I can see some value in an occasional MPSIMSish thread outside of MPSIMS for those of us who wouldn’t step foot in MPSIMS on a bet. We are people, too, most of us, and sometimes build up personal relationships, within our limited capabilities. And sometimes it’s nice to be able to relate together, as a group, without somebody piping in about their dead cat or favorite sexual position.
I agree again with the principle of your post.
I have a huge task of trying to explain the morality of the near death experience. Both the scientists and religionists strongly disapprove because it takes something way from their doctrines, but I believe it adds plenty to make up for the losses.
First: yes, there is moral sense inherent in all individuals. It is the “spark” of the Creator, there to guide us on our journey through life.
Second: the basic sentiment is love, when applied it forms an atmosphere of honesty, empathy, and compassion for all others.
Third:
The basic rule is the Golden Rule:
http://www.aleroy.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=28
Told above in many religions.
Fourth: the enforcer
“What goes around, comes around,” “You will reap whatsoever you sow,” etc.
Without an enforcer morality does nothing. There has to be a reason people want to learn to love others, and there is a whole bunch of very good reasons, but I will leave off with this.
Huh? How can an experience have a morality?
The scientists and the religionists disapprove of what?
Where does it take whatever it takes from their doctrines?
What is the “it” that adds plenty of what to make up for the losses of what?
Just wondering.
Ah, I had not noticed that lekatt was back.
Welcome again, Leroy. If I assured you that Czarcasm would not be making any more snide remarks, would you be willing to explore important experimental results from decades of research in cognitive science in a dedicated thread?
For the love of all that weeps for mercy in the face of wanton waste, will you please stop quoting the entire content of a post, especially one nine paragraphs long, when just making a couple of points.
Nonsense. Apparent altruism, based upon anticipated reciprocation, is common in daily discourse, i.e. scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours later. People who take but do not return are labeled as “sponges” and are shunned, or at least have to appeal to pity or resort to extortion to continue their parasitic behavior.
The dogma you call morality is an (intellectually) poor man’s substitute for appreciating the consequences of an action. This is not to say that it’s not useful as a guideline for daily behavior, but it often becomes perverted to justify the ends of those who claim to represent “the enforcer”.
I see no evidence that your god punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous (as measured by your standards), other than a vague and variable promise of rewards in the “next life”. At any rate, the case that people who hold a religious belief behave in a more moral fashion is at odds with observed behavior. The threat of eternal damnation or loss of heavenly bounties doesn’t prevent many self-proclaimed “good Christians” (and others) from behaving in ways that are diametrically opposed to the morals they supposedly hold with.
Stranger
Don’t mention it. It’s that I don’t want a poster whose inputs I enjoy to disappear.
I’m glad things are improved. And I refuse to say anything trite like, “Everything happens for the best.” Hell no, everything doesn’t.
And time doesn’t heal all wounds either, but if the wound isn’t picked at it eventually fades into the background.
No thank you, the deck was stacked, and no one read my posts, so it was worthless.
Might point out that the Pam Reynolds surgery report was strong enough to turn the minds of many. Long-time skeptic Susan Blackmore researched it and is no longer a skeptic.
If true, she has gone from being an enthusiast of OBEs to being a reluctant skeptic to an enthusiast again. So far.
Fucking hell, you’ve got some balls.
Apologies for suddenly making this thread non-worksafe, but lekatt has just stated an ABSOLUTE UNTRUTH about someone I have actually met. She has dedicated her career to rigorously searching for paranormal phenomena and tours the country describing her UTTER FAILURE.
Citation, lekatt. Right now.
Calm down, Sentient. I doubt that lekatt is making this up. He probably read it somewhere. Just as the Nine Commandment Christians quickly fabricated the story of Darwin “recanting” on his deathbed, so a few less than scrupulous NDE adherents have begun claiming that Ms. Blackmore has changed her mind. (The sources of their claim are a bit dodgy, given that she was actively and publicly debating the topic–without changing sides to join the NDE folks–just a few months ago)
I am willing to do as you ask. However, since the SDMB was reformatted this last year, I cannot find URLs for specific threads–resting the cursor on the thread’s link, in this forum or that, doesn’t work anymore. If there is a way to locate the proper URL for each thread, tell me what it is and I’ll trake it from there. 
You do get upset, don’t you.
One day you and the rest will understand I speak honestly.
Susan Blackmore said:
Skeptical interviewer:
http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/anomalistics/skeptic_research.htm
Your selective quote has distorted the sense of your cite. Blackmore was saying that she had tried to find confirmation for psychic phenomena and failed.
Here is her full quote including the lead-in to part your quoted and which you omitted.
The whole article was for the purpose of degrading the skeptical opinion of psychic phenomena and critique of Blackmore’s methods. However, Blackmore did not say that she was recanting her conclusion that her work failed to find any evidence for psychic phenomena. Quite the contrary.
Actually, lekatt, I might very well meet Susan again in June at the Cheltenham Science Festival since I am involved in the same event as her partner Adam Hart Davis. Her talk will explain yet again how she changed her mind from believer to skeptic, as your very own incompetent misquote says.
So if I get the chance to ask her “Susan, I hear you are no longer a skeptic but believe that NDE’s are evidence of an afterlife?” she’ll reply “Yes, that’s correct” will she?
Come on lekatt, unload before us that wheelbarrow in which you transport your gargantuan gonads and say “Yes, I predict that she will.”
They’ll miss her investigations. Do you even read the stuff you cite?
I knew you skeptics would read into it something you wanted to hear.
I think she said basically that she was tired of trying to find evidence to disprove her experience of out-of-body, and now give up saying that it could be true.
The war is over, but many battles will yet be fought. There is enough solid evidence and documentation available right now to change the mind of any serious researcher. In the future there will be considerable more.
It is nothing new that man is spiritual. Over ninty percent of the world population has known that from the beginning of time. It is only in the last 30-50 years that “science” has challenged this fact. A foolish upstart in the ages of history.
Eventually the false teachings of science will be reveal, and those caught up in it will be able to again use the spiritual tools available to them to cope with life. You will see suicides, depression, anxiety attacks, and many other spiritual maladies diminish.
But for now, we will plod along doing what we can to help.
Read it again. All of it.
It says nothing of the sort.
You say spiritual, I say superstitious.
So you’re saying that making careful observations and writing down the results so you don’t have to rely on demonstrably poor recollections, is somehow false? Because that’s what science does, and how it differs from what humans have done previous to the age of science.
Here is the quote from Blackmore, repeated once again.
Now follow along carefully. She said she is sad.
Why do you suppose that is?
[quote[It was just over thirty years ago that I had the dramatic out-of-body experience that convinced me of the reality of psychic phenomena…[/quote]
Like some others she had a strange mentall aberration that convinced her that she had left her body. This lead her to believe that psychic phenomena as ordinarily defined, precognition, ESP and the like, are real.
So she began running experiments to try to nail down the assumed phenomena. But in all of her experimentation she found no evidence of such phenomena.
She no longer thinks there is any such phenomena so she feels sad referring back to her opening statement.
You are the one who had the experience. If you would conduct some valid tests maybe you could find something and wouldn’t have to rely on distortions and misquotations.
I read it three times. She tried to prove psi, and she couldn’t, then she tried to disprove psi and she couldn’t so she gave up saying it could be real.
I stand by what I said.
Let’s see if I can fix the coding in the middle of that last post.
(Me) Like some others she had a strange mentall aberration that convinced her that she had left her body. This lead her to believe that psychic phenomena as ordinarily defined, precognition, ESP and the like, are real.
So she began running experiments to try to nail down the assumed phenomena. But in all of her experimentation she found no evidence of such phenomena.