Discuss.

What?

OKAY!

http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-foru...showtopic=78990

Don't you like popsicles?

No.. they aren't

Yes.

Well... there ya have it.
Conclusive



1 fer

1 agin

There's a lot of data that points to certain medicines that induce many of these NDE and these medicines are common in trauma cases.

So I would say that if they are true, they are for the individual, not for public proof.

how is a traumatized individual supposed to reliably distinguish between truth and psychosis without "public" proof?

Maybe I explained it bad, or come from a different perspective.

I meant even if they did die and have an afterlife experience, it isn't relative to anyone but themselves, ie not for the public.

http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-foru...howtopic=126798

there's nothing relative about it at all. NDE's are either factual experiences indicating there is an afterlife that everyone is subject to or they are the result of psychosis, and the only way to differentiate is to use objective science. certainly a traumatized individual has no way to differentiate without public (objective) help.

same goes for any internal revelation of what is external reality. since it's an obvious fact that the mind/emotions can paint misleading pictures of external reality, without external public help an individual has no way to know if he's fooling himself or not.

also kind of makes faith in general pointless.

Pretty sure that there isn't anything in the known world that you can try to use to make this claim.

It's kind of an obsession

Sometimes I think you are pulling our legs. You want to use science to determine whether or not someone had a personal experience? You might as well make the claim that all truth will have to pass through you before it can be truth.

I'll let you in on a secret, we don't care if somethings happen that we can't explain, makes life kind of fun. We don't have to worry that the whole world will think less of us for not really knowing something. And when I say 'we' I mean the rest of the world, not just Christians.




LOL, of course, why can anyone think they can know what happened to them, without the help of modern science to tell them what it was.

Hi. I am arrogant, but I am fairly certain by reading this post that my arrogance pails in comparison. It's a testament to your faith in yourself.

i'm not making a claim, i'm stating the obvious. because individuals using strictly internal methods aren't capable of differentiating between truth and delusion, faith is effectively a useless method for an individual to reliably determine what is and isn't objective reality.

no. i want to use science to determine whether personal experiences reflect objective reality or psychosis, since it's the only useful tool we have available to do the job.


you lost me. what anyone cares about is irrelevant. the truth of NDE's is not a subjective issue, it's a scientific one. finding "fun" or some other personal subjective value in the experience has nothing to do with whether they are objectively real experiences or not.



for practical purposes they can't.

what specifically are you disputing and why?

So if it happened to you, you would not know what it was until someone who it didn't happen too tells you what it was?

Yea, you might want to get that looked at.

Only useful tool if you base all of life in scientific meathods maybe, not it's not even remotely all we have for those of us that let a little wonder fill our lives.




So it's not for the public...I read that somewhere, I will wait for a scientist to tell me where though.

if by "someone" you mean external scientific verification, then yes.

okay then, we know where you stand.

while letting wonder fill your life might help you learn a lot about your own personal fulfillment or similar subjective issues, it is utterly useless in helping you determine whether NDE's are objective factual experiences or the result of psychosis.



the truth to you of your feelings about NDE's is not a public matter. the truth of the actual NDE's themselves is.

Do you think that there's anything science will never be able to fully explain?



So you're going with the "perception is reality" argument...which is fine as long as you understand that perception is most definitely not always reality.

Somehow I'm pretty sure you're all wrong about this one.

it's where you stand on all things not related to christianity.

in principal, no. constraints on human technology due to unavailable resources is a limiting factor, but there is nothing fundamental about science that is self-limiting.

And this,,,

Only useful tool if you base all of life in scientific meathods maybe, not it's not even remotely all we have for those of us that let a little wonder fill our lives.



Can't wait to see if this is your opinion when your 15 year old daughter stays out all night and tells you it's none of your business since it was HER personal experience and only she can know about it.


This is a low blow and I apologize in advance but it's easy for you to ignore being realistic if it fits your side of the argument but the reality is that we all have wonder in our lives. It obviously has nothing to do with whether there are NDE's or whether someone under trauma can deduce what factually happened to them.

Sorry, my youngest is 18, so it can't happen, plus that doesn't have anyhing to do with anything, but that's par for the course around here.



If you look at my first post I said that any NDE would not be useful for anyone else except the person that had it. Because we can't rely on the reality of it, so therefore if you have one then it will not prove anything to me. That's all, in reference to NDEs, that was said.

Crow cannot ever agree with anyone that isn't an athiest, so he had to tell me why that only science can tell us what happened, which is funny.

So now it has turned into another "Christians don't think rationally about anything because they base everything on experiences" direction. Which is really nothing more than a case of "I can't accept that someone would think different than me" form of narcism laced with " My understanding of science if the only one there is" thrown in for a full conceit factor.


Fine, I love how the athiest arrogance is so easily brought up to the surface. The covering is very thin.

You mean they woldn't help anyone else determine what they mean?
Doesn't that make them private then.

And the opposite of private is...




Not to me it isn't

If you have a NDE I will not chnge my opinion of them nor my world view on life. If I have one, I wouldn't ask you to change your views because of them either.

That makes them private, which again is the opposit of?

Sorry crow, I had a very long look at things before I accepted Christ and just because you can't understand how anyone could think different than you, doesn't make you right.

Besides the beginning of the universe you mean?



Yes, perception is reality in reference to NDEs for the individual, it will not have any bearing on anything for anyone else. It's a private event that only means something to them, exactly like a dream. If anyone wants to take my explanation of NDEs and apply that to anything else, that is their thing, not mine.



You're half right

you never responded to the original question. how specifically is an NDE "useful" for the person that had it in terms of confidently determining what is objective reality? (see thread title).

this has nothing to do with atheism. you're saying irrational things.



the only arrogance here is you holding internal "experiences" that might support christianity to a different standard than you hold internal experiences that support anything else.

i said a "sense of wonder" isn't useful in helping anyone determine anything about objective reality.





you lost me. nobody is talking about world views (again see thread title).

"where i stand" is someone's internal experiences are not a reliable indicator of what is external objective reality for them or anyone else. it is certainly also where you stand on anything not related to christianity.

there is nothing intrinsic keeping science from explaining the beginning of our universe. it may well happen in your lifetime.




nobody is talking about personal meaning (read thread title!!!!)

Okay, so you except that scientifically there is probably no basis for NDE'S only a person's perception that it was and it's irrelevent to there being an afterlife.

But if they want to believe it is then so be it.

Lot's of people wish something to be true. That doesn't make it true.

You wish for there to be an afterlife, again that doesn't make it true.

Yes, that's what I mean.



Admitting defeat already?

I guess I didn't explain it right, although after reading it I didn't think it was that hard to see my point.

In context of NDEs, the OP asked if they prove anything about an afterlife.

I pointed out that many drugs have been found actively causing these, but rather than completely say everyone of them means nothing, because many people have had life changing experiences from them, I feel that if a person has an NDE, it isn't proof of anything, but it could be a meaningful experience for that single person.

One that isn't for anyone else.

crow saying that without a scientist to tell the person what happened, than it has no meaning is the equivalent of saying that your choosing to be impacted by a Rush song is completely void of meaning because more scientist like Radio Head, whoever they are.

I found his clear explanation that science must explain everything including the metaphysical, to be sadly funny. In a sad way.


Now if this is what you guys thought I said, and you still want to say these things, than let me know, because I have lots of room on my "people to be pitied" list.

Wait...que?

Crow's not saying what you think he's saying. I believe (and I could be wrong) that his only point is that just because they think they had an out-of-body NDE doesn't mean they actually did (according to the definition of the term). I'm not sure he ever said that this means it's any less meaningful to the person in question.



To be fair to him, there are almost certainly things that you think science will never explain that it eventually will. But that's neither here nor there.

i never said anything about the metaphysical. i'm not sure that the concept of metaphysics even has any real meaning when you break it down to specifics.

Metaphysics has nothing to do with any kind of applied science, from what I understand...and from what the dictionary tells me.

1. the branch of philosophy that treats of first principles, includes ontology and cosmology, and is intimately connected with epistemology.
2. philosophy, esp. in its more abstruse branches.
3. the underlying theoretical principles of a subject or field of inquiry.
4. (initial capital letter, italics) a treatise (4th century b.c.) by Aristotle, dealing with first principles, the relation of universals to particulars, and the teleological doctrine of causation.

That's it in a nutshell, right? We agree, near death experiences are not proof of an afterlife. Thank you.

I'd hate to be on your pitied list.

i'm assuming by metaphysical BG is just referring to stuff that transcends scientific testing of any kind, not the practice of the philosophy of metaphysics. i'm not sure the concept of something transcending the physical world (in the sense of being fundamentally outside the boundaries of science-like testing) has any real meaning. for practical purposes for something to exist it pretty much definitionally has to have physical components or be related to or the product of physical components in some way.

again, there are technological/resourse limitations that prevent us from detecting/testing many things in practice, but in principal the concept of something being fundamentally outside the boundaries of science or science-like reasoning seems nonsensical. certainly whether we have souls or not, or whether an afterlife exists or not are absolutely scientific questions.

From what I've gathered after reading three or four threads in this forum in their entirety:

Balloon guy is religious and funny, and has a good grasp on how to use metaphorical arguments. Sometimes discussion of his beliefs is taken as aggressive missionary action, to which many just get angry at.

Crow, understandably, needs science to prove everything.

Speedz and Randy share crow's mindset for the most part.

But pretty much all of the threads have this in common:

content
content
content
confusion, misinterpretation
NO GOD, YES GOD, NO GOD, YES GOD
agree to disagree
snide comments
snide comments
snide comments

not everything. i don't need science to prove art or music appreciation or any other value judgement that is of a subjective nature.

however science is the only thing we have that has proven the least bit useful in answering questions about external objective reality, such as the one asked in the thread title.

You do still live in Ohio...