>>For me the problem with religious/spiritual beliefs is that people seem unable to justify them in any tangible way and often continue to believe despite evidence to the contrary<<

There's a term for that type of behaviour and of course I can't remember what is is at this moment in time!, It's not just applied to religion but explains things like why people stick with a particular supplier of goods even though it's pointed out other suppliers are cheaper/nearer/better value/more efficient. "Stupid" isn't the term I'm looking for before someone suggests it ;-)

>> I have more than just a gut-feeling that nature is not just strange, it's very, very, very strange. Now whatever this strangeness is, may well be what others perceive as spirituality, god, earth energy, whatever, but for me it's part of the quest for knowledge.<<

So speaks the scientist :-)

Lots of scientific principles like relativity and quantum mechanics and often logistics make my head hurt. I can follow the trains of thought, but it is a struggle. I can see the enjoyment people can get from taking an idea and "properly" running with it and formulating more theories that can be validated by logical construct etc, but it's just not for me to look at life in that analytical cerebral way. I'm thankful that there are people who do and I don't think either approach is right and the other is wrong, I believe both are equally valid.

I'm happy to experience what I do and enjoy it for the pleasure it brings without wondering too much about how and what it is that causes it. The more I've tried over the last thirty or so years, the more I've tied myself into mental knots and I've come to realise the less I really know.

Experiences at sites for me often are comparable in a way to a lover's touch. Do I lie there and think 'Oh, that nerve impulse has reached my brain which soon will release more endorphins which is why this feels as good as it does'

Nope, fraid not, my only thought is AhhhUhhhMmmmmmmmmmm.

Rune ;-)

>I've had a scientific training and therefore tend to approach things from that viewpoint

Ditto (though it might not always seem that way).

The cold objective 'Scientific' truth of 'The Way Things Are' ought to exist somewhere out there. It feels right, that there should be a bottom level of being, for all things, where they can be described in terms of measurements. Measurements that will become apparent to me by way of my senses. As I interpret incoming signals from the outside world, I exercise a degree of selectivity. I filter some stuff out, and emphasise other stuff. In a sense, I make my world up as I go along. Of course, this is true to some extent, but you can't get away from the fact that though it's possible to ignore some signals and concentrate on others, this tweaking of the signals can only be effected within certain parameters. No matter how hard I try, I cannot manage to convince myself that it's possible to affect the physical materium around me by thinking hard enough. So says half of me.

Yet I can't get away from the nagging feeling that the physical materium is not the be all and end all of reality. So how to reconcile these two contradictory thoughts? I wish I knew.

Some old bunch or other, I think they were proto-sufis or something similar, used to say that god recreates the world millions of times every second. This sort of has echos in quantum waffle. From my limited understanding of matters quantum, the Everett-Wheeler interpretation of some-shit-or-other implies multiversal levels of physical materium. I've taken this to mean that the universe is constantly phasing in and out of an infinite number of possible states, and that what consciousness does is something akin to reducing signal to noise ratios in this shifting multi-dimensional mush. A bit like forcing a narrative out of random words. Human brains seem to be ideally placed to support consciousness whilst being firmly placed in nice sensible lines of self-sustainable causality. I mean, the molecules of your brain don't suddenly go zooping off into an eigenstate akin to that of a small shrub. These molecules follow more or less predictable patterns. If it's a brain on Monday, it will, accidents notwithstanding, be a brain on Tuesday, it can't really stop being so of its own accord. But the bit our awareness that isn't brain, call it' the mind' or whatever for the sake of argument, it does have the ability to become something other than what it is of it's own accord. It can develop, it can expand, and it's dynamic in a way that I find impossible to describe with words. So I'm not even going to try.

Dunno if this has any bearing on old rocks and stuff, if it does (and I hope that's the case) then at the moment, I am mostly susecting that it has to be something to do with an attempt to transcend our mundane human perception of time.

I am not a scientist and Einstein is way beyond me, but consider another approach to the concept of time:

Does time exist or is it just an invention of mankind? If we had no way of measuring time would time exist? If we had no memory would time exist? If we had no written histories would time exist? Does an animal have any concept of time other than the seasons, night and day and coming into heat? Does any creature on earth other than man have any concept of time? If man ceased to exist would time cease to exist? Did time exist before mankind invented it?

Is there a beginning and an ending? Is the reality not one of constant change, growth and decay and growth again. Instead of linear time stretching from A (the Big Bang) to B (collapse of the universe) consider timeless, cyclical, spiralling growth and perpetual motion. What came before the Big Bang and what might come after the collapse of the universe? Nothing? Then surely time will not exist either.