X-Message-Number: 20161 From: "mike99" <> Subject: The short & cryptic messages of Dormammu (was: God talk) Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 15:45:31 -0600 Dear Mr. Your short and cryptic responses to messages in the thread about technologically-induced "spiritual" experiences seem to indicate that you do not appreciate exactly how damning this evidence is to the claim that these are God-induced experiences. For example, there is the exchange below (quoted material is inside the 2 .... lines): ...................................................................... LATORRA<<the claim is, in your analogy, that we can easily produce physical evidence of both natural and synthetic rubies. Can you produce incontrovertible evidence of the existence of God?>> d: I see. You misread my analogy. my claim is that the existence of synthetic rubies has no bearing on the existence of natural rubies. thus, the existence of induced spiritual experiences has no bearing on the existence of non-induced spiritual experiences. indeed, even the induced experiences may be authentic spiritual experiences, just as an authentic breeze may be noticed when a switched-off fan is switched on. ...................................................................... NEW RESPONSE TO THE ABOVE-v LATORRA: Once again, your analogizing misses the mark because the moving air of a breeze does not have the emotional impact and "revelatory" effect of the brain events which people interpret as "spiritual" experiences. No one who felt a breeze than went out a committed mass murder because "the breeze told me to" but numerous individuals have done precisely this because, so they thought, "God told me to." (For examples of this, read the historically accurate material on Old Testament massacres, Muslin massacres, Jim Jones' People's Temple mass murder-suicide, etc.) And then, Mr. D., there was this exchange: ...................................................................... Message #20149 From: Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 16:02:41 EDT Subject: Re: CryoNet #20132 - #20143 In a message dated 9/23/02 2:00:53 AM, writes: <<Mark Plus: I happen to find all this talk of "mystical" & "spiritual" experiences baffling. I have no clue what such people are mouthing off about. d: find out. ............ LATORRA: What do you mean by "find out"? Meditate? Pray? Take psychedelics? Use a "brain machine" to induce mystical experiences? One could do some or all of that. I certainly have. But these experiences prove nothing...except that homo sapiens are capable of having such experiences. The experiences certainly don't prove the existence of God, an afterlife, or anything else that some people interpret them to mean. In other words, the meaning is added to the experience by the experiencer. The experiences themselves are just whatever they are: bliss, love, union with something greater, etc. Heck, even many so-called spiritual masters (e.g., Adi Da) warn their followers not to get attached to these experiences. If they don't idolize these subjective states, then why should we?>> d: one may say the same of "ordinary" experiences. and one should. ...................................................................... NEW RESPONSE TO THE ABOVE-v LATORRA: OK, let's do that. So now do you agree that these so-called "spiritual" experiences are not caused by God and should be treated as being in the same causal category as getting drunk or having a pleasant dream? Or do you still maintain that, somehow without evidence of any kind and without logical proof, we should still accept your original claim that God-caused spiritual experiences are real? And please, write more than a dozen words this time. If you continue to pretend to be a Zen-like sage (and BTW I am a Zen Buddhist) and refuse to engage in the level of debate this list deserves, you will have discredited yourself and your arguments (such as they are). Please, don't cheapen the efforts of those who want to engage you in debate by dismissing them without expending at least as much time and effort to explain your position as they have spent to explain theirs. This is simple good manners. Regards, Michael LaTorra Member: Extropy Institute: www.extropy.org World Transhumanist Association: www.transhumanism.org Alcor Life Extension Foundation: www.alcor.org Society for Technical Communication: www.stc.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=20161