RE: Evolution
March 14, 2018 at 8:51 pm
(This post was last modified: March 14, 2018 at 9:03 pm by Angrboda.)
(March 14, 2018 at 11:19 am)Little Rik Wrote: 1) Hindus follow a religion with all their dogmas and their hundreds of Gods so it is irrelevant to me what they think.
I could really care less what you think of Hindus, the fact is that the reports of their NDEs are relevant to the argument you put forward. I must also say that given how much you whined about me allegedly dismissing your evidence for arbitrary reasons, I find your dismissal of their NDE reports to be hypocritical. Regardless, you brought forth that your interpretation of why people were being sent back was because of karma is contradicted by their experiences. You still have that contradiction to resolve despite your rather irrelevant complaint about their dogmas and their hundreds of Gods. Your objection would only be relevant if it were Hindu dogma to lie about NDE experiences, which I'm pretty sure it's not.
(March 14, 2018 at 11:19 am)Little Rik Wrote: 2) As far as NDEs are behind contradiction then those experience in which there is God, karma and reincarnation are real therefore is pointless for you to argue unless you can contradict that NDEs are not real.
Not true in more ways than one, but we'll get to that later. The existence of your specific God appearing in an NDE might lend credence to the idea that karma and reincarnation exist, but only insofar as the god encountered in an NDE corresponds to your god. Do you have an NDE in which the god that appears identifies himself as the god of reincarnation and karma? If not, you don't have a case of an NDE in which your specific god identifiably appears. From what I understand, the most common identifiable god appearing in NDEs is the Christian god in the form of Jesus. Not only does that not help you as he is not your specific god, it in fact creates a problem. If Jesus is real, then Christian beliefs about the afterlife follow, and that doesn't include reincarnation and karma. So, no, the mere appearance of a god in an NDE does not by itself entail the existence of reincarnation and karma.
(March 14, 2018 at 11:19 am)Little Rik Wrote: The day that you can prove that an NDE can be experienced with a dead brain then you will have a good argument to bring forward.
At the moment you don't so all your blah, blah, blah is pointless.
You misunderstand the burden of proof here. You are the person who claimed that reincarnation and karma exist because of the things experienced in NDEs. I need not demonstrate that NDE experience is not real. Quite the opposite, to demonstrate your claim, you must prove that NDEs are real in all applicable senses (below I have more to say on this). I could accept that NDEs occur as you say, by consciousness leaving the body, etc., without having to concede that the things experienced in an NDE are all true (and not some type of illusion that consciousness is prone to once it leaves the body). Typical of you, to claim victory when you've only half succeeded. You need to demonstrate the truth of NDEs. I do not need to refute NDEs as a whole to refute your particular claims here. So, typical of you, your claim that my "blah, blah, blah" as you call it is not in fact pointless, as I don't need to present any such argument that NDEs occur in a dead brain to effectively refute your claims. So, sorry, but you're wrong again.
(March 14, 2018 at 11:19 am)Little Rik Wrote: Obviously you haven't read much about NDEs.
If you would have you would know that a lot of those people clearly explain that life continue until the peak of evolution is reached and those who do not talk about that do not say the opposite because for them is something obvious.
And we have NDEs in which people see Jesus Christ, who, identifiably does not endorse the truth of karma or reincarnation. The thing you're not getting is that the problem is not whether you can dredge up some schmuck who had an NDE in which he talked about karma and reincarnation, the problem is that the NDE accounts report contradictory things. If Jesus Christ appears in an NDE and is "real," then according to that NDE, karma and reincarnation do not exist. Any NDE which reports a view of the afterlife which is not compatible with karma and reincarnation becomes a problem because contradictory things cannot both be true in the same sense. In order to resolve the contradiction, you cannot appeal to particular NDEs as real and accurate and others as not so, based solely on the content of the NDEs alone, as that is simply begging the question. You can only settle the Jesus versus Yoga God question regarding NDEs by proving that one or the other is the only accurate picture of reality based upon something outside of NDEs. Otherwise you are just judging which account is accurate and which is not, solely on the basis of your prior beliefs about the respective religious/spiritual beliefs. And your prior beliefs aren't evidence, so deciding by that is invalid, and your conclusions unfounded. Ultimately, you must justify believing certain NDEs over others by reference to the real world, rather than to the NDEs. However, I've never seen you provide any evidence for your god outside of NDEs, so I suspect that you don't have any. Failing that, it is impossible for you to maintain that NDEs are real and that they exclusively provide evidence for your beliefs. If you can't do that, then you don't have evidence that karma and reincarnation exist because your evidence paints a picture which is logically irreconcilable.
I will also note that you are prone to lying about the prevalence of specific content in NDEs (e.g. veridical NDEs), so I have no faith in your claim that "a lot of those people clearly explain that life continue until the peak of evolution is reached...." (emphasis mine). Evidence not presented is not evidence. Provide the accounts of three such NDEs or else your claim is just an unsupported assertion and will be dismissed accordingly. (Not that it's even relevant, but I'm going to require you to substantiate your assertion. Evidence that is not actually presented is not evidence.)
(March 14, 2018 at 11:19 am)Little Rik Wrote: 3) You say that you do not dismissed NDEs as false but at the same time you keep on asking for more and more evidence 24/7.
No matter the amount of evidence given to you.
You still would ask for more and more evidence obviously because your strong belief in no God would collapse in no time.
No point in trying to understand.
You are hopeless.
You were whining about my dismissing things in this thread, specifically that I had dismissed NDEs as not being real. Your initial complaint was false, and your attempt to imply that any of my arguments depended upon such a dismissal is just dishonest. Regardless, I'm not going to respond to your attempt to psychoanalyze the reasons why I have in the past asked for evidence as it is not germane to this thread.
However since you are being such a dishonest and hypocritical prick, I'm going to raise a point about the question of whether NDEs are real, and place some strictures upon your evidence as a consequence. First let's get out of the way one niggling quibble which must necessarily be borne in mind. This is the fact that, on the basis of the experience of an NDE, it is not possible to distinguish between attributing OBE experiences to clairvoyance/clairaudience, and attributing them to consciousness leaving the body. Note, I am not here denying that, perhaps, there is no biological phenomena that can account for NDEs. I am only claiming that there is not conclusive evidence that consciousness, whatever it is, actually leaves the body. Since you are claiming that consciousness leaves the body prior to reincarnation, you necessarily must show that. Specifically, you must show that OBEs in NDEs cannot be accounted for by clairvoyance/clairaudience, in which the consciousness never leaves the body. It's a subtle distinction, but an important one.
Now onto the more significant stricture upon the NDE evidence you present. Regardless of how one conceives of consciousness -- brain, soul, independent entity -- it is a known fact that people can hallucinate things (and I don't need to rely on a brain based explanation for this to matter, as, given the burden of proof, you are responsible for establishing the reality of NDE content, not the other way around). We know that in hallucinatory experiences, only some of the perceived content is not veridical or false. If I hallucinate a bear in my living room, that does not mean that my perception of the walls, my couch, the furniture in my room, my body, are all hallucinatory and therefore unreal. The content of perception during a hallucination is mixed, part of it being real, and part of it not being real. If consciousness, spirit, whatever, is capable of hallucinating, then we cannot depend upon the fact that some elements of perception are real to validate that all elements in my perception are real. Because there is a mix of real and unreal elements in hallucinations, the fact that some aspect of a veridical NDE is real (such as Pamela Reynolds' perception of the operating room instruments) does not itself provide evidence that other aspects (such as seeing God, for example) are also real. That doesn't follow given what we know about illusory content in perception. Even if we grant that consciousness leaves the body and is able to perceive its surroundings, that does not in itself demonstrate that some of the perceptions, say those beyond the OBE, are not illusory. The long and short of it is that you must either demonstrate that a disembodied consciousness is not capable of having illusory perceptions, or you must restrict the evidence you present to only those elements of an NDE that have been verified as real or veridical (such as the contents of the OBE). Failing that, you cannot conclude anything based on NDE content that has not been verified by independent observers, as that would not be logically valid.
Good luck.
(March 14, 2018 at 11:19 am)Little Rik Wrote: 4) Many NDEs clearly talk about action and reactions which result in going up or down evolutionary speaking that is why as it happen physically also happen in consciousness.
Answered above.
(March 14, 2018 at 11:19 am)Little Rik Wrote: 5) Why the universe would disintegrate without someone in charge.
The universe need energy to survive like a body need energy to survive.
There is no such a thing in the universe that is able to exist without being continuously fed so obviously lack of "food" means death.
I'll give you points for creativity. Unfortunately your argument fails. The universe began with a rather low total entropy, which in plain speak means that it originally was possessed of considerable potential energy as a consequence of that low entropy. Over time, the universe has been converting that potential energy into actual energy by increasing its entropy, becoming more and more disordered. So, in fact, the universe began with an abundant source of energy which it has gradually been converting from potential energy into other forms of energy. So, you see, the universe has had a continual infusion of energy thanks to its initial state; no god required. So, no, the idea that the universe would have thus necessarily "died" from lack of food without god is simply false. It has been constantly feeding itself through this process of entropy conversion since its inception. It will only run out of energy at the heat death of the universe, but that's not going to occur for a very long time to come. When that comes, there will indeed be a sort of death, but that has not happened in the past, so no god has been required between the inception of the universe and now (in terms of energy anyway). But kudos for creativity, even though your answer is still wrong.
Try again.
(March 14, 2018 at 11:19 am)Little Rik Wrote: Additionally:
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(March 13, 2018 at 8:19 am)Little Rik Wrote: On top of this we have ex hard and staunch atheists that are now strong theists so you are just fooling yourself in believing that evidence is not there.
Quote:This isn't evidence for either karma or reincarnation, so your complaint here is irrelevant to this discussion.
These ex atheists went trough an NDE which entail that God is there, karma is there and reincarnation is there.
First of all, it only entails that they believe there is a god, not that one therefore exists. Their changed belief by itself is evidence of nothing. But more to the point, their experience, if real, is evidence of a god, not necessarily your specific god. If they have an NDE of Jesus, it doesn't help you, as reincarnation and karma are not implied by His existence. In addition, my earlier comments about irreconcilable god claims also applies. So, no, this is not relevant.