Mike
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Everything posted by Mike
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BTW, here is a super short summary of my stand on free will: Yes, we have free will but it is much weaker than we imagine or want it to be, and it is not immediate like we want it to be. This delay in it, and its weakness means it is prone to failure, at first. BUT with practice and persistence it can grow in strength, like a muscle. We can't control everything about our brain, but with a few things in it, we can learn to control better tomorrow than we could yesterday.
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If you see the value in understanding the mind by a merging of Neuroscience and Philosophy, I have a book for you. It is "Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain" by Patricia Churchland. She won a MacArthur award for that book, so it is a leader in the field. Scientific American magazine called that book a classic in 1991, and since then she has written a few smaller books touching on free will without mentioning that term very much. What is unique about Churchland is she started out as a fully credentialed ivy-league Philosopher, and then fully educated herself in math, science, physics, and chemistry with tutors like DNA Nobel Laureate Frances Crick. At one time she had an office in the Salk Institute near Crick's, and another office across the street in the UCSD Philosophy Dept. Her book "Neurophilosophy" very much started this interaction between the two fields of Philosophy and Neuroscience, and she is still an active participant. I imagine she could be mentioned in the book you cited above.
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I didn't get that far in the video yet, to see that book, but the first half is very cool. It's about anesthesia effects, and on split-brain surgery effects. They now have much better equipment to study this split-brain phenomenon than they did 30 years ago, when I first heard about it. The group I attended hosted Joe Bogen as a guest speaker, who was the first surgeon to perform split-brain surgery. I am happy to see this is still cutting edge in brain science after all these years. This video is the tip of the iceberg on STRANGE split-brain data and implications. And anesthesiology was the FIRST area where hard science addressed the issue of consciousness, many decades ago. Before that hard core scientists avoided the field of consciousness due to the centuries of abuse in that field by religion and false science and fraud. Most of neuroscience is a very new science, but ansthesiology and split-brain go way back.
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Rocky, I was too busy to read this thread when first posted, but I just started reading it today. Your opening post is fascinating and loaded with details, so I will have to check out that book. The points you posted were very much in line with my thinking and my ideas for redefining free will to fit with science. I admit that the thread on determinism that Nathan started for me was a mass of confusion, but not the ideas I was pumping. I had a brand new idea I was hammering out, and it was even more new to all who read the thread. Then the "vpw vs. gsc" theme clouded it over, even though the ideas themselves were very far from anything we experienced at TWI. I'd say that from your first post in this thread, Rocky, that you did get the gist of half of what I was talking about: that our free will's details are far from ever being explored carefully. There are lots of indications that we ALSO have a very mechanical and robotic kind of will that seems to prevail over freedom much of the time. Our free will is limited, and getting to know it's limitations is useful, especially when the notion of free will is constantly coming up. P.S. I ordered that book, The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back, from amazon just now. Thanks for the tip.
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I think PayPal may insulate you from that. I think they offer e-mail validation.
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Hey, if I can donate, you all can donate too. And maybe, if this thread were moved into "About the Way" more of the Read-Only Audience can see it and donate as well. Just a thought.
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God’s Budget and Double Doors .... On the Scarcity of Miracles
Mike replied to Mike's topic in Doctrinal: Exploring the Bible
You just switched configurations. We were talking about one-time, unique interventions, and you brought in a regular daily scheduled set of events. I think the analogy is lost in that shift. -
God’s Budget and Double Doors .... On the Scarcity of Miracles
Mike replied to Mike's topic in Doctrinal: Exploring the Bible
God being always on time was one of the starting points of this thread: that it SEEMS like He's usually not early, but just barely on time, at the last minute. It seemed to suggest a budget to me. But that is two uses of "seem" in a row, hence my not being very sure on this topic, like I am sure about many others. -
Late EDIT: So sorry WW. I was wrong on many points below. Both my reading and writing were distorted. I’m glad I caught it after a rest. Poetic License Excuse: I was lost in the jungle of nuances and memory. Please tell me how I can call this a terrible distortion? I see it as a diabolical lie. Please go back to that thread and see it was not what is characterized above at all! How could you get it so incorrect? First of all I was comparing every day life's miracle density per unit time to be far less than we see in the Gospels, and asking why is that? Then it was a general discussion of a POSSIBLE answer to that question that I admitted up front and often that I was unsure of, and I was exploring the topic. WordWolf, did you really miss my many comments to that effect at the beginning of the thread, as well as often popping up in the pages ??? Did you really miss that? Surprise! You may discover a lot more by re-visiting that thread: https://www.greasespotcafe.com/ipb/topic/25457-god’s-budget-and-double-doors-on-the-scarcity-of-miracles/ Enjoy.
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That's just a pesky little truth-for-the moment, but wait till the re-write comes out. We're stuck here now living in the first rough draft. Patience. It's only temporary.
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I don't doubt it, that grads can get the whole devil possession thing on a spectrum of plain wrong, to a bit nutty, to downright crazy. We were taught that there are two way was the devils operates kingdoms of this world: devil possession is one, and devil oppression is the other. I find that a vast majority of grads I've talked to have totally forgotten about how OFTEN we ALL are OPPRESSED by devils in one way or another. But the same grads gravitate to the process of direct possession, maybe because it gets better CGI in the movies? Possession is relatively rare, while oppression is exceedingly common.
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I can believe that. TWI-1 outside Corps supervision was wonderful and helpful to me. TWI-2 was a dud, and so was TWI-3. I am actually enjoying giving TWI-4 a helping hand, but I see then still need some wobbles corrected they inherited from past administrations. ALL of the fruit in my life from PFAL came from unsupervised TWI-1 and my rich exposure to tapes and collaterals and especially heavy witnessing. I loved witnessing. That's what I am doing here, basically. */*/*/* I will try harder to re-aim my pejorative comments towards the quality of the ideas I reject. That is my heart in all of this. If you could point out one of my ad hominem comments aimed at you, I will treat it as a writing lesson and a repenting to go along with an apology. I am honestly unaware of what you refer to there, and sleuthing it out takes a lot of time and brain power. For you it should be easy to show me what you mean specifically. I'm serious. Old School and I have been trying to sharpen our aim away from each other.
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SINCE I have fruit in my life, I need not brag about it. I have mentioned some of the benefits here before, but it was summarily rejected. You know in your heart how strongly you are poised to pounce on anything I would offer now. I know it; you know it; the readers know it. I am supposed to not cast my pearls before swine. It is a waste of time. You know you just want to roll in the mud with whatever I told you.
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Got Gotcha hunger pangs, I see.
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....I got nothing I want to offer to you. I'd rather discuss the doctrines that produced the fruit that fires me up. Me discussing my life and fruit will not help you recover your mind for renewal. It will not help any readers. What I do here is straighten out the errors that took you and others over the edge into darkness. Those that like the darkness need not participate, and should not be surprised if I don't participate in silly Gotcha Games.
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The truths in PFAL are true no matter how rotten VPW's old man nature was. The fruit from PFAL in my life is true no matter what your rotten old-man nature thinks of it.
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Another botched seduction. Did you run out of Gotcha hooks also?
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I've seen your (and others') piddly offerings, which are no more than suggestions that alt-vpw doctrines should be considered. These are simple contradictions of what we were taught in PFAL, and have NOTHING to offer, except to shelter vpw-phobes. You basically have NOTHING solid offer, and think that the Ocean of Doubt is a nice place to be. Comparatively speaking, what you all can offer may very well be a little better than whatever garbage held you into the crazy confines of TWI-2 and/or TWI-3, but no thanks. I spent too many years in that wandering menagerie before finding PFAL in my hippie days. If you want specifics of the fruit in my life, you will need to become meek. Not much chance of that, but otherwise you can't receive it from me. Let me know if that meekness thing ever happens again in your life. It certainly aint happening now. You can't hide your lust to find fresh Gotcha hooks in my testimony to hang your doubting denouncements on. Why should I tell you, anyway? I don't need to mention the benefits of PFAL to the reading folks at home, because it they already enjoying them themselves, the readers that I target.
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I can understand you your need for saying what you say about me to the others, about how anything I say is a waste of time to think about. Think about this: why don't you start a thread on it? You could go back to all the times you said it on past threads and consolidate all your thoughts about how thoughts on this line of reasoning is a waste.
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I never saw it.
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What ever happened to your promised expose thread on the 4 crucified?
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Wake up to your nightmare? Or to someone else's ? No thanks.
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That may have been the case for the Way Corps, but not for PFAL and the collaterals. The fruit in my life has been good from my focus on the class and collaterals. Something went very wrong in how the Corps evolved. Discovering a new set of facts about VPW's old-man nature long after he died and I am counting my blessings from PFAL does not negate the fruit in my life. It just complicates how I am able to teach others, but not fatally.
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If that is the case I will eventually find out. */*/* Meanwhile, can you or anyone else here, reasonably expect me to throw away the baby (the fruit in my life) with the bathwater (VPW's old-man nature) ???? What piddly replacement could you offer? Nothing !
