111–120 of 165 posts
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religious beliefs aside, there’s something pleasing about living a good life and facing a decent death: closure.
except without religious beliefs you cannot objectively define good and bad, it's all just moral relativism.
The thing I don't get about accounts of NDE and what people say about them afterwards is this: if they lived to tell the tale, their near death wasn't actual death. They didn't "peak over to the other side". So whatever they experienced was what the brain experienced well within the realm of the living. And we know it was within the living enough that the person recovered and was able to recount the experience! How c…
Things that are worthy of discussion ( such as one in this posting ) rarely get any attention.
What is of discussion here?: 1. Restaurants should carry an anti-choking device. Too many elderly risk a stroke without it. 2. People often do have a delusion or vision just before death, one that is a product of their own brain, fitting their understanding of the world. I had an incredible vision when I had taken half an oxycodone prescribed for pain. 3. There are more ways of expressing one's belief or disbelief in…
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Also well-known now is that our feelings are affected by things like our gut biome. Do all our little passengers resurrect with us?
The traditional concept of an 'embodied' resurrection (as opposed to ghosts playing harps) makes me lean towards: yes (eg the gut is part of the body). Who knows though, it's a fun question!
I have questions...
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> the brain dumping DMT Why do you exclude this hypothesis? It's well known that some drugs such as DMT do cause very similar hallucinations among people, even across cultures (as is the case with NDE).
Yeah I didn't want to burst anyone's spiritual bubble earlier, but I had a very similar experience one time when I smoked salvia divinorum: there was an eerie and overwhelming purple light, sort of like a "fluorescent" UV bulb, and the Ministers of The Universe pulled my life history in front of me, something something ALL OF SPACE AND TIME WAS- I wasn't speaking to God. I was high on salvia. And I'm quite certain A.…
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Do you frequently experience and remember dreams?
Yes I even used to do lucid dreaming. These days best I can do is wake up and stop dreams on command. I also regularly experience sleep paralysis. That took a lot of work to get used to.
Being familiar with Ayer from his Epistemology works, this writeup was unexpected. How could an empiricist write "My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me". It also directly contradicted his stance about metaphycal claims.
An empiricist could write that with no contradiction if he experienced it, which Ayer did. I think his conclusion is very reasonable. It's highly likely that NDEs are minds sputtering to a stop. But if you experience one (while your heart has stopped for 4 minutes no less), it seems rational to "slightly" update your priors towards the possibility of some kind of afterlife. At the very least, it may indicate some kin…
The 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…
> 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 feel that eternity in Heaven would actually be Hell, because nothing would matter. No danger, no failure, no challenge, no goals, no purpose. What gives life meaning are mortality, limitations, beginnings and endings, progress. I recently watched the film "Eternity" on Apple TV, sta…
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Not long ago, a local mad church put a packet of pamphlets through my door, one of which was this magnificent tale: https://avesselofhonour.com/2023/06/28/48-hours-in-hell/ Some of those features show up there too. Of course, this comes from a Christian background, and draws on that. But it does have a river, and there's no river in hell in the bible.
Where is that story from? Is George Lennox even a real person?
Probably 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…
100% agree with BoardsOfCanada. Note: Atheism, agnosticism are all religions ( or religious thinking disguised as reasoning ); no less fanatic than the ones their adherents so fervently ridicule.
This whole “well actually atheism is just another kind of religion” thing is why I begrudgingly have started to prefer describing myself as ‘irreligious,’ just so that there is absolutely no opportunity for equivocation.