.

Ultimately I don't see a distinction between science and spirituality either. If there's an underlying order to things then it should be possible to methodically explore and map it, regardless of what realm we usually put said order in. The scientific tools at our disposal today might not be the right tools for it, but I don't think spiritual or religious insights are either. Using spirituality to discern some deeper truth is like trying to figure out integrated circuits by poking at a computer with a stick. Most likely there are things we're simply not equipped to understand at all, and I'm fine with that.

And just to veer things back on topic: religion didn't put men on the moon, science did.

[Belligerent Savant]

.

Well, we can't say for certain that science put men on the moon, at least not as it's been depicted on TV.*

The last 4-5 pages of this thread in no way provide clarity in either direction, in my view. It remains largely a faith-based decision to fully subscribe to Man landing on the moon, which is why I remain agnostic on the issue.

You raise sound points Re: religion/spirituality, DrEvil [as did the other contributors on this page]. I happen to believe there are phenomenon that can't currently be explained by 'chemical reactions' alone. The nature of consciousness -- and the nature of 'outer space' -- remain relatively unknown territory; it's premature to render a confident declaration on what may actually be going on out/in there.

[perhaps there is no in/out there at all]

*this clip here does little to offset the claims of 'fabrication', given the inclusion of 'simulation' footage. Clearly, today's audience demands far more authenticity/realism; CGI wizardry has improved in recent years, but it may not yet be good enough** to convince the average disaffected twitter handle. Given the modern era of Ultra HD 4K, the prospect of 'faking' it is a more challenging campaign now than, say, 50 years ago, when footage largely relied on an individual's imagination rather than hard visual evidence. Consumers were ok with such grainy displays back then -- they knew nothing else -- and it afforded the transmitters far more leverage in their production. They have no such luxury today, or anytime henceforth.



**at least with respect to technology made available to the huddled masses, of course.


Side-note, Re: nature of consciousness:

https://www.wired.com/2013/04/conscious ... ter-death/

Excerpt:

Wired: One of the first after-death accounts in your book involves Joe Tiralosi, who was resuscitated 40 minutes after his heart stopped. Can you tell me more about him?

Parnia: [...]

When Tiralosi woke up, he told nurses that he had a profound experience and wanted to talk about it. That’s how we met. He told me that he felt incredibly peaceful, and saw this perfect being, full of love and compassion. This is not uncommon.

People tend to interpret what they see based on their background: A Hindu describes a Hindu god, an atheist doesn’t see a Hindu god or a Christian god, but some being. Different cultures see the same thing, but their interpretation depends on what they believe.

Wired: What can we learn from the fact that people report seeing the same thing?

Parnia: At the very least, it tells us that there’s this unique experience that humans have when they go through death. It’s universal. It’s described by children as young as three. And it tells us that we should not be afraid of death.

Wired: Couldn’t the experiences just reflect some extremely subtle type of brain activity?

Parnia: When you die, there’s no blood flow going into your brain. If it goes below a certain level, you can’t have electrical activity. It takes a lot of imagination to think there’s somehow a hidden area of your brain that comes into action when everything else isn’t working.

These observations raise a question about our current concept of how brain and mind interact. The historical idea is that electrochemical processes in the brain lead to consciousness. That may no longer be correct, because we can demonstrate that those processes don’t go on after death.

There may be something in the brain we haven’t discovered that accounts for consciousness, or it may be that consciousness is a separate entity from the brain.

Wired: This seems to verge on supernatural explanations of consciousness.

Parnia: Throughout history, we try to explain things the best we can with the tools of science. But most open-minded and objective scientists recognize that we have limitations. Just because something is inexplicable with our current science doesn’t make it superstitious or wrong. When people discovered electromagnetism, forces that couldn’t then be seen or measured, a lot of scientists made fun of it.

Scientists have come to believe that the self is brain cell processes, but there’s never been an experiment to show how cells in the brain could possibly lead to human thought. If you look at a brain cell under a microscope, and I tell you, “this brain cell thinks I’m hungry,” that’s impossible.

It could be that, like electromagnetism, the human psyche and consciousness are a very subtle type of force that interacts with the brain, but are not necessarily produced by the brain. The jury is still out.

Wired: But what about all the fMRI brain imaging studies of thoughts and feelings? Or experiments in which scientists can tell what someone is seeing, or what they’re dreaming, by looking at brain activity?

Parnia: All the evidence we have shows an association between certain parts of the brain and certain mental processes. But it’s a chicken and egg question: Does cellular activity produce the mind, or does the mind produce cellular activity?

Some people have tried to conclude that what we observe indicates that cells produce thought: here’s a picture of depression, here’s a picture of happiness. But this is simply an association, not a causation. If you accept that theory, there should be no reports of people hearing or seeing things after activity in their brain has stopped. If people can have consciousness, maybe that raises the possibility that our theories are premature.