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richiemobile Profile
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Registered: 12-2017
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Re: Why Religion Won't Die


I was raised by a lay Christian Minister and a member of the Gideon’s a Christian group that bought Bibles for Hotels and Prisons.

I am a Christian culturally. But my loyalty to the the flying Sphagetti Minster surges Fiorth . Prostrate thyselfrs d (if you want to) in the presence of the alpha and the omega the most exalted lord of lords and king of kings

TFSM!

https://youtu.be/UB1tNq0bOGY



Last edited by richiemobile, 1/14/2019, 11:21 pm
1/14/2019, 11:17 pm Link to this post PM richiemobile Blog
 
RedQ Profile
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Re: Why Religion Won't Die


Why would you be so silly, Richie. Alexander's experience supports much of modern science and challenges many of the false paradigms we're dealing with in today's culture.

Last edited by RedQ, 1/15/2019, 6:11 pm
1/15/2019, 5:58 pm Link to this post PM RedQ Blog
 
Extropia DaSilva Profile
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Re: Why Religion Won't Die


Thought I would write up this ‘Island Analogy’ to explain the difficulties in accepting NDEs...

Imagine that some explorers return from an ocean voyage, claiming to have discovered an island. This remote island, they say, was home to a lost civilisation who left behind giant statues. Their tales inspire other explorers to go looking for this island. They follow the coordinates recorded by the previous trip’s log and maps and, sure enough, they too find the island with stone statues. Years pass and new technologies are invented, such as the camera. People bring back footage of the island. When satellite imagery is invented we have aerial shots of the island, located where the explorers said it would be, and shaped just as map-makers and artists had been drawing it all those years passed.

Even if I had never been to this island myself, I would accept that it does exist. There is a lot of evidence for its existence, and its existing Is quite compatible with accepted scientific orthodoxy, so there is really no reason to doubt this island exists.

NDE is not much like this.

OK. Now imagine that, every now and then, people come back from an ocean trip claiming to have seen a mysterious island. What is most striking about this island is that it floats in mid-air. Alleged witnesses speak in awe-struck tones about having seen millions of tons of rock just...hovering in the air, somehow defying gravity. They come across as being sober and serious, and even though they can’t possibly have swapped stories there are details common to all such annecdotes that are too precise to be dismissed as coincidence.

Unsurprisingly, other people want to see this incredible levitating island and they go off in search of it. They do not find it. No persuasive photographic images or film footage of the island is ever documented, and after decades of satellite imagery and aerial photography that cover all the world’s expanse of water, no solid proof that the island exists is ever found. This, however, does not dissuade true believers, who claim that the island has the ability to turn invisible.

Why should I believe this island exists? Well, those people who claim to have seen it seem earnest, and there are those details to their tales which are not easily dismissed. But, on the other hand, lots of other people have never reported seeing this island, and every attempt to bring back solid proof of its existence has failed. Also...levitating islands? It’s physically impossible. We would have to throw out scientific theories that have been verified to the Nth degree in order to accept that this mysterious island exists.

This is like NDE.

1/17/2019, 2:24 am Link to this post PM Extropia DaSilva Blog
 
RedQ Profile
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Well, Ex, I think if you look at your arguments objectively, you'll realize that you're relying on science (scientism actually) in favor of experience. Wiki defines scientism as "an ideology that promotes science as the purportedly objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values." At the root of modern scientism is reductive materialism, which many of us share as the ruling orthodoxy we were raised under.

In a court of law, experiential testimony is accepted, so long as a witness isn't impeached. In criminal trials, a conviction must be based on conclusions "beyond a reasonable doubt". The standard you're demanding is scientific proof, which is a much higher standard. It would be nice if we had indisputable truth, and as you noted above, the Alexander case is about as close as we can get. He was dead as a door nail after all.

Science gets a lot of stuff wrong for a long time. Sometimes centuries. I should do a list of current 'scientific' fallacies.

Scientism churns out politically correct nonsense all the time (the current rage being catastrophic anthropogenic global warming).

The reductive materialism paradigm is falling because it's rotten to the core. What replaces it? That's an interesting question, and Alexander stands like an angel or demon pointing the way:


Image

Last edited by RedQ, 1/17/2019, 8:00 pm
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Extropia DaSilva Profile
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>In a court of law, experiential testimony is accepted<

That’s not quite right. It is accepted as part of a trial, yes, but nobody sentence is passed purely on somebody’s say-so. You don’t have a person take the stand, say ‘that guy there (pointing to the Defendent) he shot my brother’ and the judge responds ‘if you say so it must be true’. No, you combine his testimony with forensic evidence and cross examination of his testimony and that of others.

I don’t think its too much to ask to insist on some physical evidence to back up claims that consciousness can exist without a functioning brain and body or to take into consideration how minds are not actually capable of verbatim recall and what we call memories are just kind of true fictions that can sometimes trick us into believing in something that never happened.

Having said that you and I both know that there are a few really interesting cases. Like Pam Reynolds. At least, I think that was her name?
1/18/2019, 2:24 am Link to this post PM Extropia DaSilva Blog
 
RedQ Profile
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Re: Why Religion Won't Die


quote:

I don’t think its too much to ask to insist on some physical evidence to back up claims that consciousness can exist without a functioning brain



Alexander!

quote:

a few really interesting cases. Like Pam Reynolds.



That's the story about the sneaker on the ledge of a hospital windowsill that a dead patient said she saw? And they found it? Good one!
1/18/2019, 6:05 pm Link to this post PM RedQ Blog
 


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