What I said about a rainbow doesn’t make sense to you because I was replying to someone else about an article you didn’t read so you don’t understand the context. Yes I know about rainbows, I read one of Dawkins books where he describes how it works. I understand a little about it, I can’t say I’m an expert in optics.
You basically discount any evidence having to do with mind. Experiencer testimony is enough for scientists because what else can they give? For example have you heard of the so called God helmet where scientist applies magnetic frequency to the person’s brain and they often report sensing multiple entities around them that are invisible. If it was just one or two people you could say that is just an anecdotal report but it is commonly reported when these frequencies are applied to the brain. This is how spiritual events can happen too. I said my experience is same as reported across thousands of years and across the world and written in Bible or in other folklore so I would compare this to to those types of reports.
Try to AP yourself and see what you experience. Everything is dubious to you because you reject outright like you’re not even able to entertain an idea without excepting it. If thousands of people reported being able to astral project in a study, it is not just anecdote but a common human experience.
AP is an experiment you can try yourself instead of rejecting without even looking into it. It is easy to be an atheist if you don’t even consider the evidence.
The king of England wrote a book on demonology but you would just think he was crazy?
P.s. I’ve reached daily limit on number of posts so can’t post anymore. I’m going to edit previous post that asked what an atheist physicis book is (think like Dawkins or Sagan)
became atheist for 15 years. Here is the problem - no one becomes atheist. There is nothing to become. It appears that while you called yourself an atheist you did so out of a system of belief. You believed there was such a thing an an athest and that you belonged to that group of things. You did not understand atheism at all. Atheism is not a belief that you adopt or anything that you become.
How does your experience lead you to ‘God.’ There is no experience you could have that would validate a God. If the god thing appeared before you, you would still have no means of validating the claim that it was god. It could be an alien with sufficient technology to make you think it was a god. According to your own bible, it could be a false prophet, or even Satan. You have no way to create “Evidence” out of personal experience. Once you believe in magical, invisible, all powerful, beings. All magical, invisible, all powerful beings become possible and you have no ability to distinguish between any of them.
Godel’s fomal proof: The Incompleteness of the universe or of math isn’t proof that God exists .
Simulation Theory is not a theory. At best it is chewing gum for the mind.
I actually do astral projection and have been able to do it since I was in my early 20s studying the occult. Anyone can do astral projection as it is a mind state. Entire cultures have based their religious beliefs on such cultivated experiences. Look into (Dream Cultures). There is no evidence what so ever that astral projection is anything more than a mind state. And I can easily explain it with know biological phenomena.
Phantom Limb Syndrome: When someone loses a limb the brain will, in many cases, insist that the limb is still there. People experience phantom pains in the missing limb. People will reach fror items with the missing limb. People will try to stand and walk with missing limbs. (Obviously they fall over.) The brain has a perception of body and it clings to that perception even in the absence of body. This is missing limb syndrome.
Next, Sleep Paralysis, a very common mental state in which a person is awake while their body is asleep. The brain naturally separates from the body each and every night while you sleep. If this were not the case, you would dream about running and then wake up six blocks from your bed. The brain disconnects to keep you safe while you sleep. “Disconnect” is important here.
The disconnection means that the 'Body" the entire body, is no longer giving sensory input to the brain. (JUST LIKE A MISSING LIMB) The brain creates a body. In a state of sleep paralysis the brain creates a phantom body and while the person is in the state of transitioning between sleep and wakefulness, they can experience this ‘Astral Projection’ phenomena. It is a brain state and nothing more. I honestly believe I can teach anyone how to achieve this state in a month or two. There is nothing mystical or spiritual here. I am well traveled over the terrain.
First person testimony? We have covered that topic. It isn’t. My, you have made it too easy to dispel all personal testimony.
Seen what? Angels? Spirits? In this age where a LOT of people are carrying around cell phones and about every imaginable mishap and act has been captured, how come there are no pictures of such creatures?
Tens of millions of people capturing billions of pictures and videos, yet not one verifiable picture of a spirit or angel or whatever.
I hate to break it to you, but the entire Exodus story has been debunked. Theist scholars and researchers have searched the many writings by Egyptians and there is no mention of a substantial Jewish slave population in Egypt. Researchers have scoured the desert region where alleged countless people lived in the desert and there is no trace.
One trait of humans is we leave garbage in our wake. No garbage.
That is winter solstice, the position of the sun relative to the horizon appears (as if they had instruments accurate enough to measure small changes back then) to stop moving because it has reached the limit if it’s travel it is beginning it’s journey south.
If you had the chops and actually used modern instruments to measure the sun’s relative position to the horizon, you would be able to discern for yourself it does not stop moving.
Something like hell? Of course, a person is in dire straits and facing death. Their thoughts are a jumble of fear, anxiety, and very negative thoughts. They aren’t exactly going to be thinking of butterflies and unicorns.
So in an NDE we have two competing propositions. Mine is that a brain near death reaches toward the easiest memories, and your is that the “soul” travels out of the body, goes to some magical place in the sky, gets a job interview then is recalled.
Then why do they need Reddit if they are capable of meeting on the astral realm? Why don’t they begin by having a meet and greet in this imaginary place?
Bare faced lie. What we discount is blind assertions bereft of evidential support, which basically includes all mythology fanboy assertions, many of which have been destroyed repeatedly here.
Then what doesn’t make sense is your claim to have seen a rainbow without any rain, in any context.
No, that’s a lie, and a clumsy one at that, I dismiss nothing. I do however attach little credence to unevidenced anecdotal claims, especially wherever such claim contradict known scientific facts, laws, theories, or evidence.
Objective evidence, obviously, no scientific idea could be validated SOLELY on anecdotal claims as religions do. That you don’t know this is why your arguments and reasoning here are so poor, I can only urge you to learn more about how the methods of science differ from faith based religious claims and anecdotes. No one has suggested that personal experience is not a necessary component of all intellectual endeavour, only that it is virtually useless in validating ideas and claims if used ALONE, or WITHOUT ANY SUPPORTING OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE. Again you are making this error over and over, it is a very common error among religious apologists who are largely ignorant of, or completely misunderstand the methods of science. Most probably they have been fed this distorted biased view of science by other religious apologists, whom they trust, and never think to critically examine the claims.
No, and I’d bet my life this was pseudo scientific rubbish, or at the very least it will be a gross distortion of what if anything, the evidence demonstrates, as you have done this already with your sweeping and unevidenced conclusions about the experiences of brains going into oxygen debt during a cardiac event, and are of course so obviously biased in favour of your religious beliefs, which you are only interested in validating, and not critically or objectively examining. I have no emotional investment in scientific claims, and there is no belief I won’t relinquish if the evidence demands it.
This is called an argumentum ad populum fallacy, look it up, and learn why it means your claim is irrational by definition. The number of people ALONE who hold a belief or make a claim, tells us nothing about the validity of that belief. A consensus can be of value, but only if it reflects knowledge and expertise based on objective evidence, as is the case with the methods of science.
So what? Another bare appeal to numbers, imagine for one moment how much superstitious nonsense has been believed using such uncritically examined superstition. Once you abandon the bias of wanting something to be true, and accept only those ideas that withstand through critical and objective scrutiny, your reasoning won’t resort so often to known logical fallacies as you have done here again.
Another lie, do try and desist from making such sweeping straw man fallacies, they border on ad hominem fallacy as well of course, in sporting parlance you are playing the man, and not the ball, which is to say you are not addressing the arguments made, but attacking the person making them, and unjustly as this claim is demonstrably false. I’d need to be an expert in every single facet of scientific endeavour in order to accept it if your claim were true, an impossibility for anyone.
Of course it remains anecdotal, you need to learn what anecdotal means, and learn what an argumentum ad populum fallacy is, as your claim is both wrong, and irrational. If a claim is based on personal accounts, rather than facts or research, this then makes it anecdotal, the number of people who repeat this anecdotal process doesn’t change this fact, why would it, and your claim this bare appeal to numbers changes this is as I have explained is a known common logical fallacy, called argumentum ad populum.
I need think nothing at all, unless someone can demonstrate some objective evidence to support such claims, can you? Only you have pointedly failed to do so thus far, as I must warn you have all the theists and religious apologists I have ever encountered or read. This is also bordering on an appeal to authority fallacy, as the fact he was a king has no relevance, and the idea a monarch can’t be insane is again demonstrably false, ever heard of George III? There is a film about him, entitled The Madness of King George.
