Reality and Faith

This thread has been started as a platform to discuss the nature of reality and the role that faith plays or does not play.
How do you define “faith”?
Does it have positive or negative associations and why such a perception?
Is it purely subjective?




@wolly.green
Feel free to expand on the OP question for this thread.

 

I would like to present as some possible evidence into the action that faith has on reality with the following links.

Healing at a Distance
Astin et al (2000). The Efficacy of “Distant Healing”: A Systematic Review of Randomized Trials

Leibovici (2001). Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial

Krucoff et al (2001).Integrative noetic therapies as adjuncts to percutaneous intervention during unstable coronary syndromes: Monitoring and Actualization of Noetic Training (MANTRA) feasibility pilot

Radin et al (2004). Possible effects of healing intention on cell cultures and truly random events.

Krucoff et al (2005). Music, imagery, touch, and prayer as adjuncts to interventional cardiac care: the Monitoring and Actualisation of Noetic Trainings (MANTRA) II randomised study

Benson et al (2006). Study of the therapeutic effects of intercessory prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients

Masters & Spielmans (2007). Prayer and health: Review, meta-analysis, and research agenda

Radin et al (2008). Compassionate intention as a therapeutic intervention by partners of cancer patients: Effects of distant intention on the patients’ autonomic nervous system.

Schlitz et al (2012). Distant healing of surgical wounds: An exploratory study.

Radin et al (2015). Distant healing intention therapies: An overview of the scientific evidence

Physiological correlations at a distance
Duane & Behrendt (1965). Extrasensory electroencephalographic induction between identical twins.

Grinberg-Zylberbaum et al (1994). The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox in the Brain: The transferred potential

Wiseman & Schlitz (1997). Experimenter effects and the remote detection of staring.

Standish et al (2003). Evidence of correlated functional magnetic resonance imaging signals between distant human brains.

Wackermann et al (2003). Correlations between brain electrical activities of two spatially separated human subjects

Schmidt et al (2004). Distant intentionality and the feeling of being stared at: Two meta-analyses

Radin (2004). Event related EEG correlations between isolated human subjects.

Standish et al (2004). Electroencephalographic evidence of correlated event-related signals between the brains of spatially and sensory isolated human subjects

Richards et al (2005). Replicable functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence of correlated brain signals between physically and sensory isolated subjects.

Achterberg et al (2005). Evidence for correlations between distant intentionality and brain function in recipients: A functional magnetic resonance imaging analysis

Radin (2005). The sense of being stared at: A preliminary meta-analysis.

Radin & Schlitz (2005). Gut feelings, intuition, and emotions: An exploratory study.

Schlitz et al (2006). Of two minds: Skeptic-proponent collaboration within parapsychology.

Moulton & Kosslyn (2008). Using neuroimaging to resolve the psi debate.

Ambach (2008). Correlations between the EEGs of two spatially separated subjects − a replication study.

Hinterberger (2010). Searching for neuronal markers of psi: A summary of three studies measuring electrophysiology in distant participants.

Schmidt (2012). Can we help just by good intentions? A meta-analysis of experiments on distant intention effects

Jensen & Parker (2012). Entangled in the womb? A pilot study on the possible physiological connectedness between identical twins with different embryonic backgrounds.

Parker & Jensen (2013). Further possible physiological connectedness between identical twins: The London study.


Telepathy & ESP
Targ & Puthoff (1974). Information transmission under conditions of sensory shielding.

Puthoff & Targ (1976). A perceptual channel for information transfer over kilometer distance: Historical perspective and recent research

Eisenberg & Donderi (1979). Telepathic transfer of emotional information in humans.

Bem & Honorton (1994). Does psi exist?

Hyman (1994). Anomaly or artifact? Comments on Bem and Honorton

Bem (1994). Response to Hyman

Milton & Wiseman (1999). Does Psi Exist? Lack of Replication of an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer

Sheldrake & Smart (2000). Testing a return-anticipating dog, Kane.

Sheldrake & Smart (2000). A dog that seems to know when his owner to coming home: Videotaped experiments and observations.

Storm & Ertel (2001). Does Psi Exist? Comments on Milton and Wiseman's (1999) Meta-Analysis of Ganzfeld Research

Milton & Wiseman (2001). Does Psi Exist? Reply to Storm and Ertel (2001)

Sheldrake & Morgana (2003). Testing a language-using parrot for telepathy.

Sheldrake & Smart (2003). Videotaped experiments on telephone telepathy.

Sherwood & Roe (2003). A Review of Dream ESP Studies Conducted Since the Maimonides Dream ESP Programme

Delgado-Romero & Howard (2005). Finding and Correcting Flawed Research Literatures

Hastings (2007). Comment on Delgado-Romero and Howard

Radin (2007). Finding Or Imagining Flawed Research?

Storm et al (2010). Meta-Analysis of Free-Response Studies, 1992–2008: Assessing the Noise Reduction Model in Parapsychology

Storm et al (2010). A Meta-Analysis With Nothing to Hide: Reply to Hyman (2010)

Tressoldi (2011). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence: the case of non-local perception, a classical and Bayesian review of evidences

Tressoldi et al (2011). Mental Connection at Distance: Useful for Solving Difficult Tasks?

Williams (2011). Revisiting the Ganzfeld ESP Debate: A Basic Review and Assessment

Rouder et al (2013). A Bayes Factor Meta-Analysis of Recent Extrasensory Perception Experiments: Comment on Storm, Tressoldi, and Di Risio (2010)

Storm et al (2013). Testing the Storm et al. (2010) Meta-Analysis Using Bayesian and Frequentist Approaches: Reply to Rouder et al. (2013)



General Overviews & Critiques
Utts (1996). An assessment of the evidence for psychic functioning

Alcock (2003). Give the null hypothesis a chance

Parker & Brusewitz (2003). A compendium of the evidence for psi

Carter (2010). Heads I lose, tails you win.

McLuhan (no date). Fraud in psi research.


Survival of Consciousness
van Lommel et al (2001). Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands

van Lommel (2006). Near-death experience, consciousness, and the brain

Beischel & Schwartz (2007). Anomalous information reception by research mediums demonstrated using a novel triple-blind protocol

Greyson (2010). Seeing dead people not known to have died: “Peak in Darien” experiences

Kelly (2010). Some directions for mediumship research

Kelly & Arcangel (2011). An investigation of mediums who claim to give information about deceased persons

Nahm et al (2011). Terminal lucidity: A review and a case collection.

Facco & Agrillo (2012). Near-death experiences between science and prejudice

Matlock (2012). Bibliography of reincarnation resources online (articles and books, all downloadable)

Beischel, J., Boccuzzi, M., Biuso, M., & Rock, A. J. (2015). Anomalous information reception by research mediums under blinded conditions II: Replication and extension. EXPLORE: The Journal of Science & Healing, 11(2), 136-142. doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2015.01.001


Precognition & Presentiment
Honorton & Ferrari (1989). “Future telling”: A meta-analysis of forced-choice precognition experiments, 1935-1987

Spottiswoode & May (2003). Skin Conductance Prestimulus Response: Analyses, Artifacts and a Pilot Study

Radin (2004). Electrodermal presentiments of future emotions.

McCraty et al (2004). Electrophysiological Evidence of Intuition: Part 1. The Surprising Role of the Heart

McCraty et al (2004). Electrophysiological Evidence of Intuition: Part 2. A System-Wide Process?

Radin & Lobach (2007). Toward understanding the placebo effect: Investigating a possible retrocausal factor.

Radin & Borges (2009). Intuition through time: What does the seer see?

Bem (2011). Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect

Bem et al (2011). Must psychologists change the way they analyze their data?

Bierman (2011). Anomalous switching of the bi-stable percept of a Necker Cube

Radin et al (2011). Electrocortical activity prior to unpredictable stimuli in meditators and non-meditators.

Radin (2011). Predicting the unpredictable: 75 years of experimental evidence

Tressoldi et al (2011). Let your eyes predict : Prediction accuracy of pupillary responses to random alerting and neutral sounds

Galek et al (2012). Correcting the past: Failures to replicate psi

Mossbridge et al (2012). Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis

Bem et al (2015). Feeling the future: A meta-analysis of 90 experiments on the anomalous anticipation of random future events

Theory
Josephson & Pallikari-Viras (1991). Biological utilisation of quantum nonlocality

May et al (1995). Decision augmentation theory: Towards a model of anomalous mental phenomena

Houtkooper (2002). Arguing for an observational theory of paranormal phenomena

Bierman (2003). Does consciousness collapse the wave-packet?

Dunne & Jahn (2005). Consciousness, information, and living systems

Henry (2005). The mental universe

Hiley & Pylkkanen (2005). Can mind affect matter via active information?

Lucadou et al (2007). Synchronistic phenomena as entanglement correlations in generalized quantum theory

Rietdijk (2007). Four-dimensional physics, nonlocal coherence, and paranormal phenomena

Bierman (2010). Consciousness induced restoration of time symmetry (CIRTS ): A psychophysical theoretical perspective

Tressoldi et al (2010). Extrasensory perception and quantum models of cognition.

Tressoldi (2012). Replication unreliability in psychology: elusive phenomena or “elusive” statistical power?


Mind-Matter Interaction
Crookes (1874). Researches in the phenomena of spiritualism

Crookes (1874). Notes of séances with DDH

Medhurst & Goldney (1964). William Crookes and the physical phenomena of mediumship.

Merrifield (1885/1971). Merrifield’s report (on D. D. Home)

Braude (1985). The enigma of Daniel Home.

Zorab (1971). Were D. D. Home’s ‘spirit hands” ever fraudulently produced?

Jahn (1982). The persistent paradox of psychic phenomena: An engineering perspective.

Inglis (1983). Review of “The spiritualists. The passion for the occult in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by Ruth Brandon.”

Schmidt (1987). The strange properties of psychokinesis.

Schmidt (1990). Correlation between mental processes and external random events

Radin & Nelson (1989). Evidence for consciousness-related anomalies in random physical systems

Radin & Ferrari (1991). Effects of consciousness on the fall of dice: A meta-analysis

Jahn et al (1997). Correlations of random binary sequences with pre-stated operator intention: A review of a 12-year program.

Nelson et al (2002). Correlations of continuous random data with major world events.

Crawford et al (2003). Alterations in random event measures associated with a healing practice

Freedman et al (2003). Effects of frontal lobe lesions on intentionality and random physical phenomena

Bierman (2004). Does consciousness collapse the wave function?

Jahn & Dunne (2005). The PEAR Proposition.

Bosch et al (2006). Examining psychokinesis: The interaction of human intention with random number generators

Radin et al (2006). Reexamining psychokinesis.

Radin et al (2006). Assessing the evidence for mind-matter interaction effects.

Radin (2006). Experiments testing models of mind-matter interaction.

Radin. (2008). Testing nonlocal observation as a source of intuitive knowledge.

Nelson & Bancel (2011). Effects of mass consciousness: Changes in random data during global events.

Radin et al (2012). Consciousness and the double-slit interference pattern: Six experiments

Radin et al (2013). Psychophysical interactions with a double-slit interference pattern

Shiah & Radin (2013). A randomized trial investigating the roles of intention and belief on mood while drinking tea.

Radin et al (2015). Psychophysical interactions with a single-photon double-slit optical system.

Radin et al (2016). Psychophysical modulation of fringe visibility in a distant double-slit optical system.


Potential Applications
Carpenter (2011). Laboratory psi effects may be put to practical use: Two pilot studies

Schwartz (1980/2000). Location and reconstruction of a Byzantine structure … [by remote viewing]

Beischel, J., Mosher, C. & Boccuzzi, M. (2014-2015). The possible effects on bereavement of assisted after-death communication during readings with psychic mediums: A continuing bonds perspective. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, 70(2), 169-194. doi: 10.2190/OM.70.2.b

 

What I find even more interesting is this...
The majority of healing that is documented as seemingly influenced by prayer is that it does show some significant measurable effects.
The curious part is that some showed an opposite effect (though in only a few studies).
I wonder why?
What made the difference?
(not expecting an answer, just food for thought)

 

"Rationality is merely a means through which one discovers truth, science just happens to need evidence to do it.”

Sounds like "blind” faith to me, if you do not demand scientific evidence.
And we don’t know how immaterial these things actually are...we do not have a working model of how our observation of reality changes it/us, but we do know that our observations do have a measurable effect.

We are not trying to prove any philosophical theory...I am not at any rate, but I do offer actual physical, testable, replicated, scientific studies that show that things like prayer make a measurable difference...so I’m not trying to prove anything firstly, because there is a huge empty space of knowledge that is lacking in our understanding of how even our brain and mind function...much less how space/time and our universe came to exist and continue to do so.
So you can only take rationality so far, and then you are into the realm of theory.
Which is only one step, amongst many, coming from many different aspects and angles, moving to find a working model.

"So again, what is the difference between between faith and rationality?”

It really depends on what you believe faith to be.
If you narrowly look at is always as “blind faith”...blindly following something or someone without question of critical thought then I disagree with your POV.

Some people cannot see a difference and some can see stark differences...it’s a subjective thought process.
Take me for example...I was raised in the Mormon church, which actually was a quite good way to be raised in many ways...they are very family-centric, don’t drink, smoke, watch negative movies, drink caffeinated beverages, don’t swear, etc., etc..

My older brother came out as being gay to my parents when I was about 15...he was 17.
Well, despite what the religion espouses about how family and keeping family together is the most important thing...they are staunchly anti-gay, and have poured millions of dollars into anti-gay legislature, and have destroyed millions of families with their rhetoric....anyhow...my parents chose my brother over the religion.

Now some might say that was because of a lack of faith...I say the opposite.
It took a great deal of personal faith in what my parents believed (that my brother is and has always been a good person and he did not chose his sexual preferences and no God being worth a damn would condemn someone for such a thing) to be true vs. what they are told to blindly follow by the church which my mother grew up in and was quite a big deal for her to leave.
(Never let your morals get in the way of doing the right thing.)
I have my own faith in what the true nature of reality is because of my own subjective experiences that have shown me what you see is NOT always what you get/have.

You look at the brain as the hardware and the mind as the software basically from what I gather?
I don’t have too different of an idea about how it all functions...I do view the physical brain as the hardware yes.
But I do not view the mind as software confined to the limits of the skull.
I view the brain as a receiver of mind, of consciousness, and the brain as the interpreter/reducing valve of the information available for us to detect.

IMHO, faith is our ability to control our reality, it is not a feeling like love or contempt, it is an action, it is the physical manifestation of our will over reality.

"What happens when your mind is guided by faith? Your actions will be guided by them a well! But what if your faith is inconsistent with reality? Then your actions will be too. And here is the problem, beliefs affect what you do, not JUST what you think.”

Everyone is somewhat guided by faith if you take it to mean what the general population define it as.
Of course, we all have faith that the sun will rise the next day...but, that isn’t blind faith, that is educated faith...it is faith within reason.
I am a firm believer in critical thinking being an essential part of finding my definition of faith.

Faith doesn’t have to be intangible...it isn’t some magical-thinking disorder.
Take a look at the story of Jesus walking on water...or other various religious figures who reportedly could preform superhuman feats such as levitation, the direct manipulation and replication of matter (Jesus and the fishes)....etc.
Who is to say that the potential for such mastery is impossible?
Of course if your faith is inconsistent with reality, and you try to fly off the top of a cliff, then you will splat.
But part of the reason I listed the above studies ^^^ is to show that faith is not intangible.
Beliefs do affect what you do, and your beliefs also affect your reality (and others) imho...I don’t go so far as to be as to eliminate any possibility...we as humans are so self-limiting...that doesn’t mean that I also blindly believe everything either.

“You create your own reality” came from Jane Roberts back in the 1970s...but other people have expressed similar ideas for several millennia.
The Buddha said, “What you dwell upon you become.”
Jesus said, “It is done unto you as you believe.”
Hindu mysticism from Shankaracharya says, “Whatever a person’s mind dwells on intensely and with firm resolve, that is exactly what he becomes.”
It says in the Talmud, “We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

More recent sages like Ralph Waldo Emerson have said, “We become what we think about all day long.”
Walt Disney said, “If you can dream it you can do it.”
Napoleon Hill said, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.”
Norman Vincent Peale said, “Change your thoughts and you change your world.”
Wayne Dyer says, “You see it when you believe it.”
And let’s not forget Oprah who repeats this message frequently by saying things like, “Remember, you are co-creating your life with the energy of your own intentions.”

This is all the physicality of “faith”.

 

While we can both parade out various physicists to argue the “hard question” of consciousness.
People like Niels Bohr or Schrödinger come to mind -

“I myself find the division of the world into an objective and a subjective side much too arbitrary.
The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer.

But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality.
And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won't get us very far.”
~ Niels Bohr

And observation may not be at the core of reality, but it has been shown and theorized in various ways that observation has a measurable effect.
Is it a wave? Is it a particle? It’s both, and it’s neither, until conscious focus is put on it.
Now this is refuted and supported by all kinds of people with degrees that took longer than my own.
That doesn’t mean there are no trees in the forest because there are no observers, it only means we probably don’t have as large a scale effect as we may think...then again, perhaps not.
The opposite of being correct is usually being wrong...but sometimes, it can also be correct....it depends on our perspective yes?
There can be two truths...neither of us has to be wrong (because ultimately we won’t ever know who is right), we only need find a bridge to connect the ideas and entertain it to see if it has merit or should be altered, explored, etc.
"what you think matters, in fact it forms matter”
~ Vajra Ghanta Gadan

Bohr also said - "If QM hasn’t shocked you yet, you don’t understand it.”
lol

“We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.” ~Terence McKenna

You are coming at this with more of a classical materialist reductionist approach.
I don’t think reducing things to smaller and smaller bits will reveal some great key of knowledge we have yet to understand or discover.
I wrote a paper in college on the correlations between reaching a state of Samadhi, and suggested that after years and years of meditation that a monk puts him/herself through, that perhaps he has trained his very own brain to release large enough amounts of the proper neurochemicals and they would basically hallucinate via their own body-made drugs.
I still can’t rule that out as a possibility....but I also have the subjective experiences of being outside of my own body, as well as various other paranormal, possibly PSI related phenomena....as have millions of others down through the ages.

One of the most recent theories is that the microtubules within the brain can act as a biologic “quantum” computer, but that the information is not necessarily stored in the physical brain itself, the electromagnetic field within the tubules keeps the information contained until the moment of death when such information (a soul) is released....Dr. Pim Van Lommel.
Also your brain kicks out a huge dose of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine or DMT as you are dying...there is also the emerging theory that it is this biochemical “kick” that pushes the soul from the physical body.
(just thought that was interesting)

So I am in agreement that we are not far off, but there are some fundamental differences in our thought processes.
But this is how we learn and explore...how boring would the universe be if it has already been figured out?
Many religions take that view...bury your head in the sand.
Why?
Because to them...it is a failing of faith to be critical...I rather think that someone who believes in a supreme being would also have the thought that we were given minds that can self-reflect and think critically for a reason?
Didn’t Jesus feel doubt and pray to his Father in the garden before the night before his physical death?
I could never support a “God” who will strike you dead for questioning him or the nature of reality, much less blindly believing in parables that have been re-told for hundreds of years before being written down, then altered and changed and omitted to grant maximum control to the religious authority.

"What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.”
~ T.H. Key

 

That is an agreeable definition.
But you wouldn’t call that “blind faith” would you?
I mean...you probably did not just one day decide on that theory and go balls out for it.
It probably was with much consideration, thought, and “soul searching”.
So there must be something more to faith than just an active/pursuing hope...there is probably solid reasoning behind what you consider your own “faith” or acting in faith.
I mean...you wouldn’t continue to have faith for the sake of having faith...it’s a give and receive thing.
If people...logical people...sane people, can find faith a worthy pursuit, then even those who have difficulties seeing the value, being of an intelligent and critically-thinking personage - revisit the material aspects of faith? Or at least the concept in general?
It seems that Wolly is being self-limiting to me...(I don’t mean that in a bad way Wolly).

It seems that people would cease to have faith if faith didn’t pay off for people somehow, human nature being what it is.

 

I can go along with that line of thinking.
I was inferring that you do NOT have “blind faith” as it is popularly defined...no need to explain.

 

It seemed as if you were coming in from a purely materialist science perspective.
I was offering alternative theories and evidence as something that may interest you and others who might read this thread.
Please don’t think I was attacking your belief system...I was only explaining my own in more depth that you might understand where I stand.
Cheers.

 

No doubt...I would encourage any person who considers themselves to be a true “Christian” to read the Biblical Apocrypha.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_apocrypha
http://apocrypha.org

The omitted chapters of the Bible are quite illuminating in the sense you are speaking.
They contain such terrible suggestions such as God being everything including you.

 

In what ways is quantum physics violated...excuse me, logic?
(especially since we have a limited picture of how it works)
Are you anti-observer-effect?