This is why I rarely discuss this with people, because it is not something you need to do. If you want do do it, because you think you can learn something, or you are curious about altered states in general, go ahead. If not, then dont.

I actually feel the same way about the Divine...or perhaps better stated the "Numinous". Too few have really known God in any meaningful way but want to explain away what that feeling is.

As a soft materialist, as Robert Anton Wilson would classify me, I'm okay with resigning myself to materialism until something better comes along. But I see no reason to evangelize the paradigm's supposed virtues, and any attempt to justify skeptical missionary work via appeals to the idea people ought to live with the Truth are IMO self-defeating as there is no "ought" written into the world nor is there Platonic Truth.

Too many materialists seem so desperate to spread conformity to their ideas that they get hypercritical about anyone else's interpretations of mystical/gnostic experiences whether that is religious ecstasy or the psychedelic experience.

Really goes back to the possibility that a lot of intellectual bitterness is self-inflicted.

Great choice Sci

Love the albums when Sandy Denny was around. The ones without her, not so much.
She had such a rich voice.

Yup. Her voice is hella sensual and mystical all at once. 

Fairport Convention - Tam Lin ( Sandy Denny )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guFZkLxYM60

"...Janet tied her kirtle green a bit above her knee
And she's gone to her father as fast as go can she

Well, up then spoke her father dear and he spoke meek and mild
Oh, and alas, Janet, he said, I think you go with child

Well, if that be so, Janet said, myself shall bear the blame
There's not a knight in all your hall shall get the baby's name

For if my love were an earthly knight, as he is an elfin grey
I'd not change my own true love for any knight you have..."

Yes, but the question here is: Does an alien race from another galaxy have vested financial interest in making crop circles?

Probably not, but there could be some crop circles faked by people who want money and the slim chance that some are inexplicable.

So the question, IMO at least, shouldn't be "Are these the work of aliens?"

First we need to see if there's data on why crop circles couldn't just be formed by humans in the dead of the night.

I just wouldn't dismiss the possibility out of hand - which isn't to say that was necessarily where Madness was going. I don't want to put words in his mouth. 

I have other thoughts but this is important. The whole phenomenon can be collapsed in that someone makes a profit by the existence of crop circles and thus have a vested interest into their production.

But people have a vested financial interest in just about anything. Even the people who dislike the ubiquity of financial interest have books to sell us on the matter.

Julian Barbour talks more on time being illusory in this video, A New Kind of Causality. I started watching this last night but it keeps cutting out for me.

 

"There are serious indications from attempts to create a quantum theory of gravity that time must disappear completely from the description of the quantum universe. This has been known since 1967, when DeWitt discovered the Wheeler-DeWitt equation.

I shall argue that this forces us to conceive explanation and causality in an entirely new way. The present can no longer be understood as the consequence of the past. Instead, I shall suggest that one may have to distinguish possible presents on the basis of their intrinsic structure, not on the basis of an assumed temporal ordering. If correct, this could have far-reaching implications. Hitherto, because the present has always been interpreted as the lawful consequence of the past, science has made no attempt to answer 'Why' questions, only 'How' questions. But if there is no past in the traditional sense, we must consider things differently. Thus, if we eliminate time, we may even be able to start asking "Why" questions."

You guys might be interested in this. First round is over but the whole thing should be available as a podcast, possibly the video as well:

Debate: The President Has Constitutional Power to Target and Kill U.S. Citizens Abroad

FOR THE MOTION: Alan Dershowitz, Michael Lewis

AGAINST THE MOTION: Noah Feldman, Hina Shamsi