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Post by VALIS on Nov 25, 2007 9:39:27 GMT -4
I routinely talk to inanimate objects (I swear at the furniture on which I stubbed my toe) and even sometimes make requests to them, particularly failing parts of equipment (Come on, start!!! Please!!!). I guess it could arguably be called praying.
To some it's stupid, to some it's animism. To me it's just a way to vent and express myself. I don't expect it to work. I never expect request I make in thin air to have any result.
I'm pretty sure I would have done the same as Dr. Musgrave, just for the hell of it.
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Post by JayUtah on Nov 25, 2007 11:09:10 GMT -4
THE MORE IT GETS WEIRDER TO ME THAT AN INTELLIGENT, SCIENTIFIC MAN WOUD DO SO.
You started out this thread trying to call Dr. Musgrave weird. You brought up a twisted article dealing with his statements and lamented that it seemed to you he had gone down the same road as Dr. Mitchell. Then when a bit of research yielded what was likely the original source, and it explained in much more reasonable terms what he did and why, you're still on the "Dr. Musgrave is a looney" bandwagon.
Isn't it reasonable for us then to conclude that you're on that bandwagon to stay and nothing said here will change your mind? Isn't your conclusion here entirely preconceived?
it doesn't make them "norma for scientific, intelligent people".
Dr. Musgrave used religious terminology to describe his personal philosophy about extraterrestrial life. In your mad rush to condemn him, you forget that sociologists don't describe only the perverted or strange. Scientists and intelligent people are still people.
You can't get beyond simply trying to foist off your own personal opinion of what's normal and what isn't. You're begging the question.
if you are raised on something, it is different than going about inventing things to believe in.
Only in the capacity of familiarity. You are just hung up on the vocabulary Musgrave is using to express his philosophy. You want to read into that vocabulary all the nuances that historically have occupied it and pin them on Musgrave even though he denies that's what he means.
Musgrave grounded his work in a larger perspective. He wasn't there just to replace some broken gadget in an orbital scientific instrument; he was participating in mankind's reach toward a larger community of life and being. Sounds like a pretty good way of thinking to me.
I fail to understand how can't you see this Musgrave act ridiculous.
That's because you can't see outside yourself.
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Post by lionking on Nov 25, 2007 13:32:12 GMT -4
quote]You started out this thread trying to call Dr. Musgrave weird.[/quote]
and I still call him weird.
the real article introduced him as weirder than the first one. "you first believe in their presence..then you send a form of prayer..." .. it explained better how weird this is.
but scientific people are not there to speak about intangibles. They are here to prove the mysterious exists (for example sending radio waves and stuff to aliens to see if they exist). Scientific people can't go without any philosophy to believe in things that doesn't exist most probably - according to them. If scientific people would start doing such things , they will do nothing to improve science. They will seem unintelligent and naive. I would have understood it from a scientific man to send radio waves to see if aliens exist, not pray to them - notice the religious method that not only uses religious language, but is religious itself when he says" first you acknowledge their presence, then you send a frm of prayer.."
you are here right, but I can't see how an scientific man helped science by what he did above
no, it is bcz you get too biased when it comes to astronauts. If anyone else did that like Aulis and stuff, you would have used it as a cse against them and against their rational thinking. I have heard this comment about them bcz of that alien thing.
I once introduced what my friend believes in. She believes that intentions can affect matter and change things. Al Johnston said: she doesn't seem very believable. He tied the credibility of that person to her belief in such things. let him come up now and say what he said about an astonaut. Other people here suggested that I tell her to throw herself and believe that she wuill not fall down. Gravity will surely make her fall. You see there are things you don't expect from certain people adn you expect them from other people. You expect a Hindu, uneducated man to marry a dog as happened in India to compensate for sins of killing two dogs, but you don't expect this to come from an educated man. If you come to sociology, you can explain it socially.. that people need a set of belief and stuff, but to an educated person, some things don't seem right.
I hope you understand my point better.
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Post by lionking on Nov 25, 2007 13:54:06 GMT -4
Just to make myself clear: I am not here to destroy any space credibility by this, it has nothing to do with moon project being real or not, or Dr Musgrave eing credible about his experience in space or not. He surely seems decent and loves what he is doing. He seems to have a special crave for space exploration which is respectable. It is just that some important people do weird things. For example, I heard that the inventor of CDs who is a Japanese scientist, photographs everything he eats. I heard about Einchtein walking barefooted on streets at night. Maybe bcz the experiences these people had isolated them a bit from communicating with people so their acts made them weird to us, but it doesn't mean that they are not credible. They are just weird.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Nov 25, 2007 16:28:13 GMT -4
No, because such is an ad homenim attack. Saying "You beleive in aliens and pray to them, therefore your argument is unsound and irrational" is playing the man, not the ball.
Can you point out where anyone here has said that the Aulis staff believe in aliens and thus are irrational and that their arguments can therefore be ignored on that basis?
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Post by JayUtah on Nov 25, 2007 16:40:38 GMT -4
...and I still call him weird.
And if you had stopped there, you would have been okay. Instead you try to take everyone to task for disagreeing that he's weird.
the real article introduced him as weirder than the first one.
I disagree. The actual quotations revealed Musgrave's actual motivations. McClelland writes that Musgrave tried to contact aliens telepathically on every mission. Musgrave says all he was doing was focusing his thoughts in a ritualistic, cathartic way, and that it wasn't supposed to be taken as a serious effort to contact them.
McClelland writes that Musgrave prays for aliens to come take him away from Earth. Musgrave instead says that if aliens contacted him, he would go.
I would have understood it from a scientific man to send radio waves to see if aliens exist, not pray to them...
Musgrave specifically disclaims that his is an actual effort to contact space aliens. You consistently confound two things that Musgrave has specifically and emphatically kept separate. You're not listening at all to what he says. You're trying to portray him as irrational only because you insistently paste irrationality on him.
you are here right, but I can't see how an scientific man helped science by what he did above
Not everything a scientific man does is meant to help science. How many times must this be explained to you? Musgrave thinks about aliens the way he does for his own personal benefit. You insist on interpreting his actions the way McClelland has done.
no, it is bcz you get too biased when it comes to astronauts.
The classic corollary to begging the question. We don't see it your way, so we're "biased." You have a narrow, wrong interpretation of what Story Musgrave has said in his own words. You insist on attaching to it an intent that Musgrave himself has repudiated.
I hope you understand my point better.
Not really. You're just digging a deeper hole.
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Post by echnaton on Nov 26, 2007 12:17:10 GMT -4
In my late teens and early 20’s, I would do the same thing as Musgrave. When out camping in the countryside, I would lay down in the grass at night to look at stars and “pray” for aliens to take me away. I had no rational belief that anyone was listening, but I sure hoped there was. It was really more of an internal dialogue indicative of the situation facing me in that stage of life. I was separating from my parents and setting out on my own with great excitement over the possibilities of the future, great apprehension for the difficulties of being on my own and some sadness for loosing the everyday contact with my family.
It turned out someone was listening, just not who I was thinking of at the time. As I grew older I learned that this was an internal dialogue and I was listening to myself. As this occurred to me I focused my attention differently. I interpret Musgrave’s action similarly to my own. His story is an analogue of his internal conversation while he is engaged in a dangerous and stressful process of exploration. If you take it as his literal description of some provable reality, it could sound weird. If you listen with a little bit of sympathy it sounds wonderful and very personal. He is telling us about himself in a way that many can identify with even if his meaning is different than others.
Lionking, don’t you ever wish someone would show up and take you away from all the stress of creating your own future and the future of Lebanon to a new place where the problems are solved? Even if you don’t really believe it will happen.
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Post by lionking on Nov 26, 2007 13:20:02 GMT -4
same as you try to take everyone into believing he is not weird. sme as you try to convince people of Apollo. ..and this is legitemate. He is not without sin.
the second article proves that he was trying to contact aliens telepathetically. No matter if he believes they are going to answer him. He still has hope. As a scientific, intelligent man, he is supposed to prove the intangible exists, or at least not stop at mysterious things in that manner.
he doesn't say it is unactual effort to contact aliens. It is actual, has belief and ritual, althaugh the possibility is rare to him that this will happen. Sometimes ppl pray to God without much hope that this will happen, but they have this religious belief in a place. This is the same happening here.
every scientific man shouln't act at least in this way when faced with an enigmatic question, this is he can't help science.
but it tells about the way he thinks and about personal benefits. It is not a personal romantic benefit as much as believing in things that most probably doesn't exist and assuming their presence in stead of dreaming of something romantic and declaring them as dreams. He is following rituals, you don't do this in romantic dreams. If it has romanticism, it has religiousity in it. This religiousity makes me think it is not for fun in its roots.
Musgrave has repudiated? saying that he doesn't expect and it is nearly around zero that they will reply doesn't mean that he lost hope. He still hopes that they will reply o him. Again, religiousity...
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Post by lionking on Nov 26, 2007 13:36:47 GMT -4
echnaton, as usua;l you are the closest to ogic according to me. Yes, I would understand the stupid things we do when we are teenagers. When I was also younger than that, i.e in the 7/8 yrs old I used to speak to rocks and trees in the village when we wanted to come back to Beirut. I hated getting back to school and promised those trees and rocks to come back and visit them. ..but now if I will do the same thing, what would I say about myself? If I repeat certain acts similar to yours that I did in the 19, wouldn't I seem too irrational to myself? The man is not teenager, not unintelligent, not a child. I see it weird of him to act as naively as such. It doesn't show maturity, don't you think so?
As for my future, I found a good job of a well-paid salary. As for the future of Lebanon, I am very upset, even of my political line and its leaders who let us down lastly in their strategies. upset till hoping that Syria and America will not reconcile in Anapolis, maybe then I will rest that no conspiracy fro mAmerica is going behind our backs. But as you see, nothing I request for comes from nowhere. The things that I hope quick change for in my personal life, I try to figure out how they could be solved. I would say: maybe if this happens then this will happen, but not waiting for ginnies to come take me away. I am no longer a child.
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Post by Halcyon Dayz, FCD on Nov 26, 2007 13:37:48 GMT -4
Musgrave has a BS degree in mathematics and statistics, an MBA degree in operations analysis and computer programming , a BA degree in chemistry, an M.D. in medicine, an MS in physiology and biophysics and a MA in literature. But no high school diploma.
This guy's mind works on a completely different level then most of us can even fathom.
Weird?
Certainly unusually.
Entertaining the notion that it is most likely that there are civilisations more advanced then ours out there requires a considerable smaller leap of faith then the god concept. It is not even in the same ball park.
And only the dead have no hope.
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Post by lionking on Nov 26, 2007 13:38:52 GMT -4
phantom I remember this was said long time ago, can't recal in which thread, but I'll try to find it
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Post by sts60 on Nov 26, 2007 13:43:15 GMT -4
the second article proves that he was trying to contact aliens telepathetically. No matter if he believes they are going to answer him. He still has hope. As a scientific, intelligent man, he is supposed to prove the intangible exists, or at least not stop at mysterious things in that manner.
This was not a scientific experiment. He is under no obligation to "prove the intangible exists" outside the context of his scientific duties.
every scientific man shouln't act at least in this way when faced with an enigmatic question, this is he can't help science.
Rubbish. I am an engineer and science is the basis for what I do. I am also a Christian, but am under no obligation to "prove the intangible exists" because of this since it is outside the context of my professional duties.
but it tells about the way he thinks and about personal benefits. It is not a personal romantic benefit as much as believing in things that most probably doesn't exist and assuming their presence in stead of dreaming of something romantic and declaring them as dreams. He is following rituals, you don't do this in romantic dreams. If it has romanticism, it has religiousity in it. This religiousity makes me think it is not for fun in its roots.
Non sequitir. There is no requirement for ritual behavior to be religious in nature. For example, taking an oath of office in the U.S. may routinely refer to God, but such is optional for nonbelievers. (The oath is to uphold the Constitution.)
All this boils down to is that you think he's weird. OK, fine, that's your opinion. I've worked with the man, and I find him deeply interesting, but not weird.
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Post by echnaton on Nov 26, 2007 13:48:44 GMT -4
He is not without sin. None of are, so we must be careful about casting stones.
every scientific man shouln't act at least in this way when faced with an enigmatic question, this is he can't help science.
Just because he acts in a way you do not understand, doesn't mean he is irrational. There is no requirement for Musgrave or any other human to be empirical all the time. We often experience life in ways that are difficult to empirically describe. This leads to reporting our inner world in unusual terms. Science is one of the tools to differentiate between the empirical and the analogue to our inner feelings and experiences and act with according to that knowledge. That is what men of science do and Musgrave has done here.
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Post by echnaton on Nov 26, 2007 14:03:13 GMT -4
When I was also younger than that, i.e in the 7/8 yrs old I used to speak to rocks and trees in the village when we wanted to come back to Beirut. I hated getting back to school and promised those trees and rocks to come back and visit them. ..but now if I will do the same thing, what would I say about myself?
That you are human!
If you went to them as an adult with the same beliefs of a seven year old it would be troubling. But speaking to the rocks and trees to help you reattach to the wonderful feeling you had for your environment as a seven year old it would mean you were a mature adult . You would be an adult who was able to comprehend both the material world and able to touch the magic of childhood. That would be a great thing. Too many of us loose that duality if we don't practice keeping it.
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Post by lionking on Nov 26, 2007 14:14:26 GMT -4
you r not under this obligation if you can't do it, but at least not think in that manner if you want to know about something and prove it to yourself. this is if u r rational. belief s religious. prayer is religious. it is different than swearing. religion has its definitions in sociology. "A religion is a social institution that includes a set of common beliefs and practices generally held by a group of people, often codified as prayer, ritual, and religious law" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religionclearly there are things religious in what the man did. He doesn't have to be uninteresting. actually, such ppl are very funny and interesting. they are easy to deal with and just charming. My friend who had her strange beliefs ws as such. echnaton it doesn't mean we can't give our opinions of what we think about the man. I don't think he is bad or stupid in general, but this is mysterious and childish act to me. didn't get how the experimental went along the inner self feelings in what musgrave did. there is nothing experimental that lead him to believe so
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