Supernatural phenomena are a product of the brain!

[Radical]

Who am I? Are we like a machine or are we more then a machine?

The question is what is that “I” that we refer to. Is it a body part? Or is it a characteristic or a property of some body part or an organ. Is it really separate from our body? What do we mean by separate from our body? Where does that “I” reside?

Let us take an example. Suppose you are healthy today. Then one day your hand gets cut off. You recovered and after that you will still feel that you have the same central entity “I” within you. You will say “my hand got cut off but I did not die”. So hand is not “I”. You will have same perception of “I” before and after the accident when your hand got cut off. Take another example, suppose you got a heart transplant and after your recovery you will say that I have now different heart but I am still alive. Here again your perception of “I” is still same. You still have same habits. You have all your memory still intact. “I” still is same before and after heart transplant.

These types of examples makes us feel that “I” is not part of the body because when an organ or a body part is cut off or replaced then the feeling of “I” does not go away. It still remains same within us. You remember your family. You have the same old opinion of “I” as before the organ or body parts was replaced. You still have your old desires and problems. You feel that “I” is still same. So you may feel that “I” does not belong to hands or legs or any other body parts.

What if the body parts that we talked about in previous paragraph refers to brain. Will you have the same feeling of “I” if your brain is damaged or if you had a brain transplant? I claim you won’t. At this time medically brain transplant is not possible. Science has not advanced that much that we can transplant brain from one person to another person. You should ask the question that would you feel the same “I”, if you go through brain transplant or if you were unconscious? If you ask the question, you will find out that you will not feel the same “I”.

We have known cases where person’s brain is damaged. Then at some point they recover. When they were unconscious then the feeling of “I” was not there else they were not unconscious. You can go through this exercise yourself. Suppose if you were unconscious for some reason or if you were under general anesthesia, would you have feeling of “I”? The feeling of “I” goes away. Only during waking hours or sometimes during dreams you get the feeling of “I”. This tells us that feeling of “I” is produced by brain cells. It is a property of the brain cells that produce this feeling.

So what is the “I” that we refer to ourselves? It is a feeling that happens in brain. It is not a separate entity from brain. Similarly we go through feeling of sorrow and pleasure in our brain. The feeling of “I” is not same as emotional feelings of pain and pleasure but it is another type of feeling that makes us feel that there is a separate entity called “I”. I am not expert in how brain works but in brain there are brain cells called neurons. Within these cells and among these cells there are electro-chemical reactions happening in the brain. The feeling of “I” may be caused by these reactions or communications between neurons or because of some entire different activity. What I am trying to point out is that it happens in brain and is caused by some brain activity.

This leads us to the conclusion that the feeling of “I” is part of the brain. The feeling is such that it has the characteristic that it makes us feel that “I” is separate from our body but it is the characteristic of the feeling. It is still a feeling that is happening in our brain. It is part of our body. The reason I am saying that it is part of our body is that because the feeling happens in our brain and brain is part of our body so that feeling of “I” is part of our body. But the characteristic of this feeling is that it does make us feel separate from our body but it is really not separate from our body. When brain is damaged or unconscious then the feeling of “I” is no longer there.

What are the implications of the above conclusion that feeling of the “I” is part of the brain which is part of the body?

What happens when we die? At some point and time our body is going to stop functioning and we are going to die. It is the same fate for all of us. By using science we can extend the life but ultimately we all are going to die. When we die our brain stops functioning. The feeling of “I” is no longer remains because the brain is not functioning. It is like when a computer’s central processing unit (the brain of the computer – we call it CPU) dies, it cannot process instructions. Similarly when our brain dies and when we die the feeling of “I” goes away. It is no longer there because brain is dead.

This leads us to a conclusion that the feeling of “I” is only temporary and happens in brain and it lasts only as long as we are alive and brain is functioning. After death the whole body and brain dies and there is no “I”. There is no permanent “I” or there is no central entity, which lasts after the death of the body and brain. The unique genetic combination in this universe that has produced our body and brain will no longer exist. “I” is a feeling, which also goes with the death of the body and brain. It goes forever.

From above discussion let me say what we mean by life.

We are born somewhere on this planet. It is sheer luck where we were born. Also the unique genes from our parents have produced our body. Our body has its own properties like a tree has its own properties. When a seed grows it takes the shape of a tree and when fertile human egg grows it takes the shape of a human body. Then our body goes through different stages throughout our lifetime. From childhood it grows and we enter adulthood. Then we enter in to mid life and our body ( we ) starts going down hill. At some point body starts deteriorating and then it dies. At that point the unique body that existed for short period of time on this earth no longer exists. The unique genetic combination in this universe that has produced our body dies and the game is over for us. The feeling of “I” also goes away with the death of our body.

This leads us to conclusion that we are just like a machine. We are our body. Our body is set of parts and organs. The brain is one of the organs. It produces these effects of “I”, identity, intuition, intelligence etc. When our body thus brain dies then the feeling of “I”, identity etc. all goes away since functioning brain is no longer there. This tells us that there is no permanent separate residual entity remains in us after the death of the body. Also when we are alive there is no separate entity in us. These feelings are just property of the brain. The brain produces them.

[Radical]

Question: what is a thought?

Answer: I am not an expert in how brain works. But thought is some kind of a process that happens in our brain. Exactly what is the process that causes thought, I do not know. It can be some kind of electro-chemical reaction or it can be some communication between neurons, which can be electro-chemical reaction or some other type of process. We are not here to find out what chemical or electro-chemical or what other process causes thought, but I will state that, like “I”, thought is some kind of a process that happens in brain. Similar to “I” when brain dies then thought also dies with death of the brain because thought can only exists as long as brain exists and functions. This is true for other emotions and feeling of “I” too. They go away once and for all, when brain dies.

Question: People describe out of body experiences? Don’t they exist?
Answer: Let us go slowly in to what you mean by out of body experience. Let us take an example of out of body experience. Suppose when you are sleeping then you get a dream that you are separate from your body and you are flying in the air.

Examine what is happening here. You have a thought that goes through your brain giving you the feeling that you are flying in air and you are separate from your body. But it is still a thought that is happening in your brain. Physically you are still there in the bed. Thought goes through your brain and makes you feel that you are flying.

The same thing happens when you are reading a book or watching a movie. When you are reading a book you feel that you are somewhere in the plot of the book. You are physically there. In a movie you feel that you are in a movie somewhere else. Physically you are still in your room or in a theater. The activity or processes which goes through your brain makes you feel that you are somewhere else but they are just some processes or thoughts going through the brain. You are still at the same place. They are just the thoughts going through your brain giving you the feeling of separateness.

Out of body experiences are nothing but thoughts telling you that you are separate from body and physically you are located somewhere else. The whole game is played in your brain. You are still in your bed if you are sleeping at that time.

Question: People talk about mystical, magical experiences. They also experience God and other different things. Don’t you think that they have any value?

Answer: Where does all these experiences happen? They are product of brain. Brain thinks and makes all those experiences. If a person is totally unconscious, he or she will not feel any of those experiences. The person should be totally unconscious under anesthesia. What this means is that our body is a machine. Like machine has different parts, our body has different parts. Brain is one of the part or organ of the body-machine. This body part brain creates all these experiences. That is all these out of body experiences, experience of seeing God, experience of some magical or mystical experiences, seeing angels etc. They are all product of the brain.

We are bored in our life. We are confused and we do not know what to do with our life. We generate all these things and believe in them so we have something to hang on to. All these experiences and all we talk about supernatural, magical and mystical things are useless. Brain is seeking something to hold on to. So it holds on to all these supernatural phenomena. Spirituality and all these magical beliefs are fairy tales. It has no value.

[Scott]

I don't think anyone here is questioning that these things are a product of the brain. The brain is one heck of an amazing machine. It gives us our experiences and causes us to question them. It's the only type of brain in existence (at least in my perception of existence) that is capable of studying itself.

Aside from the fact that you make no mention whatsoever of phenomena which involve interactions between multiple, real, living humans (e.g. telepathy), let me ask you this...

What's your point?

[Radical]

Originally Posted by Scott

What's your point?

Please reread my post. My point is very clear. My point is basically that anything supernatural is just a product of the brain, not reality.

[Erki]

Wasn't reality the product of the brain? :

[Savage]

@Radical: Your belief system is similar to what I believed when I was your age (19).

[MartialDev]

Originally Posted by Radical

Please reread my post. My point is very clear. My point is basically that anything supernatural is just a product of the brain, not reality.

If you edit your essay down to 1-2 paragraphs, the flaws in your logic will become clearer.

[Radical]

Originally Posted by MartialDev

If you edit your essay down to 1-2 paragraphs, the flaws in your logic will become clearer.

Please point them out.

[Reality Handbook]

Originally Posted by Radical

Supernatural phenomena are a product of the brain!

Steve brought up video games and I think it's a good metaphor to use.

Imagine a person seated on a sofa playing Super Mario Brothers. Every move that Super Mario makes precisely correlates with a signal received on a Nintendo controller--that's the way it works. Yet if Luigi were studying Mario from inside-the-Nintendo, it might be very difficult to "see" the person sitting on the couch who is playing. Everything would appear to originate from "the controller"...so phenomena like the fingers pushing could be discovered only as tiny cul-de-sacs and footnotes of "gamepad science".

I am reminded of this poem about blind men and an elephant:

Blind Men and the Elephant (a.k.a., "Blindmen") (by John Godfrey Saxe).

There's no doubting it: the brain is clearly a bottleneck by which our presence in the physical world using the "5 senses" is accomplished. Just like you-as-Mario can't be animated without a controller, you-as-Radical can't be animated without a brain. But the broader question is about where the identity lies...and what do you want to study. Are you interested in Mario, or are you interested in the person playing the game seated on a couch?

Neither is an intrinsically invalid place to start. While you are playing the game you become Mario. So it might seem that a study fixated on the paradigm of the Nintendo controller as the "source" is sensible, all else is irrelevant because it is only techniques that affect the controller that further you in the game. Yet some people are interested in other questions...like are there other game cartridges, or is there beer in the fridge.

[Sean.M.Connelly]

I know there's nothing I can say to change your mind, Radical. And I doubt there is something I could say just to make you think twice about your belief system. Maybe I'll just say what I personally did, and you can do whatever you want with that information. Of course, I'm a little long winded, so maybe you won't even read this post :-P.

Looking back, I suppose the main reason why I changed was because I wasn't happy being a mechanical-atheist. I simply wasn't happy. Maybe there is something inside of us that tells us that the truth will ultimately make you feel really good :-P. But I thought I had truth, and I didn't feel really good :-P. I argued with people, and told them how stupid they were, and explained everything they experienced from my mechanical perspective. But I was not happy. I didn't enjoy life, and I found it very hard and difficult. I suppose that was the root that caused me to change.

From there, my curiosity led me to research psychic abilities. I went on forums, and heard people asking for help, because a ghost had invaded their house and caused things to fly across the room. I would think to myself, "Good lord! These people are really delusional! Don't they realize ghosts don't exist? These people need serious mental help." I suppose the desire to prove people wrong led me to researching psychic abilities quite a lot. I think I was part curious, and part just wanted to prove everyone was stupid in my head :-P.

Over time, a lingering question started to appear in my mind. I had met and seen a lot of people who believed in psychic abilities, and who could claim to do psychic feats. Sure, I could explain each individual away using coincidence, or that they were lying, or delusional. And I did :-P. But there was an underlying problem: how could there be so many delusional people? How could that be? How was it that everyone around me was stupid, and I was the only smart one? Now sure... you can say "coincidence", or "you're a nut", or "you're lying"... but after a while, those words start to lose meaning. You can only say that so many times before you start to think to yourself, "Hmmm ... maybe there is something else going on here? Because I sure am resorting to those three explanations quite a lot. These situations just seem more complicated than that."

Once that question entered my mind... I got the balls to actually TRY some exercises these supposed "nut jobs" were telling me to try. I had never tried them before, because I already "knew" that nothing would happen. But I was a bored teenager, and I had this lingering doubt, so I had to give it a shot. And when I did, I started experiencing some things they described.

Now for the kicker.

I don't think it was the actual psychic experiences that convinced me. I think what actually convinced me was that I would explain my own simple experiences with other mechanical-atheists. And they're reaction was that I was delusional! It felt like I was arguing with myself! I wanted to reach out, and say, "NO! I'm not one of those delusional nut jobs... I'm one of you! I'm on the good side! It's just I can't explain this experience completely... Just listen to me for a second! This is serious!"

When I finally saw my own personality from the outside looking in... that convinced me. When suddenly I found myself being labeled as the delusional one, and I saw how the mechanical-atheist wouldn't listen to one word that I said... that's when I realized that that was how I acted to others. And it sucked.

I didn't leave the mechanical world by choice. The mechanical-atheists pushed me out because my experiences didn't align with their beliefs. It's easy to label others as delusional nutjobs, or liars, or label an experience as just random luck. Until you personally experience it. And when you do, try explaining your experience to another like-minded mechanical-atheist :-P.

~Sean

[Brutha]

Originally Posted by Radical

In that case what about brain damaged people? Does their consciousness somehow get damaged in the so called non-physical plane, or are they just faking retardation?

Take the Mario example. Lets asume the controller is defect and sometimes when the player presses the button nothing happens. Sometimes when the player doesn't press the button, the controller acts like when it is pressed.
When Luigi observes Mario he must come to the conclusion that Mario is retarted.

Also, when we are asleep we are not conscious, and our brains don't have any perceptions. We may have dreams, but they are just hazy thoughts floating around from previous perceptions.

How do you know that your brains don't have any perceptions when you sleep? Simply because you don't remember them? I had experiences where I acted conscious and had no memory of it afterwards. One was shutting my alarm clock of in a polyphasic sleep trial. The other was a bid more serious.
I woke up in a hospital, with some machienes attached to my body. I knew that I should be operated, but the last thing I remembered was going to bed the day before the operation.
My doctor told me that 6 days had passed. When I awoke at the OP-day I have had to be fully consciouis, but I had no real sleep in those 6 days so the memorys weren't saved. In your sleep your brain does memory saving.
Sure I thought that the doctor was nuts, their were no way that 6 days were simply disappeared.
But it turned out that those six days simply were not in my memory.

So to conclude that because you can't remember being conscious while you sleep, that you actually are unconscious is difficult.

But you would argue that your brain produces the perception of the ghost. The mind could as well produce the perception of a "physical plane".

Originally Posted by Radical

The only existence we know of is this current physical existence.

There you are wrong, you have no way to know that the physical plane exists. All you have is some perceptions. And it is quite possible that those perceptions don't resemble something phyical.
You would also think that when someone sees a Ghost that Ghost doesn't exist in the "physical plane". Seeing Ghosts through taking drugs is quite easy and a phenomen that you should be able to accept.

Originally Posted by Scott

Before you continue to argue, ask yourself this: What if there were more psychics in the world than there were scientists? Would scientists then not be considered the "weird ones"?

If you count all prists and shaman into the group of psychics I would think that there are more psychics than scientist. You have to take into account that most people in this world don't live in Europe or the USA.

[MartialDev]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Take the Mario example. Lets asume the controller is defect and sometimes when the player presses the button nothing happens. Sometimes when the player doesn't press the button, the controller acts like when it is pressed.
When Luigi observes Mario he must come to the conclusion that Mario is retarted.

What a funny choice of analogies. When Mario faces ghosts, they all disappear!

[ReallyGoodIdeas]

Sean M Connelly,

Yes - me too! I find it interesting that my "logical" friends are the unhappiest ones as well.

I agree - its a learning process. If you read Power vs Force, it's a progression through the levels of consciousness. And all levels are valid, but the "truths" at one level seem like rubbish at another level. We are all meant to be at the levels we're at so we can progress through them. And all our interactions are for us to learn from.

Joy to you
Hazel

[Alyssa]

woah that's so intense
it probably took so long to write that
but man, we need to hang out
even if some of your facts were wrong
but maybe you were stoned
o.o

[phire]

Originally Posted by Sean.M.Connelly

But there was an underlying problem: how could there be so many delusional people? How could that be? How was it that everyone around me was stupid, and I was the only smart one? Now sure... you can say "coincidence", or "you're a nut", or "you're lying"... but after a while, those words start to lose meaning. You can only say that so many times before you start to think to yourself, "Hmmm ... maybe there is something else going on here? Because I sure am resorting to those three explanations quite a lot. These situations just seem more complicated than that."

Watch these videos by Derren Brown and you may find that skepticism coming back.

Voodoo

Remote viewing

One inch punch

Instant religious conversion

The mind is a very powerfull organ that we do not fully understand yet. The subconcious mind is especially strong. It has the ability to affect the way we view reality much more so than even our conscious mind. It can prevent the conscious mind from accessing certain memories, it can change the way we remember those memories, it can make us feel things with no physical stimuli, it can prevent us from seeing things and it can also help us to notice small details.

In truth a person cannot trust their own experiences any more than they can trust a strangers advice. Even though we like to think our conscious mind (the "I") is in control, the subconscious mind is the one that really runs the show. Experiences are based on what we can perceive but you can never be 100% sure that you are perceiving all that you need to come to an accurate conclusion of what happened.

My belief is that we do live in a objective mechanical universe. However, that being the case, each of us still lives in our own subject universe in our own minds. We have different ideas on what is important in life, our own purposes, and the many other aspects that make us human are all variables that create our own subjective reality.

[Sean.M.Connelly]

Originally Posted by phire

...

In truth a person cannot trust their own experiences any more than they can trust a strangers advice.

...

I love Derren Brown, and actually bought some of his DVDs :-P. Although I found out the hard way that my DVD player is Region 1.

Self delusion is always possible, I completely agree. In fact, I agree with pretty much everyone you wrote in your post. I'm not saying my own subjective experience is something that CONVINCES me... I am saying that if I experience something bizarre, and I can't explain it, then that makes me curious :-P.

Whenever I have the ability to repeatedly test a bizarre experience, I try to. I'm not a scientist, but I am as scientific as a layman can get, I imagine :-P. For example, here is one experiment I performed, that produced measurable results: Peebrain's Psi Journal: Reproducible Results

I've also done experiment with out of body experiences that led me to conclude that I am perceiving the external world to some extent. I posted about it here: Peebrain's Psi Journal: Awesome OBE

My original post was saying that the question of "how can this many people be delusional?" was a question that started to get me more curious and open-minded about psychic abilities. That question alone didn't convince me of anything. Only years of practice and research has actually convinced me :-P.

~Sean

[Reality Handbook]

Originally Posted by phire

My belief is that we do live in a objective mechanical universe.

I'm willing to believe that subjective experience can be an ever-receding frontier...constantly giving way to a body of shared knowledge of how systems are interconnected.

But the idea that our present state of established consensus has all the connections right is pretty crazy. There's a 2,400 year old debate on whether people can sense barometric pressure "in their bones"...and the establishment opinion (as of 1997) in the National Academy of Sciences discarded the idea based on studying 18 people. So don't be surprised if another study comes out which reverses that.

Originally Posted by phire

Watch these videos by Derren Brown and you may find that skepticism coming back.

Where I personally look in order to keep my mind open is art. As Shakespeare said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." So the kind of videos I encourage people to watch are ones like this one, that reminds me of the dizzying array of possibilities:

YouTube - Royksopp - Remind Me

The moon affects the tides, so planets may influence your life in other ways. I don't personally believe in astrology, but it could be the proto-science whose body of evidence leads to a serendipitous discovery on that front. The only way to know is to not be a knee-jerker when someone uses a certain terminology to describe their experience...

[astra]

Originally Posted by Radical

Let us take an example. Suppose you are healthy today. Then one day your hand gets cut off. You recovered and after that you will still feel that you have the same central entity “I” within you. You will say “my hand got cut off but I did not die”. So hand is not “I”. You will have same perception of “I” before and after the accident when your hand got cut off. Take another example, suppose you got a heart transplant and after your recovery you will say that I have now different heart but I am still alive. Here again your perception of “I” is still same. You still have same habits. You have all your memory still intact. “I” still is same before and after heart transplant.

How do you know this? Has your hand been cut off? Have you had a heart transplant? I've heard of many cases where, after an organ transplant, people develop habits or tastes for food or remember things related to the person who donated the organ to them. If you truly believe this and want to convince people of it, you need more solid foundations than 'This is how I believe things are'. More to the point, while I have no problem with people presenting different ideas and having different beliefs (and, in fact, I encourage it), I don't believe in trying to force it down people's throats and make them beleive it (especially hard if your logic's shaky). IMO, this only makes people reject it more. I say this with the experience of someone forced to attend a catholic school for several years which led to my conclusion that it's all just a really entertaining historical story (no offence to any catholics/christians out there btw). I'm sure it's real to some people, but we each choose our reality, perhaps not consciously, but belief is a choice still.

Anyway, I could go on about this subject for ages, but I think i've made the main points.