This was previously attached to “Faith and Intellect.”

Club Schadenfreude’s position appears to be that I believe that I have proven souls exist. Well, that seems fair, although my reference is not physics but the recorded history of spirituality. I believe that I have presented ideas that lead in the direction of reconciling our observations of physics and cosmology with the existence of spirit. Club Schadenfreude’s complaint appears to be that I shouldn’t ask people to consider them until I’ve received broad agreement from the community of working scientists. My general point here is that working scientists don’t do as good a job of explaining the world as they generally take credit for, and so until they solve the problems I’ve identified, it’s fair for me to offer alternatives, and UNFAIR for people to use science as proof that spirituality is just plain-old craziness.

Some of the contents, and in particular the characterizations of my relationship with my sons, are clearly out-of-bounds under my Comment Policy.

This is still incomplete – I’ll be transferring the comment thread over from “Faith and Intellect” as I have time.

Club Schadenfreude:

I am wondering, if your hypotheses in physics are so great, then why have you done nothing to show they are true? There needs to be evidence. It seems you want others to do the work you should be doing. It’s also curious that you claim you can use physics to show that “love” works, when all of your fellow theists are claiming that only their religions can show this.

ideas are indeed strongest if they are shared. Threatening your child so he won’t share his ideas so yours aren’t challenged is quite the hypocrisy and the actions of someone afraid that his claims will be shown wrong.

Myself:

Have you read the material? The writing documents clearly the contradictions in current physical theory. The community should be looking for new answers. They are not. By your criteria, I am doing their work for them, not the other way around.

You mischaracterize the situation with mu children. My elder son immediately accepted that he was unfair to his brother, and his peers at school are astonished by the energy he invests in helping others to succeed. That has manifested in very lucrative and sought-after internships – last year at SpaceX and this coming summer with one of the largest high-tech companies in the world.

But you misdirect from the central issue: interpreting your comment as an indication that you are an atheist, what is your position on spirituality?

Club Schadenfreude:

I’ve read the material. It does nothing of the kind. And again, you have no evidence to support any of your claims. You have no answers and you are not doing any work at all, for anyone else or to show your hypotheses are true.

I do not mischaracterize your relationship with your children at all. You made a threat and your son backed down. What your claism about how wonderful your son is have to do with the matter at hand, I do no know. I suspect that your son never got an internship at SpaceX or at this unnamed high tech company He very well may have and then would know that his position was right and his fathers was wrong and only supported by threats.

I’m not quite sure what you mean by spirituality. If you mean the claim that there is some god or something “bigger” that we are attached to, I find it a claim that has no basis in fact. Theists and others who make claims about magic and gods have nothing to back up their claims. There is nothing to show that the mind and the brain are separate. If this were true, brain damage would not change people as it does.

Myself:

Your observation regarding brain damage is accommodated by my model. If the brain is an interface, damage to the interface will affect the linkage to ideas.

You assert that I present no evidence, but much of the evidence that I present is actual research results by working scientists. The cosmologists and nuclear physicists have all kinds of problems they can’t explain – the particle theorists just ignore them.

Please be advised that your ad hominem attacks on my character are inappropriate for this forum. I will edit them out if they continue.

Club Schadenfreude:

If the physical interface can be damaged, then we should be able to detect these magical emanations, if they interface with reality e.g. the electrochemical brain. Do you have such evidence?

And yes, there are problems that can’t be explained *yet*. Where is your evidence that your claims are true, Brian? All you have so far are claims that others are wrong but nothing at all to show you are right.

And it’s “ad hominem”, not “ad nominee”. You may want to know what you are accusing me of before just throwing something out there randomly. I have not attacked your character. You have indicated you made a threat.You have made claims without evidence. I am happy to wait for that evidence if you have it.

Myself:

While I am happy to comply with your request, realize that you would procure information far faster if you would simply ask, rather than attempting to construct a moral claim against me.

First, electrical fields are also magical emanations, similar, as I’m sure you are aware, to a quark, a gluon or a Higgs boson, which no one has ever seen. Physicists posit them as an explanation that correlates with observations of the behavior of macroscopic experimental components. So I’ll provide you a list of observations that defy “conventional” explanations and have often been attributed to “spiritual” phenomena.

Those interested in reading the New Physics material will eventually find that I believe massive particles are formed when the smallest unit of electric field is tied to the components of the dark energy field. So “spirit” is actually unbound “electric charge.” They’re really the same thing, just under different conditions.

The Princeton Electronic Anomalies Research Study was commissioned by the Air Force when fighter jet flight recorder data showed that electronics were generating signals that should have been impossible in the circuits as designed. The investigators could not explain the data using electrical engineering. For reasons unclear to me (perhaps interviews with the pilots) the study examined the correlation between electrical signals and the emotional state of experimental subjects. They found a positive correlation even when careful steps were taken to ensure electrical isolation.

The study was followed up by IONS, which in collaboration with other institutions runs a set of random number generators. The study looks for correlations in the sequence of numbers generated by the independent sites. They discovered inexplicable synchronization of the generators around the time of major stock market crashes and the 9/11 attacks.

Both studies have been ignored. As a recall, PEARS has been actively suppressed.

Robert Monroe (whose work is carried on by the Robert Monroe Institute) published an exhaustive study of out-of-body experiences. He would tell his subjects when he planned to “visit,” and ask them to record their activities. He duplicated their records, which I recall were sent independently to a third party for verification.

There is also exhaustive documentation of reincarnation and faith healing. I published a review of The Lost Language of Plants by a trained biologist that documents his experiences. Again, these studies are ignored or denigrated by the scientific community.

Studies of mature meditators uncovered a third resonance mode of the brain, adding a gamma mode to the previously known alpha and beta states.

Finally, there is the evidence and testimony of philosophers, mystics and theologians throughout the history of mankind. If you want to go to the outer limits, I suggest F. Scott Peck’s Glimpses of the Devil and Father Amorth’s An Exorcist Tells His Tale. Both of these men faced professional condemnation for publishing their experiences.

But of course to put all this in front of the physics community would be really too much, wouldn’t it? I chose to organize my campaign by focusing on issues that they consider to be appropriate for publication in refereed journals.

Thanks for pointing out the typo. I intended to write “ad hominem.” The spell-checker intervened.

At some point, I will elide all the personal attacks and publish them in a separate post. I don’t have the energy for it now.

Of course parents make threats – although I prefer to call them “clearly defined consequences.” I was angry. Believe me, it wasn’t the first time the behavior had been exhibited, and I had tried other methods previously. Obviously I followed up with my son and repaired the damage. And – BTW – he’s still an atheist, and I love him just as he is. He’s not ready to share the work that I do in the world, and I’m just glad that he’s enjoying his life when mine has been such a struggle.

Club Schadenfreude:

You’ve made quite interesting claims here. According to you, electrical fields are magical. That is not true and your attempt to bring quantum physics into this is nothing more than the usual attempt by a charlatan to validate his nonsense with actual science. Current science has that we do know the Higgs boson exists and we have evidence for it. No one needs to see it with one’s own eyes, one only needs evidence. Unsurprisingly, you have no evidence for your claims at all.

You do make a lot of claims. Evidence that they are even remotely accurate? No. You’ve simply made up nonsense. What are these “components of the dark energy field”? What is the “smallest unit of electric field”, because those terms don’t mean anything? The PEAR claims are considered at best controversial and at worst utter nonsense, claims that cannot be replicated, not even by the people who originally did them. So you are starting with questionable and likely false information to base your claims on.

The Institute of Noetic Science is an organization that has the same problems with being able to show any proof of their claims as PEARS, just like groups like the Discovery Institute, ICR, etc. For all of the claims they make of doing research and promises of evidence real soon now, they never can show this evidence or replicate it. These claims are quite similar to claims of prophecy, where there is never anything seen before some event to actually be of use, but lots of claims of correlation are made after the fact with no ability to show actual causation. They certainly get a lot of mileage out of selection bias. It’s also the usual attempt to try to cloak nonsense in sciency sounding words to make it sound true when it’s nothing more than fantasy, like the idea that thetans are souls of extraterrestrials who came earth and were destroyed by hydrogen bombs and you can sense these being by meters.

Now, I am expecting you to offer the usual excuses, that no one understands the science but you, but if it is actual science, it can be supported with evidence and understood, if your claims aren’t simply made up. The studies have been ignored since they are untrue. There is nothing support the claims about these studies. PEARS was discontinued since its mission was a failure and the only people who accept its claims are those who can’t produce any evidence, just like them. It was not actively suppressed at all, it’s available to anyone who wants their information. That’s the great thing about the internet. So, your claims of conspiracy also fail.
Publishing a list of claims doesn’t make those claims true, and there was no “exhaustive study” of OBE or NDEs or faith healing, reincarnation, etc. They are just repetitions of the claims and no analysis done at all. Unsurprisingly, you only claim a recollection, not actual evidence. Who was this third party, Brian? Unsurprisingly, faith healers always fail when they are actualy required to show evidence. The usual excuse by people like this is that somehow “unbelievers” keep their magical powers from working. How convenient.

Claiming that the “Lost Language of Plants” is somehow true since the author is supposedly a “trained biologist” is an appeal to authority, and in no way confirms that the claims are true at all. If I claimed that crystals have magic properties isn’t true just because I am a trained geologist; I have to provide evidence of my claim. There is no evidence offered, only anecdotal claims. If the results are true, then they should be replicable without concern. They aren’t. The reason that they are ignored and denigrated by the scientific community is the claims are false and they don’t work, just like claims of perpetual motions machines, engines that run on water, etc. What’s sad is that people die because they believe in such nonsense.

Yep, there are lots of testimony from philosophers, mystics, etc but there is no evidence to support their claims at all. Unsuprisingly, again, no evidence of demons or devils, nothing at all but claims of causation and no evidence at all. Peck (and his first initial is M, not F) and Amorth deserve ridicule and professional condemnation for telling such stories. I enjoyed how Peck decided to take it upon himself to redefine what an exorcist “really” is, and inadvertently making this god of his rather worthless letting all of these demons run around, which does a great job of showing how believers invent their own nonsense. Amorth’s stories are no more believable. Again, amazing how slack this god is in leaving demons all over the place, just for priests to show off evidently, since if it is to be believed, Amorth did around 2 or more exorcisms a day. Now, he claims these powers are from his god and references matthew 10. Funny how such imaginary things can be claimed to have been done but something that would actually have evidence to support it, healing people of sickness and injury and even more spectacular, raising the dead, these beleivers just can’t do that at all. How convenient. Not one healed amputee, not one person suddenly free of leperosy. But imaginary demons, why we take care of thousands of them.

Theologians make all sorts of claims and again, no evidence for their claims. No gods, no miracles, no events as described in their holy books, just myths and then excuses why there is no evidence. The magic decoder rings come out and each believer decides what is true and false based on what they want to believe, not what is supported.

No, it wouldn’t be too much at all to put this to actual review and experimentation in front of the physics community. That’s the excuse of someone who doesn’t want his claims actually examined. Rather than finding your own evidence for your claims, you insist that it is other people who have to do that. Unfortuantely for you, the burden of proof for your positive claims is on you, no one else.

It is no surprise at all that you offer an excuse for not actually showing the supposed personal attacks you accuse me of making. You can write many many paragraphs but cutting and pasting is just too hard. It’s evidently also too hard to explain why your magical emanations can’t be detected by other electrochemical instruments if they can be received by the brain.

Parents do make threats. Your case is different than just a threat to behave. You made a threat so your opinion wasn’t challenged. I’m sure that did make you angry that someone dared to point out the problems with your claims. That’s not the reaction of someone who is sure that their opinion is true and can support it. A claim that has nothing to support it must have no challenges offered. I suppose you did follow up with your son and insisted that he believe no one but you. It seems you are little different than many parents, who want their thumbprint on their child’s mind, creating their own external validation.

Still waiting for evidence for your claims, just like I’ve been waiting for evidence for ESP, faith healing, etc. It would be great if such things existed. I used to read Fate Magazine, watch In Search of.., hope for evidence of aliens on earth and hope that gods existed. As of now, there is absolutely no evidence that these claims are true.

Myself:

Please see my recent post titled Comment Policies.

I have made an honest attempt to provide you with public information that matches my experience of life. I have met some of the people that work in these institutions, and they are good, earnest, and care deeply about the future of humanity.

We are clearly at a political impasse, and I believe that continued discussion is not going to serve the purpose of illuminating the content of the original post. My goal here was not, contrary to the thrust of your comments, to prove that I am right. My goal was to voice my befuddlement that researchers facing a huge theoretical deficit in their field should be so deaf to new ideas – much as some claim Christians are deaf to new ideas.

As this entire thread is irrelevant to the OP, I’ll build another post from its contents so that future readers don’t have to wade through it.

As for the personal attacks: “It seems you are little different than many parents, who want their thumbprint on the child’s mind, creating their own external validation.” At this point, my belief is that you are transferring your own experience onto my relationship with my son, WHO IS STILL AN ATHEIST.

Club Schadenfreude:

It is unsurprising that you have decided to create a brand new comment policy to keep people from commenting on your claims. Since your comment policy didn’t exist when I posting comments, your claims that the posts are out of bounds is a lovely example of attempting to retcon a situation. Again, still waiting for you to show where I was making ad hominem attacks. I am sure I do offend your sensibilities; no one likes to be shown their claims fail. However, your sensibilities don’t make your claims true. They still fail. You further make false comments about others and your bible. You call people sociopaths and you claim that anyone who disagrees with you is somehow abused, in order to ignore their positions. The claim that the New Testament “deprecates” the commandments in the bible is most curious since the character JEsus Christ says that all of his father’s commandments should be followed, until earth and heaven pass away, that those who follow them are the first in his father’s kingdom (Matthew 5).

You have yet to give any evidence of your claims. You cannot explain what you mean by your terms. You ignore questions about your claims that point out the failures in your hypothesis. The claims by the organizations and people you mention are just as baseless as your own. They have been shown to be false repeatedly. It doesn’t matter how good or earnest or deeply caring one is if one is spreading false information.

“We” are at no kind of impasse. *You* have refused to support your claims. It’s always quite curious that you claim you aren’t here to prove you are right, but that is the only thing you have claimed, by saying that current science is wrong, that atheists are wrong, etc. It seems that you are trying to say you weren’t claiming you are right in order to excuse yourself from actually presenting evidence. You did not voice your “befuddlement”, you said they are wrong and claimed your position was correct. But when asked to show how you know, it is no surprise that you have now come up with one more excuse so you can run away from supporting your claims again. Show your “new ideas” are supported by fact at all. You made the positive claim, so the burden of proof is on you.

It seems that you are afraid to have people read this thread and are going to do your best to present it falsely. Again, unsurprising. You claim that this thread of comments is “irrelevant to the OP”. This is not true, since the comments address your claims and point out how they fail.

You seem to have no idea what an ad hominem attack is. This is bringing up something unrelated to the discussion at hand to throw doubt on the position of an opponent, for example saying that someone is ugly and that should make one doubt him. When I pointed out that you seem very little different than many parents that want their children to think exactly like them, this is relevant to the discussion that contained you claiming you threatened your son for his daring to contradict you by telling your other son you were wrong. His still being an atheist is not relevant, though it is good to hear. Your actions are relevant as they apply to your claims and your reactions to those who question them.

I shall ask you my questions again: What are these “components of the dark energy field”? What is the “smallest unit of electric field”, because those terms don’t mean anything? If the brain is only a receiver, then why can’t we detect these mysterious emanations you claim exists, with electrical or chemical devices since that’s all the brain is, no magic needed? Where is the evidence that supports your claim “those investigations force them to confront his existence.”?

Myself:

You demand proof in terms that you accept. Why should souls comply?

Let me provide you an analogy: let’s say that you were friends with a neurosurgeon and you both had brain cancer. The friend comes to you and says that he’s going to dismantle your brain so that he could cure himself. Would you participate?

Souls take billions of years to construct. Scientists are reductionist – they take things apart. Why would souls submit to validating their bag of tricks?

Our brains evolved to couple to souls over billions of years. They are the tool that is provided. We should use them appropriately.

And you posit your conclusion in your question: “Since that’s how the brain works.” If you study neurophysiology, you’ll discover that there are many manifestations of behavior that cannot be explained using the “electrical signaling” theory of the brain. Nobody actually knows how the mind works.

As for detecting these emanations: people have been known to turn the lights of in a room so that they can see my halo.

Club Schadenfreude:

Still waiting for evidence for your claims. Again, you claim others are wrong and you are right. What supports this? And no, Brian, you haven’t just used spirituality, you’ve claimed that the brain is a receiver. If this is true, then the soul should be detectable by electrical or chemical means since that’s how the brain works. Can you show this?

Myself:

You claim to have read the material under the “New Physics” tab. You obviously have not. A comment thread is no place to deal with material as complex as I am presenting.

My comment policy is not new. I have exercised it in the past. I am publishing it so that I can provide reference to it in the future.

Your comments are not relevant to the OP. Your comments may be relevant to the material on the “New Physics” page. But as I explain “On Whether I’m Right”, you are demanding proof for something that I don’t claim. The ideas that I’m presenting are in their infancy. All that I seek to prove here, as explained in “On Whether I’m Right” is that there are huge gaps in our understanding of theoretical physics that allow for the existence of the soul. I’m just surprised the someone isn’t interested in the topic.

When I published my books, I established Facebook pages for them and cultivated a presence in a group that advertised tolerance. I’m pretty open about my spirituality, and had several deep and rewarding interactions with members seeking fellowship as they navigated life’s many crises. I also express a great deal of confidence in my interpretation of scripture, defining clear and consistent boundaries between Hebrew and Christian teaching.

I obviously became a thorn in the side of the moderator. The moderator frequently directed people to a sister web site containing an exhaustive collection of religious dogma and creed. The material was frequently drawn upon by atheists in the group to deconstruct arguments for faith. As I methodically asserted the message of love offered by Christ, they became more and more antagonistic. Ultimately, the moderator revealed herself as a troll. Facebook is a conversational experience, and as a working professional, I often came late to discussions, and had trouble maintaining the focus of the threads I established. She took advantage of that, posting warped “explanations” of my positions, and then referencing them elsewhere to create the impression that I was trolling the group. When it became clear what was going on, I responded to the last of her posts with notice that I was leaving the group, and told her not to expect that I would lose any sleep over it.

Since establishing myself here in Word Press, I have noticed a lot of similar back-and-forth in the comment threads. I don’t tolerate it here on Ever Deepening. This is a place for ideas. I am happy to discuss them with anyone. I do take on sacred cows, and occasionally lampoon boorishness in our public figures. But I don’t allow anyone to tell me who I am, and do the best that I can to avoid labeling the individuals that visit here.

I do allow leeway. While the situation on Facebook was clearly sociopathic, I recognize that the issues I discuss are often sources of deep sorrow. In “The Sociopath Next Door,” Martha Stout identifies five sources of trauma, and one of them is spiritual abuse. Stout characterizes this as arising when an authority figure places themselves between their victim and an authentic personal experience of God. When I was a member of the local Unitarian Universalist Church – a community dominated by pagans and humanists – I encountered many people recovering from Christian spiritual abuse. This is often sourced in the threats of the Pentateuch which New Testament scripture deprecates. I recognize the problem, and often hear pain behind the angry statements made by those the disagree with me.

Recognizing these realities, I tend to be pretty tolerant of suggestions that a specific idea is wrong or that I am misrepresenting the ideas of others. But broad generalizations were the technique applied by the troll that managed the group on Facebook. Attempting to maintain the focus of the threads I was managing, I would respond to specific claims, and then discover that the broad generalizations were reasserted as characterizations of me as a thinker.

I have seen two strategies in response to this kind of dialog. One is to ask the poster to reference specific statements to back up their claim. This degenerates into a he-said-she-said pissing match that detracts focus from the subject of the original post. Another is to edit or delete posts that offend the sensibilities of the blogger. This is not consistent with my purpose here – I want to have dialog built upon disagreement. The ideas I offer are often abstract, and require elaboration through discussion to support concrete realization.

So what I do here on Word Press follows two steps: I’ll take the dialog to one side, and identify the specific statements that violate my sensibilities, and ask the poster to restructure their points as affirmations of their personal experience and perspective. If they continue with personal denigration, I delete the offending material and add their names to my comment filter so that I can review anything they post.

For the last two years, I have had my head “catch on fire” in Catholic services when the congregation sings:

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us.

Today was different. After finishing Sera Beak’s Red, Hot and Holy, I perceive a pathway out of annihilation – to offer destructive personalities the option of surrender through the Divine Feminine for rebirth on another planet.

That still left me scratching my head and wondering why I’m going about it this way. The only hint comes from the practices that governed access to the Holy of Holies during the years in the Desert. The High Priest would prepare himself carefully for his annual encounter, lest he corrupt the energies within and bring ruin upon the people.

So what rules apply to those in the vicinity of events that bend the tide of history? We find some clues in the Bible: only John stood at Calvary with Christ, and only he died a natural death. Was it the will of Christ that the others suffer as he did, or was it their guilt that fed into the stream he forged through time? And what of Mary Magdalene, obviously deeply in love with Jesus, who was warned “Do not cling to me!” Raised to believe that the Messiah would rule as king, how would she not have been dreaming of bearing his child, and securing eternal peace for her people? What would have become of those dreams, cast into the river of Jesus’s will, in the circuit of time that leads from the cross to judgment day and back again?

And what of all those, such as Judas and Pilate, who saw themselves as pawns caught up in events beyond their control? Tied in remembrance and spirit to their cowardice and treason, would they have injected rationalizations of their virtue into the stream of time, attempting to bend it to their own benefit?

One way to deal with that pollution is to confront them with the same choices under circumstances that ensure they won’t face any personal threat (either material or spiritual) from either choice. It is to say to them, in effect: “You didn’t understand the weight of the decisions you were making. Now you do. Well, do you wish to participate or withdraw?”

In my particular case, they are all withdrawing, which liberates me from codependency. I think that I’ve given the last of them their freedom. It’s time to rest, heal from the pathologies they bred in me, and prepare myself for the work to come.

As for this audience: I think that this has actually been a tool for expanding my radar. It may have served its purpose.

It’s amazing. After all the strain and passion, I finally feel peace, alone here in my “nation of one”, as a Jewish elder characterized me one night in a dream.