Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Actually, I haven't said that consciousness can't be individualized. It's clear enough that consciousness IS individualized, but that this is an ephemeral phenomenon and not a constant. As for mental activity being dependent on the brain, there is a lot of evidence for that.

These are your interpretations of the evidence and ideas that you have. Others have different interpretations.

I wonder if you understood what Sheldrake said on the subject in the second video you linked above. He wasn't talking about mental activity happening without the brain being involved, but about the concept of the mind being confined to the inside of the skull being naïve, and pointing out that when we interact with the universe through sensation, we are extending the mind out to the edges of what we can see, in an active as well as passive fashion. This is something totally different from what you are talking about.

I know; he wasn't talking about denial of life after death as one of the dogmas. He may well have discussed this too; I don't have a link now though. It's a good talk and worth watching, regardless of its relevance to our discussion; which is why I posted it, not to answer any of your points.

I hope we can let some of the other posters here back in; we don't need to monopolize this thread.

I don't see any evidence. You have certainly not presented any.

I have presented evidence that you interpret as non-evidence, based on your philosophical assumptions. Whatever evidence I present, you would interpret the same way. It is simple; I am open to this aspect of spirit, and you are not. Difference in worldview; that's why I call myself a spiritualist, and you say the term doesn't make a difference. Original point. That's all it is.

The question before us is whether the experience happens during brain death. Is there anything about the NDEs of those who have not suffered brain death that distinguishes it from the NDEs of those who have, anything internal to the experience itself? Apparently not. Is there any solid evidence that the NDEs of those who do suffer brain death, occur while the brain is dead? No. Is there any reason to believe this? Only if, as seems to be true with you, one is determined to find evidence of life after death here.

As is true of everyone who has had this beyond-death experience. It is evident to them. Near-death experiences without brain death are just experiences of fright or alarm etc., they are not experiences of the other side that change their view of life and death and make them different people as a result. That's not to say that experiencing coming close to death might not also be a powerful life-changing experience, but not in quite the same way.

The question that started this dialogue was actually NOT whether there is life after death, or when NDEs happen, etc; it is what I said above that is the issue. It is only a matter of the meaning of the term I use to define my own worldview. For some reason, you find this worth arguing about.

If there is evidence of life after death in the NDE, it is in the information acquired by the NDE itself, and not in the circumstances of its occurrence. One thing that does appear to be the case is that those who undergo NDEs emerge in most cases with greatly reduced fear of death. And in fact, consciousness being universal, and our own individual consciousness only something like a wave pattern in the greater sea, death is nothing to fear, and the NDE appears to make people more aware of this -- which is also true of deep spiritual experience, which seems greatly to resemble the NDE so that it is not unwarranted to call the NDE a form or specific type of spiritual experience.

They emerge from the experience beyond death with less fear of death, and everyone I have heard says this is because they survived death individually.

Eric, what are the "facts" here? The actual facts are that the medium entered an altered state of consciousness and produced certain information which, in some cases, could not have been acquired by normal mundane methods. Anything else -- anything at all -- is an interpretation of the facts and not a fact itself. So no, I am not "trying to get around the facts." I am recognizing all of the facts (I just did), and providing an explanation for them.

Yes, your "explanation" is the attempt to get around the facts.

It's based on what the word "evidence" means. If that's philosophy, it's basic epistemology and generally agreed upon.

As in the above case, when you attribute the information received to the medium's psychic ability, and not to what the medium learned from the spirit, it's your worldview, and not the meaning of the word evidence.

A medium is not necessarily a psychic, and when a medium is contacting a spirit, (s)he is not tuning in to his/her intuition or doing a reading. Those are different processes.

Lots to read through at this site:
http://www.near-death.com/

Notable NDEs
George Ritchie Mellen-Thomas
Howard Storm Dianne Morrissey
P.M.H. Atwater Jayne Smith
Pam Reynolds Vicki Umipeg
Carl Jung Dannion Brinkley
George Rodonaia Edgar Cayce
Thomas Sawyer Arthur Yensen
Christian Andreason David Oakford
Lynnclaire Dennis UPDATED Ned Dougherty
Betty Eadie Kimberly Sharp
RaNelle Wallace Larry Hagman
Linda Stewart Karen Schaeffer
Guenter Wagner Tiffany Snow
Josiane Antonette Laurelynn Martin
Grace Bubulka E. Swedenborg
Martha St. Claire Elane Durham
Daniel Rosenblit

Scientific Evidence of Survival

People have NDEs while Brain Dead
People See Verified Events while Out-of-Body
People Born Blind can See During a NDE
Children have NDEs Similar to Adults
People are Radically Changed by their NDE
Common Aspects of NDEs are Found
Scientific Discoveries come from NDEs
People having NDEs are Absolutely Convinced
Groups of People can Share the Same NDE
Some People were Dead for Several Days
NDEs have Accurately Foreseen the Future
Ancient History is Replete with NDE Reports
Scientific Studies have Validated NDEs
World Religions Originated from NDEs
Science has Validated Out-of-Body Experiences
Quantum Physics can Explain NDEs
Analytical Psychology can Explain NDEs
Hypnotic Regression Verifies NDE Concepts
Dream Research Verifies NDE Concepts
After-Death Visions have been Validated
Synchronicity Statistically Proves the Afterlife
Hypnosis can Induce After-Death Visions
Deathbed Visions Affirm Survival after Death
Out-of-Body Experiences can be Triggered
Scientific Evidence of Reincarnation Exists
Hallucinogens Trigger Out-of-Body States
Credible Reports of Angelic Beings Exists
Apparitions of the Dead have been Recorded
Valid Psychic Contact with the Dead Exists
Governments have Validated Remote Viewing
Some People Retain Pre-Birth Memories
Scientific Evidence of the Paranormal Exists
NDE Symbolism Supports Sacred Geometry
Science has Validated the Efficacy of Prayer
More Evidence ...

Out-of-Body Experiences
Dr. Charles Tart Paul Beecher
Robert Monroe R.B.Y.
Jerry Gross Daniel Eli
OBE Research Mihbond
Astral Projection Lynn Russell
Dr. Kay Jamison Victor Borras
Sharon How to Have an OBE
Greg Burkett

I can't read through it all now; I am familiar with some of this from past reports and readings....

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I have presented evidence that you interpret as non-evidence, based on your philosophical assumptions. Whatever evidence I present, you would interpret the same way. It is simple; I am open to this aspect of spirit, and you are not. Difference in worldview; that's why I call myself a spiritualist, and you say the term doesn't make a difference. Original point. That's all it is.

No, it's more than that. You present as evidence supporting life after death, things that are not. It's really that simple.

The only way something can be evidence of life after death is if there is no other way to interpret it. By analogy, suppose that a mug is used to beat someone to death, and it's your coffee mug. It has your fingerprints on it. Does this mean that you beat the victim to death with your mug? Not necessarily; it's equally possible that someone else grabbed your coffee mug off your desk and did the deed, and it has your fingerprints on it because you drink from it every day (or used to). If I also happen to know that you are not a violent person and that beating someone to death with a coffee mug is radically unlike you, and further that you suffer from a physical disability so that it's extremely unlikely you'd even be able to beat someone to death with a coffee mug, then the alternative explanation that someone else used your mug as a murder weapon becomes far more believable than that you did it yourself.

Similarly, if we have another explanation for a phenomenon -- a real one, of course, not a clutching at straws thing -- then we can't take it as evidence of life after death especially since life after death in the naïve spirit-world-survival sense is inherently difficult to model, making any other reasonable explanation to be preferred.

Near-death experiences without brain death are just experiences of fright or alarm etc., they are not experiences of the other side that change their view of life and death and make them different people as a result. That's not to say that experiencing coming close to death might not also be a powerful life-changing experience, but not in quite the same way.

This is not true. There is nothing about the NDE that occurs when there is no brain death that distinguishes it in any way from one where there is. It is absolutely unwarranted to dismiss it with a wave of your hand as you are doing here. It produces exactly the same sort of long-lasting results and changes in outlook on life and in attitude either way.

They emerge from the experience beyond death with less fear of death, and everyone I have heard says this is because they survived death individually.

They emerge from the NDE with less fear of death, and why this is so is an open question. Whether the experience is "beyond death," and if so precisely how, is also an open question.

Yes, your "explanation" is the attempt to get around the facts.

What "facts" am I trying to get around? What "facts" are there other than the ones I just listed?

As in the above case, when you attribute the information received to the medium's psychic ability, and not to what the medium learned from the spirit, it's your worldview, and not the meaning of the word evidence.

My explanation for it is not the issue here. Whether there IS an alternate explanation is the issue. If there is, then this cannot be evidence for life after death. And that DOES arise from the meaning of the word evidence.

A medium is not necessarily a psychic, and when a medium is contacting a spirit, (s)he is not tuning in to his/her intuition or doing a reading. Those are different processes.

There is no reason to believe that. It works exactly the same way, with exactly the same type of success and failure. And of course, that means that your first sentence is wrong; a medium (unless fraudulent or deluded) IS necessarily a psychic.

I'm going to suggest here, that there are not two, but three distinct world-views or perspectives in contention on this thread. One of them is scientific, but out of date. One is scientific and current. And one is not scientific.

The out-of-date viewpoint is classical materialism. This is the idea that there is one world, and that it obeys the principles of Newtonian physics. Causality is all local, events are deterministic, principles like the inverse-square law are universal and describe all possible events, and the universe, including living things, behaves like a machine. In this viewpoint, psi phenomena are impossible.

The unscientific viewpoint might be called spiritism. This is the view that the mind is the result of something non-material and not bound by the normal behavior of matter and energy as we observe them, and that each one of us has an individual soul that is responsible for all mental activity and survives death either by traveling to another plane of existence or by reincarnating. In this viewpoint, psi phenomena are possible and result from this discarnate soul-stuff; whether the advocates of this view like the term or not, this is to say that they are supernatural. (The advocates of classical materialism would agree with that, but say that as the supernatural isn't possible, neither is psi.)

The current-science view regards the nature of the material world in terms of modern physics, which undercuts the classical materialist view in a number of ways. Causation isn't necessarily local and frequently isn't. Nothing is completely deterministic and most events aren't even close. The inverse-square law does a good job of describing the behavior of radiant energy but is hardly a universal principle. Consciousness isn't a stranger in the universe but is everywhere, part of its nature and as much a part of everything as mass and energy and space-time. The universe doesn't behave like a clockwork mechanism but something like an organism and something like a hologram. In this view, psi phenomena are perfectly possible and not supernatural in the least. At the same time, this view rejects concepts like the individual soul as having no evidence behind them and also conflicting with the complex and multi-faceted nature of mental activity, which are amenable to no such simple descriptions. As such, it also rejects traditional and simplistic concepts of life after death, while being open to the idea that consciousness, which is not an island in a sea of dead matter but rather a universal characteristic, is not extinguished at death in equally simplistic fashion.

We don't have a good word to describe that last view. I've called it "non-classical materialism" in the past, but this may be somewhat misleading if the "materialism" part of it makes one think of the traditional materialistic view, which it certainly is not.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

No, because that is only one thing, not two. Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I model psi (all of psi) as consisting, in its effect on physical events (including those occurring in the brain), of alterations in the normal probability associated with indeterminate events. In the case of telepathy, the firing of synapses is the TARGET of psi, NOT its generator.

That doesn't matter. What you have psi causes the synapse response. The presence if psi is reveal by excess probability (the deviation of a result over and above the random result, after controlling for all known impactors). Because psi affects both things, these two things will be correlated even though there is no causal relation between them.

You have probably heard of the saying "correlation does not necessarily mean causation". This saying refers to lurking variable effects: a situation that occurs in which the two correlated variables (synapse activity & excess probability) are related to a third variable (psi) and as a result show a correlation without any causal relationship existing between them.

Unless you want to accuse all modern psi researchers who have achieved positive results of deliberate fraud or having been deceived by their subjects (and you'd be on very shaky ground to make that accusation), instances of this sort of thing in the past have no relevance.

No, the measurement of statistically significant excess probability means that some impactor is affecting the result. Researcher fraud or subject deception are only two of a wide variety of possible impactors.

The point of my example is deception by the subject is a very obvious impactor, that fact that early researchers missed it made the research a joke. The tendency for the effect to shrink upon more rigorous assessment has created the modern situation in which the effect is so small as to be irrelevant in normal life. It was its applications that conferred upon science its status as a preferred way of knowing. Science without its use in technology would be like literary theory, a subject of interest to a handful of specialists, but mostly ignored by everyone else.

Even a weak form of telepathy would have obvious applications. That such have not arisen is a strong argument against its existence in any meaningful sense.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

It was its applications that conferred upon science its status as a preferred way of knowing. Science without its use in technology would be like literary theory, a subject of interest to a handful of specialists, but mostly ignored by everyone else.

What is the technical application of cosmology? Astronomy? String theory? Theory of evolution?

Even a weak form of telepathy would have obvious applications. That such have not arisen is a strong argument against its existence in any meaningful sense.

People and authorities pay good money to see psychics or get them to find information. If it is not used more than this, it is because of bias.

In any case, I think I mentioned before that psi cannot be as reliable as engineering. That doesn't mean it isn't useful for someone to have a psychic impression that their relative is in trouble, and as a result save their life in the nick of time.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

That doesn't matter. What you have psi causes the synapse response.

What does "what you have psi" mean?

T
he presence if psi is reveal by excess probability (the deviation of a result over and above the random result, after controlling for all known impactors). Because psi affects both things

You don't seem to have mentioned two things here, only one. Please clarify.

This saying refers to lurking variable effects: a situation that occurs in which the two correlated variables (synapse activity & excess probability)

The "excess probability" here is the probability OF synapses firing in a certain way. Thus, not two things, only one.

The point of my example is deception by the subject is a very obvious impactor, that fact that early researchers missed it made the research a joke. The tendency for the effect to shrink upon more rigorous assessment has created the modern situation in which the effect is so small as to be irrelevant in normal life.

That is incorrect. There is no tendency for the effect to shrink upon more rigorous assessment. (There is a tendency for the effect to shrink upon tests being conducted by committed skeptics, but even that effect doesn't always show up.)

Even a weak form of telepathy would have obvious applications. That such have not arisen is a strong argument against its existence in any meaningful sense.

This is also incorrect, in that just about everyone makes use of telepathy. It's one of the most common activities around. It's used to know when someone close to you is about to call, or is in danger and needs help, or when you're being watched, to cite three very common applications. That's without even going into the methods for increasing the effect of this and other psi abilities.

It's true that parapsychology hasn't resulted in any improvement in these techniques, but that's a result of what I've been saying, that parapsychologists have failed to come up with a coherent theory. This failure has consequences above and beyond leaving the psychological community to choose between rejecting the evidence and believing in the supernatural.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

No, it's more than that. You present as evidence supporting life after death, things that are not. It's really that simple.

I think this dialogue only exists because I said I use the term spiritualist because I am open to the things you are not open to, or prefer to explain by non-spiritual means.

I present evidence for something in the spirit realm, which you have and will explain away by attributing it to something else (often psi).

The only way something can be evidence of life after death is if there is no other way to interpret it.

That does not follow at all. If you can explain something away, that does not mean it isn't evidence. Just not strong enough evidence to convince you with your way of interpreting it. You also need to provide evidence for your explanation.

By analogy, suppose that a mug is used to beat someone to death, and it's your coffee mug. It has your fingerprints on it. Does this mean that you beat the victim to death with your mug? Not necessarily; it's equally possible that someone else grabbed your coffee mug off your desk and did the deed, and it has your fingerprints on it because you drink from it every day (or used to). If I also happen to know that you are not a violent person and that beating someone to death with a coffee mug is radically unlike you, and further that you suffer from a physical disability so that it's extremely unlikely you'd even be able to beat someone to death with a coffee mug, then the alternative explanation that someone else used your mug as a murder weapon becomes far more believable than that you did it yourself.

If you watch Dateline or 48 Hours, you'd know this analogy does not work. People today in the USA are often assumed guilty, even if proved innocent. Such evidence of such a mug would be more than enough to convict these days, no matter how many explanations are offered.

Evidence is not proof; the interpretation of evidence can be disputed; only proof seems beyond dispute, although such proof is rare.

Similarly, if we have another explanation for a phenomenon -- a real one, of course, not a clutching at straws thing -- then we can't take it as evidence of life after death especially since life after death in the naïve spirit-world-survival sense is inherently difficult to model, making any other reasonable explanation to be preferred.

When you explain it using your own psi theory, you need to have independent testing and verification of your theory for it to be a viable explanation for phenomena.

It is not preferable to model something else than the subject you are investigating. Science can study any object, and has inherent limits in studying any subject. It's protocols are necessary to follow for it to be science, but those same protocols necessarily limit what it can know, even though what it does know is more reliable and more-likely free from bias. Science can model the subject of beyond-death experiences; they are well-known and well-defined.

This is not true. There is nothing about the NDE that occurs when there is no brain death that distinguishes it in any way from one where there is. It is absolutely unwarranted to dismiss it with a wave of your hand as you are doing here. It produces exactly the same sort of long-lasting results and changes in outlook on life and in attitude either way.

Not according to the accounts I know about. It is unwarranted to attribute these experiences solely to the state of being near death, when the experiences under discussion are brain-dead experiences.

They emerge from the NDE with less fear of death, and why this is so is an open question. Whether the experience is "beyond death," and if so precisely how, is also an open question.

Yes, for science these are open questions. I am open-minded about these subjects. What is clear is that they emerge from them a changed person, (and with NO fear of death, not "less"), and what is also clear is what they say about it. That to me is evidence, and to you it is not. It is evidence to me because I am open-minded about the subject, not because I think the issue is settled. What people report about NDEs is, to me, evidence, because there are so many instances of it, and there's a pattern among the different instances to what they report. It is not final proof. But it's enough to convince me, and not you. This is a worldview question, in my opinion; not an evidence question. The evidence remains the same here. I draw different conclusions from it than you. I say it's evidence of the spirit world, and you say the evidence can be interpreted in some kind of physical and/or psychic/probability way.

What "facts" am I trying to get around? What "facts" are there other than the ones I just listed?

None at all; obviously you added "an explanation for them." (your words). The "explanation" is your attempt to evade the facts by explaining them away.

My explanation for it is not the issue here. Whether there IS an alternate explanation is the issue. If there is, then this cannot be evidence for life after death. And that DOES arise from the meaning of the word evidence.

I disagree. Evidence is not explanation.

There is no reason to believe that. It works exactly the same way, with exactly the same type of success and failure. And of course, that means that your first sentence is wrong; a medium (unless fraudulent or deluded) IS necessarily a psychic.

I stand by my statement, based on my knowledge of practitioners and practices in this field.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I'm going to suggest here, that there are not two, but three distinct world-views or perspectives in contention on this thread. One of them is scientific, but out of date. One is scientific and current. And one is not scientific.

Good try, but not quite.

The out-of-date viewpoint is classical materialism. This is the idea that there is one world, and that it obeys the principles of Newtonian physics. Causality is all local, events are deterministic, principles like the inverse-square law are universal and describe all possible events, and the universe, including living things, behaves like a machine. In this viewpoint, psi phenomena are impossible.

Relativist physics is also materialist, as are the most common ways scientists attempt to explain away the results of quantum theory. This viewpoint is "out of date" only among some scientists, who only question the aspect of it which they study and still hold to the remainder of it. This classical materialist viewpoint is the default world view today of most scientists and educated people in the world. I agree with Sheldrake on this, and with any number of others. The sciences today are "wholly-owned subsidiaries" of the 19th-century materialist worldview.

The unscientific viewpoint might be called spiritism. This is the view that the mind is the result of something non-material and not bound by the normal behavior of matter and energy as we observe them, and that each one of us has an individual soul that is responsible for all mental activity and survives death either by traveling to another plane of existence or by reincarnating. In this viewpoint, psi phenomena are possible and result from this discarnate soul-stuff; whether the advocates of this view like the term or not, this is to say that they are supernatural. (The advocates of classical materialism would agree with that, but say that as the supernatural isn't possible, neither is psi.)

Your picture of spiritism (that's a decent word) is conditioned by viewpoint number one, which postulates that matter and energy exist as they have been described. If your definitions were different than the classical ones, they would not preclude spirit worlds.

It is not that each one of us "has" an individual soul, but that each one of us IS an individual soul that is also one with all. Spiritists don't deny the universality of spirit and the unity of all souls with it.

No, we don't agree to the term supernatural, because this is not in some other world; the spirit world is also this world.

The current-science view regards the nature of the material world in terms of modern physics, which undercuts the classical materialist view in a number of ways. Causation isn't necessarily local and frequently isn't. Nothing is completely deterministic and most events aren't even close. The inverse-square law does a good job of describing the behavior of radiant energy but is hardly a universal principle. Consciousness isn't a stranger in the universe but is everywhere, part of its nature and as much a part of everything as mass and energy and space-time. The universe doesn't behave like a clockwork mechanism but something like an organism and something like a hologram. In this view, psi phenomena are perfectly possible and not supernatural in the least.

So far so good, except that causation is also not necessarily (and often is not) efficient; meaning preceding it in time. The future is also causative.

At the same time, this view rejects concepts like the individual soul as having no evidence behind them and also conflicting with the complex and multi-faceted nature of mental activity, which are amenable to no such simple descriptions. As such, it also rejects traditional and simplistic concepts of life after death, while being open to the idea that consciousness, which is not an island in a sea of dead matter but rather a universal characteristic, is not extinguished at death in equally simplistic fashion.

"This" view is your view in the above respect. Opinions among "current" scientists differ on such concepts as a spirit world and individual souls. There is lots of evidence for them, but materialists reject it. In rejecting it, they hang on to classical materialist explanations such as the need for a brain in order for any mind or conscious activity to occur. This is merely a classical materialist dogma that mind must be explained by the body or caused by it.

Reducing consciousness to a "universal characteristic" was discussed by Sheldrake, in the sense that he mentioned how scientists reduce it so much than it can't do anything. That is what you do. You can say consciousness is everywhere and the "universe" behaves like an organism, but you take away any ability for the organisms themselves to behave like organisms, or for consciousness to cause anything; you certainly didn't mention this in your description above of the "current view." And psi, for it to be psi, must be the activity of the consciousness of the living beings involved in it (assuming we are limiting our discussion of psi to those beings). Otherwise it is just brain activity related to some probabilities of some kind. The brain viewed as such is an object, not a psyche; such "psi" activity might as well be some waves in a bucket of water.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

What is the technical application of cosmology? Astronomy? String theory? Theory of evolution?

Not all scientific results will have applications. Many will never have any applications. But some have had enormous impact. Astronomy is the fundament of a great deal of classical physics, which had enormous impact on the technology of the 19th and early 20th century. Quantum mechanics seemed more of a curiosity when it was first advanced and yet all of modern information technology is based on the transistor. Solar cells are another derived tech from QM. So is modern computational drug design. Evolution was to key strain selection efforts that gave us affordable antibiotics. The search for its mechanism led to genes, DNA and modern genetic engineering that today has become like science fiction (you can plunk down a few thousand and get an entire genome sequenced). Heck I think that within 20 years many cancers not removed surgically will become effectively treatable (and often cured) by treatments specifically tailored to that particular type of cancer. So evolution was HUGE.

These benefits have conferred authority to scientific enterprise in all its branches. Furthermore it is hard to predict whether or nor some particular scientific result will end up being used in an important application many years down the road. Thus even things that seem very unlikely to give applications are valued (funded) by economic and political elites.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I think this dialogue only exists because I said I use the term spiritualist because I am open to the things you are not open to, or prefer to explain by non-spiritual means.

Well, another way to say the same thing is that this dialogue only exists because you oppose the methods of science being applied to subjects near and dear to your heart.

That does not follow at all. If you can explain something away, that does not mean it isn't evidence. Just not strong enough evidence to convince you with your way of interpreting it. You also need to provide evidence for your explanation.

The same evidence you are presenting for life after death IS evidence for my explanation, since my explanation is OF that evidence. On the other hand, you're right that I should be able to provide other areas where my models apply. I can. Can you?

If you watch Dateline or 48 Hours, you'd know this analogy does not work. People today in the USA are often assumed guilty, even if proved innocent. Such evidence of such a mug would be more than enough to convict these days, no matter how many explanations are offered.

Possibly, but if so, that's an indictment of the justice system, not a flaw in the analogy. Pretend the justice system worked the way it should and look again.

It is not preferable to model something else than the subject you are investigating.

Actually, that isn't true at all. Let me give you an example. Scientists exploring turbulence in ocean currents find that the same patterns apply to turbulence in the atmosphere. If we can develop a single model of psi that applies to all so-called paranormal phenomena, that's ideal. (I don't claim to have done that, by the way, but I do think my model applies to an awful lot of them.)

Science can study any object, and has inherent limits in studying any subject. It's protocols are necessary to follow for it to be science, but those same protocols necessarily limit what it can know, even though what it does know is more reliable and more-likely free from bias. Science can model the subject of beyond-death experiences; they are well-known and well-defined.

Well, sort of. Work is in progress on the subject, and the first step is to not use a loaded term that presupposes a preferred explanation, like "beyond-death experiences." "Near death experience" is the term chosen by those who research the phenomenon, and even that isn't perfect because an identical experience sometimes occurs without the subject being near death. Anyway, there's still a lot of work to be done. When I said earlier that we can fully account for the phenomenon in terms of brain activity, that was sloppy of me -- we can't. We don't have any reason to reject the general idea that it all involves brain activity, but we're a long way yet from being able to pinpoint exactly what in the brain is going on. It's different from hallucinations in some important ways, and likewise different from dreaming. It's NOT different from deep spiritual experience, so the NDE provides a decent opportunity to study that as well.

Not according to the accounts I know about. It is unwarranted to attribute these experiences solely to the state of being near death, when the experiences under discussion are brain-dead experiences.

(Sigh) You can't prove that. It's inherently EXTREMELY unlikely. In every case, the brain enters a period of shutting down, does shut down, and then revives. The experience that happens is exactly similar to experiences others undergo, when there is no brain death. In short, you are simply believing what you want to believe here, without the slightest logical reason to do so.

What is clear is that they emerge from them a changed person, (and with NO fear of death, not "less"), and what is also clear is what they say about it. That to me is evidence, and to you it is not.

You're mistaken. I do consider it evidence, which is why I agree that people emerge from the experience changed. What I am not willing to do is to accept people's word on things about the experience which they are in no position to be able to know. That includes whether it occurs during the time they are brain dead. There is absolutely no way they can know that, so I'm not prepared to take their word for that, for exactly the same reason that I wouldn't take your word about what color my sister-in-law's hair is: you have no way to know. They're also in no position to know whether they "really" experienced the afterlife, so I don't take their word about that, either. They ARE in a position to know what the experience felt like, and how it has changed their lives, and similar things, so I DO take their word about these things.

None at all; obviously you added "an explanation for them." (your words). The "explanation" is your attempt to evade the facts by explaining them away.

On the contrary, if I was really trying to explain them away, I would try to show that nothing beyond normal sensory information was happening.

I stand by my statement, based on my knowledge of practitioners and practices in this field.

And I stand by mine, based on the fact that I AM a practitioner in this field.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Not all scientific results will have applications. Many will never have any applications. But some have had enormous impact. Astronomy is the fundament of a great deal of classical physics, which had enormous impact on the technology of the 19th and early 20th century. Quantum mechanics seemed more of a curiosity when it was first advanced and yet all of modern information technology is based on the transistor. Solar cells are another derived tech from QM. So is modern computational drug design. Evolution was to key strain selection efforts that gave us affordable antibiotics. The search for its mechanism led to genes, DNA and modern genetic engineering that today has become like science fiction (you can plunk down a few thousand and get an entire genome sequenced). Heck I think that within 20 years many cancers not removed surgically will become effectively treatable (and often cured) by treatments specifically tailored to that particular type of cancer. So evolution was HUGE.

These benefits have conferred authority to scientific enterprise in all its branches. Furthermore it is hard to predict whether or nor some particular scientific result will end up being used in an important application many years down the road. Thus even things that seem very unlikely to give applications are valued (funded) by economic and political elites.

I know that your points are correct to a great extent. You also admit above that scientific results don't always have applications. It is true about astronomy and physics, but I wonder what the practical application will be to studying how many rings Uranus has, or how the big bang "created" the universe. Not all these applications are "benefits" either; the benefits of genetic engineering is very questionable. Knowledge of genes may be able to help doctors tailor treatments, and is involved in biochemistry, but the benefits of knowing the genome are over-rated; it is not itself a cure for anything.

Psi is not comparable, because it is less predictable. It may become more so when more people are encouraged and helped to develop it. Right now this only happens in new age circles because teaching it elsewhere is simply taboo. Psi is as new a frontier now as the astronomy that led to Newton was 500 years ago. It is an ability, not just a phenomena. We don't say the ability to learn to play music is a predictable application that works just as well no matter who tries to learn.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Good try, but not quite.

Rather than replying in detail, I'm just going to describe your view the way it seems to me. And I'm not going to pull any punches here, so I'm going to apologize in advance for hurting your feelings, which most likely I will.

You believe in ghosts, and in the soul, as simplistic and concrete objects, definable in time and space, made of spirit-stuff, and behaving differently, but otherwise exactly like objects in the material world. You believe in other worlds, spirit worlds, as places we can go to, perhaps not with our bodies along, but otherwise exactly like getting in a vehicle and driving to another town, and these are in some sense literal places, not merely experiences with meaning but places with quasi-physical reality. You believe that death will not only leave consciousness operational, but leave us more or less intact, with our personalities pretty much the way they are in our bodies, maybe purified or made "transcendent" in some sense, but definitely like a Christian believes he will be in Heaven, and there is no recognition of the ephemeral nature of identity, or the way that it changes in different states of consciousness, which transform the circumstances of consciousness far less than death does, or even if there is, you can't see the implications in that for your ideas of what the afterlife is like.

Because you believe all of these things, you are also very quick to take reports of "going to heaven" in near-death experiences at face value, not as metaphors or profound spiritual experiences but as literal truth, and also very quick to conclude that the experience happens while the brain is quiescent rather than before that happens, despite the fact that it happens in many people when the brain never becomes quiescent and that we have absolutely no evidence that anything happens while the brain is dead whatsoever. You are also quick to accept the work of mediums as actually showing contact with the spirit world, without applying critical considerations and proper skepticism to this concept.

To me, your ideas about ghosts and the spirit world and survival after death are extremely crude. They are simplistic. They are on a kindergarten level. They are Sunday-school stuff. They are not only scientifically unjustified, but spiritually very primitive and unsophisticated, showing a lack of deep experience and understanding. If, for example, you had ever experienced and properly understood the implications of the mutable nature of your own identity -- that it can be contracted to consciousness as a mote point looking out at your own thoughts and feelings and not being part of any of them, or in the other direction expanded to encompass everything that is -- then you would not be so insistent about the survival of the individual personality, because you would know that the individual personality isn't even real during our lives, let alone after we are dead. But you would also be quite sure about the enduring nature of consciousness.

I think your grasp of the methods of science is extremely poor, but what's more alarming is that your grasp of spirituality belongs in a comic book. These ideas aren't just scientifically unsound, they're spiritually unsound, too. And in fact, this IS a belief in the supernatural -- if you say that the entire world is like this, what you are really saying is that the whole world is supernatural and there is no such thing as nature. And quite frankly, that's absurd.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Well, another way to say the same thing is that this dialogue only exists because you oppose the methods of science being applied to subjects near and dear to your heart.

I explained that (again) already. I want the methods of science applied; I also want scientists to acknowledge the inherent limits of their science. For the zenteenth time, I do not want science not to study anything. I'd do the repeat bit like you did, but I'm too busy tonight.

The same evidence you are presenting for life after death IS evidence for my explanation, since my explanation is OF that evidence. On the other hand, you're right that I should be able to provide other areas where my models apply. I can. Can you?

Quite unconvincing.

Possibly, but if so, that's an indictment of the justice system, not a flaw in the analogy. Pretend the justice system worked the way it should and look again.

Interpretations are inevitable for such evidence. Juries and judges have to decide.

Well, sort of. Work is in progress on the subject, and the first step is to not use a loaded term that presupposes a preferred explanation, like "beyond-death experiences." "Near death experience" is the term chosen by those who research the phenomenon, and even that isn't perfect because an identical experience sometimes occurs without the subject being near death. Anyway, there's still a lot of work to be done. When I said earlier that we can fully account for the phenomenon in terms of brain activity, that was sloppy of me -- we can't. We don't have any reason to reject the general idea that it all involves brain activity, but we're a long way yet from being able to pinpoint exactly what in the brain is going on. It's different from hallucinations in some important ways, and likewise different from dreaming. It's NOT different from deep spiritual experience, so the NDE provides a decent opportunity to study that as well.

As I quoted, the term is admitted to be problematic for the exact reason I said. So I'll use my new term sometimes. You won't; I understand that. I think you need to provide for experiences of the after life for clinically dead people. You can't do that if you require that they be interpreted as experiences of living people, without any evidence for that choice.

There is no "general idea" that this involves brain activity, except among those trying to explain away the phenomena in order to fit the materialist worldview that wholly-owns science.

(Sigh) You can't prove that. It's inherently EXTREMELY unlikely. In every case, the brain enters a period of shutting down, does shut down, and then revives. The experience that happens is exactly similar to experiences others undergo, when there is no brain death. In short, you are simply believing what you want to believe here, without the slightest logical reason to do so.

You're mistaken. I do consider it evidence, which is why I agree that people emerge from the experience changed. What I am not willing to do is to accept people's word on things about the experience which they are in no position to be able to know. That includes whether it occurs during the time they are brain dead. There is absolutely no way they can know that, so I'm not prepared to take their word for that, for exactly the same reason that I wouldn't take your word about what color my sister-in-law's hair is: you have no way to know. They're also in no position to know whether they "really" experienced the afterlife, so I don't take their word about that, either. They ARE in a position to know what the experience felt like, and how it has changed their lives, and similar things, so I DO take their word about these things.

"Inherently EXTREMELY unlikely" for the sole reason that it conflicts with your world view. It doesn't with mine, so I regard it as "very likely." I don't really know why you choose to regard the spirit world as impossible.

The experience is not similar at all to experiences others undergo whose brain is not dead. Experiences of coming close to death, do not change people much at all. It may increase their resolution to live, because they are reminded of death. It may just increase their fear. Such changes in people can happen anyway, with NO "near-death" experience. so you are just saying there's no difference between any experiences.

I understand that you think there's no way for them to know. You do not accept this as evidence, because you describe it as evidence of something other than what is claimed. If it is really an experience while alive, then they are delusional, so you are not taking their word at all. They have given to me their testimony that what they experienced was a world beyond this life. They are witnesses, and their testimony is confirmed by others. I also don't find it credible, as I mentioned, that all of these folks would have blacked out during brain death and not known it.

On the contrary, if I was really trying to explain them away, I would try to show that nothing beyond normal sensory information was happening.

What is reported, is that this is a visit to the spirit world (and this applies to the other spirit world phenomena). You are explaining it away as something other than that. Your explanation provides no evidence for it.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Rather than replying in detail, I'm just going to describe your view the way it seems to me. And I'm not going to pull any punches here, so I'm going to apologize in advance for hurting your feelings, which most likely I will.

I don't think I will mind. Nothing new

I'll just need to correct your statements. And I apologize in advance on the same grounds.

You believe in ghosts, and in the soul, as simplistic and concrete objects, definable in time and space, made of spirit-stuff, and behaving differently, but otherwise exactly like objects in the material world. You believe in other worlds, spirit worlds, as places we can go to, perhaps not with our bodies along, but otherwise exactly like getting in a vehicle and driving to another town, and these are in some sense literal places, not merely experiences with meaning but places with quasi-physical reality. You believe that death will not only leave consciousness operational, but leave us more or less intact, with our personalities pretty much the way they are in our bodies, maybe purified or made "transcendent" in some sense, but definitely like a Christian believes he will be in Heaven, and there is no recognition of the ephemeral nature of identity, or the way that it changes in different states of consciousness, which transform the circumstances of consciousness far less than death does, or even if there is, you can't see the implications in that for your ideas of what the afterlife is like.

Ghosts are a separate category from spirits; from all the voluminous reports I have heard, they are stuck in transition between this side and the other side. They are frequently disturbed and unready to leave the Earth life. They can't be described as "concrete" very well, but they are subtle for sure. Their relationship to space is very fluid.

Yes, your word "meaning" does not do justice to the realities that science has trouble describing with its sense-based and tightly defined approach. I do definitely experience my soul/consciousness as constant and changeless in its core, although my body changes and the soul changes too. But that description above of my views is not too far off, given due allowance for your different point of view.

Because you believe all of these things, you are also very quick to take reports of "going to heaven" in near-death experiences at face value, not as metaphors or profound spiritual experiences but as literal truth, and also very quick to conclude that the experience happens while the brain is quiescent rather than before that happens, despite the fact that it happens in many people when the brain never becomes quiescent and that we have absolutely no evidence that anything happens while the brain is dead whatsoever. You are also quick to accept the work of mediums as actually showing contact with the spirit world, without applying critical considerations and proper skepticism to this concept.

Yes, but I am not ready to totally "conclude" all this without "critical considerations;" or to conclude finally that the evidence demonstrates a spiritual theory of them; as I said I am open minded to evidence; but "evidence" to me does not mean reinterpreting the evidence definitely in materialist terms either. I am sure that near-death experiences cannot definitely be said to happen only when the brain is alive. That is a "conclusion" I don't make. These people always had clinical brain death, from what I remember. I give credence to people who have these experiences and take them at their word that they visited the other side, provisionally, but am open to the possibility that they may be wrong. Unlike you, I do not assume they are mistaken. I will check out the website linked above and report what I find interesting from it, and I'm sure there are many other sources to check out. You could check it out too.

To me, your ideas about ghosts and the spirit world and survival after death are extremely crude. They are simplistic. They are on a kindergarten level. They are Sunday-school stuff. They are not only scientifically unjustified, but spiritually very primitive and unsophisticated, showing a lack of deep experience and understanding. If, for example, you had ever experienced and properly understood the implications of the mutable nature of your own identity -- that it can be contracted to consciousness as a mote point looking out at your own thoughts and feelings and not being part of any of them, or in the other direction expanded to encompass everything that is -- then you would not be so insistent about the survival of the individual personality, because you would know that the individual personality isn't even real during our lives, let alone after we are dead. But you would also be quite sure about the enduring nature of consciousness.

Your ideas are very crude too, on this topic anyway. You are ready to conclude that such experiences are physical-body experiences only. You don't seem open to other interpretations or possibilities. This is being shut inside the materialist paradigm, so that you can't see beyond it. The experiences of consciousness you mention, I understand quite well, and I seek them out, and have had them; I simply don't draw the logical conclusions you do from it. It is "crude" to apply such logic to experiences that go beyond logic. As I see it, even when a conscious being is contracted or expanded, it is still the experience of an individual, and somehow whoever experiences these experiences returns to being an individual. So it appears that individuality is as real in the spirit or mystical realms as it is in everything else. I have stated many times that I am aware of the oneness of things. Someone who disagrees with you, is not automatically "unsophisticated." I am educated in science, and once was a materialist, and then had the views on consciousness similar to yours (no individual death survival, etc.) Been there; done that. So, unsophisticated? No, I've gone on beyond you; leaving you at the portal to the greater world.

I think your grasp of the methods of science is extremely poor, but what's more alarming is that your grasp of spirituality belongs in a comic book. These ideas aren't just scientifically unsound, they're spiritually unsound, too. And in fact, this IS a belief in the supernatural -- if you say that the entire world is like this, what you are really saying is that the whole world is supernatural and there is no such thing as nature. And quite frankly, that's absurd.

"Extremely poor" is unfair, and shows lack of comprehension of what I write. But, your response to what I write, is your business.

Some people think I'm ignorant because I accept and use astrology; others such as you say that because I accept that individual survival of death is possible and even the best likely conclusion from the evidence. It reminds you of simple beliefs. Your response is up to you; I can't help it. What seems simple and superstitious to prevalent and conventional modern opinion, may in fact be quite sophisticated.

Our knowledge of the other side is quite sophisticated now, from all the descriptions from those who were there and report about it in one way or another; it's not just the simple belief in heaven and hell as described by medieval Christians (or more-elaborately by Dante or Bosch).

The world behaves as it does out of habit and momentum. It is not easily broken out of, but that's all it is. Fundamentally, anything is possible. There are levels of density. I have explained all this. I conceive nature differently than you. Laws are metaphors for human laws; they are not fixed and constant. I have known that since way back in the late 60s.

People just have different world views. Many folks have similar worldviews to mine. They are not all ignorant folks. They just see more than you do about some stuff. But that is common at this site, for people to accuse people who disagree with them of being ignorant, or some such thing. Assuming and saying that people who disagree with your worldview are ignorant, is not very sophisticated in turn. I went through this before with you, Bob, Copperfield and Odin on this thread. It's just the temperament and orientation of this site. That's OK, I like a challenge! And I learn to clarify what I DO know about science.

I know you are concerned that people disregard science too much, especially in regard to things like climate change and creationism. That is an important concern, and I share it to a degree. I quote scientific studies here often. You conceive that science is the required tool for any understanding of observable facts. Everything, you say, that is known by other means, is about meaning and value, or the decision about fundamental axioms of knowledge. I don't agree. There are many kinds of observation, and realities not easily known by scientific methods. But I agree that science methods are valuable and should be used, with no subject off limits; just not conceived as the only source of knowledge about anything. That assumption is not at all necessary to do science; that is interpretation and assumption only.

My view: consciousness is prior to its objects, and also one with its objects. Such apparent paradoxes are inevitable in attempting to explain the ineffable in words. Those who know, do not speak, and those who speak, do not know, said Lao Tze. This is an inside out world. Our subjective experience, is the root experience. I am an individualized expression of the divine consciousness. I can be one with all, and be an individual too. I am both causative, and receptive; able to focus intention and attention with the world. The universe individualizes all the time, on all levels. Individual means undivided. My view is similar to Ken Wilber's and other Integral philosophers in this respect. I am one with all, flexible and multifaceted, and also one being myself. The divided and chaotic mental life you describe, is not what I experience. I am not just in my brain. I am one with all of myself all the time, and that one being suffuses everything in my being. I am centered, and working to get more so.

Dr. Michael Sabom is a cardiologist whose book entitled Light and Death includes a detailed medical and scientific analysis of an amazing near-death experience of a woman named Pam Reynolds. She underwent a rare operation to remove a giant basilar artery aneurysm in her brain that threatened her life. The size and location of the aneurysm, however, precluded its safe removal using the standard neuro-surgical techniques. She was referred to a doctor who had pioneered a daring surgical procedure known as hypothermic cardiac arrest. It allowed Pam's aneurysm to be excised with a reasonable chance of success. This operation, nicknamed "standstill" by the doctors who perform it, required that Pam's body temperature be lowered to 60 degrees, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, her brain waves flattened, and the blood drained from her head. In everyday terms, she was put to death. After removing the aneurysm, she was restored to life. During the time that Pam was in standstill, she experienced a NDE. Her remarkably detailed veridical out-of-body observations during her surgery were later verified to be very accurate. This case is considered to be one of the strongest cases of veridical evidence in NDE research because of her ability to describe the unique surgical instruments and procedures used and her ability to describe in detail these events while she was clinically and brain dead.

1. Introduction to Pam Reynold's NDE
When all of Pam's vital signs were stopped, the doctor turned on a surgical saw and began to cut through Pam's skull. While this was going on, Pam reported that she felt herself "pop" outside her body and hover above the operating table. Then she watched the doctors working on her lifeless body for awhile. From her out-of-body position, she observed the doctor sawing into her skull with what looked to her like an electric toothbrush. Pam heard and reported later what the nurses in the operating room had said and exactly what was happening during the operation. At this time, every monitor attached to Pam's body registered "no life" whatsoever. At some point, Pam's consciousness floated out of the operating room and traveled down a tunnel which had a light at the end of it where her deceased relatives and friends were waiting including her long-dead grandmother. Pam's NDE ended when her deceased uncle led her back to her body for her to reentered it. Pam compared the feeling of reentering her dead body to "plunging into a pool of ice." The following is Pam Reynolds' account of her NDE in her own words.....

More at:
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence01.html

4. NDEs demonstrate the return of consciousness from death.
Dr. Melvin Morse photo. An anecdotal example of evidence that a person's consciousness leaves and returns to their body during an NDE comes from the research of Dr. Melvin Morse. Olga Gearhardt was a 63 year old woman who underwent a heart transplant because of a severe virus that attacked her heart tissue. Her entire family awaited at the hospital during the surgery, except for her son-in-law, who stayed home. The transplant was a success, but at exactly 2:15 am, her new heart stopped beating. It took the frantic transplant team three more hours to revive her. Her family was only told in the morning that her operation was a success, without other details. When they called her son-in-law with the good news, he had his own news to tell. He had already learned about the successful surgery. At exactly 2:15 am, while he was sleeping, he awoke to see his Olga, his mother-in-law, at the foot of his bed. She told him not to worry, that she was going to be alright. She asked him to tell her daughter (his wife). He wrote down the message, and the time of day and then fell asleep. Later on at the hospital, Olga regained consciousness. Her first words were "did you get the message?" She was able to confirm that she left her body during her near-death experience and was able to travel to her son-in-law to communicate to him the message. This anecdotal evidence demonstrates that the near-death experience is a return to consciousness at the point of death, when the brain is dying. Dr. Melvin Morse thoroughly researched Olga's testimony and every detail had objective verification including the scribbled note by the son-in-law.
Sources:
Book: Morse, M. with Paul Perry, Parting Visions: Uses and Meanings of Pre-Death, Psychic, and Spiritual Experiences. - www.amazon.com
Book: Myers, F. Human Personality and Its Survival After Death, Longmans, Green and Co. 1917. - www.amazon.com
Book: Zammit, V., A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife, Chapter 14: Irrefutable proof -- Cross Correspondences - www.victorzammit.com

http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html#a2

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

The great Rupert Sheldrake portrays the "annoying" Vandal completely and accurately in the first minute; then goes on to explain the 10 dogmas. He explains the origin of and lack of evidence for the false dogma of the conservation of matter and energy as an unexamined philosophical assumption that became embedded in science; and he does the same with the notion of fixed laws of nature and constants.

The funniest part is that Sheldrake has actually eviscerated his own "side". It is not science that claims to know everything. Just read any of Eric's woo-filled diatribes and you'll get a pretty clear sense of which side claims to know everything.

Science simply works by giving us a way to differentiate between ideas and concepts that accurately describe our universe from those that accurately describe our personal wishes about the universe.

Your hero can't even use the terms energy and force correctly. He keeps using them interchangeably. I guess that is what happens when a botanist, who hasn't done research for almost four decades, decides to take on the principles of physics. What a shlub.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I guess on this "blockhead" the G stands for Gumby, which is a TV show I never saw, but if the blockhead is Vandal, then listening to Sheldrake's lecture, it's perfectly clear that G could stand for BIG G, the gravitational constant that Sheldrake shows is not really a constant, but just the kind of dogma that Vandal believes in.

Poor, superstitious, annoying, scornful, blockhead Mr. Vandal.

Please tell us enlightened one, what is a constant?

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Fine. My only problem is when you present things as evidence for your views that isn't. I'm going to continue to call you on that.

My irony meter seems to be giving off a pretty strong spike for some reason.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

What is the technical application of cosmology?

GPS, solar weather forecasting

Astronomy?

Lasers, digital cameras (CCD's)

String theory?

None, so far. And maybe none ever.

Theory of evolution?

All of modern medicine, agriculture, forensic crime scene investigation

People and authorities pay good money to see psychics or get them to find information. If it is not used more than this, it is because of bias.

Yeah. Most people are biased towards wanting actual results.

In any case, I think I mentioned before that psi cannot be as reliable as engineering. That doesn't mean it isn't useful for someone to have a psychic impression that their relative is in trouble, and as a result save their life in the nick of time.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

What does "what you have psi" mean?

You don't seem to have mentioned two things here, only one. Please clarify.

The "excess probability" here is the probability OF synapses firing in a certain way. Thus, not two things, only one.

That is incorrect. There is no tendency for the effect to shrink upon more rigorous assessment. (There is a tendency for the effect to shrink upon tests being conducted by committed skeptics, but even that effect doesn't always show up.)


This is also incorrect, in that just about everyone makes use of telepathy. It's one of the most common activities around. It's used to know when someone close to you is about to call, or is in danger and needs help, or when you're being watched, to cite three very common applications. That's without even going into the methods for increasing the effect of this and other psi abilities.

Holy crap. You really think coincidence and sub-conscious processing of normal sensory input is "using telepathy"?

You seem to think you are not as irrational as Eric but in fact your are.

It's true that parapsychology hasn't resulted in any improvement in these techniques, but that's a result of what I've been saying, that parapsychologists have failed to come up with a coherent theory. This failure has consequences above and beyond leaving the psychological community to choose between rejecting the evidence and believing in the supernatural.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I hope we can let some of the other posters here back in; we don't need to monopolize this thread.

Vandal-72's back.

The question that started this dialogue was actually NOT whether there is life after death, or when NDEs happen, etc; it is what I said above that is the issue. It is only a matter of the meaning of the term I use to define my own worldview. For some reason, you find this worth arguing about.

Whadda 'bout OBE's? How does one tell if you're having an OBE vs. just a weird dream?

Originally Posted by Eric

It is not that each one of us "has" an individual soul, but that each one of us IS an individual soul that is also one with all. Spiritists don't deny the universality of spirit and the unity of all souls with it

Oh, OK. I think that explains why hell is so hot. As the number of souls in hell increases, so does the temperature. Hell is like an air compressor. As the air compressor compresses air, the air inside heats up. Conversely, if you let the air out, the outflowing air cools off. <half baked theory by Rags />

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Alternative medicine offers successful treatments and prevention that regular medicine does not. Both are needed, but conventional medicine treats humans as machines. They are not, and so its cures are often expensive and fruitless. In emergencies, it may sometimes help, though often all it offers is expensive management of inevitable failure.

Heroic medicine is often rescues of people who have wrecked their bodies with bad habits (boozing, whoring, drug use, and smoking), have done something very stupid (bad driving, provocation of rattlesnakes, burglary of dog-infested houses), or been victims of vehicular crashes, workplace accidents, or crime. Some drunk who wanders aimlessly from a saloon into the path of an eighteen-wheeler had a better chance by giving up alcoholism than by emergency surgery. We can do better for ourselves by pushing better habits from good nutrition to physical fitness, alleviating poverty, and making contempt for the rest of humanity unacceptable.

To prevent disease is often the better path. Most often, health is the result of a good lifestyle. Conventional ideas on health have given us pills and treatments that have many side effects and deaths from mistakes. They give us heart attacks and strokes because the cause of these diseases have not been understood to be mostly lifestyle and feelings about our problems. Alternative treatments are not understood by medical science, because its paradigm is that humans are machines. Treatments that restore the life force or chi do not fit the concept of materialism, but they work, so people use them. Acupuncture for example understands the lines of force in the body and how they are connected, and I have heard of scientific evidence that it works. Most medicines are herbal remedies transformed into dangerous pills. Natural herbs remain the best cures we have, but we are exterminating many of them.

Perverse habits kill. Few people are adept at assessing risks. The same people scared of a swimming pool often become grotesquely obese. The big risk in life may come not from the swimming pool but from avoiding it (and other exercise). The more that I see of the 'miracle pills' that cure symptoms but wreck bodies the less respect I have for physicians who simply prescribe pills. The pharmaceutical industry has relearned some of the techniques of the patent-medicine shills of 120 years ago and uses those techniques on suggestible people. "Ask your doctor about .... so that you can feel good again". Heck, maybe Sibelius' sixth symphony will be more effective, and it has no warnings about possible liver damage.

It may be that some of the non-standard medicine works better by imposing some personal discipline that mass marketing of bad habits (junk food, alcohol, cancerweed, and physical inactivity) denies. Acupuncture recognizes the complexity of the neural net.

Don't believe it. The skeptics are wrong. Science understands but a tiny fraction of life and our reality. It is like trying to trap the ocean with a sieve. That doesn't mean we have to give credence to every legend or conspiracy theory that comes down the pike, as some people do. Science, for all its limits, has some credibility for verifying claims of phenomena. To assume one way or the other before knowing the facts and the reality, is silly.

Science knows its limitations. It recognizes the futility of getting finer measurements than the fineness of the objects against which comparisons are made and that measurement to some extent (usually insignificant in scale, but not at the subatomic level) alters the object measured. It can't take the murk out of randomness. There really are unanswerable questions, like how to predict where the ball will land on the roulette wheel.

Originally Posted by Vandal-72

Please tell us enlightened one, what is a constant?

A better version: what is a constant in a quantum universe?