Heaven in the After Life

I bought this book within the last year and find it a interesting read. It provdes for me some confimration about the subject of Near Death Experiences(NDE) by a child that seem to follow in suit with what has been happening of late in the previous two blogs posts.

As if the timing couldn't be better the Times Magazine has appropriately sign on to the subject with their rendition as well. While I had picked the magazine up at my local supermarket I have yet to scan it's interior. So I will do that after having linked the previous two blog posts and continued on from there.
 
For those of you aware now, the work that I had been doing in science has had been me looking for and trying to understand the nature of gravity in our thoughts. To do that one needs to understand how time clocks and such, experiments done, and satellites that map our earth and moon, help to clarify some depth to our globalization of gravity as a subject not just in the use of measure in the world, but of understanding gravity in our thoughts as well.

 The English word spirit (from Latin spiritus "breath") has many differing meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body. The word spirit is often used metaphysically to refer to the consciousness or personality. The notions of a person's spirit and soul often also overlap, as both contrast with body and both are understood as surviving the bodily death in religion and occultism,[1] and "spirit" can also have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person.

The correlate here then for your examination is how gravity and Heaven could be related, as if in the use of our realization that what Heaven may mean for us as we live the life alive here and now on Earth exists as it is in Heaven.

***

See Also:

• Death is Not Final
• After Life Debate-Materialism and Religion
• Philosophy of Science and Death is Not Final

Death is Not Final

You all have to know the hammer analogy was made aware to me about a week before this debate took place. Also,  a YouTube label given to this demonstration was posted under "gaming" so I find that kind of funny given the seriousness of this debate.

I pushed Number 1.  But, you also know my bias right so I did not think providing this image would hurt in an way given that you already have some insight into my perspective? My opinion at Sean's Blog as well pertaining to this subject.

So as I am going through the debate I thought it necessary to keep a running tab for my self so as to see from what position one is speaking.  So now that I know Sean is speaking from a Naturalist point of view. I will continue.

A metaphysics that goes beyond the commitments of science is simply unsupported by the best available evidence.^[27]

—Lynne Rudder Baker, Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective

 A naturalistic methodology (sometimes called an "inductive theory of science") has its value, no doubt.... I reject the naturalistic view: It is uncritical. Its upholders fail to notice that whenever they believe to have discovered a fact, they have only proposed a convention. Hence the convention is liable to turn into a dogma. This criticism of the naturalistic view applies not only to its criterion of meaning, but also to its idea of science, and consequently to its idea of empirical method.

— Karl R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, (Routledge, 2002), pp. 52–53, ISBN 0-415-27844-9.

Okay I am at 36:58 of the video so I have had the opportunity to listen to the four speakers. I have to say oh my gosh, there is a lot here to consider, and a lot I have already considered. So I need to respond to that first part of the video.

As life calls us to do our things in the day to day, I also have a schedule today, so this posting will be broken up in terms of my response as to the first part of the video. Please be patient. It also gives me time to think about what has been said.

I want to open with the quote Sean responded too, of Eben Alexanders of Einstein. So give me time to drawn this comment out of Eben's book.

A man should look for what is, and not for what he thinks  should be. -Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

I am still ay 36:58 so I needed to finish what  what I have surmised in that first part so I can go on with the video. Below is something that I had written to my Aunt,  so hope she is okay with me repeating it here.  You will see that entry below. It basically sums up the first part of the debate for me.

As I was finishing listening to Steven Novella speak, the quote of Einstein, now gotten from Eben's book, Proof of Heaven under Prologue,  and response given by Sean Carroll was a matter of fact to the whole first part to me as it was for Sean to Eben's Alexanders use of the quote.

Something also interesting to me was Sean's admittance of wanting to believe (that death is not final) but at this point not being able too.That said a lot to me, and in the aspect of being a scientist,  I believe what he is saying.:) So I will continue on with the rest of the video now.

***

 In a note to my Aunt.

Hi Aunt Celine,

 I am a bit of a science buff when it comes to what is currently happening in science. I too had been reading about the NDE for quite a long time as well. Moody agrees with you, about science not quite ready. Since I have studied other aspects of consciousness research, it is my hope that one day we will understand this debate, as a recognition of who we all are as spiritual beings, in a physical body.

What Moody proposes is the beginning of a true dialogue based on logic and reason, and these stem from philosophy. So it is important to see the discussion in terms of where this dialogue can truly begin. Moody mentions pseudoscience and from that, his journey through philosophy. He is trying to set up a credible debate.

 I read Eben Alexander's book as well so I knew where he was coming from, as well I have been following Sean Carroll's science for sometime now. The only one that was sort of new to me was that Steve Novella, and as a neuroscientist, I am open to what he has to say. I must say then I am also a bit of philosopher that has had me venturing through aspect and developments about the Mind/ body debate that is going on, and that is where the science is saying that it is based on materialism. On my own, I have studied Plato and other philosophers.

 In order to accept materialism one has to believe, that consciousness is derived from the brain, while the other perspective is that the brain in my view, is what consciousness uses while the body is alive, but that consciousness can exist, once our body dies. That understanding is in contradiction to what science saids today, but I am saying to science, that they indeed do not have all the facts to make this conclusion even though they can simulate experience from manipulating the physical aspects of the body to produce the near death experience.

Religion has not helped me and I must say, that my upbringing within the Catholic Church has left much for me say, about its patriarchal construct, and how it falls short of providing support for what spiritual means to me. I hope you are not offended.

I do believe in a higher power, and I do believe that Heaven is capable in all of us now. In my education, I might of called it Symmetry, in the very beginning, and science has something to say about that. While I have a real study in reductionism, the work that has been going on, I believe eventually it will lead to an understanding within science, but it has to be developed, and in my view Moody's philosophical standpoint, is where we will start.

***

So I finished the rest of the video last night. There were somethings that were quite memorable to me that stood out.I wanted to quickly move to the end of the debate where each had an opportunity as they did in the beginning to give their last assessment as to why Death is Final, or not.

I was more focused on Sean's response and reiteration of respect for people and their beliefs. This was important to me. When Moody spoke of the work that he had been doing for the last forty years with regard to NDEs and the listening to people about these experiences, these were genuine stories of,  "Death was not Final"  for Moody. I was encouraged by the votes last night, not for which side supposedly won, but by the uncertainty(final 12%) as to the question of what remains as a definitive, as to Death is Final. These shows to me that people in the end still do not know, and that,  they could not be decisive. This to me,  leaves room for work to be done.

I also liked Sean Carroll's response too,  the responsibility of acceptance as to how one may look at life given the perspective of responsibility he has having accepted his position on Death is Final. Of course he might used,  when he was a child, as one might use as Moody did, as was his thrust to understand astronomy.

I believe this to be sincere, and such a question about death that would come to all in the child's mind, a determiner of what the future would bring for him as he sat on that panel. Not so much as a Skeptic full blooded, so as to be glib with the response of,  as if Steve Novella was the amazing Randi and waited for the bet that has not been collected. :) But to remain open, as the undecided results spoke toward, as if,  more information would be needed to make a final definitive statement.

So anyway, another moment stood out in regard to Sean Carroll's response to a woman about where the energy goes once we die. His analogy of a flame going out was like the hammer statement used above, as used in the repertoire of such a question about energy and death. What I liked about the response, was as to where it put the woman in mind. If you have ever come to the point of a logical constructive immobilizing one's position, as it was on the face this woman wore,  as to where the woman could go next. That final deductive state is an important one to me.

I have much more to say about reductionism and how that research is important to me as if the table would be permanent as the atom that make it up, would be a table ad infinitive. So as sure as, matter in all it's constitutions have been described, as to say I am pointing right a it?:) We are not objects like the table. The analogy of the narrative is always important as it is spoken, and as subjective and alone as it might seem there is the greater picture of the story of the NDEr.

I must say too, that the idea of reductionism as much as materialism, causes flinches in those who speak about spiritual things, would make one from that side speak about what is not reducible?  Since energy is an important topic and how we use configuration space to surmise  it's existence,  it becomes a classification of matter. I would assume there is much still to be ascertained.  I read the blogs of other scientists who are at the front with questions phenomenologically expressed that want to see where the science goes next. Just as we have been taken t the limits of where the identification of the Higg's operates and what that energy range is.

After Life Debate-Materialism and Religion

Just so you know while visiting Sean Carroll's site, I had not the opportunity to see the debate until I have provided the link, and embedded the debate here now. Well, to stimulate debate, its necessary without having my point if view shown. I do have an opinion about
The After Life, so you might have seen my comments there, or not, given the materialist count. :)




See: Death is not Final

So with such dire warnings I do not know what I am to face other then what I have encountered as a position taken by Sean,who I have known in the blogging world for a long time now.

My own bias can be shown here on this site so as to understand that I have had a position about the Afterlife, regardless of Sean's opinion. This did not in any way make me think less of the way in which I have learn what science is,  and all the lessons that have gone into following Sean's blog. I just wanted people to know that.

So without further ad-due, I delve into the video.

Materialism/Physicalism

In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter or energy; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance, and reality is identical with the actually occurring states of energy and matter.

To many philosophers, 'materialism' is synonymous with 'physicalism'. However, materialists have historically held that everything is made of matter, but physics has shown that gravity, for example, is not made of matter in the traditional sense of "'an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure, and motion do actually subsist'… So it is tempting to use 'physicalism' to distance oneself from what seems a historically important but no longer scientifically relevant thesis of materialism, and related to this, to emphasize a connection to physics and the physical sciences."^[1] Therefore much of the generally philosophical discussion below on materialism may be relevant to physicalism.

Also related to materialism are the ideas of methodological naturalism (i.e. "let's at least do science as though physicalism is true") and metaphysical naturalism (i.e. "the physical world is all that exists").

Contrasting philosophies include idealism, other forms of monism, dualism, and pluralism.

Defining matter

The nature and definition of matter - like other key concepts in science and philosophy - have occasioned much debate.^[12] Is there a single kind of matter (hyle) which everything is made of, or multiple kinds? Is matter a continuous substance capable of expressing multiple forms (hylomorphism),^[13] or a number of discrete, unchanging constituents (atomism)?^[14] Does it have intrinsic properties (substance theory),^[15][16] or is it lacking them (prima materia)?

One challenge to the traditional concept of matter as tangible "stuff" came with the rise of field physics in the 19th century. Relativity shows that matter and energy (including the spatially distributed energy of fields) are interchangeable. This enables the ontological view that energy is prima materia and matter is one of its forms. On the other hand, the Standard Model of Particle physics uses quantum field theory to describe all interactions. On this view it could be said that fields are prima materia and the energy is a property of the field.

See Also:

• Point Being...It's a Material World?

The Truth of Symmetry?

Fidel wrote:

Canadian Tom Harpur wrote that modern day religious scholars began to realize that indigenous people in this hemisphere possessed what are some of the most sophisticated and deeply held spiritual beliefs in the world.

I agree with your perspective about the historical perspective with the introduction of the white people assertions toward the beliefs of their spirituality  and that expressed by the indigenous people of that time. The "new culture"  to squashed that belief.

Over all I see in a  sense what you are saying that what could have befell the indigenous peoples is what could have fell upon the generations that exist now upon the planet by some alien society as an act of evolution and change with those same correlative situations as it did in our past. Many fictions written in this context today.

But again these are the finer mental states of existence of belief structures, polarization and centralization of such beliefs are "matter states" in the conquest of how we may perceive that evolution.

Quote:

LEE SMOLIN- Physicist, Perimeter Institute; Author, The Trouble With Physics

Thinking In Time Versus Thinking Outside Of Time

One very old and pervasive habit of thought is to imagine that the true answer to whatever question we are wondering about lies out there in some eternal domain of "timeless truths." The aim of re-search is then to "discover" the answer or solution in that already existing timeless domain. For example, physicists often speak as if the final theory of everything already exists in a vast timeless Platonic space of mathematical objects. This is thinking outside of time. See:A "scientific concept" may come from philosophy, logic, economics, jurisprudence, or other analytic enterprises, as long as it is a rigorous conceptual tool that may be summed up succinctly (or "in a phrase") but has broad application to understanding the world.

 Lee Smolin does not obviously like the abstractions in the mathematical realm, and prefers to set the pace for scientific realism by denouncing the historical past with regard to foundational approaches by Plato Thales and others who were our forefathers of expression. Like Hawking,  he is seeking to set foot in the realism of today?
So I am struggling with what we can define as "outside time" is no more then the belief of, while in science we are asking to deal with a methodology that is repeatable by expression, so how can we say spirituality is of a kind of substance or can exist amongst all substances and does not exist outside of time?
In dealing with the opinion of Hawking and Smolin I raise the question of Meno,

Quote:

SOCRATES: But if he always possessed this knowledge he would always have known; or if he has acquired the knowledge he could not have acquired it in this life, unless he has been taught geometry; for he may be made to do the same with all geometry and every other branch of knowledge. Now, has any one ever taught him all this? You must know about him, if, as you say, he was born and bred in your house.SEE:Meno by Plato

 

It relates to the question of how the house boy knew what he knew.

Quote:

MENO: And I am certain that no one ever did teach him.

SOCRATES: And yet he has the knowledge?

MENO: The fact, Socrates, is undeniable.

SOCRATES: But if he did not acquire the knowledge in this life, then he must have had and learned it at some other time?

MENO: Clearly he must.

Quote:

Spectrum wrote: Macdougall's mistake was to believe that spirituality could actually weigh something?

Fidel wrote:

I have no idea except to say that some scientists have said that certain phenomenon may not be detectable by our five senses as developed throughout our evolution. Astronomer Lord Rees suggests that we may need to evolve physically and otherwise a lot further in order to fully understand the universe. And I can see that. If we have evolved in a corner of the universe where atomic matter rules, then of course scientists are going to know a lot about physical matter, which is about 4% of everything that there is.

You actually quoted from a post that dissappeared when providing the links for the cultural Books of the Dead. MacDougall reference and materialism. My point was to supply the Macdougall reference to show how spirituality from my perspective is much lighter and really can't be measured in the way you captured the quoted statement I have suggested.

It goes back to the panel I provided about the weighing of the heart against the feather as truth. To me, it is about Gravity and how we are looking at it. Conceptually modelling according to the questions of a theoretical unification of all the forces. Where gravity actually begins and is inclusive. I really have to be careful here of my statements so as to maintain a mainstream correlative thinking that is current and correct. There is so much to remember.

Fidel wrote:

Apparently some pyramidologists believe that if they substitute years for inches, the great pyramid becomes a prophetic calendar of human events culminating in a forked path to our future. A similar dual future is predicted by prophecies according to Hopis of the Americas. Time is a river that flows and branches into forks and even whirlpools according to Einstein.

That's interesting as it related to my own research on that topic. Developing the concept about our "metal imagery" according to some scale was implemented in the construction of the geometry of the pyramid. I tried scaling the substance of thought as a elementary consideration of where and what we grab onto in life so as to show that the harboring of thought in such a domain, reveals how close indeed we court the matter distinctions of the world we live in.

Newton the Alchemist

Newton's Translation of the Emerald Tablet

Quote:

It is true without lying, certain and most true. That which is Below is like that which is Above and that which is Above is like that which is Below to do the miracles of the Only Thing. And as all things have been and arose from One by the mediation of One, so all things have their birth from this One Thing by adaptation. The Sun is its father; the Moon its mother; the Wind hath carried it in its belly; the Earth is its nurse. The father of all perfection in the whole world is here. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into Earth. Separate the Earth from the Fire, the subtle from the gross, sweetly with great industry. It ascends from the Earth to the Heavens and again it descends to the Earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior. By this means you shall have the glory of the whole world and thereby all obscurity shall fly from you. Its force is above all force, for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing. So was the world created. From this are and do come admirable adaptations, whereof the process is here in this. Hence am I called Hermes Trismegistus, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.

Metal should read Mental, but using the analogy of what Gold men/woman are is as much a part of the allure of chymistry as a novel idea of bettering ourselves is an inclusive thought as well.

Quote:

The Errors & Animadversions of Honest Isaac Newton
by Sheldon Lee Glashow


ABSTRACT:
Isaac Newton was my childhood hero. Along with Albert Einstein, he one of the greatest scientists ever, but Newton was no saint. He used his position to defame his competitors and rarely credited his colleagues.His arguments were sometimes false and contrived, his data were often fudged, and he exaggerated the accuracy of his calculations. Furthermore, his many religious works (mostly unpublished) were nonsensical or mystical, revealing him to be a creationist at heart. My talk offers a sampling of Newton’s many transgressions, social, scientific and religious.

Many did not like this part of Isaac Newton's research but to me even with all the failures of Newtons "mental state" he was trying to better himself, and that is what the Books of the Dead represented to me about trying to understand matter creation in the sense of what we gather together to become who we are. That is a consistent feature of living beings that what gathers around our human feature, gathers around all things? Matter gathers around "a spiritual principal" from inside each of us.

Quote:

The standard model of particle physics is a self-contained picture of fundamental particles and their interactions. Physicists, on a journey from solid matter to quarks and gluons, via atoms and nuclear matter, may have reached the foundation level of fields and particles. But have we reached bedrock, or is there something deeper? Savas Dimopoulos

The Sun then becomes a interesting feature of what "rays of creation" may mean as it gives life to all that falls under it's light that such a light could have existed inside of us as well. That we came from such a place as to exemplify that we are being first of the true signs of spirituality and then become all that falls under these rays of creation.

A refractory status of light itself and Thomas Young's question about spectrum of light and being.
Objects like the pyramid were shadow markers and were part of the history and development of concepts of geometers and angles of Euclid in my views. This is a materialistic explanation while the pyramid itself is a model for understanding the matter creation and sub developmental model of such scaling of human thought. This represented in my views as an attempt to help people of the times to understanding the truth and comparison of what values we hold to heart and our own evolution of being.

Newton Prism Experiment

The pyramidal model of refractions is a display of the light representation of the spectrum of possibilities, as a relational experimental model in my mind of something quite ancient in it's notion,  is applicable in the views of the science today. Something that is forgotten, but as a attempt of all our remembrances whether we like to admit it or not, is a universal understanding of our depth of being and our loss of memory as we are immersed in materiality.

To me this is a aspect of understanding how ideas emerge as if from a world Smolin liked to assign toward "outside of time" and a diversion of the quest to understand aspects of materiality as "not in time." That is my disagreement of him and his thoughts as it relates toward. The "idea of symmetry" and how this is assigned as a relational aspect of the idea of "outside of time." We are of such perfection that such a beauty is simplified in our own existence as spiritual beings that we each contain this within ourselves? This possibility of becoming in the world of materiality.

Entheorizing

LEONARD SUSSKIND:

And I fiddled with it, I monkeyed with it. I sat in my attic, I think for two months on and off. But the first thing I could see in it, it was describing some kind of particles which had internal structure which could vibrate, which could do things, which wasn't just a point particle. And I began to realize that what was being described here was a string, an elastic string, like a rubber band, or like a rubber band cut in half. And this rubber band could not only stretch and contract, but wiggle. And marvel of marvels, it exactly agreed with this formula.

I was pretty sure at that time that I was the only one in the world who knew this.

Thoughts cross my mind as it did with Susskind's journey into the understanding of how something like a rubber band could have helped him made sense of anything. Just as with Einstein, and how it finally came to him in the understanding of the geometry Grossmann had presented to him?

It was Grossmann who emphasized the importance of a non-Euclidean geometry called elliptic geometry to Einstein, which was a necessary step in the development of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Abraham Pais's book on Einstein suggests that Grossman mentored Einstein in tensor theory as well.

That intuitive leap is an important one in my view when it has been understood that all the data had been gone through, and ultimately, as if resting in some state of equilibrium( it should be understood that QGP and Lagrangian numbers provide such places in my mind), it was fortunate for an access to potential was realized by working to arrive at such a point.

If you picture probabilistic valuation as a link between such a funnel pointing toward the tip of Pascal's triangle, then what fills that funnel(potential) and what comes out of Pascal's triangle? What s the nature of that numbered system. Choose one?

If you can funnel such potential through a point it is more then the constraint with which others may see this proverbial struggle as to identify it as a koan, but more to realize that such potential is the very essence of accessing such a point and allowing the solution toward materialism, which was logically conducive to combing all that data.

So the idea here is that such a heat death could have happened within any mind that the very essence of such a QGP was to realize that it provide for such "a mean" in which transference of information could take place? So how can any mind ever go there?:)

I mean for sure, not only was I concerned about finding this place inside each of our selves and the truth seeking that goes on, but also toward understanding that this was a cosmological process about which sustenance of the universe could have ever been measured in it's "status quo?"




The shaky game: Einstein, realism, and the quantum theory By Arthur Fine

4 Arthur Fine (1986) characterizes such a move, this not the only instance in Einstein's thinking, as the "entheorizing" of a methodological principle in the form of a physical postulate. Fine, however, argues that determinism is, for Einstein, the entheorized version of realism.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Notes to Einstein's Philosophy of Science-Citation Information Don A. Howard

It is most certainly important for myself to maintain some thread of consistency in regard to how we look at reality and how one theorizes about it. So sure... what was Einstein's Realism all about?

So you have to follow that line of thinking?

It still is about truth. About looking to understand it, and being able to know when you have come across it. Does it sound right to you, and does it ring at the very basis of your being when you recognize it?

***

Einstein and the Development of Twentieth-Century

Philosophy of Science
Don Howard
University of Notre Dame

And in a 28 November 1944 letter to Robert Thornton he echoed those words of nearly thirty years earlier:

I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today—and even professional scientists—seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering.
This independence created by philosophical insight is—in my opinion—the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth. (Einstein to
Thornton, 7 December 1944, EA 61-574)

Heaven's ephemeral Qualities?

"Materialism:

Basically, the view that everything is made of matter. But what is matter? Probably the most innocent and cheerful acceptance of it comes right at the start of materialism with Democratius of Abdera (in Northern Greece) in the fifth century B.C., for whom the world consisted entirely of 'atoms', tiny, absolutely hard, impenetrable, incompressible, indivisible and unalterable bits of 'stuff', which had shape and size, but no other properties, and scurried about in the void, forming the world as we know it by jostling each other and either rebounding (despite being incompressible) or getting entangled with each other because of their shapes. They and the void alone are real, the colours, flavours and temperatures that surround us being merely subjective. This model has lasted, with various modifications and sophistications right down to modern times, though the notion of solidity was causing qualms at least as early as Locke. But, in the last century, all has been thrown into confusion by Einstein's famous, E=mc2 and also by general relativity. Mass, the sophisticated notion that has replaced crude matter, is interchangeable in certain circumstances with energy, and in any case is only a sort of distortion of the space in which it was supposed to be floating. Photons and neutrons have little or no mass, while particles pop out of the void, destroy each other and pop back in again.

'The Oxford Companion To Philosophy', edited by Ted Honderich. Oxford University Press, 1995




Heaven in one sense, as a ephemeral quality(violet or blue), but in the gratification of savoring smell and tastes, these are not true bearers of the "quality of thought" are they? These sense are more.....earthly then?

I struggle. :)


If such senses are to perish, then what shall be everlasting? If intuition, is to only serve it's purpose until the math is adorned, then what shall this math be, in the state of the abstract mind(yellow)?

An equation means nothing to me unless it expresses a thought of God.

Srinivasa Ramanujan

Ramanujan's thought about equation is emotively charged (red), that this too issues from such a mental abstract, as to be from heaven and descending?

Wait! It's about heaven on earth? Really? :) Heaven is only a state of mind? (r/light)?

Am I Okay on analogies then, to confuse the mind about these states of heaven, that I could have mixed heaven up, as to the varities of "time and segments," as our own colorful experiences?

What song sung then, that each musical octave gain, and of loss is its own vibratory tone? Yet, it existed in the very fields of the sun, as a chemist combines?