The big question..

Ooh, also...
Xenon. What makes you think books aren't conceited?

 

I don't want you to believe me. I want to to reach the point where you experience it for yourself.

Once you do, you'll understand the difficulty in trying to bring it to the outside world.

A book is only as good as the person who wrote it. But it's static, and cannot answer your questions.


x

 

wow when did you come out of the woodworks?

notice no one gives a fuck about convincing you out of your beliefs, but yet you feel the need to attack his.

isn't that just odd.

 

My sentiments exactly. I may be wrong, but those are my operating beliefs and expectations.

 

I come when things interest me, and go when they don't.

But anyways, it's a discussion. It's not about who's right and who is wrong, it's about thinking about what is possible and finding what is true. Or most likely true. I do indeed think Xexon's ideas and confidence in them are a bit silly (sorry Xexon), and I do indeed find it a little conceited that he places himself on a sort of prophet's pedestal of "people like me."

What do you think, Neodude? You have said that you regard only god as true, and only god as possible. Does that mean that you don't accept the possibility of my view on death?

Would that perhaps explain your eagerness for a counter-attack?

 

Im not really eager about anything on this site anymore. I think anything is possible, but some things seem more possible than others. Studies of the physical makeup of the brain make the existence of the soul less possible, but more probable simply by the nature of the search. I think science is never really going to get down to the bottom of anything. nothing supernatural that is.

So when you say this,

and then go on to say this,

makes me feel that you had absolutely no point to post other than to insult xexon. Then again im probably wrong.

But evaluating your two very different opinions on death, I dont see what the criteria is that makes something "whimsical gibberish".

If his opinion is whimsical gibberish, then so is yours. Then so is all of ours.

 

This is why those who have chosen to come back and help this world, face the most difficult task of them all. It is a lifelong uphill battle.

This is why I've learned to help others in subtle ways, pushing them to discover truth themselves, and to help develop their personal qualities.

When you try to spread the truth headon, you'll meet opposition.

 

Insult me? None of you have the ability.

Emotion is what clouds critical thinking. If you're going to chase after the divine, it will poison the journey.


x

 

Do you mind if I ask what experiences led you to this point of view? What gives you this ultimate understanding of the nature of life, reality, and the souls of human beings?

Oh, I agree. But you seemed to be saying before that your words may seem conceited because they aren't from a book, as if books are not conceited.

 

Science regularly gets to the bottom of things, it's just that new channels and segues keep popping up from the bottom. Maybe science will never find anything about the supernatural. But what if...and this is purely a what if...what if none of those things that are described as "supernatural" actually exist, and every single person professing that experience was mistaken, hallucinating, or otherwise just wrong? If people still claim to have those experiences (and I assure you they would), then it would be impossible to get to the bottom of it, since the only reason for having any belief about it other than a question or a no would be wrong.

Insulting Xexon was not my intent. I think it is whimsical gibberish because it is outlandish, because it is unlikely (from a pure probability standpoint), and because it is presented as being from a position of absolute knowledge. As if divine knowledge was handed down. There is no question, no reservation, just "this is the way it is."

I am willing to accept that I do not know for sure. But I haven't seen any evidence to say that the supernatural is real.

Also, the human mind explains a LOT of what one might use as evidence. It is so incredibly complex it's amazing. Did you know that if you apply an electric impulse to a certain part of your brain you can stimulate an out-of-body-experience?

 

I can only describe it as having additional senses. I've watched it grow and unfold over a period of decades. My own path was one of yoga, hence my close identifcation with it in the way I present things.

What I talk about is what I see. Life has become a waking meditation. I still see like you do, but I no longer identify with it as reality. Life for me is still the same, but with a profound abilty to percieve the depths rather than just the surface.

It requires no concentration on my behalf. Its just there. When someone asks me a question, the answer just appears. I spend more time trying to construct it into sentences than I do analyzing it. It often comes out in torrents, so I have to edit it down into something that makes sense to someone reading it.

Much of this is inline with eastern thought, and I'm certainly more understood by them than by people of the Judeo/Christian traditions.

I don't see duality except when I use the old me to communicate with. Nice place to visit, but I don't live there anymore.


x

 

and what if they do exist.

im still having trouble discerning what the average atheist considers "likely". This is death we are talking about. There is no way to know. So how can something be probable.

So why does this happen, and what does it prove? Does the electricity stimulate the OOBE itself, or just the beginning step in some sort of process?

 

First off, I'd like to welcome you to the discussion FreakerSoup.

Second, where do your alls perspective lie on the beginning and end? Do you believe time exists or is it merely a counting system?

 

Science regularly gets to the bottom of some useful things, but some really basic ones like the origin of life, the nature of consciousness, and the origin of the universe continue to elude us. These are things that have been central to religious explanations of reality. If you say science will get to the bottom of these things, too, because it always comes through, you are not talking science anymore--you're talking faith. When I read some of the leading atheists talking matter-of-factly about how there's nothing very mysterious about these things--life began when a small supply of nucleotides somehow came together in the waters of early earth; consciousness is just neurons firing; most of the universe consists of dark matter that no one has ever seen or measured; all matter, energy, time, and space originated from loops resonating in ten dimensions; fine tuning of the universe isn't so impressive because there might be other universes we don't know about that are really messed up, etc.-- I wonder if scientism isn't just another set of myths in which quarks, dark matter and superstring fill the role once occupied by ghosts, demons and deities. Because there's no empirical proof for any of this.

 

amen brother okie.


lol.

 

Then I think that science will eventually be able to account for them. But do you see my point? If they aren't real, then the best science can do is to show that certain cases were false, that such experiences can be produced just by the brain, etc.

Here's how I see it: Start from a point of no knowledge. You don't have a belief, opinion, or even a thought about what happens after you die. What's the best way to find out?

People have many different thoughts on death, so if you are listening for who can give the most complete explanation, you will be very confused. You will be relying on other people's unsubstantiated beliefs, and you will unable to give different theories more credence than another. On the other hand, if you decide to analyze evidence logically and reasonably, some ways are more likely than others. I.E. if something is really out there and has no evidence, it more like just someone's outlandish idea. The most likely solution is the one that isn't supernatural.

Well it appears that the OOBE is an event involved with death. It may not come into play in sudden death, but it is either the soul deciding to leave a dying body or the brain shutting down. In ancient egypt, a Pharaoh could not be Pharaoh until they had this mystical experience. The priests locked him in a coffin for a precise amount of time, and when they let him out he would have had an OOBE. Could you really screw with a soul like that?

Both. Time exists in the same way length exists. It's a manmade system, but it measure something tangible. I don't think there was a time when time didn't exist. It's still there, even if there's nothing to measure it by. What do you mean with the first question?

Okiefreak - I agree, atheists and scientists have to be careful to avoid stepping in the same holes. There are some thing we can never be completely sure of, because they happened long ago and/or aren't a repeating or ongoing process. But if this supernatural world exists, I think we will eventually have the tools and the means with which to detect it and know that it is there.

 

dude their is not only 1 for shure ansewr everyone has diffrent views. i mean in dont know for shure their isnt anyone that knows execpt god and goddess. but you can belive what you choose and the only way to do so is reaserch spirituality,metaphysics and religion. and yes your body is just a shell your true self is formless shapeless. we are all bondless nothingness and everythng is connested. we have three parts the mind,the body, and the soul. your true self is your soul and the rest are all just manifestations of it. i dont stick to one confining belief system i am more metaphysical then anything i dont want to push any belifes on anyone everyone has their own ansewr i just pray u find a true one thats nt doggma. peace and love

 

Freaker Soup, I remember watching the show that scienfitically induced an OOBE, and let me tell you, it is NOTHING like a real OOBE.

 

that's quite a lot of faith in science you have their.

I just dont agree with this. I would say that each solution would have to be just as likely as the next, in the case of no evidence. What evidence do you have that when you die that is it?

I dont see why not.

 

You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

It's not faith to say I think this will probably happen, it's faith to say this will happen, I'm right you're wrong, etc. Not that I don't have faith in science. More logic and reason, I think, but they're all pretty close. Here's why!

Logic and reason (and science) have proven themselves to be reliable, and continuously repeat that proof. Using logic and reason, you have more knowledge of the world than you would otherwise. So it's not blind faith, it's EVIDENCE...and then a little bit o' faith. E.G. the sun has not failed to come up every twenty four hours or so for my entire life. I have faith that it'll come up tomorrow. This is a much safer, more logical, rational, and sound type of faith than saying that the human population started when aliens bred with monkeys. One is based on logic and reason, the other on an idea someone just came up with. Ya know?

Also, if I say to you "Prove that the supernatural exists." And you take it upon yourself to do that, how do you do it? You don't compile ghost stories, you look for solid objective evidence. If it were to be shown that what we consider to be supernatural does indeed exist, I think science would then be able to study it. Simple as that.

I think that is why you and many others get caught up in supernatural explanations for natural occurrences. You might say absence of proof is not proof of absence, which is true. But isn't absence of evidence evidence of absence? If you search every centimeter of a forest for bear poop, tracks, etc and don't find any, it doesn't mean there are no bears in those woods. You can't prove a universal negative. But it means that it is very unlikely that there is a bear in that forest.

But do you get the rest of my point on that?

You're saying your soul is something immortal, lives forever, uses a human body. Not bound by physical laws. Why would your soul or consciousness be forced out of a body just because your brain isn't getting enough oxygen? You aren't dead, so why would that happen? And so reliably that they timed it and did it to pharaohs?

Another interesting (to me) thought about the soul: What happens to people born with mental retardation, barely able to function? Is their soul similarly crippled, or just trapped in a non-working body? What about when a person becomes a vegetable, in a coma, no notable brain activity. Is their soul still in there? Or does it only leave when the brain cells die?