I think I am beginning to see what you want. I said she was dead for about two hours, but you say she was dead for a matter of minutes, actually according to the time line she was dead about 50 minutes. But the time line is mainly opinion, not fact. No one could know when she had her NDE and how. So, if I say I was wrong and the time dead was only a matter of minutes you would be satisfied. Ok done. Now we can get on with the present. No matter what the time dead was it don’t change the facts of the event.
How would they know the being in question was God?
Well, I actually have, but that’s just one instance and of a friend of mine, and i’ve never heard it from anywhere else. So I’d agree. I would say though that a combination of an emotive dream and the major traumatic event together could cause that kind of reaction.
I think that’s pretty speculative. After all, not all NDEs are positive, not all NDE experiencers plan to change their lives, and not all do so. Besides, simply being motivating doesn’t necessarily make something true.
I’d appreciate if you didn’t keep treating me as if I know nothing about the subject. Anyway, not being able to duplicate something doesn’t mean it is truth. We can’t duplicate dreams, either.
I’m happy for you, but that doesn’t mean you’re right. After all, many people have had similar awesome (in the original meaning) experiences, but would disagree with you totally as to their cause.
It’s from a question I asked in another thread prior to this, which you didn’t answer then. I did explain it again upthread, actually. But basically the question is this; your statement for a while has been “Scientists have proved the mind lives on after death” - how long have they proved it lasts for?
We humans have an intellectual side and an emotional side. One is not better than the other, if we can integrate them we can learn more than by just using one or the other. Yes, truths can be arrived at by logic and testing, but truths can also be arrived at through emotions or intuition. To be a whole person is best.
Science can not duplicate spiritual experiences with drugs or brain stimulation, etc. Whatever claims made in this area have been found to be false. There is not one whit of physical evidence in the brain of memory, thoughts or any other attibutes of the mind. We are spiritual beings having a physical experience.
If we want to know truth it will be necessary to use all our attributes to find it.
Cite? Please?!
If you think believers don’t do a vigorous search you are dead wrong. Many may believe based on the accepting what has been taught to them by others but many believers have done a lot of searching, reading and studying for the express purpose of seeking the truth.
In every discussion about beliefs here on the SDMB without exception every atheist has revealed that they too hold certain beliefs without evidence. Our lives, our hearts and minds and how we arrive at our personal belief system, is built on much more than objective verifiable evidence. It’s built on our personal subjective experience, as well as our emotional make up. We believe some things simply because we prefer to believe them for a myriad of reasons. The right and wrong of them is left for future discovery.
Oh, really? Tell me-what is it I believe without evidence?
I don’t know. I don’t believe I said I did.
You’re reading it too literally. Does it need more qualification?
Yes, it definitely does, because you seem to be saying, not only that atheists hold certain beliefs without evidence, as do we all, but that atheism as such includes certain beliefs without evidence, which it does not.
It does?? I thought I was only noting what you just stated by saying “as do we all”
My point is that atheists, as humans, hold some beliefs without evidence, which just happens to be the thing many criticize about theists.
I’m not a theist nor believer in any religion. I am content not knowing why we are here or where we are going, but I thought atheists Believe that there absolutely is no god. Am I wrong?
If atheists do hold such Belief is that not similar to other religionists? I mean the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I, too, find scientific evidence compelling. None of the scientific evidence that I have examined has ever contradicted anything that I believe in the religious sphere.
That you have found religion (or spiritual beliefs or whatever) lacking is true for you.
When you extend from your belief to question how others continue to hold belief, you are still within the realm of expressing your view of the world, including the fact that you find others’ beliefs puzzling.
If you take one more step and claim that believers have simply accepted belief without questioning and that it is only their failure to question that causes them to continue to believe, then you step outside your experience to join those believers who insist that your lack of belief is simply the result of youre failure to listen for god. That attitude, (and it is really the same attitude expressed differently from opposite sides of a chasm regarding belief), gives the person who expresses the attitude a comforting sense of self-satisfaction, but it does nothing to actually address reality and it prevents dialogue between believers and unbelievers. (If one does not wish to engage in such dialogue, that is fine, but one should be aware that the logic leading to such claim(s) is identical.)
For the most part, I would say, Yes, you are wrong.
There are a few atheists who hold a positive belief that no god exists and that god cannot exist. (A few of them post here.) That, however, is not the norm among atheists, who generally simply do not believe in (a) god.
I would characterize your statement as one of atheism. You do not have to stride forward and insist that no god exists, you simply have no belief in a god and feel no compulsion to consider the possibility of a god.
I say the supposed distinction between atheism and agnosticism is a false one necessitated by social pressures – but that’s another debate, one we have already had many times in this forum.
You use the words “every”(twice), “without exception” and “without evidence” You claim that every single atheist on this board has somehow revealed that they have beliefs that they hold without any evidence to support them. How am I reading this too literally?
In every discussion should imply, “every discussion in which I’ve participated to some serious degree” which would lead then to the implication that I’m only talking about the atheists I’ve had serious lengthy discussions with. Did you need that qualifier? Sorry. I could have been clearer.
To avoid further misunderstanding I’ll qualify it further. I mean those who have repeatedly complained about theists holding beliefs without evidence have in the course of a discussion with me, revealed some beliefs they hold to be true with little or no real evidence.
Cite?
No lekatt: according to the timeline, she was brain flatline for only a few minutes: ten at most.
When you were saying it was two hours, it was supposedly hard evidence. Now that you are being confronted with the flat out surgical timeline of a matter of minutes, it’s now just opinion? The timeline is built off the surgical record reported in the book that YOU CITED. What’s “opinion” about it?
Well in the case of the one major confirmed event that she heard: them talking about her veins being too small, this event definately occured when she was merely under general anesthesia: meaning that her “NDE” began long before her life was even in any danger, much less brain dead.
Of course it does: it undermines your entire case. Your whole story was based on the idea that she had experiences when she was brain flatline: you kept repeating over and over how significant it was that all the blood was drained out of her head and there were no spikes on the various machines set up to measure brain activity.
But with the actual surgical timeline, we see that:
- the time when she was brain dead was quite short compared to her total surgical proceedure, meaning that she could have hallucinated the experiences at ANY time during the many hours when she was heavily drugged but NOT dead.
- that the supposed amazing recall of events and things said during the surgery all happened at times when she, again, was NOT DEAD and in fact could have simply been not fully sedated (which often happens)
In short, with the actual facts of the event in hand, there is nothing particularly inexplicable about her case and experiences at all from a perfectly normal mundane perspective: which was the whole POINT of you making a big deal out of the case as supposedly proving the existence of conscious experience without brain function.
I’ve put it into words. You just don’t accept it. Or apparently respect it, for that matter.
I’m very interested to see the experimental results. Cite?