If

[Davka]

That would depend entirely on my personality.

If I were a capricious, wrathful, jealous trickster-god, I'd be both pleased and pissed. Pleased because I'd have a new toy to torment, and pissed just because that's who I am.

If I were a loving, forgiving, kind and merciful god, I'd be pleased to see anyone and everyone. I would be able to ease the pain and suffering that is inherent to life, and I'd finally be able to explain the purpose and workings of the Universe.

You mean that you would act like a father that do his son homework?
So how your son would ever learn anything?

No, not even close. Remember, this is an after-death hypothetical, so the supposed "homework" is already done. All I'd be doing (as a truly loving god) would be going over the homework after it was already graded, and explaining my child's mistakes, as well as what she got right.

Suppose you in this life exploit the labour.
As God i would make you reborn as an exploited labour in order to see the evil of exploitation and in order to learn how to live better.

That's a reasonable approach, I guess. But it would be useless if I didn't remember my previous life. I'd just be another exploited laborer, wondering why life sucks.

In the real world, however, we can only learn from what happens in this life. We certainly don't have any reliable textbooks or homework assignments - on the contrary, we have a shit-ton of books that all claim the be "the one true textbook," and none of them are confirmed in any rational way by observable reality.

As for "homework," we have our intelligence, our curiosity, our tools, and the "homework" of all those who have gone before. We're trying to figure out the how and why of the Universe, and so far all the answers to things like "what is lightning?" and "why do people look different in different parts of the world?" and "where did all the different animals come from" are noticeably lacking anything like "goddidit." Every time we find a new answer; another piece of the puzzle, it turns out to be "this is how nature works."

So if - against all the evidence we have so far discovered - there actually is an afterlife and a god, that god's first responsibility upon my meeting her would be to explain why everything appears to be the result of natural causes rather than divine creation.

Unless god is the capricious, irrational shit described in the Bible. In that case, I'm gonna run like hell and hope he gets distracted by the prospect of another Holocaust, or another billion babies to torture with horrific diseases. BibleGod does seem to be a pretty clueless fuck, for all his bragging about omniscience.

[DeadChannel]

I'd be like "Hahahaha! Gotcha!"

[Angrboda]

When I lost 9 fingers due to frostbite, they didn't amputate the dead flesh right away. For several weeks, they allowed the dead flesh to necrotize so as to separate the good flesh from the bad. During this time I essentially had two large open wounds on each hand. In order to deal with the pain, they fed me a constant diet of opiates, painkillers derived from poppies. I felt rather little pain this way. The reason these opiates worked to suppress the pain is that they mirror the effect of natural opiates produced by the brain. The brain produces its own painkillers. Under the right circumstances, the brain can, on its own, suppress considerable pain using things like dissociation and natural opiates. What you claim is evidence of the separateness of consciousness from the mind is no such thing. It's just another example of the many strange capacities of the brain. Pure evidence my ass.

The circumstances vary from individual to individual.
You build up these circumstances.
It is like having people with money and people without money.
During the war some people scream full throat for a small wound while some other people with big wound hardly scream.
But again this is only the physical-mental side of the equation.
If you don't believe the pictures that i showed you you can go one day to one of these festival and experience for yourself how the consciousness can be disconnected from the mind so again this is evidence.

What I believe is that if the brain didn't have receptors for its own internally produced painkillers, opiates wouldn't work as painkillers. None of the above even addresses the point. You're just repeating the same claim over again. So different people have different abilities to suppress pain. That varying ability has been demonstrated by science to rely on physical-material mechanisms. All you're doing is claiming that it doesn't, without evidence.

So let me guess, you found a phenomena that you think (not proved) cannot be explained by the brain. Therefore, spirits. How do you know this cannot be explained by the brain? You admitted that you don't have the medical expertise to do so. For the record, neither do I. Yet you make the bold accertion that it can't. Your presenting a prime example of the argument-from-ignorance fallacy.

Try yourself to perforate your body with a knife or something else and then tell your brain to not let you feel any pain and to close the cut as soon as you take the knife out.

You've been corrected on this once already. The article you quote even explains how there are scars that result from the practice. But you didn't listen, did you? It goes in one ear and out the other. Who would trust such a poor learner to possess any kind of wisdom? You are a wishful thinker who believes what you want to believe, even when it's pointed out to you in black and white how it's not true. You are worthless for any kind of discernment, yogic or otherwise.

The article that you linked to clearly says, "For weeks after the festival I see local guys with fresh scars! The scar tissue is often quite obvious especially on those who have been participating for many years."

[Surgenator]

So let me guess, you found a phenomena that you think (not proved) cannot be explained by the brain. Therefore, spirits. How do you know this cannot be explained by the brain? You admitted that you don't have the medical expertise to do so. For the record, neither do I. Yet you make the bold accertion that it can't. Your presenting a prime example of the argument-from-ignorance fallacy.

Try yourself to perforate your body with a knife or something else and then tell your brain to not let you feel any pain and to close the cut as soon as you take the knife out.
Do you think your brain will listen to you?
Do you think your medical expertise would help you in any way to understand how the system works?
So how come that some people can do and other can not do?

First off, I'm not interested in purposely injuring myself. Second, you still making the same argument-from-ignorance fallacy. You have to show that the brain cannot do it. You haven't not done so.

The wonderful past where people died from tooth decay and had a lifespace of 30 years. But now we have all this dirty air, water, and pesticides that prevents us progressing past the age of 30. Oh wait, we now live up to 80 years old. How is that not progress. How the fact that people have more leisure time today than in the past 100 years considered not progress. FYI, they didn't take viagra because they didn't live past 30. Viagra is for old people that are in the 50's and up.

You never give up dreaming surgen.
The consciousness of people in the past was different from today consciousness.
Peace of mind is not related to having or not having a computer or as in the past to have or not having a cart with a pulling ox.
You could be 100% happy with a cart and 100% unhappy with a computer.
Peace of mind and happiness have nothing to do with material-physical possession or having a perfect body.
Beautiful and rich people commit suicide regardless of what they got, on the other hand you may find ugly and poor people happy with what they got.

So your going to appeal to your special knowledge. I always wondered how you would know the consciousness of people who are long dead. Are you suppose to be physic? What I mentioned can easily be varified while your claims are wishful thinking, nothing more.

The reason why I don't believe in anything beyond the physical worlds is simple. There is no evidence for it.

That is mental laziness.
Intelligent people would try to understand where happiness and peace of mind can be found.
It doesn't take long to understand that can not be found in this finite universe in which the positive and negative (yang and yin) always balance each other so they would look elsewhere rather than wait for father Christmas to bring the goodies.

I do explore where my happiness and peace of mind comes from. It comes from my friends, a good night sleep, interesting stories, and sometimes arguing with idiots. But what you want everyone to do is plainly stupid. You don't accept something just because it sounds cool. If that was the case, I would be visiting New York city to see all the super heroes.

WOW WOW WOW.
Since when your scientific evidence has been able to understand the supernatural world?

There you go again, trying to change the subject. Prove that testimonials are scientific evidences.

What is scientific surgen?
Does your idea of scientific is related to this physical world?
How do you know that this universe is not an illusion and the supernatural is?
Can your scientific evidence explain why some people don't feel any pain when they perforate their flesh?
So if your scientific evidence CAN NOT explain these facts then how can you rely on something that fail to understand this thing?
Don't you think that an intelligent person would think that is much better to rely on something that can explain these facts.

Scientific evidence is a testible, repeatable experiment that gives consistent results independent of the user. Testinomials are not repeatable and defineatly not consistent. They also are heavily dependent on the experimentor. Hense they are not scientific evidence.

Please demonstrated how cannot explain why some people don't feel pain. Before you just assume that is the case.

See I told you don't understand the null hypothesis. My position is the null hypothesis. It is your job to prove that the null hypothesis isn't sufficient to explain the observations.

Hypothesis are used by someone with an open mind not by someone that lock himself inside a corral of dogmas and doesn't allow anyone to enter and challenge his ideas as in your case.
As far as you insist that scientific evidence has to be related to this physical world then you automatically reject any hypothesis.

All scientific hypothesis are falsifiable, including the null hypothesis. If you cannot create an experiment that falsifies the null hypothesis, then I don't need to believe in anything extra. You want us to first except your hypothesis and then find evidence for it. This is fundamentally backwards of how science works. Hense, it is not scientific, but pseudoscientific.

[Little Rik]

That's a reasonable approach, I guess. But it would be useless if I didn't remember my previous life. I'd just be another exploited laborer, wondering why life sucks.

Suppose that YOUR full picture is missing something.
Suppose that your consciousness is always tune in with the cosmic consciousness but your mind is not.
So your consciousness knows about your previous life but as far as you haven't created a parallelism between your consciousness and your mind is not possible for your mind to see the full picture.
The work to be done would be to reflect your consciousness into your mind so you could see the reality and understand how everything works but this hypothetically is also the divine game.
Where would be the fun for the supreme controller if everything is easy?

In the real world, however, we can only learn from what happens in this life. We certainly don't have any reliable textbooks or homework assignments - on the contrary, we have a shit-ton of books that all claim the be "the one true textbook," and none of them are confirmed in any rational way by observable reality.
As for "homework," we have our intelligence, our curiosity, our tools, and the "homework" of all those who have gone before. We're trying to figure out the how and why of the Universe, and so far all the answers to things like "what is lightning?" and "why do people look different in different parts of the world?" and "where did all the different animals come from" are noticeably lacking anything like "goddidit." Every time we find a new answer; another piece of the puzzle, it turns out to be "this is how nature works."
So if - against all the evidence we have so far discovered - there actually is an afterlife and a god, that god's first responsibility upon my meeting her would be to explain why everything appears to be the result of natural causes rather than divine creation.
Unless god is the capricious, irrational shit described in the Bible. In that case, I'm gonna run like hell and hope he gets distracted by the prospect of another Holocaust, or another billion babies to torture with horrific diseases. BibleGod does seem to be a pretty clueless fuck, for all his bragging about omniscience.

If i would be God i would say to you...........WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU!
HOW CAN YOU BE SO DUMB! CAN'T YOU SEE THAT IN THE CREATED UNIVERSE THERE CAN NOT BE ANY REAL PROGRESS..........CAN'T YOU REALIZE THAT REAL PROGRESS CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED OUTSIDE AND INTO THE SPIRITUAL SIDE?
So no.
According to me God is not responsible for anyone dumbness.

[Davka]

That's a reasonable approach, I guess. But it would be useless if I didn't remember my previous life. I'd just be another exploited laborer, wondering why life sucks.

Suppose that YOUR full picture is missing something.
Suppose that your consciousness is always tune in with the cosmic consciousness but your mind is not.
So your consciousness knows about your previous life but as far as you haven't created a parallelism between your consciousness and your mind is not possible for your mind to see the full picture.

This is a false dichotomy. You really need to look up the meanings of words before you start throwing them around higgledy-piggledy. "Consciousness" == "mindfulness" even in woo-town; you can't have consciousness without a mind.

You're trying to pretend that water can be separated from wet.

The work to be done would be to reflect your consciousness into your mind so you could see the reality and understand how everything works but this hypothetically is also the divine game.
Where would be the fun for the supreme controller if everything is easy?

If it's a divine game played by a supreme controller for her entertainment, then she is a sadistic and malevolent bitch. She's willing to allow countless billions of sentient beings to suffer in agony without the slightest clue as to what - if any - the purpose of it all is.

If i would be God i would say to you...........WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU!
HOW CAN YOU BE SO DUMB! CAN'T YOU SEE THAT IN THE CREATED UNIVERSE THERE CAN NOT BE ANY REAL PROGRESS..........CAN'T YOU REALIZE THAT REAL PROGRESS CAN ONLY BE ACHIEVED OUTSIDE AND INTO THE SPIRITUAL SIDE?

Yeah, I had an acid trip like that once, too.

But I came down.

[Little Rik]

What I believe is that if the brain didn't have receptors for its own internally produced painkillers, opiates wouldn't work as painkillers. None of the above even addresses the point. You're just repeating the same claim over again. So different people have different abilities to suppress pain. That varying ability has been demonstrated by science to rely on physical-material mechanisms. All you're doing is claiming that it doesn't, without evidence.

The brain is something physical and as all physical things they are FINITE.
As such there got to be a limit to what the brain can or can not do while consciousness is INFINITE by nature so it is unlimited in the way it can do things.
The fact that the pain can be suppress doesn't mean much.
The aftermath and consequences of a normal injury are there for quite a long time.
On the other hand when the consciousness take over and the brain is under control the consequences are minimized or nullify altogether.

Try yourself to perforate your body with a knife or something else and then tell your brain to not let you feel any pain and to close the cut as soon as you take the knife out.

You've been corrected on this once already. The article you quote even explains how there are scars that result from the practice. But you didn't listen, did you? It goes in one ear and out the other. Who would trust such a poor learner to possess any kind of wisdom? You are a wishful thinker who believes what you want to believe, even when it's pointed out to you in black and white how it's not true. You are worthless for any kind of discernment, yogic or otherwise.
The article that you linked to clearly says, "For weeks after the festival I see local guys with fresh scars! The scar tissue is often quite obvious especially on those who have been participating for many years."

Actually is you that doesn't listen.
If you go back many month ago when we were talking about this subject i already explained why.
The people who participate in these festivals are normal people who during the year most of them eat meat and don't really do any meditation.
They follow Hinduism which involve a bit of chanting mantras and some prayers.
Once a year they want to prove themselves that God is with them so what they do?
3 weeks before the festival they only eat vegetarian food in order to clean up their body-mind from impurities and at the same time they chant mantras in the temples and sex is also off during that time in order to focus on the divinity within.
When the time come their mind is therefore under control and their consciousness take over but here we got to understand that not everybody reach an high stage of consciousness so in some of them the mind still has some influence over them and that is why some of them feel a bit of pain and some scars are still visible while other feel no pain and no scars are visible so again you show that you haven't got the full picture of what really happen.

[Davka]

The people who participate in these festivals are normal people who during the year most of them eat meat and don't really do any meditation.
They follow Hinduism which involve a bit of chanting mantras and some prayers.
Once a year they want to prove themselves that God is with them so what they do?
3 weeks before the festival they only eat vegetarian food in order to clean up their body-mind from impurities and at the same time they chant mantras in the temples and sex is also off during that time in order to focus on the divinity within.

All of which results in a state of brain activity which causes the body to secrete natural pain blockers.

None of which leads logically to your conclusions:

When the time come their mind is therefore under control and their consciousness take over but here we got to understand that not everybody reach an high stage of consciousness so in some of them the mind still has some influence over them and that is why some of them feel a bit of pain and some scars are still visible while other feel no pain and no scars are visible so again you show that you haven't got the full picture of what really happen.

This is pure conjecture, based on a steaming pile of woo wrapped loosely in pseudoscience.

You have yet to demonstrate that such a thing as a "higher state of consciousness" even exists, let alone that the mind's influence over the individual can be halted without producing unconsciousness. All you're doing is parroting the explanations of ignorant snake-oil salesmen for things they themselves don't understand.

[Little Rik]

This is a false dichotomy. You really need to look up the meanings of words before you start throwing them around higgledy-piggledy. "Consciousness" == "mindfulness" even in woo-town; you can't have consciousness without a mind. You're trying to pretend that water can be separated from wet.

NDEs proved that consciousness can be there without a mind.

If it's a divine game played by a supreme controller for her entertainment, then she is a sadistic and malevolent bitch. She's willing to allow countless billions of sentient beings to suffer in agony without the slightest clue as to what - if any - the purpose of it all is.

Sorry mate.
Wrong again.
It is not God that destroy the forests, create pollution, create hunger, create exploitation and all sort of evil so why blame God?

Yeah, I had an acid trip like that once, too.
But I came down.

How sad!

---

The people who participate in these festivals are normal people who during the year most of them eat meat and don't really do any meditation.
They follow Hinduism which involve a bit of chanting mantras and some prayers.
Once a year they want to prove themselves that God is with them so what they do?
3 weeks before the festival they only eat vegetarian food in order to clean up their body-mind from impurities and at the same time they chant mantras in the temples and sex is also off during that time in order to focus on the divinity within.

All of which results in a state of brain activity which causes the body to secrete natural pain blockers.

None of which leads logically to your conclusions:

When the time come their mind is therefore under control and their consciousness take over but here we got to understand that not everybody reach an high stage of consciousness so in some of them the mind still has some influence over them and that is why some of them feel a bit of pain and some scars are still visible while other feel no pain and no scars are visible so again you show that you haven't got the full picture of what really happen.

This is pure conjecture, based on a steaming pile of woo wrapped loosely in pseudoscience.

You have yet to demonstrate that such a thing as a "higher state of consciousness" even exists, let alone that the mind's influence over the individual can be halted without producing unconsciousness. All you're doing is parroting the explanations of ignorant snake-oil salesmen for things they themselves don't understand.

Try to believe.

[Davka]

This is a false dichotomy. You really need to look up the meanings of words before you start throwing them around higgledy-piggledy. "Consciousness" == "mindfulness" even in woo-town; you can't have consciousness without a mind. You're trying to pretend that water can be separated from wet.

NDEs proved that consciousness can be there without a mind.

All that NDEs have proven so far is that the brain does some pretty weird shit when it's shutting down. Actual double-blind tests have shown that these subjective experiences are not linked to physical reality.

My favorite test was this: A sign was placed in an operating room, in a spot where it could only be seen by someone who was up near the ceiling. The sign was simple, clear, and attention-drawing. Nobody other than the researcher was aware of what was written on the sign, and doctors did not even know which operating room the sign was in.

Whenever a patient reported a NDE, they were interviewed. Those who reported having been "hovering above my body, looking down on everything that was happening" (an extremely common phenomenon in NDEs) were asked what was written on the sign.

Not one of them could answer. Most said they did not see a sign. This study was done over the course of a few years.

If it's a divine game played by a supreme controller for her entertainment, then she is a sadistic and malevolent bitch. She's willing to allow countless billions of sentient beings to suffer in agony without the slightest clue as to what - if any - the purpose of it all is.

Sorry mate.
Wrong again.
It is not God that destroy the forests, create pollution, create hunger, create exploitation and all sort of evil so why blame God?

Who created Spina Bifida? Polio? Multiple Sclerosis? Who created the human body such that death during childbirth was common until the advent of modern medicine, and infant mortality was so high that many cultures did not even bother to name children under 2 years old?

Sure, humans are responsible for a lot of suffering. But nature is responsible for far more - as well as for creating the conditions which cause humans to do so many horrible things out of desperation and fear.

Yeah, I had an acid trip like that once, too.
But I came down.

How sad!

Not really. Delusional mental states can be entertaining, but living there 24/7? That's truly sad.

Try to believe.

On what basis?

Are you suggesting that I should attempt to fool my brain into a belief-system which will lead to confirmation bias by way of dopamine squirts?