"A More Superstitious Age"...Or A Less Receptive Modernity?

[Stone holm]

So because you can't understand what I say, you feel the need to insult? Seriously?

We are too prideful to admit that we are just as superstitious as previous generations. Society treats previous generations as ignoramouses because we have technology they don't have. People haven't changed. Id even say we are more superstitious than previous generations.

In what way are we just as superstitious as previous generations? What does that mean?

[thesometimesaint]

Me too but it comes with a price.

Always.

[Stone holm]

Always.

The price being?

[thesometimesaint]

The price being?

Depends on the technology. It is always a bit of a two edged sword.

The simple car that most of us drive every day, kills some 30,000 Americans every year, and hundreds of thousands more are injured. So we make cars roads more safe adding to the economic expense(price).

Depends on the superstition.

Humans used to believe that the weather was a God, beyond even our most basic understanding. We now know that it is the complex interplay of natural forces that makes weather. So much so that we can watch hurricanes form in the Atlantic Ocean days if not weeks before they make landfall.

The price we pay is we no longer worship weather, and employ thousands to tell us, with reasonable accuracy, what the weather will be like.

[Questing Beast]

The price of using this medium to "make friends" all over the world is, we don't go outside and walk our own neighborhoods and make friends of physically present people. This is a huge mistake, I think. Yet here I am, tapping away, probably because many or even most of my immediate neighbors are disgusting and disturbing to be around too much. I don't relish meeting more of the same. How perverse is that? I am weak and take the easy way in this offered medium, to give me what I need/want, which is some contact with my fellows, but not too much, and contact that is easily broken off when I choose to, etc....

[Stone holm]

Depends on the technology. It is always a bit of a two edged sword.

The simple car that most of us drive every day, kills some 30,000 Americans every year, and hundreds of thousands more are injured. So we make cars roads more safe adding to the economic expense(price).

Depends on the superstition.

Humans used to believe that the weather was a God, beyond even our most basic understanding. We now know that it is the complex interplay of natural forces that makes weather. So much so that we can watch hurricanes form in the Atlantic Ocean days if not weeks before they make landfall.

The price we pay is we no longer worship weather, and employ thousands to tell us, with reasonable accuracy, what the weather will be like.

Hm, except I keep thinking back to those indeginous people living on islands off the coast of India knowing without any technology that a Tsunname was coming, and I am thinking why couldn't we have it both ways. Am thinking of all of the old weather rhymes that my mother use to say, "Red sky at night sailor's delight, red sky in the morning sailor's warning" and "Winter's fog freeze the hair off a dog." I think of the Bank VP who used to talk off warts, the agricultural industrialist who had the ring that he used to locate drowned bodies, the bank cashier who saw spirits, and my maternal grandmother who was a midwife and made prophecies about children...and I wonder have we lost something. What if there really are things like trolls, elves, djinn and such and we have just lost the ability to see and believe. C.S. Lewis once wrote that the only reason we aren't still burning witches is that we no longer believe they exist -- not suggesting that I want to go back to burning witches, but what was going on? And how did those Egyptian magicians turn their staves into snakes in the first place, etc. etc. And well maybe there is something in the wind called Mariah....

[thesometimesaint]

Hm, except I keep thinking back to those indeginous people living on islands off the coast of India knowing without any technology that a Tsunname was coming, and I am thinking why couldn't we have it both ways. Am thinking of all of the old weather rhymes that my mother use to say, "Red sky at night sailor's delight, red sky in the morning sailor's warning" and "Winter's fog freeze the hair off a dog." I think of the Bank VP who used to talk off warts, the agricultural industrialist who had the ring that he used to locate drowned bodies, the bank cashier who saw spirits, and my maternal grandmother who was a midwife and made prophecies about children...and I wonder have we lost something. What if there really are things like trolls, elves, djinn and such and we have just lost the ability to see and believe. C.S. Lewis once wrote that the only reason we aren't still burning witches is that we no longer believe they exist -- not suggesting that I want to go back to burning witches, but what was going on? And how did those Egyptian magicians turn their staves into snakes in the first place, etc. etc. And well maybe there is something in the wind called Mariah....

I think we can have it both ways. With Tsunamis better instrumentation would also be a big help. But nothing currently beats a good set of eyes, and a knowledge of past tsunamis. IE; If you're on the beach and the water suddenly greatly recedes. Get to higher group immediately. Those old sailors tales have wisdom in them. High air pressure moves the clouds out. While low pressure moves them in. Just good observational skills go a long way towards that "folk wisdom". But with a temperature gauge, a relative humidity gauge, and a air pressure gauge we are more accurate as to how big that storm will be.

• Monday's child is fair of face,
  
• Tuesday's child is full of grace,
  
• Wednesday's child is full of woe,
  
• Thursday's child has far to go.
  
• Friday's child is loving and giving,
  
• Saturday's child works hard for a living,
  
• But the child born on the Sabbath Day,
  
• Is fair and wise and good and gay.
  
• 
  

I don't know how they did it. But positing a Supernatural cause is a logical fallacy. An Appeal from Ignrance.

Edited June 3, 2013 by thesometimesaint

[Stone holm]

I think we can have it both ways. With Tsunamis better instrumentation would also be a big help. But nothing currently beats a good set of eyes, and a knowledge of past tsunamis. IE; If you're on the beach and the water suddenly greatly recedes. Get to higher group immediately. Those old sailors tales have wisdom in them. High air pressure moves the clouds out. While low pressure moves them in. Just good observational skills go a long way towards that "folk wisdom". But with a temperature gauge, a relative humidity gauge, and a air pressure gauge we are more accurate as to how big that storm will be.

• Monday's child is fair of face,
  
• Tuesday's child is full of grace,
  
• Wednesday's child is full of woe,
  
• Thursday's child has far to go.
  
• Friday's child is loving and giving,
  
• Saturday's child works hard for a living,
  
• But the child born on the Sabbath Day,
  
• Is fair and wise and good and gay.
  
• 
  

I don't know how they did it. But positing a Supernatural cause is a logical fallacy. An Appeal from Ignrance.

I am not sure that I am suggesting a supranatural cause, I am positing a loss of natural senses and abilities through atrophy.

[thesometimesaint]

I don't know what natural senses and abilities we could have lost. Humans are rather frail creatures in most respects. Our brains and abilities to make complex tools give us a almost a supernatural natural advantage over all other animals.

[Stone holm]

I don't know what natural senses and abilities we could have lost. Humans are rather frail creatures in most respects. Our brains and abilities to make complex tools give us a almost a supernatural natural advantage over all other animals.

I am not sure i know either, but we do know that large portions of our brain are unused. I also spent a huge amount of time as a youth hunting baby turtles in a large fishing lake behind our summer cottage and selling them to the tourists at a neighbouring resort hotel. The smaller the turtle the higher the price. Turtle hunting which I became an absolute adept at requires patience and keen observation as most were caught by hand. In the process I saw things that no one else saw. Later when I was old enough to hunt game, I would see standing hidden game that others didn't. I think some types of sensing other than just visual was in play.

[Calm]

I am not sure that I am suggesting a supranatural cause, I am positing a loss of natural senses and abilities through atrophy.

Perhaps their natural senses were aware of beings that exist that our own sense are not aware of...they exist outside of our wavelength so to speak.

I had a friend who believed she saw a brownie/tree elf in a Christmas tree she wanted to cut down, she asked him permission and saw that he nodded and he accompanied the tree into her house. She made sure to bring the tree back to the same spot when she was done with it so he could move on to another tree or whatever he did. She was convinced she could see him at times. There was nothing to indicate anything emotional or mental about save a willingness to accept unexpected things. I am open to the idea she really saw someone.

[Stone holm]

Perhaps their natural senses were aware of beings that exist that our own sense are not aware of...they exist outside of our wavelength so to speak.

I had a friend who believed she saw a brownie/tree elf in a Christmas tree she wanted to cut down, she asked him permission and saw that he nodded and he accompanied the tree into her house. She made sure to bring the tree back to the same spot when she was done with it so he could move on to another tree or whatever he did. She was convinced she could see him at times. There was nothing to indicate anything emotional or mental about save a willingness to accept unexpected things. I am open to the idea she really saw someone.

This is exactly what I am talking about. I knew a timber buyer who could walk out in a newly ploughed field after a rain and find an arrowhead within minutes, I could spend hours in the same field and never find anything. In discussing this once with my son, he said that he had found that once you had found something once something in your head changed and you could find them again everywhere. Which having thought about it makes sense. But what if you were never around someone who could sense certain things and everyone disbelieved they existed anyway?

[thesometimesaint]

An interesting question is to what extent will the scientific explanations of our time look like super-natural explanations when compared to the scientific insight and theories being formulated 1000 years from now.

"Dark matter made it happen"

Hopefully we'll know a heck of a lot more in a thousand years. What we now know is but a tiny thimble compared to the vast ocean of our ignorance. That being said I don't foresee a huge displacement in what we know now.

[ERayR]

Hopefully we'll know a heck of a lot more in a thousand years. What we now know is but a tiny thimble compared to the vast ocean of our ignorance. That being said I don't foresee a huge displacement in what we know now.

Yes but I remember reading that there were some scientist were sure that everything had been learned that there was to learn in about 1920.

[thesometimesaint]

In the 1890's it was thought that a man of normal intelligence could know everything there was to know. Mme. Curie disabused many of that rather arrogant opinion

[Stone holm]

Hopefully we'll know a heck of a lot more in a thousand years. What we now know is but a tiny thimble compared to the vast ocean of our ignorance. That being said I don't foresee a huge displacement in what we know now.

We may well continue to add to our accumulated knowledge via science, what I am talking about is experiential ability through sensation. For example we know that muscles atrophy with non use. We also know that sometimes sensory perception through one sense may enhance to compensate for loss of another sense as in the hearing of a blind person. Is it then possible if we become accustomed to thinking in a certain way, we lose the ability to receive certain types of input, kind of like a printer hooked to a computer with no driver to run it? And what if the sense lost was one important to spirituality. But we dismissed the way of thinking as being superstitious? Would we for example have a diminished ability to see or sense spirits because we don't believe in ghosts?

[thesometimesaint]

Without our senses it becomes really hard to know much about anything let alone science.

It's a bit of a sticky wicket for Theists and Atheists alike. Science by definition can not address any supernatural being or power(That goes for ghosts including the Holy one). All that it can do is show there is no accepted natural evidence for them.

[Stone holm]

Without our senses it becomes really hard to know much about anything let alone science.

It's a bit of a sticky wicket for Theists and Atheists alike. Science by definition can not address any supernatural being or power(That goes for ghosts including the Holy one). All that it can do is show there is no accepted natural evidence for them.

My view of Science and the Supranatural is that the latter is simply based on a more advanced science, on the other hand it is possible that with the loss of certain senses their could have been a loss of certain abilities. Nevertheless, all would be governed by laws and if something is governed by laws then eventually it is subject to scientific investigation. This is especially true in Mormonism which teaches that everything including spirits is made of matter. However, here we are talking about sensory perception unaided by technology which makes it more experiential.

[thesometimesaint]

My view of Science and the Supranatural is that the latter is simply based on a more advanced science, on the other hand it is possible that with the loss of certain senses their could have been a loss of certain abilities. Nevertheless, all would be governed by laws and if something is governed by laws then eventually it is subject to scientific investigation. This is especially true in Mormonism which teaches that everything including spirits is made of matter. However, here we are talking about sensory perception unaided by technology which makes it more experiential.

I don't know how advanced that would be. Seems it 's the more gullible and/or superstitious a person becomes the less amenable to science they become.IE; If witches fly around on broomsticks. There isn't much need for air planes.

I don't know how far we could take that. If Spirits are governed by the same natural laws that we are. What is the point in Spirits? The finest matter that we know of is the sub nuclear quarks. However no matter how closely we look a quarks there doesn't appear to be a Spirit Matter involved.

I don't know how God does it. But Science precludes me from using him as a explanation of how he does it.

[Stone holm]

I don't know how advanced that would be. Seems it 's the more gullible and/or superstitious a person becomes the less amenable to science they become.IE; If witches fly around on broomsticks. There isn't much need for air planes.

I don't know how far we could take that. If Spirits are governed by the same natural laws that we are. What is the point in Spirits? The finest matter that we know of is the sub nuclear quarks. However no matter how closely we look a quarks there doesn't appear to be a Spirit Matter involved.

I don't know how God does it. But Science precludes me from using him as a explanation of how he does it.

Well if witches fly around on broomsticks, I assume they are doing so in accordance with laws of physics we do not currently understand, just like the ones that allowed Moroni to beam into Joseph's bedroom. I don't pretend to understand what Joseph meant when he revealed that Spirits were actually material, but since that is doctrine it follows that they are governed by laws as well.

[Calm]

I don't know how far we could take that. If Spirits are governed by the same natural laws that we are. What is the point in Spirits?

What is the point of rocks? They exist.

[thesometimesaint]

Rocks are important. They give us something to stand on. Also there is one rock that without which we couldn't live NaCl commonly known as salt.

[ERayR]

Without our senses it becomes really hard to know much about anything let alone science.

It's a bit of a sticky wicket for Theists and Atheists alike. Science by definition can not address any supernatural being or power(That goes for ghosts including the Holy one). All that it can do is show there is no accepted natural evidence for them.

A good part of us has already subverted all our senses to what is measurable and lost the ability to fully receive the spiritual. There are those who still receive spiritual confirmations IMNSHO we have subverted our spiritual side to only that which is measurable.

[ERayR]

I don't know how advanced that would be. Seems it 's the more gullible and/or superstitious a person becomes the less amenable to science they become.IE; If witches fly around on broomsticks. There isn't much need for air planes.

I don't see that it is very advanced to be so dismissive of that beyond the realm of that which is measurable.

[Stone holm]

I don't see that it is very advanced to be so dismissive of that beyond the realm of that which is measurable.

Well maybe so, but we normally think of Joseph Smith, Jr. as fairly advanced and he was the one that received the revelation on materiality. If it is material, then it is measurable -- we may not have the technology to do so at present, but that does not mean it is not measurable. Things may be so nearly infinitute as to be beyond practical measurement like the sands of the sea, or in Eliza Snow's Hie Unto Kolob the number of the generations of gods, but they are in theory measurable.

Edited June 5, 2013 by Stone holm