Scientists recreate Out-of-Body Experience

Great Debates
281

[QUOTE=Testy]
Lekatt
Your first statement has it exactly backwards. There has to be hard evidence before something is not considered self deception. Think about what happens otherwise. With your outlook, any fool can come up with a crackpot idea that is then accepted as true.
Aside from that, no one has the time or interest to start disproving the wishful thinking that you and those like you believe. Also, why this sudden retreat into philosophy? It seems like the refrain of “Well, you can’t disprove it therefore it’s true” is the last refuge of people with no evidence to back them up. Straight-up, guy. I’m looking for hard evidence supporting your beliefs. Not anecdotes and not endless quibbling over picayune details. If you’ve got good, repeatable evidence, trot it out. Otherwise you just come across as deluded by wishful thinking.

Testy
[/QUOTE]

You are judging my beliefs without any evidence of what you say. I have every right to believe in God and mankind’s spirituality. Incidentally there is evidence for the existence of both. I have that right guaranteed by the constitution of the United States. You don’t have the right to attack me or my beliefs, when you do you are attacking the constitution. You are the one out of line here.

Look at the earlier posts for evidence of spirituality.

282

[QUOTE=Staggerlee]
This talk of proof is besides the point. I was just reacting to your defamation of the practice of scepticism, suggesting it is an unhealthy state. Having utter unquestioning certainty in quite extraordinary beliefs is philosophically unjustifiable.

You can hide, snugly and smugly behind your security blanket of blind faith if you will. But critical thinking and scepticism will serve you better in conceiving of the ‘most likely scenario’ when it comes to a fundamentally uncertain world. Do you have the moral fibre to cast off your blanket?
[/QUOTE]

Scepticism, taken to the extreme, is unhealthy, and beliefs in God and spirituality are not extraordinary beliefs. Ninty percent of the whole world hold those beliefs. I would say your beliefs are the extraordinary ones.

I don’t hide anywhere, I believe what I believe because of my personal experiences not faith. Oh, I just realized this posts is all about me and not the OP, sorry, I won’t answer any more of them.

Some great man said;

Small minds discuss people,
average minds discuss things’
and great minds discuss ideas.
Let’s get back to the ideas.

283

[QUOTE=lekatt]
You are judging my beliefs without any evidence of what you say. I have every right to believe in God and mankind’s spirituality. Incidentally there is evidence for the existence of both. I have that right guaranteed by the constitution of the United States. You don’t have the right to attack me or my beliefs, when you do you are attacking the constitution. You are the one out of line here.

Look at the earlier posts for evidence of spirituality.
[/QUOTE]

Lekatt

I think you’re missing the point here. No one is denying your right to believe anything you wish; poltergeists, telepathy, the tooth-fairy, Easter bunny, whatever. Also, what would we do, pass a law against being gullible and stupid? I’d love to see the wording on that.
As long as some people are overly trusting and untrained, there will be people believing in the things you do. There’s very little to be done about it except to try and get people to think. Sometimes it works but in other cases people have too much invested and refuse to do so.

As you say, you have every right to believe whatever you want. I, on the other hand, also have the right to ask you for your evidence and when you fail to produce it, mock you for being gullible, overly trusting, and amazingly ignorant of the ways in which things are determined to be true or false. You see, it works both ways.

Testy

284

I am sitting here trying to make sense of the science evangelists. With the Christians they get their reasons for preaching against secular ideas from the Bible, and they have a set of personal morals and principles. True, not all Christians follow those principles and morals, but at least “it is written.”

On the other hand scientists don’t seem to have a set or morals or principles to use as guidelines. People insult me for what I believe and have no feelings about telling me I deserve to be ridiculed for being so gullible, and ignorant. I don’t feel ignorant. I am comfortable with what I believe, why would that disturb them so. I don’t mind their beliefs. I am hoping that religion and science can once again peacefully co-oexist. They were doing fine up to about 50 years ago. IMHO science has the most to lose. Nothing will ever destroy religion save destruction of the whole human race.

285

[QUOTE=lekatt]
I am sitting here trying to make sense of the science evangelists. With the Christians they get their reasons for preaching against secular ideas from the Bible, and they have a set of personal morals and principles. True, not all Christians follow those principles and morals, but at least “it is written.”

On the other hand scientists don’t seem to have a set or morals or principles to use as guidelines. People insult me for what I believe and have no feelings about telling me I deserve to be ridiculed for being so gullible, and ignorant. I don’t feel ignorant. I am comfortable with what I believe, why would that disturb them so. I don’t mind their beliefs. I am hoping that religion and science can once again peacefully co-oexist. They were doing fine up to about 50 years ago. IMHO science has the most to lose. Nothing will ever destroy religion save destruction of the whole human race.
[/QUOTE]
Science evangelism has precisely the same motivation that you have for your evangelistic posting on this message board: you desire to improve people’s lives and the state of the world by correcting ommissions and errors in their knowledge base. If you were merely content to live your beliefs without sharing them, then you would never have mentioned them on this message board, and if you happened to mention them in passing, you would have ceased to do so the instant somebody told you to shut up and/or shove off. Similarly, evangelistic atheists are not content to sit quietly as others spread what they percieve to be ignorance and lies; the only difference is that you and them(us) don’t believe the same set of things to be true.

If you can understand your own motivations towards evangelism, then you can easily understand the motivations of evangelistic atheists.

Interesting that you complain of people criticising your beliefs in the same breath as blanketly accusing “scientists” of being immoral. Suffice to say, “scientists” develop their own moral codes rather than getting one off the rack, much the same way that some people cook their own steaks and mash their own potatoes rather than grabbing a TV dinner.

Spiffy for you that you’re comfortable with your beliefs. I’m not sure I believe your comment that you don’t mind the beliefs of “scientists”, though, based on your posting patterns. You tend to voraciously attack scientists that make claims that you don’t like.

Oh, and incidentally the reason that religion and science have “peacefully coexisted” has been that until recently the crushing jackboot of religion pretty much silenced scientific criticism of it (mostly). And as for the invulnerability of religion and frailty of science, humanity has the most to lose if religion crushes science. Unless you think that TVs, computers, cars, medicine, improved food distribution, toilet paper, etc are evils that should never have supplanted the glory days of toil, plague, and early death?

286

I started posting on this board because of what I saw. Then I tried to explain that all the hate directed at religion was not fair, and then the hate was directed at me. Hate is something I don’t hold, it’s a lot like stress, it messes up the logical thought processes. Then I tried to explain about the separation of consciousness and brain. But no one listened.

I have no organization, belong to nothing, and don’t mind if you believe in the principles of science that I don’t believe in. Never call anyone names or launched attacks or insults. Well, maybe once or twice.

Now about morals, you can’t make up morals or just choose which ones you like, you are either a moral person or not. Don’t have to tell anyone whether you are moral or not, they will know by your words and deeds.

Religion will survive, no matter what, I used the word scientist, and you used the word atheist, may think or do. These words are not interchangable. Many scientists believe in God.

I don’t think it would be of any benefit to continue this line of thought, but I do wish you the best of everything.

287

[QUOTE=lekatt]
I started posting on this board because of what I saw. Then I tried to explain that all the hate directed at religion was not fair, and then the hate was directed at me. Hate is something I don’t hold, it’s a lot like stress, it messes up the logical thought processes. Then I tried to explain about the separation of consciousness and brain. But no one listened.
[/QUOTE]
You spend a lot of time saying things more specific than ‘you shouldn’t express so much hate against religious people’. You have ideas about the way the world works and you argue for them. (There is no other reason why you’d argue for the existence of NDEs. For loving everybody, yes. For NDEs specifically, no.) As noted, atheistic evangelizers are doing the exact same thing as you (though they argue for a different set of facts); and they’re doing it for exactly the same reason. You really shouldn’t have any difficulty in understanding their motivations.

[QUOTE=lekatt]
I have no organization, belong to nothing, and don’t mind if you believe in the principles of science that I don’t believe in. Never call anyone names or launched attacks or insults. Well, maybe once or twice.
[/QUOTE]
And you share all these properties with (most) evangelistic atheists. (Perhaps not all; some of them may have formed clubs.) And of course the frequency of throwing insults varies wildly from person to person amongst atheist debaters too.

[QUOTE=lekatt]
Now about morals, you can’t make up morals or just choose which ones you like, you are either a moral person or not. Don’t have to tell anyone whether you are moral or not, they will know by your words and deeds.
[/QUOTE]
If morals can’t be chosen, then you can’t choose them by choosing a religion, and thus religious people who are merely following a playbook are not any more moral than atheists. Perhaps less, because if their ‘inherent morality’ is being stifled by their creed’s behavioral instructions.

On the other hand, if a person’s morals can be detected by their words and deeds, then atheists certainly can develop one without being fed it by their religions, because there are lots and lots of atheists who have very, very similar moral reactions to things as religious folks. So based on that, we KNOW that atheists can have genuine morals that they devised themselves, and that most atheists do.

The statement that atheists are amoral clearly has no basis in fact or truth, and is nothing but hate speech, pure and simple.

[QUOTE=lekatt]
Religion will survive, no matter what, I used the word scientist, and you used the word atheist, may think or do. These words are not interchangable. Many scientists believe in God.
[/QUOTE]
I think that religion will survive too; it incorporates into it a number of mechanisms for ensuring its own survival, and these mechanisms are effective despite having nothing to do with any god. (If the mechansims weren’t atheistic there would only be one extant religion, which clearly isn’t the case.) I was merely responding to the notion that religion might actually succeed in crushing science; I can not imagine a more horrible thing for humanity.

And I have no idea what you’re trying to convey with that scientist != evangelistic atheists nitpick. Sure, they’re not the same thing: scientists are persons in search of truth based on things that can be confirmed empirically, and evangelistic atheists are the guys who are getting on your case and shoving science down your throat. Personally I can’t imagine what possible beef you could have with mere scientists* --they’re just trying to search for truth, just like you. That they choose only to assert truths that they can verify shouldn’t cause you a problem. No, it’s only the evangelistic atheists who might get on your case, which is why I spoke about them and not scientists*. Many scientists believe in God, after all.

  • not counting scientists who are also evangelistic atheists, of course.

[QUOTE=lekatt]
I don’t think it would be of any benefit to continue this line of thought, but I do wish you the best of everything.
[/QUOTE]
If you don’t want to continue with the discussion, then don’t reply… but if you’re kindly asking me to let you have the final unchallenged word, well, it doesn’t look like I did. Fancy that.

Good luck to you too, in any non-evangelistic pursuits or attributes that you have.

288

[QUOTE=lekatt]
<SNIP>

On the other hand scientists don’t seem to have a set or morals or principles to use as guidelines. People insult me for what I believe and have no feelings about telling me I deserve to be ridiculed for being so gullible, and ignorant. I don’t feel ignorant. I am comfortable with what I believe, why would that disturb them so. I don’t mind their beliefs. I am hoping that religion and science can once again peacefully co-oexist. They were doing fine up to about 50 years ago. IMHO science has the most to lose. Nothing will ever destroy religion save destruction of the whole human race.
[/QUOTE]

Lekatt
Climb down off that cross and stop playing martyr. You’re on a site dedicated to fighting ignorance and trying to push a point of view with less evidence than is available for the Tooth Fairy. Why get your feelings hurt when people tell you that a list of anecdotes, no matter how long, is unacceptable?

If you don’t want to be challenged for evidence, you should stick with places where they uncritically discuss alien abductions, yetis, Atlantis, crystal healing, etc. and no one is ever allowed to ask a searching question. You’d be right at home there and maybe even considered a hero with your little list of anecdotes. It’s more than most of them have.

Testy

289

[QUOTE=Testy]
Lekatt
Climb down off that cross and stop playing martyr. You’re on a site dedicated to fighting ignorance and trying to push a point of view with less evidence than is available for the Tooth Fairy. Why get your feelings hurt when people tell you that a list of anecdotes, no matter how long, is unacceptable?

If you don’t want to be challenged for evidence, you should stick with places where they uncritically discuss alien abductions, yetis, Atlantis, crystal healing, etc. and no one is ever allowed to ask a searching question. You’d be right at home there and maybe even considered a hero with your little list of anecdotes. It’s more than most of them have.

Testy
[/QUOTE]

Really good advice. I climbed down from my cross, got off my highhorse, and vacated my ivory tower, right after my experience. My evidence is solid and clear, but, yes, unacceptable to certain people. Most of what you said has nothing to do with me, but if it makes you feel better saying it, please continue. I have no allegience to any religious or science or atheist organization. I need no validation or accredition by anyone, I am my own person, free, peaceful, and happy.

Wish you the very best of everything.

Ran into this while I was posting, thought you might like it.