Do spiritual things exist?

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Do spiritual things exist? How can we say that everything is physical? Is it any more possible to prove that than to prove that all life in the universe originated on Earth?

Proving isn't really the sort of thing that we can do in metaphysics. What we can do is to make very careful definitions and show that certain worldviews have certain properties, and maybe come up with sensible criteria to compare worldviews and figure out which ones are "better".

One obvious criterion that occurs to anyone who thinks about the subject is that when we have two worldviews that predict the same phenomena, and one is clearly more complicated than the other, we should prefer the simpler one. After all, they are essentially the same worldview in practice, but one of them is just unnecessarily complicated.

The problem with spiritual worldviews is that they often do predict different things to materialist worldviews, but the extra things they predict often cannot be observed until after we die, or something like that. But then why would we prefer a spiritual worldview? On the face of it, it seems that the extra stuff it predicts is the sort of stuff that people cannot possibly know about. That's why religions require claims of historical revelation, which are subject to historical criticism.

So basically, I think that materialism wins by default until someone shows me evidence of something that materialism cannot account for. I don't say that because materialism is "obviously true" or "proved", it's just that materialism is an extremely simple worldview and I don't want to throw away a simple worldview until I have to.

NOTE: I acknowledge that materialists have to be a bit careful when it comes to tricky subjects like subjective experience and the existence of abstract objects and all of that stuff. But I assume that for the purposes of this discussion, "materialist" means "the sort of person who is not likely to believe in ghosts".

What is a spiritual being? Has anyone observed a spiritual being outside his own skin? Hallucinations, day dreams and crazy thoughts do not count.

ruveyn

Probably not

You guys had really better be careful how you answer this one.

It doesn't make any difference to me. I'm a spiritually minded person, but I can also accept the idea from quantum physics that some of the things attributed to spirit are energy in its various forms. In fact that everything that exists is energy.

Most of what I believe I believe because of experiences, and concepts I've developed from my experiences about how the world/universe works. Maybe it's wrong, but as long as it's not so delusional that it impacts me or anyone else negatively, I see no problem with my belief that spirit exists.

Does spirit exist? Is spirit the same thing as energy? Is it conscious energy? (We are conscious, energetic beings, so why would that not be possible?) It's all a great mystery to me, and I don't mind.

Last edited by SpiritBlooms on 03 Jun 2012, 1:12 pm, edited 3 times in total.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamed of by your physicists.

In reality nothing is real

First, the burden of proof is always on the person asserting the positive. So if you claim "spiritual things" exist, it is your responsibility to provide said proof. But your phrasing strikes me of an example of an attempt to do exactly the opposite, to shift the burden of proof.(link)

Second, I think you've got a definitional problem here: I haven't a clue what you mean by a "spiritual thing," and from some of the other responses it appears others are in the same boat I'm in here. And to be quite honest, I'm not even sure I understand what someone means when they claim they're "spiritual," in the sense that the word is often contrasted with being "religious."



This question is nonsense. It is on a par with asking "How can we say all of our thoughts are not being beamed into our brains by a race of super-intelligent giant blue crabs living on a planet orbiting Proxima Centuri?" Well, neither my question nor yours can be disproven, but they're both equally rubbish.

If you're going to make some sort of positive claim, please do so. But this shifting the burden of proof is rather tedious. Why not simply state what it is you believe, offer what evidence you have in favor of said position and let the thread proceed from there?

Possibly because a question is being asked with no "position" even present?


What is do is to watch for any conflicts between material and spiritual (and with mere "positions" aside) and then try to resolve those conflicts without tossing either completely out.

And most of these dreams are balderdash and nonsense.

The reason why physics succeeds and philosophy fails is because physics is joined to reality at the hip by experiments.

ruveyn

Spirituality is implicitly a subjective experience. I could not answer this question for anyone but myself, nor could anyone answer for me. To me, dreams are a spiritualized state of mind. Once you take the reigns and begin exploring with lucidity, you'll find the depths in which the inner mind may explore to be boundless. The physical world during astral travel does not exist. Although, one could argue that a scientific model of neurotransmissions during this state could explain the occurrence of perceived spirituality. However, this would be cold and debasive, without regard for the emotional expressions that make deep introspection such a venerating experience.

Now for the crazy talk.. Or what I'll now call humanist spirituality.
When someone says they've heard the gnomes, I know what they're talking about. If you've communicated with beings from another world, so have I. If you've been ripped from the threshold of this universe and cast into vile smelling pits, looked down on and judged by thirty foot tall demons with dry blood for skin, yep, same here. If you've ever been told the secrets of the universe by a nameless goddess who is larger than every universe ever created combined, eyup.
Bring it back home..
I've met several people with similar experiences, and read far more accounts similar to my own. This is the quantitative proof of spirituality for me. But each person has their own account and interpretation of similar event. Like I may have the sensation of falling in my sleep, but you interpret that exact same brain input as flying upward. Where spirituality comes to play in all this is when you have a profound cerebral experience that changes the way you perceive this world. So what is humanist spirituality? It is a subjective experience that goes well beyond the laws of the physical world, in one's mind, that leaves a life altering emotional footprint.

Define spiritual? Because some concept of spirituality resemble more of a philosophical exploration of oneself being and relationship with the cosmos than involving supernatural entities.

Well, ok, the burden of proof is also situational, though. Often the point of discussion or debate is to convince the opposing side that their position is wrong or that the side with the forward position is correct. So if I were to actually start providing evidence that spirituality exists (or at least my version of it), I imagine someone would pipe up that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This is problematic. For one, it's an unreasonable demand in that it holds one side to an inequitable standard. Someone arguing the opposite would likely be disinclined to answer for his views by holding the same unreasonably high standard of evidence. Not having "extraordinary claims" is a poor excuse."

For another, someone who does not believe in "extraordinary claims" does not need evidence to convince themselves that "extraordinary claims" do not exist (or whatever). They need evidence to be convinced that the "extraordinary claims" are true. I don't need evidence, for example, that God exists. I'm already convinced that He exists. For me, a world without God is extraordinary. I would need some compelling evidence to suspend my belief in God, and so far I've seen nothing at all convincing.

Claiming a "shift in burden of proof" when shouldering that burden yourself is undesirable for making your case is just lazy. The most sensible argument I've heard from some atheists that spiritual things do not exists goes something like this: "Spiritual things may or may not exist; however, the lack of evidence in favor of God/etc. suggests that despite the possibility for God's existence, it is extremely unlikely that he exists. There is most likely no God." This is not, however, a disproof. It is a rationale for an opinion. It admits its limitations and is honest. Saying "you can't prove spiritual things exist, therefore spiritual things don't exit" just doesn't cut it. Lots of physical things existed before we were able to prove they exist, and we even continue to hypothesize and theorize about other things we believe to exist that we are unable to test for at the moment. We just continue to believe that what we're searching for is out there until we find it or find a better alternative.


This shares a similar problem with the other question in that it is a question. I agree that the OP should have simply made the claim that he believes is the correct one and backed up his claims. But a question is a question and there is no outright position that has been posed. It's an invitation to express how we feel about it and back up our own claims.

My position is I do not believe that "everything is physical." Thoughts, dreams, emotions, and so forth are too nuanced to be explained as simple electro-chemical responses in neurons. That explanation seems to me to say that thoughts, etc. arise as results of neural activity. It doesn't appear to me that we have sufficient evidence that this really happens. It doesn't seem to me as likely that our actions, based on thoughts/feelings, are really consistent with a world that is purely driven by material response. We aren't slaves to our emotions. In fact, we do make choices, and many of those choices are inconsistent with the expected environmental conditioning. If every single human action was a knee-jerk reaction to a causal action, I'd believe otherwise. But it isn't. And that leads me to believe that the human soul is the core of human existence and the physical world is the medium through which the spirit finds expression. Thoughts and feelings are the cause of human physical activity, not the other way around.

So you are trying to claim that there is some kind of a "double-standard," here. The thing is, it's invariably the case that you have not only failed to deliver "extraordinary" evidence, but you have delivered zip, nada, bupkis mit kuduchas.

You could try just investigating your belief. I think you would find it very satisfying to actually develop a deeper comprehension of the nature of your beliefs. It might or might not lead you to reconsidering the validity of your present conclusions, but there is little doubt in my mind that you would find it personally enriching.

Well, I would direct you to a few scientific articles on the workings of glutamate in the human CNS, but I am afraid that the material is very dry. It would probably bore you.

Glutamate does some interesting things to our neurons. Let's take, for example, the NMDA receptor. A lot of people might know a little bit about it, but you don't really hear much about what it actually does or how it works. The NMDA receptor is a little protein complex in the plasma membrane of your neurons. It actually shows up in a lot of places in your body, actually. In fact, you will usually find it in any cell that has in its chemistry the various ligands for its promoters. Anyway, what the receptor actually does, when glutamate and glycine bind at its activation sites, is open up a channel, and it allows sodium and a little calcium to flow into the cell and potassium to flow out. However, its operation can be confounded by the presence of magnesium ions, which somehow has the effect of making the functioning of the thing voltage-dependent.

Anyway, a drug that blocks the NMDA receptor strongly is this substance we call PCP.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDBofgWP5fM[/youtube]

What we have discovered about this receptor is that, if it is operating normally, it promotes the development of these little spines on dendrites, dendrites being kind of like little "feelers" put out by the brain cell. The spines make these little feelers "sticky," sort of like velcro, so they can form and hold new bonds with other cells.

The thing is, there are a lot of different kinds of receptor in any given cell, and they do a wide variety of things to the cell. There are hundreds of thousands of different receptors on any one of the hundred billion neurons in your brain. I do not exaggerate. The number of various different receptors on a given cell has everything to do with what is going on in its environment. Therefore, every single cell in your entire brain has its own unique and complex history. That history is irreplaceable. Any particular cell will never appear again. Once it's gone, it is lost to this world forever. Fortunately, we have some hundred billion of them to lose, so go ahead and drink that booze.

I study this subject pretty closely, and I have found out a lot about how we physically put our thoughts together, at the most basic chemical level. It's very interesting. However, if you want to think that some vague mystical force of some kind does all of this work instead, you go right ahead.

Last edited by WilliamWDelaney on 04 Jun 2012, 1:10 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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