Is it the West Nile Virus also causing the current outbreak of blockheadedness on these boards, or what?
In this utter catastrophe of a thread, a poster named Lekatt floated the following proposition, reprinted here in its entirety:
The supporting link leads one to a confusingly-structured web site stuffed with meandering, poorly documented anecdotes in support of the notion that near Death Experiences (NDEs) are spiritual in nature. Only after one of the respondents did a whois search did Lekatt reveal that he was the author of the site.
Most of the material on the site is in the form of personal testimonials, with a smattering of quotes from the peer-reviewed literature. The only “proof” offered is material that suggests that in some cases consciousness may continue after the supply of blood to the brain is temporarily stopped. Particularly amusing is a ludicrous “FAQ” in which author utterly fails to answer his own questions; for example:
Numerous respondents to the thread have replied with rebuttals showing, among other things, that NDE’s are not experienced universally and that the specific experiences and sensations of NDEs have been reproduced through other means. Lekatt has shown no interest in responding to specific arguments contradicting his “proof”; his only tactic seems to be to restate over and over again variations of the following:
“I have experienced this, it changed my life and that of others, therefore I am right and you are wrong”.
Lekatt, you santimonious tit, your point, what little there is of it, was made after about your third post to the same thread. The majority of respondents disagree with your conclusions, and your repeated restatment of the same fallacious reasoning is wasting everyone’s time and bandwidth. You are now cordially invited to stop your insufferable whining, take your spam posts and fuck right off.
But I LIVE for this kind of stuff! I’m so disappointed when there’s nothing good on T.V. and no JDT, lekatt, or any of the other single-minded trolls about on the SDMB to amuse me. Please don’t frighten him away.
None of which arguments sound the death knell for lekatt’s position to any but the most concrete-headed reductionist. The discussion brought up some studies that I was not aware of. Lekatt deserves thanks for that, as well as for putting up with rude attempts to belittle him and squelch an odd, but interesting, little thread. Reading it was certainly much more fun than trying to wrest useful information from a thirty year stack of “peer-reviewed” journals.
Squink, while there may be some pearls amid the dross of lekatt’s web site, that’s not the issue here. What I think are significant issues are:
lekatt posted his link without acknowledging that he was the author of the site
lekatt has clearly stated that NDEs constitute “proof” of life after death and the existence of the Judeo-Christian God, although his own supporting material provides no particular reason to infer this specifically, rather than any other conclusion
lekatt claims to have 170 cases of NDEs on his site, but as several posters have pointed out, a significant number are not NDEs at all
lekatt, as far as I can tell, has not addressed a single point raised by posters who disagree with his “proof”, replying only with variations of “if you haven’t gone through an NDE, you can’t understand” and “you haven’t read the material”. He’s posted essentially the same non-responses a dozen times or more, and all it does is lengthen the thread without adding anything to the discussion.
I don’t think the responses to lekatt have been any more or less rude than for any thread in which the OP refuses to clarify his resoning. My reading indicates, that posters, far from trying to “squelch” lekatt tried and failed to get any sense of how he reached his conclusions, and complained in frustration over his non-reponses.
Anyway, how churlish of me to bitch about these things if everyone is actually enjoying his repetitive, trolling posts.
Thank you for opening this thread, El_Kabong. I, for one, think that each unique little troll deserves his own unique little flamefest- so lets marinate those flank steaks in some Ketamine and fire up the BBQ!! WHOO-HAA!!!
I must say for the record that I had never before heard of a whois search, and didn’t even know what it was until I clicked on the link.
I found out he was the author of that wretched waste of bandwidth by visiting the messageboard there. WOW, you think he’s bad over here- he’s got the keys to kingdom over there! I had an NDE just trying to read the damn website!
It’s true because it really happened to me! I got so frustrated I smacked my forehead too hard and lost consiousness and passed through this tunnel. It was wallpapered with page after page of William Shatner interviewing his hairpiece. I looked down and I saw that the floor of the tunnel was covered with little sticky notes that all said “It depends what is is.” Then I was standing in a field surrounded by red staplers and this guy came up to me and said- “Did you get that memo about the TPS reports?” And then I realized who it was! It was Robert Jordan! And I cried out, “OH NO!! Now that you’re dead you’ll never get to finish your 60 volume set of the Wheel of Time!” and he said, “I’m not dead yet! I think I’ll go for a walk!” And then I heard a voice that sounded like the voice of God- and it said “D’OH!” and I woke up then to find myself lying in a pool of Flat Earth pamphlets and boloney.
While I wasn’t convinced of anything about life-after-death, I think there is some good evidence that NDEs can cause lasting brain damage on those that experience them.
I especially like how at his latest post, he declares the debate over and himself the winner. Golly, I guess there’s not much to argue with there. A sound tactic, from a master debater.
I dunno, I’m kinda glad he decided to “end” the debate himself. I was starting to get really frustrated and a bit pissed by him repeating “read the proof” a half-dozen or so times while ignoring my posts. When a thread starts turning out like that, I think I need to just learn to forget about it, since it only leads to frustration in the end. (Is it just something about me? Seems like most of the last few GD threads I got involved in seem to fall into that same pattern…)
In my opinion the “debate” had been “over” for quite some time, but I certainly disagree with lekatt as to who the “winner” was. It reaffirms my dislike of getting involved in religious debates. No one gets convinced of anything as all religious change comes from within. If you want to believe in God, you will. If you don’t believe nothing can make you.
(I was also very surprised to find out lekatt was in his 60s, I never would have guessed it from his posts. I really kind of feel sorry for him, in a way.)
So what we have is two, count 'em, two threads about this same material. Page after page (after page) of hearsay, misinformation, and conjecture trotted out as absolute proof of life-after-death, and no real debating tactics of any kind. Just “You just don’t understand.” repeat ad infinitum. So will we see another thread of this nature sometime in the future? Almost certainly. Will the “debate” start over again? Almost certainly. Will anything be resolved? Almost certainly not. I won’t be posting in it, that’s for sure, except maybe to link to the previous two threads.
** Fairblue**, your post gave me the first real belly laugh of the day. Thank you! (But, are you sure that wasn’t Burt Reynolds in the tunnel with the toupes?)
I posted a pretty long list of links to ‘induced NDEs’ material, but when I saw that lekatt had no intention of even looking at the material I just wandered off elsewhere and never returned.
Why waste time arguing with a rock? We’ll all know the facts of the matter sooner than we’d like.
Is it just me or has there actually been a rash of less than shall we say rational arguments out there?
This Lekkat reminds me of another poster months ago who kept cliaming his web page had proof of a lunar conspiracy. It was nothing more than close ups of blury images that he claimed were objects.
Every time we said, there is nothing there he’d say “read the page” and then post more links.
Also I seemed to have noticed GD has turned into a virtual God fest much the same was Cafe became a Star Wars posting board a few months back.
Pass me my tin foil hat and Lord save me from the loonies.
