Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Is English not your first language? The "not only no" construct is not a double negative. However I have said it very many different ways now. I see no mystical or magical aspect to the experiences at all.
NO, ENGLISH IS NOT MY FIRST LANGUAGE; SORRY IF I TOOK IT LITERALLY.
I have said that many different ways and the context of my entire posts say the same, so I am not sure how a mere difficulty with English can be giving you trouble. It could not be clearer that I am discounting any mystical or magical explanation for these experiences.
I CAN UNDERSTAND, YOU DO NOT THINK THERE IS ANY MAGIC IN THEIR NDEs.
Again... the experiences are very real. No one is denying that here. What is causing those experiences is what is being discussed. I see no reason on offer to think the cause is mystical, magical, metaphysical, supernatural or any of those things.
The brain during these experiences is clearly under a monumental amount of stress. It is therefore no surprise that such brains experience unusual things.
YOU ACCEPT THEY HAVE HAD NDEs, BUT NO MAGIC, RIGHT? DOES THAT IMPLY MEETING HEAVENLY BODY WAS MEETING WITH THE CREATOR GOD, AT LEAST IN THEIR IMAGINATION? TO ME, IT COULD ONLY HINT THE EXISTENCE OF SOME FORM OF LIFE AFTER DYING.
I already have numerous times. I am not sure why I am being asked to repeat myself. What I have said is that aspects of NDE are reproducible such as the feeling of being outside ones body.
I am citing the word of VS Ramachandran for one who works with patients who have Parietal lobe damage.
The Transcranial stimulation studies on normal subjects from UCLA for example were able to effect the Parietal lobe in such ways as to cause the same experiences or the experience of a "presence" being with the subject.
The work of Micheal Percinger is interesting. His "God Chair" can stimulate such experience in people.
ANY REFERENCE FROM A PEER REVIEWED JOURNAL TO CHECK? INFORMATION FROM BIASED STUDIES MAY NOT BE DIFFERENT FROM THAT OF BOOKS
These are the same things people talk about with NDEs... the feeling of floating outside the body or the presence of another entity with the patient for examples.
The rest of your post talks about bias in the reports of the subjects and it is great to bring that up. All such experiments are going to be affected by that and we have to do our best to account for that...
... what we notice however is that people ignore entirely such issues of bias when considering the uncontrolled anecdotes of patients who report these NDEs and if we are to be concerned about bias at all I think we need to be concerned about them in ALL cases, not just the cases that suit us.
IF WE WERE TO ACCEPT BIASED INFORMATION WE WILL HAVE TO TAKE ALL INFORMATION AVAILABLE INTO ACCOUNT; YES, NOT THAT ONLY SUITS US.
The whole point of illusion is that these people did NOT levitate or walk on water. They just made it appear that they did. While it is fun to work out how they did it I am not sure what it has to do with science or NDEs or this thread.
I UNDERSTAND ILLUSION IS USUALLY PERFORMED UNDER CONTROLLED SITUATIONS USING SMOKE AND MIRRORS, BUT OUTDOOR PUBLIC PERFORMANCES CAN HARDLY BE LABELLED AS ILLUSIONS, MAGIC WILL BE MORE APPROPRIATE. BUT YOU DO NOT APPEAR TO ACCEPT MAGIC!
IF THERE IS MAGIC IT MAY IMPLY THAT THE NDEs CAN BE MAGICAL!
Illusion is just deception oft he senses. Nothing more. Nothing says it has to be indoors. Illusion can happen in the open, in public, in rooms, in cars, in bed. Anywhere. The people you name are illusionists. The whole point of their trade is not that they actually are walking on water… but that they make it look to you like they are walking on water.
Question: Do you think he magically actually was walking on water? If so then I think you have outed yourself as someone who will believe just about anything, let alone NDEs and souls.
unless sydneytinhtutactually believes these obviously illusory events really happened.
naaahh.. Surely not.
you didn't seem to watch the news. It was all over the news throughout the world. Dynamo walked into the thames watched by amazed crowd on the bridge as well as on the banks. This was clearly shown in his new dvd album where the police patrol boat had to go and fetch dynamo from the middle of thames. It was not an illusion. It was magic.
Illusion is just deception oft he senses. Nothing more. Nothing says it has to be indoors. Illusion can happen in the open, in public, in rooms, in cars, in bed. Anywhere. The people you name are illusionists. The whole point of their trade is not that they actually are walking on water… but that they make it look to you like they are walking on water.
Question: Do you think he magically actually was walking on water? If so then i think you have outed yourself as someone who will believe just about anything, let alone ndes and souls.
you dont seem to watch it on the national news. What was he doing in the middle of the thames, fishing?
It was not illusion since he was not on land or in a studio. You can still watch him on u tube i'm sure.
There's a lot of internet articles about this guy and his various unbelievable trix! Seems he has used (surprise!) some tricks, as they all do, to achieve his imagery. The real trick-test would be this: I'll take him to the lake or body of water of MY choice, and set him free to walk out there. With full video coverage.
You wanna bet he could not do it? I will. He could not do it under htose circumstances, and would obviously decline my generous offer, even if I offered to buy the boutique designer burgers for lunch!
That, my friend, would be the absolute true objective test. Not what you hope/wish/faithfully believe to be the case.
Otherwise, the carefully pre-planted lexan sheet he's walking on (after all, this guy has a HUGE media TV budget, I hope you know... and there's no reason the London Police Dept. would not necessarily take a nice big surprise Policeman's Benevolent Association donation for their "Help" in this illusion.) is a known trick some other water walkers have used. Notice how he's looking down very carefully from time to time? Wouldn't want to "step out of line", so to speak, huh?
Illusions are what you can make people believe in despite the logical reality of the situation.
1) People cannot walk on water unless of course it's only 1.24" deep.
2) People will believe most anything, like statues of The Virgin Mary with "blood" coming out of their eyes. Wow! Imagine THAT!
3) Every single time such events are then thoroughly & independently tested, they always (let's bold and underline that, OK?) ALWAYS find there's some imaginative trickery involved. Just as there obviously is here. Even the "stunned onlooker" shots are carefully timed & choreographed.
After all, they want to attract a mega-huge TV audience. Look at the timing of this event! Boosts the confiscatory rates they charge for prime-time TV Ads, don't you know? (And that (plus his hoped-for salary...) is what it's really all about, btw...)
4) The tilt-back trick he did out in the public square was accomplished with a lone strong metal alloy rod on a track that he dropped into a carefully placed hole in the pavement. (this has been proven!)
Now, if he'd then lifted BOTH legs off the ground and allowed someone to push his floating body around for a while, THAT would have been real magic. The boy's very athletic, and all he had to do was support himself backwards briefly on one bent leg. with a steel-unobtanium alloy rod strapped to one leg. The rod may even have been designed to provide some bending-point spring tension, which would be no problem for a metallurgical engineer! Simple.
Having seen a couple of magic shows in Vegas, I'd have to say, these boys have it all down to quite the "magical" art. It's also obvious that you want to believe in this stuff, along with the now-debunked NDEs. So be it. Your choice.
But in the final analysis end, it's all illuison. No ifs, ands or but...but....buts about it!
Again just because a result goes against expectation this does not mean it is "impossible". The very fact you observed it happen shows it is possible.
Exactly. The question then becomes "why". It seems you are rejecting the hypothesis of our reality being virtual out of hand, without even examining whether or not it's possible. My point is that if, for discussion sake, you assume our reality were virtual, the results from the Double Slit (as well as other quantum wierdness) are EXACTLY what you would expect. If, for discussion sake, you assume our reality is objectively physical, the results MAKE NO SENSE.
Ergo, from that datapoint, it seems more likely that our reality is virtual than real. Ergo, we either exist as PART of that simulation (which means we are sentient, self-aware subroutines of some kind) or we exist OUTSIDE of that simulation and merely interact with it. In either case, it means the death of our (physically non-existent) bodies is irrelevant to the question of our actual consciousness, as our counsciousness is not a function of our body, rather it's the other way around.
You're simply rejecting the hypothesis as unthinkable, and ignoring the evidence in front of you.
Quote:
In fact the area of Quantum Science is full of things that go against our expectations such as particles of different types popping in and out of existence and much more.
True, and as previously stated, the VR hypothesis, if true, explains many of them. Go read the paper I posted.
Quote:
The conversation I am having is whether there is any reason here and now to put any stock in the metaphysical or supernatural interpretations of Near Death Experiences.
Thousands of stories, many of which are very similar to each other, mean something is happening. You've admitted as much. It's either a bonafide spiritual experience, or it's not. I haven't seen you propose any alternative theories, though I'll concede you may have that I missed, in any case you're simply rejecting the possibility without examination as being preposterous.
People are forming memories under conditions under which it's physically impossible to form memories. They're hearing and seeing things they could not possibly have seen or heard consciously, things that are later verified as accurate. You're just dismissing it out of hand because it doesn't suit your preconcieved notions. That's bad science.
Quote:
How convenient for you. Your own baseless, unverifiable and unsubstantiated anecdote was enough to convince you. Quelle Surprise. Now let us return to the evidence and arguments we can actually present shall we.
Which means, of course, that it didn't happen. Assume I'm a liar if you must, as you pointed out, I cannot prove it to any reasonable standard. Yet, ask yourself just one question. What if I'm not lying? What if I actually observed a conversation from 2,000 miles away, that was later verified to have taken place by the participants? What if this conversation was so incredibly specific and random that the chances of it being a coincidence were virtually nil (it wasn't "So, how's the weather")?
If all that happened, and I assure you it did, though you'll have to take my word for it as I cannot prove it, but for sh*ts and giggles, humor me. If all that happened, what does that mean?
What does everyone think of the so-called "Near Death Experience." That's when someone claims to have a usually positive, but sometimes negative experience, after they come close to dying. Usually it takes place after a cardiac arrest when the heart stops beating for up to a few minutes. I know that most scientists are of course going to be skeptical of such experiences because they seem too fantastic and do not have any evidence to support them. But is there any evidence to debunk them? Also, the people that I know that have had cardiac arrests tended to have them; has anyone in here have had a cardiac arrest and nothing happened?
Anyway, my position on this is the only thing that I debunk is that they are always "culturally influenced" because I knew people who were not only secular, but did not believe in anything before having them. That said, I am open to it being some kind helusination when the mind shuts down. But is it always that simple?
Debate and Discuss.
I became 100 percent convinced long ago that most, if not all of them are real, and were truly the person having left their body, and visiting another realm.
I have an aunt, one of the most unpretentious, southern ladies in the world, and she had one during her hysterectomy many years ago. I then had a neighbor that became a dear friend, in Hawaii that had two of them. Now, fast forward to not but a few months ago and a wonderful nephew of mine had one.
He didn't even know what to call it. He has four brain tumors, had a very bad seizure and even saw his own funeral, and other things that he said he cannot explain nor was ready to tell others about, in detail.
I have read I think it is three books by folks that had NDEs. In each one they proved to their docs and families that they, indeed could supernaturally see what others were doing while they were on a hospital table. That's enough for me.
Have you or any other reader read the latest, famous book about this? It's titled "Heaven's For Real." Fantastic book. In fact, thanks to it and another NDE by a young artist we may now know very close to what Jesus really did and does look like. Here's a link to what he looked like to both the young, female artist and to Colton, the young boy in the book I named. This makes sense! He's very, very handsome and unlike the other artists' renderings of what He could look like.
NDE's being real do not validate your religion. In fact, they tend to invalidate it, as people who should, according to the rules of your faith, go to hell (which doesn't exist), are reporting loving and happy NDE's. Something you need to consider.
NDE's being real do not validate your religion. In fact, they tend to invalidate it, as people who should, according to the rules of your faith, go to hell (which doesn't exist), are reporting loving and happy NDE's. Something you need to consider.
You haven't researched NDEs enough, obviously. NDEs have indeed been reported of folks going to hell. They've even been talked-of on secular radio and in secular media in-print. (I've heard wise suggestion that hell is such a horrible place that some of the NDEs which reported from the dark side were probably rejected and buried within the person, but others have been reported.)
Something you'll be wise to consider, indeed. Even the TV show 20/20 reported that far fewer report going to Hell but that yes, folks do.
You haven't researched NDEs enough, obviously. NDEs have indeed been reported of folks going to hell. They've even been talked-of on secular radio and in secular media in-print. (I've heard wise suggestion that hell is such a horrible place that some of the NDEs which reported from the dark side were probably rejected and buried within the person, but others have been reported.) Something you'll be wise to consider, indeed. Even the TV show 20/20 reported that far fewer report going to Hell but that yes, folks do. Touching Heaven and Hell - ABC News Patients near death see visions of hell Howard Storm - near-death experiences Earthbound - near-death experiences TO HELL AND BACK
There is no hell as in Eternal Torment. It is a ludicrous belief that blasphemes the nature of our loving God. Any who believe it of God reveal a lack of understanding of God's love for us all. It is an indoctrination disaster that the religious leaders will carry a heavy burden for.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Surely not.