RE: Atheists, I want to know your explanation for these Out of body experiences?
January 25, 2017 at 6:31 pm
(This post was last modified: January 25, 2017 at 6:36 pm by bennyboy.)
Okay, OP, let me say a couple things.
First of all, you are talking about anecdotal evidence. There are a couple problems with it:
1) People sometimes invent "truth" after the fact without realizing it. So somebody does NOT know there's a problem, for example, but after the problem occurs, they are 100% sure they predicted it: "I just KNEW something bad was going to happen, and then I got that terrible phone call!" They are not lying-- they just don't know the power of the mind in altering memories to match a narrative.
2) Given enough OBEs (and I can say the experiences are definitely real, since I've had a couple), you will have a few freak outcomes that are very compelling. If enough people have magic crystals, for example, some of them will be "miraculously" cured of cancer or will win a lottery. If their testimony is considered, and the many others whose testimony doesn't support their conclusions is disregarded, you get a false picture.
3) OBEs can be achieved in laboratory conditions, and by far the weight of evidence is against the idea that they are anything other than a sense-dissociative state, a la lucid dreaming, hypnosis and so on.
4) Sometimes people just lie or fudge details, to get famous or to sell books.
Now, it's possible that a few people really HAVE used OBEs to achieve real world results, to see what was happening in other places, and so on. Nobody can prove conclusively that it's impossible. But given what we know about anecdotal evidence, OBE-as-real-astral-travel is not the best explanation for those anecdtoes.
Understand this. If it keeps you from substituting magical crystals for actual medicine, or soothsayers for a proper pros-and-cons list in making big life decisions, understanding why anecdotal evidence fails could be crucially important to you.
imo, that should be /thread
First of all, you are talking about anecdotal evidence. There are a couple problems with it:
1) People sometimes invent "truth" after the fact without realizing it. So somebody does NOT know there's a problem, for example, but after the problem occurs, they are 100% sure they predicted it: "I just KNEW something bad was going to happen, and then I got that terrible phone call!" They are not lying-- they just don't know the power of the mind in altering memories to match a narrative.
2) Given enough OBEs (and I can say the experiences are definitely real, since I've had a couple), you will have a few freak outcomes that are very compelling. If enough people have magic crystals, for example, some of them will be "miraculously" cured of cancer or will win a lottery. If their testimony is considered, and the many others whose testimony doesn't support their conclusions is disregarded, you get a false picture.
3) OBEs can be achieved in laboratory conditions, and by far the weight of evidence is against the idea that they are anything other than a sense-dissociative state, a la lucid dreaming, hypnosis and so on.
4) Sometimes people just lie or fudge details, to get famous or to sell books.
Now, it's possible that a few people really HAVE used OBEs to achieve real world results, to see what was happening in other places, and so on. Nobody can prove conclusively that it's impossible. But given what we know about anecdotal evidence, OBE-as-real-astral-travel is not the best explanation for those anecdtoes.
Understand this. If it keeps you from substituting magical crystals for actual medicine, or soothsayers for a proper pros-and-cons list in making big life decisions, understanding why anecdotal evidence fails could be crucially important to you.
imo, that should be /thread
