Yet again lekatt completely misrepresents what is clearly written somewhere. When I heard the news about the experiment, my first thought was, “How long before he lekatts the thread about it?”
Before you go into meltdown, I would like to remind you that this country was founded and run by believers, and still is run mostly by believers now. Ninety percent remember. Try to settle down. The hobgoblins of religion are not about to get you.
Then you must have sensed the article misrepresented the truth.
No, I just expected you to post yet more lies on a subject about which you have zero actual knowledge and in such posting to twist it into your favorite obsession. It certainly did not take any sense of the article misrepresenting the truth–mainly because the article did not do that. You did, and you continue to do so.
A doubtful claim at best. The US constitution was established by We The People and prohits any sort of government interference with religion or any religious test for holding office.
It’s true that the majority in the US were people of their time and therefore religious. However, the founders seem to have been a unique group of relatively secular individuals who left religion out of the government they established.
The first permanent colony, Jamestown, VA, was a purely commercial venture. The Massachusetts Bay colony appears to have been extablshed so that its members could practice their own brand of religious intolerance. At least several of the states surrounding Mass, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, were established by people who had been forced to leave there because of religious differences.
How is that not dealing with an out of body experience? NOTE: the experiment did not claim to have “proven” anything about NDEs. However, OBEs occur in a lot of different situations. The experiment made a good faith effort to identify the neural processes that occur during an OBE–one triggered by disease, drug reaction, or other event, not necessarily an NDE.
You are the one who repeats, over and over and over, that an NDE is a special, life changing event and claims that similar phenomena induced by drugs or hypotoxia are not the same. Since OBEs occur in situations that doi not involve NDEs, I would have thought that you would recognize, (or, at least, entertain the idea), that an NDE OBE was a special event and that other OBEs could have separate causes.
Instead, you immediately laid a charge of dishonesty against the researchers even though you have no idea what their actual motivations have been. Your actions are judgmental, prejudiced, unfair, and fully in keeping with the claims that you constantly hurl at scientists and others in this Forum.
Lekatt
No meltdown here, guy. Just alarmed at the thought of people who believe in magic trying to control public policy.
Also, the country was not founded solely by believers.
Testy
Christian revisionist garbage.
You have hijacked this thread with your knee-jerk response to the phrase “out of body experience.” In the context of the article, as I understand it, an “out-of-body experience” is simply any time a person experiences the sensation of being outside their body: that “you”—your identity, or center of perception, or “mind’s eye,” or whatever—exists somewhere outside your physical body.
Such experiences could include the “near death experiences” where a person’s soul seems to leave their bodies, but it could also include dreaming, “astral projection,” drug trips (I’m thinking of the time on an episode of “The Young Ones” when Neil, the hippy, takes a hit of some really good weed, leaves his body, and floats up to the moon), or “virtual reality” devices of the kind that have been technologically avilable for years.
To the OP: As I see it, the only relevence this scientific research has to religion is to refute anyone who claims that any and all such experiences are evidence for the existence of a soul.
My emphasis. Enough said.
I hear you. That’s enough of a plus fo me.
People make up their own monsters. People who believe in God are not people who believe in magic. The people who founded this country were believers in God. Not all of them were fundamentalists, but they were moral, principled, visionaries who believe in freedom. I know that the history by atheists is different than the history by fundamentals.
Now I have no fear of religious people running the country, the vote of the people still reigns. I have no fear of scientists running the county because the vote of the people still reigns. Most people on the street know right from wrong. You have nothing to fear from the religious. Your beliefs need to be examined in light of reality.
Skepticism is doubt which is fear, there are ways to walk through this world without fear.
Actually, IF that had been been part of the intention of the researchers. then lekatt might have had a point in his intemperate and prejudicial ranting.
The fact that you folks, after the fact, might apply those results to your own philosophical musings is appropriate only to such musings and does not appear to have anything to do with the actual intentions of the researchers.
No argument from me on that point.
Oh, yes they are. What do you think someone is doing when they pray for something to happen ? Magic. And there are still Christians who believe many other superstitions, and there are all the Christians who historically have believed in witches and killed people for it.
First, that doesn’t matter even if it was true. Second, while some were no doubt, there’s no way to tell if they all were. Third, that was in an era when atheism was nearly unthinkable; especially with the discovery of evolution I expect that several would be atheists today.
Unless you were a slave, or a woman. They weren’t all that principled, all that moral, and were rather selective about who deserved freedom.
Because fundamentalists are delusional and liars, who will cheerfully twist history and everything else to fit their religion.
I am paying attention to reality. That’s why I fear and despise the religious. The religious undercut science, pass unfair & oppressive laws, insult and assault and murder people all the time. Go tell a doctor who’s been murdered because he perfomed abortions how he shouldn’t fear the religious. Go tell a gay man who can’t get married, or who’s been beaten or killed by the “God hates fags” crowd. Religion is evil, and it’s insane; it should be feared.
Insanity or lots of drugs will do that. I don’t recommend that.
Oh sure, go talk to dead people. Now who’s delusional, huh? Ispo facto! QED!
It’s not delusional, just one sided. 
Now, hearing dead people, that’s delusional - or a recording.
If by magic, you mean something that occurs that is outside our current understanding. Then yes, perhaps it is magic. The act of praying also tends to give the person praying less to worry about. And I don’t see that in of itself a bad thing. The only oddity is sometimes things that are prayed for don’t occur, and sometimes they do. It’s not a definite, so it could just be coincidence when they do happen. Or maybe not, I just don’t know. I think the jury is out on that one for a while, but research like this out of body experience, may eventually get us there.
I think you completely missed the nice article that coffeecat posted. It basically says that it is people who murder, kill, and otherwise take advantage of other people. Claiming that group A does these things, and implying that group B would not in similar circumstances is just plain wrong. Both groups are made up of people, and since they have their own free will, there are those who will take advantage of others regardless of which group they are in.
After reading your posts for quite awhile, it seems that you have gathered together the acts of criminals and blame them on the whole of religion. This is not a rational thing to do. Any more than gathering the criminal acts of those who are scientists and blaming them on the whole of science.
Your average Christian wouldn’t hurt a fly, I think what you believe is not correct.
The average Christian wouldn’t hurt a fly? Let’s look at two negative Christian influences in the world that do cause misery and death, and aren’t just the result of one wacko but a collusive effort by a large number of people:
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Abstinence-based education. The Catholic church holds significant sway in the third world and the insistence on withholding or actively hiding information on proper birth control methods have lead to millions of preventable AIDS deaths every year and added births contribute to an unthinkable number of children dying of starvation.
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Stem-cell research. Due to some fucked up thinking that the “soul” enters the body when the sperm combines with the uterus, stem cell research that could potentially cure or treat Parkinson’s, organ failure, leukemia, lymphoma, paralysis, Alzheimer’s, liver disease and more. The embryo used for stem cells is made up of 50-150 cells and is not biologically distinct from multi-celled bacteria.
Yes, no one is pulling a gun on anyone else, but millions of people are suffering and dying needlessly due to superstition and ignorance.