Fair enough, I’ll take it. Accepting people’s subjective experiences as being more real than the tooth fairy is more in line with what I was arguing– not that its proof or evidence of the afterlife that I was expecting people to accept.
Except I didn’t say that. So I’m not sure why you’re creating a whole response to something I didn’t say.
Howdy, Beach_side. Welcome to the AR. To not believe in Zeus and all the other Greek gods is a pretty bold stance. I’m curious, what is your story on why you don’t believe in the Greek pantheons? Or, if you weren’t brought up in that religion, what makes you continue to be an atheist toward those gods, despite a world where that religion of an entire culture of millions of people plays such a pivotal role? If you can answer my question, it is very likely you will answer your own question you posed to we atheists.
NDE’s and OBE’s have core claims that are untestable, and thus unfalsifiable, thus they are fundamentally unscientific, why waste limited resources on research that is unfalsifiable, and only ever produces subjective anecdotal claims?
Science recently found a treatment for Huntington’s disease, using gene therapy, that is a valuable use of limited scientific resources. If you’re going to compare potential research try that comparison. Imagine if they had their budget cut, and used to examine people’s claims about their dreams during cardiac arrest, and all to evidence an imaginary afterlife and deity. .
You said:
Remember now?
Yes, I’m aware of what I said.
Try thinking more on why–“I can’t believe people would put the tooth fairy and NDE’s in the same category” and “I can’t believe people don’t find NDE’s compelling” are completely different statements. Categories generally have objective standards that people can debate(as I’ve been doing with people on this thread) and what falls where.
The second statement (that you made up) questions why people don’t have an emotional reaction to a subject. If you want to be known as an objective thinker, I shouldn’t have to explain the logical difference between the two. No need to put words in my mouth, just stick with what I actually said.
To find something compelling (or not) isn’t an “emotional reaction”. It’s entirely rational. Evidence appropriate to the scope and significance of the claims confirms and compels belief. Lack of evidence compels the withholding of belief. Negative evidence compels disbelief.
Sometimes people are so accustomed to affording belief in obedience to alleged divine commands or demands or to emotional manipulation rather than in response to evidence proportional to the significance of the truth claim, that they can indeed think that “compelled” means “it gave me goosebumps”. I was not using it in that way.
They’re not completely different, as has been explained several times, and you have ignored several times, they are similar in that there is no objective evidence for either the tooth fairy or that we can survive the death of our brains, or that human consciousness can exist without a functioning human brain, though as you have pointed out, one of them has been investigated thoroughly, and still remains unevidenced.
Nonsense, all the objections raised have been rational and evidentiary.
I don’t think logic means what you think it does, the difference is less relevant than the similarity they share, which has been explained exhaustively, and you keep ignoring it.
Oh it needn’t be, but I suspect it is for @beach_side, as it is for most religious apologists who are emotionally invested in their religious beliefs.
I notice my question went unanswered, I shan’t even feign surprise.
So if someone claims they’ve seen a mermaid, been beamed aboard an alien spacecraft, or seen / spoken to / with a deity, you’d lend those unevidenced subjective claims more credence that the idea of a tooth fairy, great…the question is why, since they are all equally unevidenced?
@beach_side has answered one of my questions anyway, he genuinely is going to drop in once a month, ignore all objections, and endlessly repeat the same unevidenced superstitious bs about NDE’s and OBE’s he started with.
@beach_side would have to answer that one for himself, but I often observed in the evangelical world that the truth and/or desirability of an experience or belief was often judged by some combination of how subjectively “truthy” and “exciting” it seems. These aren’t the words they typically use, but let’s face it, if the goal of religion can be put in one word, it’s “transcendence” – of the human condition, of your insecurities, your sense of (un)worthiness or your uncertainty about “the meaning of life”. It ultimately tends to be a deal where it ends up amounting to the common love ballad trope of “something that feels so right can’t be wrong”. This is an honest expression of how it feels to be fascinated with a person or ideology but it’s a lousy indicator of the veracity, truth or virtue of the object of fascination.
If I could sum up all the hymnody and gospel musical content of my formative years it would follow the general pattern, “I didn’t feel good about myself or confident about my direction in life until I found these ‘true’ beliefs / had this experience of God”.
I’m not even saying that feelings shouldn’t be some input to such things but in my observation and experience there was almost zero of anything else. Why do religious services have music and ritual? It’s to create a vibe. Why do preachers spin stories with dramatic climaxes? Why do pentecostals speak in tongues? All of it is to gin up feelings.
And so I think his assumption that by “compelling” I meant “appealing” or “exciting” was telling here.
Well the music is demonstrably emotive, it even works at some level even without the belief. A recent series I watched based in the US, and the mother takes the kids to church over the xmas period, the father (non-religious, is the word atheist banned from US tv?) recently died, and in the scene the younger of the children who is also a “non believer”, sees a female school friend singing a solo, she nails the difficult hymn, and of course there’s not a dry eye in the house, hell even I was moved. Then I thought what if she’d been awful, I mean paint peeling, cats running, dogs barking, terrible? It’s hard to imagine the effect would be a religious epiphany then, even for the faithful. The emotional efficacy of music seems to lend itself to religious indoctrination.
It was slick tv, I will give them that, but ultimately it was proselytising, the message was stated unequivocally in a triumphant victory over the death of the father / husband, we can save him from purgatory, he deserves the chance…
Well, I suppose you could say I was born with the condition of atheism. However, My family, friends, community, and society at the time were able to somewhat override that condition as I got older, but it never really completely went away. The stuff I was taught about religion during my younger years always seemed to conflict with the things I was taught in school and elsewhere. Those inconsistencies and contradictions caused me a great deal of anxiety and discomfort as I got older and learned more things and gained more life experiences. Took me over 40 years to finally get myself back to the default non-theist mindset into which I was born, and I have been fine ever since. 