Wednesday, December 17, 2008

An uncommonly thoughtful article on Near-Death Experiences:

The living dead





On top of that, quantum non-locality could mean the mind is capable of being non-local to the brain, of floating to the ceiling of the room. It can become, as Stapp puts it, "unglued". His words "certain choices not specified by the physical dynamics" are world-changing. This idea would, if widely accepted, end the reign of scientific materialism, replacing it with a new dualism. It would mean the universe is not a "causally closed" system, locked down since the big bang, as mainstream science has always insisted it is, but open to freedom of choice by the autonomous, floating, matter-altering mind. We would have regained our souls.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Load of hogwash if you ask me.

We can imagine looking at ourselves from a distance.
This is special?
???
Looking at an overturned pile of matches and instantly being able to tell how many seems far more special to me, but it's just one of those things the human brain is capable of.

(And it doesn't mean that the imagining is not being done inside our brain, even if in our minds eye, we are looking at it from a distance.)

Anonymous said...

What is more intriguing to me is why do humans so much like to believe in the unprovable?

1) We like to be in control of things. When faced with something we don't understand, we give it an explanation, no matter what, and are back in control.

2) Life sucks. There better be something more to it than this. So we start believing in all sorts of mystical bullshit.


Too wasted to come up with more. ;)

Anonymous said...

For some reason, this reminds me of Teilhard de Chardin's 'Omega Point' theory, which proposes that universe is evolving towards concious, and in doing so, at some point in the future, revives all humans and other lifeforms. which, I suddenly realized, would neatly side the athiests with the believers, as both right. Because in chardin's theory, when you die, oblivion-and then billions of years later, you come back. come to think of it, that's kinda catholic, if I got my religions right. Not that any of the above is 'true', or truer than anything else. Just fascinating to me. But then, I likes to play with me brain/mind, whatever.

Mac said...

I guess I didn't realize Chardin took it that far. On the other hand, cosmologist Frank Tipler argues for the resurrection of the dead at the end of time in his (very) unconvincing book "The Physics of Immortality."