Now that sounds like someone who is sitting on the fence concerning this issue, yesseree bob.
Yes I did. You were just wrong.
- You said your hypotehsis of a magical sorceror creating the universe was “based on logic.” It is not. It’s actually illogical to hypothesize magic based on nothing.
- Your magic sorceror would not change the physical laws of the universe or make an “afterlife” possible.
Not a damn thing.
Deepak Chopra. Snirk.
Get back to us when they actually prove something. There are scientists who believe in creationsism too. This is basically the same thing. People with post-graduate degrees are not immune to woo. Some of them even believe in sky gods.
What is it you think you see there, Czar? Well, I know what you think you see, what I don’t know is why you think you see it.
But actually…it is beginning to dawn how you and others get to your presumption regarding my beliefs (which are just plain weird, by the way); your own certainty, absolute aggressive, sometimes angry, blind and unsupported True Knowledge says a great deal about your own needs, beliefs and biases: you are obviously not comfortable with uncertainty…duh.
The thing I failed to see before this moment is that your discomfort with uncertainty extends beyond yourself; you are so ill at ease with it that you cannot imagine or accept that it could actually exist in others. You are wedded to your own world view and, in your super-certain way, are super-certain that others must also need certainty as much as you do.
But you’re wrong.
Deepak Chopra.
I’m pretty sure you meant to put that in the ad hominem thread as a classic example.
He was your example of a right-thinking scholar. You want we should go past the headliner and examine some of the other “great thinkers” of that conference?
I’m sorry, but I’m still having trouble with NDEs, the least among all the possible reasons there are, being the stumbling block to your dismissing the religionist line of thought.
Stoid, you believe that the afterlife should have to be considered by default plausible. That it takes evidence to *disprove *it.
You do not believe that Smurfs require evidence to disprove them.
The only reason you give as to why the afterlife gets this special treatment is that* a lot of people believe in the afterlife*.
This is clearly an argument to popularity, and you say that you care about logical debate. Instead of addressing this you ignore criticism and deflect.
Why don’t you address the fact that you are being illogical? Would you rather *pretend *to be right than *actually *be right?
Laughing at your cited authorities is not ad hominem.
Stoid, your recent posts are full of ad hominems, ad populums, and appeals to authority. To give an example of each (all paraphrases, I’m not wading through walls of text to find the quotes). “You’re not a scientist, you’re a random doper, your argument is therefore weak” - ad hominem.
“Look how many people are at the woo-woo conference - it must have merit” - ad populum.
“It’s in the Lancet, it must be true” - appeal to authority.
If only someone would take the time to start a thread about logical fallacies…
Well, this is Great Debates. We have a long tradition of what are in fact Appeals to Authority. That would be the very core of “Cite?”. It is unavoidable because very few subjects can be effectively or honestly debated with pure rhetoric logic and argument vs. rhetoric, logic and argument. When you argument is stated as “We’ve proved…” “It’s a proven fact” “It’s been shown to be impossible” - you’re talking about real-world facts. Facts about what real life people have done, what they’ve said, written, studied…**and proved. ** When you assert that something has been proved, it’s on you to demonstrate that you are not pulling your proof from a dream you had last night. As it stands, now that I’ve gone and checked into all these assertions, that’s the best guess as to where all this “proof” came from.
You may not care for my citations - I didn’t expect you to, since they show that most of what you’ve been selling is not exactly correct. But at least I’ve provided boatloads throughout the thread.
What I’ve gotten back is nothing but a bunch of dopers announcing and declaring that X is Proved. Evidently we are expected to stand in awe of these announcements and declarations because…ummm…because…err… why is anyone supposed to accept these absolute facts that probably came to you into a dream, exactly? Are we supposed to be convinced by the unshakable nature of your certainty? It is impressive, I grant you, but it’s not that much more impressive than the certainty of snake handlers.
Perhaps the sneering dismissals of real citations to actual information are intended to act as a veil of authenticity to the otherwise naked announcements coming from the We Know contingent? Or maybe we’re supposed to bow down in supplication to the Almighty Knowing you clearly demonstrate by…what…being able to type?
I admit I’m stumped.
So I guess I’ll just have to accept that I’ve obviously missed my opportunity to sit at the feet of the All-Knowing Beings that have deigned to visit this lowly little internet forum and cast their Pearls of Mighty and Perfect Wisdom before pathetic citing swine like me.
Oh well, I’m sure I’ll manage somehow.
Now I realize that you are among The Great And Powerful All Knowing Beings…but one of the teensy weensy areas that you do not have Perfect Wisdom about happens to be my mind,as you’ve demonstrated repeatedly.
So go ahead and argue with LoboStoid…she believes whatever you want. But the real Stoid has made her position clear.
In addition to your utter and amazing failures in logic, you’ve also changed someone’s post in a quote box. That isn’t allowed.
Asking for a cite from an actual authority isn’t an appeal to authority. Do you actually know *anything *about logic?
Again, your standards for an afterlife are different than your standards for Smurfs. Why is that?
You have not offered a single citation that supports the existence of an afterlife. If you think you have, you are simply self-deluding.
What you have gotten, among other things, is demonstrations that your acceptance of an afterlife as requiring proof to dismiss is based on nothing but an irrational appeal to popularity. But you’ve ignored that because you don’t want to actually debate, you want to sling your bullshit and not be questioned.
You ignore when you are shown wrong and bury the response under random google-vomits. You are terrible at this.
Running away and ignoring uneasy truths isn’t a good way to reduce that feeling.
You simply attack when confronted with your own shortcomings. Why don’t you actually try to understand?
Ignoring when you’re wrong is probably pretty easy, I wouldn’t worry how you’ll do.
Science is based on a logical fallacy (affirming the consequent).
- If P, then Q.
- Q.
- Therefore, P.
I just disproved computers, rockets, and medicine. Humans can never obtain knowledge because reality is fundamentally inaccessible and our models are only what our flawed, evolved senses and intuition tell us is an–OW! Ow. My head hurts! Wait, OK, I’m better now. Sorry about that.
So the afterlife has beer volcanoes, boobquakes, and stripper factories, yes? Where do I sign?
Your position (at least as you stated it in this thread) is exactly as I have said. Are you withdrawing that an afterlife requires evidence to disprove it? Are you admitting that an afterlife and Smurfs have the exact same level of evidence and should face the same level of evidence to accept either as real? Are you admitting that the popularity of a concept (like the afterlife) has nothing to do with the evidentiary burden associated with that concept?
It’s only a fallacy if you’re claiming that science provides absolute truth, which, as you rightly say, it cannot.
As for your suggestion for the afterlife, it’s utterly ridiculous. Beer volcanoes? Who wants beer at the temperature of boiling lava? Fool 
Why do you call them “uneasy truths”? What are they? Beliefs? 
Stoid, get your quotes right. Here’s what you say I said in this post:
Here’s what I actually said:
Neuroscience writings which cover the damage and changes to which I refer include, for example, the works of Oliver Sacks, V. S. Ramachandran, Eric Kandel, and Alexander Luria, as well as numerous materials on the cases of Phineas Gage and H. M.
Note that I did not and do not claim that any of the abovementioned say outright that there is no afterlife, but rather that the hard evidence – in other words, the facts about the brain that their work and the work of other neuroscientists has uncovered – allow us to conclude that consciousness ends with death.
You keep talking about near death experiences as constituting evidence for something more than a physical basis for consciousness. But no NDE has ever been confirmed to be anything more than an hallucination, or, to put it more kindly, a dream. You may do well to ask yourself what possible effects various anesthetics might have on the brain’s grasp on reality, as well how the various theories about what dreams themselves are might apply to NDES.
One more thing: Deepak Chopra? Come on.
Oh, and AHunter3 … I dispute this:
Language is not an artform. Some uses to which language is put are artforms: poetry; fiction; rhetoric – these are artistic uses to which language is put, just as dance is an artistic use to which motion is put. But language itself is not an artform, nor are meanings as fluid as you imply. Words may be arbitrary sounds, but their meanings are not those sounds. A fox is a zorro is a renard is a lis: different sounds, yes, but the same meaning in each of those languages. I will grant you that a single word may hold different connotations for each of us; this is unavoidable as we can none of us ever have exactly the same experiences, and therefore we will have somewhat different associations that have aggregated for us around the same word. But the core meaning** of the word is the same.