[tombert]

> Lack of proof does not mean proof of nonexistence.

It is certainly evidence of nonexistence. Do you believe every single claim you've ever heard because you can't conclusively disprove it 100% of the time always? Of course not, you use your reason and assume that more positive claims are false until proven otherwise.

[crankylinuxuser]

Charles H. Duell was the Commissioner of US patent office in 1899. Mr. Deull's most famous attributed utterance is that "everything that can be invented has been invented."

We laugh at it today, because some patent commissioner couldn't see past his own limited view, and made that claim.

Yet, when I postulate questions about things we have very little science with, I'm dismissed. I ask for science to be used with emotions; yet Im the dumb one. I want scientific method to determine consciousness; yet I'm the non-scientific one.

Again, you're the standard fare when it comes to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism

[RichardCA]

The problem with Scientism is that the very utterance of the word sets up a Straw Man.

But I do get where you're coming from, having followed some of the same articles you've been referencing in your posts.

I think Deepak Chopra had some useful things to say. He is normally derided as trafficking in woo, especially in his remarks about James Randi.

But if you read what he has to say, his position makes sense. A lot of otherwise intelligent people fall into materialism as a sort of intellectual default and it's not wrong to challenge this.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/skepticism-and-...

And this in turn goes back to what Alan Watts had to say, the idea that materialism should be resisted in spite of its surface plausibility.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mryZ7e2TUhs

(The meat of it is around 10 minutes in)