I don’t care what you believe. You do create your own reality with your thoughts. A lot of people here are negative oriented. They weren’t born that way, most of them were taught that materialism is all there is, and that they should ignore anything else. So they grow up with nihilism, doubt, hopelessness and meaninglessness in their lives. This leads to depression, anxiety, mental and emotional problems, relationship problems, problems of just feeling anything.
Unless they recognize what happened to them, they are likely to remain so.
Bookstores, have shelves of self-help positive thinking books and not one book on how to think negatively. Why? Because others have escaped negative thinking and wrote them to help others.
So if you are not completely satisfied with a nihilistic life then this might be a good time to invest in some positive thinking.
Once again, I cite the case of H Pylori. For a very long time, scientists thought that ulcers were caused by stress. Then, a man discovered that ulcers were caused by a bacteria. Other scientists accepted his claim because he backed it with good science. There are many similar stories.
Not necessarily. Some breakthrough discoveries are widely praised by the scientific community - Newton’s Principia made him internationally famous, and Einstein recieved a Nobel Prize for his work in theoretical physics in 1921. On the other hand, some breakthrough discoveries are condemmed by mainstream science because they just aren’t scientific, like ID or Time Cube.
I agree that it has nothing to do with being right or wrong, and your premise has merit.
However, I must ask why you’re bringing that up. What does that have to do with “The Dead Contacting the Living” or NDEs? Saying that modern culture reinforce certain unhealthy thought patterns, while an interesting topic, doesn’t really contribute much here IMHO. Am I misunderstanding something here?
No actually, they were criticized because they were bad science. Did you actually bother to read what we wrote? The methods used were non-scientific, the conclusions came before the results, the procedures were sloppy, this was not science. They were not criticized because they’re making new discoveries that challenge the establishment, they were criticized because they’re trying to make claims without the science to back it up.
Care to point out who here you’re talking about? Because none of this applies to me. I was raised Catholic, and only through learning and questioning did I come to realize that claims of spirituality were bogus and nothing to back them up. I’m not negative, I’m not nihilistic, I’m not doubtful, I’m not hopeless, and I do not see life as meaningless. If demonizing those who disagree with you is all you have left in defense of your ideas, then you should probably take a long critical look at your ideas.
Which came first the stress or the bacteria. Our bodies are full of bacteria that are helpful most of the time, but can under certain conditions like a stress lowered immune system attack us. Who can tell, for sure.
Just because it’s condemned doesn’t as rule mean it’s not scientific. Continental Drift is a good example. The Scientific community wouldn’t buy into the idea in the slightest when it was first proposed for a few (poor) reasons. First the mechanism wasn’t known. Secondly, they thought that one flaw - that continents scraping across the sea floor would build up sediment in front of them - was enough to damn the whole idea (sounds like the logic of creationists).Third, he was a meteorologist by trade (why should that be more important then the idea itself?). Fourth, they were enamored with their nonsensical idea of “Lemuria” and such as a mechanism for explaining things.
The Scientific community is not an infallible entity that operates on pure logic. That may be the scientific community’s “Ideal Culture” but it is NOT the “Real Culture”. Instead they operate less on the merit of a particular scientists own ideas, so much on social terms, similar to (though not as extreme as) that of Greek Philosophy.
And some truths can’t be measured by science at all. So it is widely and falsely held that they don’t matter. Like spirituality. Science is not the final say in what is and what isn’t. In the last few decades science has taken on the mantle of a religion.
Then why do you keep trying to show legitimacy of your beliefs by attempting to cite science to back it up?
Only to those for whom religion is the only frame of reference they have, and who mistakenly apply that to something it shouldn’t be. Especially in an attempt to try and knock it down to their level. To the rest of us, science is just a method, and has nothing to with belief. See, it works whether you believe it or not.
Yes, the main subject here is do we live after the death of our bodies, and can we then communicate with those still in bodies.
Thought patterns have everything to do with this. We are consciousness whether we have a body or not, and communicate by thought. Without a body thought is our primary tool, we use it to create, to move, to do everything since we no longer have a physical body.
Thought doesn’t lose it’s power or importance when we incarnate, we still create our reality with our thoughts.
Now since science began teaching there is no spiritual existence, that it is nonsense and everything can be explained in natural terms, this conflict between the spiritual and the physical has been raging.
Science can’t measure spiritual principles or even spiritual existence yet, but they can, like subatomic particles, test for existence which is being done in near death experience research. As well as other research being done on many spiritual events.
We are spiritual beings first and physical humans second. So science will have to ignore an increasing amount of research that points in the spiritual direction, Quantum mechanics is one of these.
Of course I don’t, I don’t have to. It works. I don’t need to believe in the scientific method, I know that it does what it’s supposed to do. Believing in the scientific method or science would be like believing in the chair you’re sitting in. There’s no need for belief, you know it’s there. Unlike your beliefs, science works whether you believe in it or not.
I suspect that this was adressed to me, because “not caring what I believe” has been the thread of discussion between us for the last bit. And also because you conspicuously neglected to quote my post, almost certainly becaue that post takes your little video and beats the living crap out of it with a big stick labeled “Truth”. A fact you seem to reference by falling back to the most interesting position, “This has nothing to do with being right or wrong.” I know you don’t want to be bothered with the truth - but this may be the first time you’ve said so to me outright!
Putting aside the fact that we may or may not now both agree that your beliefs aren’t true, I think it behooves me to point out, you seem to have a serious problem with negative feelings. I mean, look at this - you’re projecting “nihilism, doubt, hopelessness and meaninglessness” onto people just for not accepting your belief system! I dunno about anyone else here, but I certainly am not nihilistic, hopeless, or consumed by meaninglessness - and while I’m occasinally doubtful about things, such as the mental coherence of the dude who made that video, I am not doubtful about my own value or my own place in the world.
As far as I know, I’m not depressed, anxious, or wracked with mental or emotional problems. For relationships, my main problem is that the girl I love and who loves me is religious and afraid to make a move of any kind as a result - but I don’t really let that get me down. And I’ve never had problems “of just feeling anything”. Though I admit I don’t revel in anger or frustration much anymore. I rather prefer a placid or happy or content feeling. Perhaps with a bit of happy triumph now and then, like when I was buring that video of yours into nonexistence with the rebutting light of truth. (If you think that was motivated by anger or fear, you’re simply mistaken.)
Now, this is not to say that there aren’t emotionally damaged and stifled and fearful people out there. (I may be in love with one!) You may have been one in the past yourself. You may not be one now. But this assumption you have that a lack of belief in fairy dust causes it - that’s simply wrong. And it’s a form of negative feelings. It’s antagonism. It’s insult. It’s imagining others to be worse than you, to make yourself feel superior or validate your particular belief system.
As an atheist I see this a fair bit from religious people, and I know what it looks like. To combat this in yourself, I suggest you accept that there is more than one path to happiness and contentment - and that you don’t have to deny mainstream science and close your eyes to what’s right or wrong to do it. If you accept that you will find yourself less compelled to put yourself in an adversational position to others.
That’s fine, but that’s not what I said. In response to lekatt’s assertion that he assertion that “all breakthrough discoveries were widely condemned by mainstream science” I responded that no, not all of them were; some have been accepted and welcomed. That’s not at all the same as saying “all scientific discovery is met with universal praise,” which is clearly not the case. Galileo’s support of Copernican heliocentrism was hugely controversial and nearly got him executed.
Again, for those new to Lekatt, I’d like to point how he accepts science when he thinks it proves it him right and attempts to discredit or ignore science when it proves him wrong.
No of course science is not like believing in god. One is trust in an established system that has proven itself and it’s results time and time again, (in case you didn’t recognize it, this is science), and the other is a superstitious belief with no supporting objective evidence behind it (god). Science doesn’t claim to be the final truth, know the final truth, or actually be concerned with ‘truth’ at all. Try not to confuse the two, they are very different.