Fair enough. Then would you say the spiritual plane that can be accessed or interacted with via these rituals, couldn't be fully described under the laws of physics as we currently know them?
(Obviously almost any phenomenon can't be fully described by the laws of physics in the sense that it's too complex to account for the location and state of every elementary particle involved. But I mean in the sense of introducing entirely new laws, or instances where the existing ones are overridden.)
Is it not possible there is a (potentially massive) hole in our understanding of physics or perhaps even a whole different set of rules which we have yet to perceive and explore?
I ask because along with the recent onset of quantum mechanics, proposed unified field theories, and the revived discussion of UFO phenomena in the US (specifically regarding US armed forces’ interactions with “them”), many state that the operation of these UFOs is simply not possible under our defined laws of physics.
Thus, is it wise for us to assume a rule which has held true in our relatively simple world would not change at a different scales of physics?
I’d think it best to be open minded as we explore these new frontiers, but do know that we are often driven to further understanding by our previous understanding.
Disclaimer: I am NOT a professional working within physics or any directly related field.
I might agree, except I view it more productively as an argument defending the idea that the physical world can be inherently lawful ("bound by natural laws", in a very real sense) despite the common belief in miracles or magick! You don't have to renounce belief in the reality of physical laws just because you might also practice some ceremonial magick (or religious prayer, for that matter) - indeed, one can make very rigorous claims about just how much physical laws explain already.
Purely for curiosity's sake: If you assume this is true what would it mean for the laws of physics? Are demons outside of physics or still constrained by it?
I understand your point. And I completely agree that many of our chosen mathematical structures, and even physical models are contingent and likely accidents of history and sensory constraints.
I'm comfortable living with the tension between these two propositions: (1) The manifestation of laws of physics are real, measurable, spread across the galaxies, and essentially outside of our subjective experience. For example, I do believe that gravity and electrons are real ... not just real for me. (2) The way in which we interpret these physical realities is somewhat conditioned by the constraints and experience of being messy human animals.
It appears to me that most commenters missed the point of the article, which (to me) is more on the lines of Arthur C. Clarke's third law: " Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." (Replace magic by religion.)
We have all these scientists trying to explain how sub-atomic particles have mass, and in course of that explanation, talk about the spin of a particle, color charge, Higgs field, et al. Thing is, I can really understand their explanation only if I know what these terms mean. And for me to know what those terms really mean, I might have to spend years (or maybe decades, depending on my mental capacity) studying theoretical physics. But I believe them because science if all about repeatable experiments. While I'm ill-equipped to check the results, I guess other domain-experts can.
Now, let's take a look at Hindu spirituality. A yogi might try to explain, say, why we exist, and in course of doing that, talk about Brahman, karma, cosmic cycle, et al. To really understand what he means, I would need to really understand what the terms mean, and doing that might take years or decades.
See the parallels? That's what the article is trying to emphasize.
So it relies on a not yet understood law of physics. I don't think it's in any way reasonable to fear or plan our actions around not yet discovered physical laws.
I think you would have to have similar arguments for consciousness as well?
Certainly I don't think there's much argument that the laws of physics are a moderately good fit for observed phenomenon. They came about by generations of physicists refining previous models.
I would consider the question of why mathematical models that fit observed phenomenon exist at all to be an open question.
I was trained as a physicist and I love physics, but I believe it is a genuinely open question whether all these laws, which probably do encompass physics per se as we know it, actually therefor encompass the whole world.
If you genuinely believe in emergent phenomena, then these laws genuinely do not describe all the things that happen in the universe. I do not believe in emergence in this form, but some philosophers of science do.
the claim is not that they are not explained by laws of nature, but that they are not explained by physics.
It's like saying you can't model a football game in terms of the behavior of proteins. Sure there are proteins, and there is no magic anywhere, but the conceptual gap is just too vast.
Sure, we can't discount that possibility. But, as far as we know, the laws of physics are not encoded anywhere, they just exist in an abstract sense. This is similar to the axioms of, say, Euclidean geometry: they exist, but are not part of the system that they "govern", circles and squares don't contain the laws that define them.
I never claimed that we figured out all the laws of nature but we certainly know a lot about them. And among the things we know are limits on things we may not have discovered. If there was, for example, a yet undiscovered fifth force, then it would have to have tiny effects because otherwise we would have noticed it in past experiments. There is no chance we would have missed anything that could enable remote viewing or something along that line.
You're getting very metaphysical here, but reality remains the same even if you expand these principles to the universe. The rules of physics still apply.
(Obviously almost any phenomenon can't be fully described by the laws of physics in the sense that it's too complex to account for the location and state of every elementary particle involved. But I mean in the sense of introducing entirely new laws, or instances where the existing ones are overridden.)
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