I don’t care if you post in this thread.
I do care if you make silly claims that you refuse to support and then make snide remarks that other posters have not done your homework for you.
(There is a very easy way to prove OBE’s and no OBE adherent has ever actually bothered to do it, so your sarcasm comes across as a defense mechanism to help you avoid posting substantive responses.)
[ /Moderating ]
I think you read it the wrong way. It wasnt snide, I just wish people would do more research on the topic before dismissing it right off the bat out of a knee-jerk reaction.
That goes for you too, Deb. I suspect you done little to no research on astral projection, yet your first knee-jerk reaction was this sounds weird, so it must all be bullshit.
Unless of course I’m mistaken, and you have done lots of research on the topic. In that case my apologies
Specifically addressed in Roach’s book.
If I were on a jury, and the only evidence the state produced was a few eye witness accounts, I’d be very likely to vote not guilty. No forensics? No motive? No weapon? We’ve had multiple consistent eye witness accounts of an airship flying around in the 1890s - which we know never happened.
There are two possibilities. In yours, everything we know about how the brain works is wrong, since if you can project your mind it cannot be physical.
In the second, since the brain determines where you think you are, if it is somehow damaged or you train it to delude itself, you can convince yourself you have traveled outside your body. Here is a class about the brain’s sense of location - it is hard to find a good cite.
Since it is clearly evolutionarily advantageous to know where you are, such brain function is less than surprising.
I totally buy that one can teach himself how to have these experiences, assuming you are more or less wired for it. Doesn’t mean they actually happen. Them old astral projections are only in your head.
Well, he also had them pick the suspect out of a line-up, so that’s an additional element. People have certainly been convicted of lesser crimes on eyewitness testimony alone, although I couldn’t say if it’s ever been a murder rap.
Anyway, I was willing to give our colleague the opening he asked for. It didn’t lead anywhere, so it doesn’t seem to matter.
The thing about Hallucinations is that it seems so real to the one having them.
The mind can create much, just like a person with dementia.
If it has weight then for sure it is just not a spirit, A spirit that can go through walls etc. would not have weight!
I know I am going to regret asking this, but could you please explain how God is an absurdity compared to understanding that everything came from nothing.
“God” is blatantly nothing more than human anthropomorphism, wish fulfillment, patriarchalism (seriously, what’s the point of a male god without a goddess?), and egotism. It’s just a myth created by ignorant primitives who hadn’t the first clue about how the universe worked but desperately wanted to think themselves important. It’s also logically impossible thanks all to the infinite qualities its followers have added to it. “Nothing” on the other hand is just nothing; it’s simple, it’s not blatantly designed to cater to human fantasies like “God” is.
And I don’t know where everything came from for sure; whatever the universe came from might have been “nothing”, it might have always existed. But I am certain that no Iron Age myths were involved, and that’s all that “God” is; the leftover fantasy of a tribe of ignorant barbarians.
Is it easier to believe that undifferentiated energy came from nothing versus the most complex entity imaginable? Plus. particles come from nothing all the time. As long as the net energy is zero there is no reason they couldn’t - in fact they must. That it makes no sense to you makes no difference at the quantum level.
And, precisely what kind of god do you think created things? Hairy thunderer or cosmic muffin? Someone who sees each sparrow fall or doesn’t give a crap?
If someone created our universe, it is most likely a grad student in some other and very advanced brane.
“My religion sucks, so yours must, too.”
Questions about faith, god, afterlife and such, on this forum, are usually heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian doctrine, and I usually refrain from weighing in, both because I am out of my depth about J-C doctrine and also because such questions make little sense from an Eastern perspective.
Anyone with questions about the “religion/god/afterlife” trinity is strongly recommended to turn to Eastern/Indic systems such as Hinduism, Buddhism, or even Sufi Islam for the straight dope. I dare say these systems are far more subtle, sophisticated and meaningful that the J-C framework, which in my honest opinion is rich in doctrine but ridiculously ill-equipped to comment on subtle philosophical matters. No surprise a thinking person at once rejects the Church and its dogma that has stifled scientific advancement for centuries.
Unfortunately, these questions, specific to the J-C context, have been generalized to encompass all religions all over the world, because if the Western man cant see sense in his religion, it means all religions all over the world, including those with 5000 year histories, are inaccurate, “delusional” and incapable of standing up to scrutiny.
I can see now why atheism is a religion. I didn’t realize God had to mean what “you” think. I thought it could mean something we have no way of knowing the existence of until we know everything, which you obviously do.
No hang on… there seems to be some indecision in your last sentence about big bang and steady state or rainbow gravity theories.
I would agree in part with your left over Iron Age mythology. except it is a giant leap of faith and credibility to assume nobody would have thought of God had that period not existed.
You thought wrong then. No idea where you got that thought from, after centuries upon centuries of religious people claiming to know *exactly *what God is about.
So? Your point?
Again you seem to be trying to make some sort of point here, could you please rephrase so it turns into a coherent argument?
Atheism is not a religion. It is merely a lack of belief in a deity.
Of course, being human, some atheists promote their lack of belief with religious fervor, but atheism is still not a religion.
Sorry. I should have said, “Now I realize why atheism can be perceived as a religion.”
God is nothing more than a fantasy. That’s what “God” means; a particular fantasy. And it isn’t necessary to “know everything” or even much at all to know that, any more than someone needs to “know everything” to know that Santa Claus is a fantasy.
Not at all. “God” is a fantasy created by a particular culture; if that culture had never existed then neither would God. Just as if Tolkien had never existed then neither would Sauron; other “supernatural evil overlord” characters would have, but not Sauron specifically.
So, tell us what god you believe in and give us his or her characteristics. What I’ve seen is that gods throughout history look a lot like the cultures that created them, and not at all like the gods of other cultures. Why would this be? Is god like a chameleon, so insecure that he can’t take on his own form in different places? Are there lots of gods? If you can’t answer these questions, perhaps you’ll accept the simplest explanation - that there are no gods, and they all got made up.
Don’t be ridiculous. If the unicorn is invisible, it cannot also be pink. A translucent pink unicorn is much more believable.
If you had faith, you would see that the invisible one is indeed pink - but this quality is reserved for only the most faithful.