Tom
This is an excellent explanation, in Popper’s own words (from Conjectures and Refutations), of the difference between science and pseudo-science.
It is amazing to me how popular the notion is, even among some scientists, that the most scientific theory is the one that best fits the data. As Popper explains, that is in fact a description of pseudo-science.
Appreciate all of your posts, but not looking for methods, and such. Just trying to ascertain truth among all the BS in the world.
Willing to work to find it.
Love
How exactly do you sort BS from truth without a method?
Science is that method… That is what it is designed to do from the ground up. That is all science is. It is NOT the information uncovered to date. It is a process for sorting claims to truth from each other.
Give it a fair try. Have criticisms of it then, well… at least you will be speaking from experience.
I would really like to believe what you say, and I have given it many fair tries. It doesn’t work because it is managed by people. People make mistakes, they use poor judgement, they say one thing while doing another.
Previously I posted some NDE research on this board, some by me, and others by qualified scientific groups. It was bashed to s**t by those who claim to follow science.
I wrote the paragraph below to describe what really happens when science meets something it doesn’t agree with.
"Our Science is a closed belief system, a set of laws (limitations) by which Scientists test reality (truth). It is a template used to organize the stream of consciousness we humans are immersed in daily. We use it to organize, count, catalog and validate our experiences. We feel pretty good about our template (scientific beliefs) until some phenomenon comes along that doesn’t fit the patterns of its structure.
At this point, we might consider the accuracy of our beliefs, whether they are perfect enough to cover ALL of human experience. Maybe they need to be modified or expanded: what if we don’t know everything.
But rather than examine our tools we foolishly label the experience as false, a freak, or the experiencer/reporter as unreliable in some way. Even worse, we try to trim and shape the experience to force it into the structure of the template. Doing so, we can say we understand it, even though the experience has been violated and frauded.
Such is the position of the Near Death Experiences in relation to science."
This quote has since been published in books of a metaphysical nature.
So much for trying.
Love
Well, I would suggest that the reason you were getting hammered on this one was because the “research” was a far cry from qualifying as science.
Science would love for someone to find clear evidence of any of the things claimed by the NDE sites. Science just insists that all the other possible explanations are shot down before you insist that you have the correct answer. How do you know you have the correct answer if still have possible correct answers still left standing.
Fraud, mistake, halucination, and others possibilities still exist. Sure, you have some things that are consistent with your explanation.
Proving NDE’s would be a HUGE deal to science if someone can demonstrate it thoroughly. Science (or the people of science) will jump all over you pointing out the missed possibilities when they think you have come to a conclusion prematurely.
There are people doing real science on NDE’s. Looking for occurances that could only be explained by NDE’s. Know what has turned up so far? Nothing. But science is paying very much attention to those controled experiments.
Just because your (mostly) anecdotes don’t constitute the proof the rigorous science demands, don’t get mad at it. You are making a testable claim. Eliminate the other answers. Prove your case. If you don’t go that far… well, you haven’t tried science a couple a times like you say.
If you don’t understand the need for the rigorous checking, then you don’t understand science at all.
Other scientist didn’t like Relativity because it appealed to them. It was strongly resisted at first. But, it quickly converted nearly everyone with its incontravertible agreement with measured reality.
If NDE’s see things and know things that the couldn’t possibly know… prove it. Provide a means for NDErs to demonstrate that they really did have an out of body experience. Tests have been ongoing for a couple of decades trying to do just that. So far, a great big nothing.
I am sorry that lekatt cannot tell the difference between dream interpretation filtered through wishful thinking and religious beliefs, and real science.
By the way Lekatt,
Science treats new ideas forwarded by all branches of science in just the same manner as the NDE studies. The stuff that is really true, and really works always seems to get through the wringer just fine.
Scientists ask “nasty” questions concerning the claims of their colleages. It is by design. It isn’t pretty, but that is how the mistakes, self deceptions, and sometimes even academic fraud are detected and corrected. Scientists are people too. They have the same desires to see their pet idea succeed as anyone else. They fully expect everyone else to try to shoot holes in their idea. If it survives the process, that says alot about the idea. People are still doing very serious research trying to disprove any aspect of relativity. And they just might have found some cracks in it, but the public generally don’t hear much about stuff like that. It isn’t “interesting” appearently.
The public also doesn’t hear about all the interesting ideas that science has that are just sitting there on the shelf. They are consistent with what is known, but there isn’t any data to seperate them from the several other ideas sitting on the shelf beside them. Well, this isn’t entirely true, the public does seem to have a strong interest in hearing the latest “discoveries” and research… Almost like they want to know what we really don’t know yet. They want to be amazed, but not bothered with the details. And the public never seems to be interested in what we know really well. No interest in things we have down cold. I guess it just insn’t sexy anymore. People aren’t interested in how things of science are known with the “confidence” that they are known. There are aspects of QED that can be calculated to 10 significant digits and measured to that accuracy and found to in agreement. That is like a theory predicting the distance between L.A. and N.Y and getting it right to an accuracy of better than a millimeter. That is something to have confidence in.
People of science have been very plain in what they would consider reasonable proof of claims like NDE’s. They have patience for you to look as long as you like. If you step up and do rigorously controlled experiments and only claim what you can demonstrate, your chops will not get busted. If you say, “I think there is something to this, and it deserves my study.”, you will be congratulated. Everyone will agree that there is very suggestive data available. Just eliminate the other possible (and more prosaic) answers before you make any great claims.
It has nothing to do with not being able to “handle the claims”. The claims do run counter to very well established principals. Key being “very well” established. If you propose to turn over ideas that have been verified to that accuracy that has been done, you better have something like really solid evidence.
Haven’t read the material, don’t understand that science is not God, never will. This universe is greater than you can ever understand with science. Science, science, science, your God goes before you.
Incidentally, spiritual events will never be measured by science. But that doesn’t mean they can’t be experienced and seen by those looking in a different direction.
Love
“I can’t hear you! la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la” * ::: putting fingers in ears and thumbs over eyes ::: * “You can’t make me loo-o-o-ook. la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la”
So, lekatt, how should one approach the NDE phenomenon? What should an examiner (scientist or not) do to determine whether NDEs are paranormal events and not the firing of synapses under stress or some other event?
Yeah, I read the material. I remember the first line.
“Due to Near Death Experiences, life after death has been proven”
I see the word proven in there clear as day. That is the arguement. If you are sticking by that statement, you aren’t doing science, and you have been shown why.
Or, are you after that last statement about science is not God (what that has to do with a damn thing is still beyond me), are you backing away from the claim of a couple hours ago about how you tried science several times and got “bashed to s$%t”.
You brought up your old thread. It starts with the word PROVEN!
Which is it? Is it proven? Is it not? Is what you tried really science? or not?
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/1122create_life.asp
It looks like we’re both right about the creationist/IDist response to Venter’s new project:
“Therefore a cell even simpler than Mycoplasma, such as the one planned, is even less likely to be able to survive in a primitive soup.”
“Finally, far from supporting chemical evolution, it reinforces the creationist claim that intelligence is required to create new life!”
Particularly interesting is Sarfati’s claim that since God gave us dominion over the earth, we can experiment on animals (and he puts no limits on the nature of the experimentation, btw.)
FWIW, Sarfati claims in one of his books that since genetic analysis shows that birds are a subgroup of reptiles, that obviously proves that creationism is right and evolution is wrong! Why? Because creationism and evolution make the same prediction: birds, mammals, and reptiles should be completely separate groups. Since evolution’s prediction failed, it must be wrong. (No, I’m not exaggerating…)
Well, It just occured to me that there would be no way for you to approach learning about NDEs. In religion, any thing outside of the teaching is from the devil, and anything outside of the teaching of science is automatically false. Hence the title of this thread calling anyone who believes in creation idiots.
So, the answer is, you can’t, you have given up your normal avenues of learning, for the mantle of science. Perhaps later.
Love
Maybe you could carry one of those cardboard signs: WILLING TO WORK FOR TRUTH. 
There are a limited number of religions (and not all Christian denominations are among them) that hold that “everything outside of the teaching is from the devil” so we begin with a misunderstanding of what religion teaches.
There is no “teaching” of science, only the presentation of facts that have been discovered, with the theories that currently best explain those facts, until an aspect of a theory can be demonstrated as false.
It is possible that science can put forth hypotheses that explain NDEs in physical terms. Such hypotheses will need to be falsifiable, and, therefore, tested. If no one can present a theory that can be tested, then it falls outside the realm of science. Now, the inability to provide a testable hypothesis could conceivably arise from different causes:
NDEs may be a way to touch the transcendant, in which case they are outside the purview of science;
We may currently lack tools to provide the means to test a hypothesis*;
or
the proponents of various explanations of NDEs may lack the imagination to create a testable hypothesis.
In either event, science can only comment upon physical reality, so accusing science of being “belief” because it does not demonstrate the hubris to address things which it cannot seems to be a particularly upside down view of the world.
*(When “continental drift” was first proposed, it was suggested based on inductive comparisons of various geographic factors. It was interesting, but it was not science: there was no proposal to identify the mechanism to allow continents to drift and there was no way to test the belief. In the decades following the proposal of continental drift, new tools were developed (usually for other purposes) that could be used to explore the earth in new ways. At that time, various theories were proposed to explain the phenomena that had prompted the notion of continental drift. The theories were then tested using the new methods and technology and Plate Tectonics was developed as a scientific endeavor. So cheer up, science may yet find ways to test genuine theories to explain NDEs. However, if you believe that science will ever “prove” the existence of God (or gods) through NDEs, I am afraid that you will be disappointed. If gods are not physical realities, then they are outside the purview of science.)
Funny, but true, I did odd jobs at a church I didn’t belong to in order to access their library. Have traded books I bought at sales for those I wanted to read. Life is better for me now, I can usually buy what I want.
Love
It’d be a much better world if more people did!! 
Lekatt- I’m curious, is it your opinion that someone who believes in God, and who uses the scientific method a paradox?
Also, what is so wrong about trying to prove something exists?
Maybe science hasn’t found a way to examine NDE’s, that doesn’t mean it won’t in the future. It’s just that, currently, we can not detect NDE and that their isn’t enough evidence. That doesn’t mean their won’t be enough in the future.
It seems like you are asking people to believe eyewitness accounts, in regards to NDE’s-is this correct?
I don’t know about paradox? But it is fairly normal for people to hold and believe in conflicting systems. Look at all the different interpretations of the Bible, and most saying: “there are no contradictions in what I believe” etc.! People seldom look at, and study the accuracy of their beliefs. H4E will tell you in one sentence God is love, and another He hates. That is just the way most people survive in this world. Beliefs become survival skills instead of truth. I will stop here, could write a book on the subject.
Love
Oh, heavens forbid, asking someone to believe a first-hand, eyewitness account, you know I would never, never do that.
Love