Lekatt, if one could sell ignorance, you'd be Walmart

The BBQ Pit
61

A brief history of the beginnings of Lekatt

I’d like to invite the witness to the stand. Nosferatu, who is currently known as Cheswolf first brought this seemingly innocuous post to SDMB via GQ:
Web site that says it’s absolute proof of life after death

and then the thread frighteningly evolves to include this:

I’m thinking this is how we all got infected. It wasn’t the monkey, the vial that fell off the scientist’s shelf, or the barrel of toxins dropped off by the aliens over Chicago.

This is where Lekatt introduces himself and a noteworthy quote (this is in reference to a Near Death Experience and info on his website):

I think he meant to say “scientician” but I can’t corroborate that for sure.

The thread dies down after some posts by Doc Cathode and DMC. A peace is felt around SDMB. Ignorance has been vanquished and there was frollocking (and yes, much rejoicing).
Then the clouds started to come, darkness rained down and a thread in GD was started. We should have seen the signs.

This thread starts with a HUGE presumption to say the least.
Life continues beyond physical death. Is this proof of God’s existance. Lekatt , doesn’t give an option or a basis to assume that NDEs are true for the reasoning of his arguement. This trainwreck is at best amusing and at worst completely frustrating.
8 days later, the first of many Lekatt BBQ threads is founded (and ironically, this thread was started exactly a year to the day later).

One of my favorite
Lekattisms from the “Life Continues beyond physical death” thread is:

Monkey see once, monkey do thousand times.

Of course it ends in amazing fashion:

Lekatt then hops on his horse and trots off into the sunset as the debate is over. But it isn’t. Not really. In fact he keeps posting to this debate.

Lekatt enjoys his smug “victory” and posts the following:

I didn’t snip anything out of this one because I wanted y’all to see it without any editing. So according to Lekatt, it’s up to the skeptic to prove that things didn’t happen and not the person that claims that had the NDE.
Still in the same thread:

Finally, on page 6 it gets really interesting with the following quote. Read it and then scroll up to the top of this post and see something.

Yup, the information collaborated by other scientists to prove the NDEs actually isn’t proof.

Lekatt takes time out to call someone something (something that I thought was an offense worthy of being banned):

Then you wonder if this is his motto in life:

This here is the 6th thread in the BBQ with Lekatt’s name in the title:Lekatt kindly piss off
Milum, let’s talk Lekatt
To Lekatt something or pull a Lekatt means
I apologize to Lekatt
lekatt:le posterior

The apology thread wasn’t really meant to be a flame against him per the OP, but that did quickly change.

62

“Lekatt, what is the frequency?”

63

You don’t have to be a Christian to oppose certain government actions. If people really wanted to destroy all Bibles and churches, I’d oppose that too. lekatts problem is that he’s willing to indulge in the fantasy that anything like that is happening.

64

Is Aldebaran the lovechild of lekatt and His4Ever?

I was going to pit him, but the mods did it for me. If we locked the three in a room, would they form strangelet of ignorance, or would they self destruct?:smiley:

65

link?

66

Sorry Lib I wasn’t really trying to make a serious point, I was just being flippant. Should’ve used a smiley.

67

Yep. Myself and SimonX (I think it was) once kept at him for probably 7 or 8 pages demanding that he answer a particular question. Needless to say he never answered.

68

Steven

I am in fact free to argue against whatever I wish — but as it happens, I have argued against one thing only; i.e., I have argued against the cite you gave having value as an idictment against Lekatt. If ever you care to debate the actual point I’ve made, feel free.

69

No problem. :slight_smile:

70

St. Pauler

Excellent.

Lekatt

If you’re still around, I call to your attention something you said in the thread analysed by St. Pauler:

Your feelings in that regard are admirable, and were you to hold to that particular assertion only, no one would dispute you. After all, only you know what is important to you.

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, you have bought into the notion that science is some sort of uber-epistemology and is necessary to validate near death experience as a correspondence truth. It isn’t.

As a philosophy, science may be defined this way:

Metaphysic: the material universe

Epistemology: observation

Ethic: falsification

Aesthetic: fascimilation

All science can do is tell you is what is recorded on certain measuring devices as you come near death, make a prediction about what might register on the next test subject, and determine whether some statement about the observation or prediction is false. That which it cannot observe — your subjective experience — is outside its purview. That which it cannot falsify — including its own validity — is non-scientific. And that which it cannot repeat — including its own metadata — is not a part of its domain.

What I am saying is that the scientific evidence about near death experiences does not refute the experiences themselves, nor does it reveal any truth about them, correspondence or otherwise. It merely establishes that among a number of hypotheses, some are not falsifiable. Thus, says science, your near death experience could be the result of certain neurological activity that resembles activity in other observed circumstances. What it does NOT say is that your near death experience is non-spiritual in nature. It does not because it can not.

Whether it is the brain that simulates the spirit or the spirit that stimulates the brain is unknown and untestable. As one prominent neurosurgeon and prodigious publisher on brain research has stated:

“Why is the revealed truth of such transcendent [religious] experiences in any way “inferior” to the more mundane tuths that we scientists dabble in? Indeed, if you are ever tempted to jump to this conclusion, just bear in mind that one could use exactly the same evidence — the involvement of the temporal lobes in religion — to argue for, rather than against, the existence of God.” — V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph. D., Phantoms in the Brain, God and the Limbic System

Don’t make the mistake of pretending that scientific studies do not say what they say. You’ll just look foolish. Instead, make sure that you understand what they in fact do say, and what exactly is their sphere of sovereignty. It is with love and understanding that I tell you, making a laughing-stock of yourself does not further your cause.

71

Your arguement doesn’t hold water because you apparently don’t understand what a net.kook title means. It doesn’t occur in a vacuum. There was an implicit history behind the pronouncement of lekatt as a net.kook, as there is behind virtually all such pronouncements on usenet. The giving of the net.kook title is a relatively formal process. It was based on his own behavior in the group which kooked him. If you wish to continue to ignore that history and pretend the judgement stands with no supporting evidence other than the author’s authority then I have no interest in your assertion. It was never offered as evidence in and of itself. It was offered as documentary evidence that among other groups he had displayed the same type of behavior he has displayed here. “NDE’s prove god. Disagreement is illogical and insulting.”

Quite frankly I’m annoyed with your whole line of arguementation. As I said earlier it seems nothing more than arguing for the sake of arguing. Someone from talk.athiesm said “lekatt is a kook” and you took up the banner against talk.athiesm. Didn’t give a shit about the statement itself, repeatedly refused to argue for or against the statement, just wanted to get your two cents in about the athiesm group and the credibility of persons therein. Didn’t try to assert the statement was false, just that the person advancing it had no credibility. Despicable.

I can’t find the thread right now(may have been lost in the server crash), but I distinctly remember you starting a thread in the Pit a few months or a year ago crying for people to PLEASE, PLEASE address the actual ARGUEMENT instead of lobbing genetic fallacies all over the place(if anyone can find it I’d appreciate a link). Of course you were referring to people using genetic fallacies to discredit the arguements of creationists and thiests, so I guess the same standard may not apply to athiests advancing arguements. Apparently they can say something as obviously true as “lekatt is a kook” and even back it up with his posting history in a specific group and still have no credibility and no weight in a discussion about that individual. Because that’s exactly what they did. It is exactly what a net.kooks list IS, that’s why they give the kooks email addresses along with their posting names, so people without enough history to understand why the person got the title kook can look up their posting history and see the evidence if they wish, kind of a built-in cite. Yet still you continue to say the cite carries no weight.

The assertion does carry weight. It carries no weight with YOU because of your own prejudice against talk.athiesm and its members. To other people, people who can see the assertion is true, earned by his history in their group and corraborated on this board and elsewhere, it carries plenty of weight. Truth always does.

Enjoy,
Steven

72

One of my most favorite Kattein quotes so far

Not only has the brain been proven to have nothing to do with any
thinking…

73

Oh for f*ck’s sake:
If what Lekatt hasn’t said on SDMB isn’t enough…
alt.atheism has this post by him (my bolding):

Hmm, yes, that’s what criminals all need, a near death experience.
Next off we have quote of another article that refutes what Cecil himself has said on the topic:
NDE’s & Ketamine

I’d love to post the rest but you can click on the link above and read the short article yourself. I will throw this final quote from the article in here though:

Suddenly Lekatt has used something he never has before. Logic. If only he could apply it to all of his claims.

Of course, logic is pushed out the window for this next online sample of mental deficiency:
http://neil.franklin.ch/Usenet/alt.conscious.near-death-exp/19980315_What_do_I_believe

Of course the zenith of stupidity is found here:
Lekatt relays his “Near Death Experience”

Sure, most of us have had dreams or nightmares. But who goes around and calls them a NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE?Lekatt.

:confused:

Next thing you know, he’ll have a bowel movement and see an invisible pink unicorn.
Lekatt, once again, shut the f*ck up, you kook.

74

I did forget to put in the link that is what Cecil said:

Do near-death experiences prove there is life after death?

75

Shit! I didn’t realize it, but I’ve had Near-Death Experiences, too. Since a young age, I’ve had about one dream every couple years in which I die; generally, I experience the death in a detached, dismayed fashion, coldly contemplating the feel of bullets as they plow through my brain, thinking calmly about how I’m drowning, and so on. NDE, apparently!

But I’m still a cynical atheist bastard.
Daniel

76

So basically, he had one amazing dream back in the eighties, it wasn’t a near death experience because he wasn’t near death, and decided to make a crusade out of it and he transformed from a skeptic into a true believer, impervious to any attempts to explain his experience in any other way.

77

Yup, that’s our Lekatt .
I think given that, Merriam Webster’s definition of kook applies:

78

Yea, everyone on the planet can agree the guy is a kook, but as soon as those hand-stabbing athiests start saying it, well they’re just full of shit. Their findings have absolutely no weight.

Enjoy,
Steven

79

Lekatt is a perfect example of what the skeptics dictionary calls True Believer syndrome:

He also displays Wishfull thinking : interpreting facts, reports, events, perceptions, etc., according to what one would like to be the case rather than according to the actual evidence.

And Selective Thinking : The process whereby one selects out favorable evidence for remembrance and focus, while ignoring unfavorable evidence for a belief.

80

Steven

As opposed to what you’re doing, no doubt.

You’re annoyed that I do not accept the atheist newsgroup you cited as the world’s authority for assigning kook status. You’ll just have to be annoyed.