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A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)
21–30 of 165 posts
Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)
#22The most striking thing to me is that Ayer hopes there isn't life after death.
> My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be. (italics mine)
I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife. (I think Thomas Nagel wrote something along those lines.) I sort of get it but regardless I think it's very interesting.
Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)
#23The most striking thing to me is that Ayer hopes there isn't life after death. > My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be . (italics mine) I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife. (I think Thomas…
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Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)
#24Probably the contrarian take, but an informed one. Near death experiences are probably the best way we have to assess the nature of reality. Now, it's almost impossible to reach people who aren't ready with any arguments, but I'll outline some possible steps for anyone who's on the verge. - Go to youtube, type in NDE and listen to a few - Try to come up with a "rational" explanation (hallucinations, the brain dumping…
A materialist would argue that nothing you describe rules out malfunction in a brain failing rapidly due to oxygen starvation, and that the commonality of experiences is explicable in terms of common failure modes in effectively identical brain architecture. (Just about everyone's visual cortex works about the same, etc.) I think it's cute how hardcore materialists believe it is even in theory possible to distinguish…
So we agree but one point: There are tens of thousands of NDEs happening under monitored conditions (operating tables) when we know for a fact that the brain is out of oxygen and energy according to any know physical (not to mention evolutionary) mechanism, and that has to be explained.
Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)
#25Probably the contrarian take, but an informed one. Near death experiences are probably the best way we have to assess the nature of reality. Now, it's almost impossible to reach people who aren't ready with any arguments, but I'll outline some possible steps for anyone who's on the verge. - Go to youtube, type in NDE and listen to a few - Try to come up with a "rational" explanation (hallucinations, the brain dumping…
Here's Plato's thing, the "myth of Er":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_Er
What are the unaccountably unlikely commonalities that I should be noticing? Between this and the article, I see only: some kind of colored light, some kind of officiating beings, and a river (A.J.Ayer says he presumably had the Styx in mind, though amusingly in the actual ancient Greek account it's a different river and there's no need to cross it).
Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)
#26Probably the contrarian take, but an informed one. Near death experiences are probably the best way we have to assess the nature of reality. Now, it's almost impossible to reach people who aren't ready with any arguments, but I'll outline some possible steps for anyone who's on the verge. - Go to youtube, type in NDE and listen to a few - Try to come up with a "rational" explanation (hallucinations, the brain dumping…
> In particular, what was convincing to me, is how very very similar the cases are and that they happen to tribes living at a stone age technological level with no contact to Hollywood, and that there is a described case from Plato from over 2000 years ago that is identical to modern cases.
This sounds intriguing.
> Case in point, in NDEs there are a couple of common stages, and experiencers go through some or all of these, most often only some. One is traveling from the location of death to a heavenly realm. For westerners this often is flying through a star trek like hyperspace tunnel, while for stone age people they might be in a canoe that travels by itself to a distant island.
Ah, so the similarity is all enitrely in your interpretation of these clearly dissimilar visions.
Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)
#27The most striking thing to me is that Ayer hopes there isn't life after death. > My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be . (italics mine) I do get the sense that many atheists not only reject God & the afterlife but actually don't want there to be a God or an afterlife. (I think Thomas…
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Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)
#28Probably the contrarian take, but an informed one. Near death experiences are probably the best way we have to assess the nature of reality. Now, it's almost impossible to reach people who aren't ready with any arguments, but I'll outline some possible steps for anyone who's on the verge. - Go to youtube, type in NDE and listen to a few - Try to come up with a "rational" explanation (hallucinations, the brain dumping…
Objective reality exists, but nobody can ever perceive it, at least not while they're perceiving things through the filter of their body
Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
A materialist would argue that nothing you describe rules out malfunction in a brain failing rapidly due to oxygen starvation, and that the commonality of experiences is explicable in terms of common failure modes in effectively identical brain architecture. (Just about everyone's visual cortex works about the same, etc.) I think it's cute how hardcore materialists believe it is even in theory possible to distinguish…
So we agree but one point: There are tens of thousands of NDEs happening under monitored conditions (operating tables) when we know for a fact that the brain is out of oxygen and energy according to any know physical (not to mention evolutionary) mechanism, and that has to be explained.
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Re: A. J. Ayer – ‘What I Saw When I Was Dead’ (1988)
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it worthy of discussion because there is something actionable in it?
Yes. Actionable: To Consider the significance of kindness, compassion, love to and for each other, which world, at large, is missing owing to many factors. And to consider one's own superficiality and have profound thoughts for others.
Why is that tied to some notion of an afterlife? If anything, it seems to me that the reality that this one life is all any of us have should make one care way more for their fragile peers, and for making it the one life they have count. As The Doors once put it, "no eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn".