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Bear in mind that most things scientists believe now were laughed at when they were first proposed. Darwin's theories didn't sit well his peers, but over time they've come to be excepted. Even to take a more modern theory, the Gaia theory. Scientists scoffed when they first heard this theory years ago, but now many scientist are starting to seriously consider some parts of this hypothesis as fact. To outright deny anything is foolish to say the least. It's better to approach with an air of sceptisicm, no matter how ridiculous the thing may be.
Darwin may have been laughed at, but his ideas were always science, and those who denied them did not represent science. The reason is simple: he provided clear physical evidence which was totally at odds with other theories. There's a difference between somebody who claims to be a scientist, and a true scientist.
I don't think the Gaia hypothesis is truly a hypothesis. It doesn't make any predictions.
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Because science has been wrong before in the past I find it dangerous to use science to decide the limitations of the human experience. If thousands of people have experienced something, how can we conclude they are wrong simply because science doesn't understand the nature of their experience
You still don't understand what science is. If you did you wouldn't be making statements like these.
How can science possibly be wrong? True science always acknowledges any areas of doubt if there are any, and all evidence comes with provisos.
Give me a single example of when the scientific method has led to an incorrect statement.
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I agree with you! Famous scientists did think outside the box. But here's the problem. How many famous scientists were ridiculed by their contemporaries? A lot of them were!
Bruce Lipton has won an award for his work concerning biology and thoughts. But I can't even talk about Bruce Lipton on this forum without people shouting pseudoscience. I couldn't even get the people shouting pseudoscience to look at his video, book or website. It took Bruce ten years to get his research out to the public.
Pseudoscience is slander. There is genuine research being done that's slandered as pseudoscience just because of the nature of the research.
I honestly don't care to discuss what people may say about the work of others.
If some research is called pseudoscience because it happens to be in a particular area, that is wrong. However, if is being called pseudoscience because the people doing the studies are making unverifiable claims without publishing evidence, then that is correct.
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Do you know of any experiment that took place concerning shared dreaming, that proved it was impossible? I don't know of any! How can we have evidence for shared dreaming UNTIL the experiments happen?
But that doesn't mean there is no reason to believe in its possibility. We don't have to wait for science to do a experiment to form our own ideas of whether or not something is real. We didn't sit and wait around for science to talk about lucid dreaming - most of us knew it was possible because we experienced it first hand as a child.
Knowing how powerful and affirming it is to experience something yourself, you honor the experiences of others. Especially if there are promises that you can experience it yourself!
Again, you haven't listened to me.
Science is equivalent to reasoning and evidence.
How can you justify believing in anything if you don't have any evidence for it (to yourself, let alone other people)? It's simply nonsensical.
ANYTHING might be possible juroara. It's possible that gravity randomly stops functioning tomorrow. It's possible that there are blue men living on a planet orbiting alpha centurai. It's possible that I can levitate. And OBVIOUSLY you can never PROVE that any of these things AREN'T true.
That's distinct from the fact that there is absolutely NO reason to BELIEVE that they ARE.
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Well, that's a kind of fishy analogy to what I said. Levitating is supposed to be a real time phenomenon. If someone says they can levitate, okay, show us. What I'm talking about is honoring the SUBJECTIVE experiences of others.
How do I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the lucid experiences you've shared on this forum aren't all made believe to boost your ego? Imagine if I felt this way about everyone who shared a lucid dream, and my reasoning was "well if you can't prove to me objectively that you lucid dreamed, then you're just lying" At some point, that's just paranoia. Numbers matter! It makes a huge difference if only one person in the world testified to shared dreaming versus one million.
That's what I'm talking about. It's however hard to get an accurate reading on how many people have shared dreams, because from what I've seen its generally something that happens between close friends. And that makes the experience even more personal - why do they want to open their personal experience for public ridicule?
But lucid dreaming was proven, juroara. Never heard of Stephen LaBerge? That's why lucid dreaming is scientifically excepted whereas shared dreaming is not.
Incidentally it's hugely more difficult to test lucid dreaming than it is to test shared dreaming. Doesn't that tell you something?
I'm not asking for something complicated. Just anything that shows it's something more than a dream with another person in; the kind of standards of proof that any sane person would ask for.
You make incredibly weak arguments for why nobody has done such an experiment. There are several huge flaws:
- Even if there were only a small number of people who could do this, it's extremely unlikely that none of them cares a single bit about all of the praise, fame, and money they would get. They could give all the money to charities if they wanted. The fact that they haven't would make them extremely selfish.
- Even if they didn't care about the money; if this experience is so marvellous, why don't they want to share it with the world, and let everybody do it?
- Lucid dreaming is just as 'personal', yet people had no problem with scientifcally proving that.
Along with the fact that shared dreaming is against our current understanding of how the brain works, there is literally no reason at all to believe that shared dreaming is true.
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I am terrible at explaining experiments. I chop them up and make them sound horrible because I never use the right words. But here's my best shot. In one experiment they wanted to know if the intention to heal someone did anything - anything at all.
They grabbed what they thought would make the best healers, reiki healers, chi masters, shamans. And as for a control, they grabbed ordinary people untrained in the art of healing. They started out with their theory, which made them place the healers and the healee in a big box of a room made specially for the experiment. To block out interference.
First they thought they found electrical energy emanating out of the healers. But that could not explain the healing phenomenon that both the healers and the healees testify too. Then they reasoned the electrical energy was the by product of magnetic energy coming out of the electromagnetic human field. But that still did not explain the testimonies of spontaneous healing, when the healer was thousands of miles away.
Still optimistic that they could find something on the intention to heal another, they came up with a new theory based on what they had already found. That healing another uses light. Light on the spectrum outside of our vision.
They get new sensitive equipment, and they find evidence for their theory. Coherent light was emanating out of the healers hand that was more intense than any light the control group could produce. Not only did they find light a part of the healing process, but the healee's brain waves would often mimic the brain waves of the healer, as if the healer is conditioning the healee.
They even put green algae in the same room as the healers to see if the algae reacted differently.
I read about this in the Intention Experiment.
The book also reviews the old lie detectors on the plants, bringing to light the entire story. Sure people laugh at these experiments, the man wasn't even a trained scientist. But the book talks about how he conducted hundreds of experiments. In one live shrimp were dropped in boiling water. At the same moment the the plants register an enormous spike. Were it a human spike it would mean an intense emotion was just felt.
Now naturally people laughed at these experiments. How can plants have emotions when they don't have brains, let alone, how could plants know that live shrimp were being boiled alive when they don't have eyes? So everyone just laughs! End of story.
But a physicist today thinks there is something to look at here. His theory is our thoughts are composed of light. Plants absorb the light, the light which is still carrying the information of the intention or thought.
The ramifications are huge if it turns out to be true. And now that they have formulated a theory that thoughts or intentions are composed of light, they can make even better experiments.
Firstly, nothing you've said has anything to do with what I asked for, which is an experiment which showed people could have shared dreams.
Secondly, all the experiments you talk about are classic pseudoscience.
If you want to prove somebody has healing powers, then you let them meet with sick people and then see if the sick people heal at a greater rate than would be statistically expected. It's extremely easy.
Those studies unashamedly use all of the classic techniques of pseudoscience like using isolated data points instead of groups of data, use nonsensical technical sounding phrases (magnetic energy as a byproduct of electric energy causing long distance effects is totally meaningless), and make up all kinds of 'theories' which don't even have testable or meaningful results.