Quote: (01-27-2016 11:10 PM)hydrogonian Wrote:  

Quote: (01-27-2016 11:48 AM)The Father Wrote:  

Interesting comments, all. I think where I've ended up is that, while I see no evidence for a god, the possibility is so unknowable that I refuse to rule it out.

Agnosticism is a rational position, much more so than atheism in my opinion. I was an agnostic for a long time.

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And I've seen too many eerie things happen to not think there is some collective consciousness out there, some string we are pushing on. For example, did you ever suddenly wonder "Hey, I wonder whatever happened to my old friend Bob. Haven't thought of Bob in YEARS!" And then minutes later, Bob calls out of the blue :/ After years. There is some sort of super-consciousness we all occasionally tap into. Not sure what that means or implies about a deity or a higher collective consciousness beyond our mortal, individual consciousness. But it's just odd.

I've had at least two confirmed experiences, with the different individuals, along the lines of a shared psychic phenomenon. I had prior shared a traumatic experience with one of these individuals (we had a mutual deceased friend), and with the other we had had an intense personal connection (a girl - though not one that I had had sex with nor was going to). The former experience was intensely physical, shared, unmistakable, and confirmed in the moment as we were within ten feet of one another. Also, it involved the deceased friend, in a manner of speaking, and was one of the most memorable experiences of my life. The latter experience occurred across several states and was confirmed later.

Though, I can't hold these to be evidence of "God", the experiences were evidence enough for me toward a shared consciousness of sorts, or perhaps a communication channel that is accessible if enough love, emotion, trauma, etc. is shared between individuals. The one that involved the dead friend seemed to involve a third power, and that is how I always interpreted it. I've had other experiences, but these are the only ones that I am reasonably confident in terms of their nature; at least insofar as anyone can be. I'm not one to look for experiences like this, or to over-interpret them, but also I can't deny that these events occurred.

Those are exactly my experiences. I do not pretend they prove "God". They just prove that there are yet undiscovered realities. If you were born in the 3rd century, you'd look around at the moon and stars and tides and seasons and KNOW they were real....but you'd have no idea why. So you might make up a story to explain it. We see phenomena like what you and I have described above, we know it to be real, and we do not yet have the science to explain it. Well I won't make up a Church of a Flying Spaghetti Monster to explain it, but I do believe something exists, something meaningful and powerful, and I have no real idea about it's nature. That is simultaneously the most interesting, frustrating, and somewhat frightening thought of which I can conceive.

Quote: (01-27-2016 10:38 AM)EDantes Wrote:  

Basically the Secular Humanist religion uses a lot of the same philosophical ideas as religious fundamentalism. In short it basically just trades "God" for science and claims that "science" is the only way to happiness.

This is true. They basically use Aristotle to go in and turn the Universal Ideals of Plato on their head, and then they exit their surgical project and say "Look, here, these are now the Universals". And then they deny the use of the tools of Aristotle to anyone who wants to go back in and fix their mess. Meaning, that they hold their new moralities to derive from "immutable" truth and thus they ignore any logic from dissenters. It's a dirty trick.

I personally know a guy who was killed in an accident, went to the next place, and came back. He sits in his wheel chair and can barely talk about anything else. Now what I dont get is this. I can understand how a being could be "uploaded", so to speak, to a parallel universe but he was even wearing the same clothes there that he had at the time of death. He saw translucent winged beings and interesting enough, birds. Our God seriously likes birds. That is mind blowing.

Quote: (01-27-2016 11:28 PM)rpg Wrote:  

I personally know a guy who was killed in an accident, went to the next place, and came back. He sits in his wheel chair and can barely talk about anything else. Now what I dont get is this. I can understand how a being could be "uploaded", so to speak, to a parallel universe but he was even wearing the same clothes there that he had at the time of death. He saw translucent winged beings and interesting enough, birds. Our God seriously likes birds. That is mind blowing.

Tell me more. What were the extent of his injuries. Physical. Mental. How does he KNOW he went to another place. Could he have been dreaming? What was the place like? What did he take away from all this? Were the winged beings judgmental? Or accepting? Did he have to EARN his way there? Did he see dead relatives? Most significantly...how do you know he didn't hallucinate it all?

Quote: (01-27-2016 11:28 PM)rpg Wrote:  

I can understand how a being could be "uploaded", so to speak, to a parallel universe but he was even wearing the same clothes there that he had at the time of death.

Quote: (01-27-2016 11:28 PM)rpg Wrote:  

I personally know a guy who was killed in an accident, went to the next place, and came back. He sits in his wheel chair and can barely talk about anything else. Now what I dont get is this. I can understand how a being could be "uploaded", so to speak, to a parallel universe but he was even wearing the same clothes there that he had at the time of death. He saw translucent winged beings and interesting enough, birds. Our God seriously likes birds. That is mind blowing.

Reminds me of people who take psychedelics and actually think they discovered some "hidden" part of universe or some nonsense like that.

Someone I knew once tripped on DMT and was transported into alien ship where he saw and spoke with his dead grandpa and it felt 100% real, maybe more real then anything else that happened before in his life.

He understood that it was just temporary altered brain chemistry and that he didn't discover some deeper meaning of life or any other bullshit.

Just ask yourself: What is more likely, that this persons brain was "altered" in some way OR that creator of the universe himself transported him because he wanted to show him around

Also, there is no such thing as a miracle. There are things that are highly unlikely but not miracles: Like being false recognized as dead, spontaneously beating cancer, surviving plane crash...
Miracle would be if your head was cut off and 5 minutes latter it re-attached itself.

And with some 20 000 people dying of hunger each day, I think it's very egoistic to think that creator of the universe is bending the "laws of reality" for you or people you know.

Quote: (01-28-2016 12:20 AM)Hoo Wrote:  

Just ask yourself: What is more likely, that this persons brain was "altered" in some way OR that creator of the universe himself transported him because he wanted to show him around

That's simple to adjudicate. If you want to be intellectually honest about applying Ockham's Razor -- which you're having a sort of an inept go at here -- then all you have to do replicate the same experience precisely in another person with chemical ingestion of the same substance.

If you can, you can then say it's more likely that the effect is solely due to the drug. Without it, you can't say with any intellectual honesty which is more likely. And it still would not invalidate the experiences of those who have spiritual experiences without ingestion of the drug. Let's leave aside the logical fallacy of Inappropriate Generalisation you're trying on by attempting to make your friend's experience stand for everybody else who has a supernatural experience.

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Also, there is no such thing as a miracle. There are things that are highly unlikely but not miracles: Like being false recognized as dead, spontaneously beating cancer, surviving plane crash...
Miracle would be if your head was cut off and 5 minutes latter it re-attached itself.

That's also intellectually dishonest, because a miracle is by definition something that defies both probability and the laws of physics. Would you like to posit why an omniscient and omnipotent deity should have to confine itself to human laws of probability or physics?

And please don't go to the fallback of "miracles are just shit that science hasn't explained yet." That's as fallacious as the God of the Gaps argument.

God is real simply on the basis that my ass has been saved in near impossible situations by pure and complete luck almost repetitively. Moments where I thought I had no hope possibly surviving.

Giving those away might be giving away too big of a paper trail, but I can elaborate over PM. That and my constant ability to always find someone higher up on the food chain shows me there is a natural hierarchy to life and to stand on the summit is to complete defy reality itself ergo God.

Lastly I believe in God simply because I gain everything from having faith in such a being and lose nothing should he not exist on a purely practical basis all my personal feelings and gut assumptions put aside.

I'd also like to point out that I'd believe that God is more a concept than say a physical being conscious in a human kind of being. People always liken God to some man in the sky, but that's as far from possible that it could be. God is an omniscient conceptual force in the universe plain and simple.

This post is more or less sort of a self confirmation as these kinds of arguments over the existence of a being we humans can only hope to understand always become circular.

On drugs opening the way to belief in God. Most of the human brain is unmapped and there is no true knowledge on what certain chemicals can 100% do to the human brain. Perhaps those chemicals allow for greater understanding perhaps they don't. You can't completely rule out the possibility.

[quote] (01-28-2016 12:20 AM)Hoo Wrote:  

[quote='rpg' pid='1204093' dateline='1453955319']

Just ask yourself: What is more likely, that this persons brain was "altered" in some way OR that creator of the universe himself transported him because he wanted to show him around [/quote]

I've read somewhere that the reason people see things being on drugs is that a drug stops your mind's functioning. When you stop your mental function, you can see other worlds.

As in meditation, the main purpose is to stop the thought process. When you manage to stop the mind, you go beyond it. And it's not some fantasy. But it takes quite a few years of practice to master this.

Most people just don't have patience to practise it long enough, and prefer a short route using drugs, which are destructive and short-term in effect, whereas in meditation you can alter your consciousness at your sweet will, but it takes a very long time and discipline, which entails for instance a vegetarian diet and physical abstinence. ))

Btw you shouldn't completely empty your mind and also don't open the top chakras first while doing kundalini meditation, I had a friend who started hearing demons and voices.

Quote: (01-28-2016 03:51 AM)avantgarde Wrote:  

Btw you shouldn't completely empty your mind and also don't open the top chakras first while doing kundalini meditation, I had a friend who started hearing demons and voices.

I've heard, if you don't abstain from boffing, you can go nuts, if you practise meditation, especially kundalini.
I guess that's why many chicks who practise yoga are nuts, as they practise some elements of kundalini, without caring to purify their nature.

I believe in God and that belief helped me have the courage to continue on during a number of difficult times in my life. Despite its many detractors I also believe that religion as a general rule is beneficial to a society.

Quote: (01-25-2016 01:26 PM)Truth Teller Wrote:  

Quote: (01-25-2016 10:52 AM)glugger Wrote:  

Someone mentioned Intelligent Design was bad science, can you please explain why?

Sure. Science is methodologically naturalistic. That is, it looks for natural answers to questions about the natural world. It seeks to explain how things occur, not why they do. Science usually has multiple levels of explanation, even if we can't yet find them.

Intelligent Design argues for "inference to an intelligent agent." That's fine, but that's not science. It's philosophy. Saying that an intelligent agent created the universe (which I believe, by the way) is not a scientific answer. How did this agent do so?

Intelligent Design unfortunately blurs the lines between primary (divine) and secondary (natural) causality. Science can only test secondary causality, but ID tries to make it test both.

Yes I think I've seen this argument, science can only prove natural things, and you can't test the supernatural, therefore you can't prove god exists. I think this is essentially what you are saying here.

But what's frustrating is that ID is logically sound to me. I haven't seen or heard anything that clearly proves ID to be completely illogical (would to love to read more on this if someone has info). Even the counter someone made to the watch analogy earlier in this thread falls unsatisfyingly short of making ID seem illogical.

I've read a few books basically on the lord, liar, or lunatic scenario (can't remember the exact title), and this combined with some creation science* arguments (irreducible complexity, no new genetic material) has me tentatively believing.


I was raised christian, we went to church semi-regularly, went to a christian school, played in chapel band etc. But frustatingly I've never been able to confirm to myself physically that god exists, even though logically I believe so.

*I understand how laughable a lot of the creation science media is, but I think the two ideas mentioned above have merit.

Quote: (01-28-2016 12:20 AM)Hoo Wrote:  

Quote: (01-27-2016 11:28 PM)rpg Wrote:  

I personally know a guy who was killed in an accident, went to the next place, and came back. He sits in his wheel chair and can barely talk about anything else. Now what I dont get is this. I can understand how a being could be "uploaded", so to speak, to a parallel universe but he was even wearing the same clothes there that he had at the time of death. He saw translucent winged beings and interesting enough, birds. Our God seriously likes birds. That is mind blowing.

Reminds me of people who take psychedelics and actually think they discovered some "hidden" part of universe or some nonsense like that.

Someone I knew once tripped on DMT and was transported into alien ship where he saw and spoke with his dead grandpa and it felt 100% real, maybe more real then anything else that happened before in his life.

He understood that it was just temporary altered brain chemistry and that he didn't discover some deeper meaning of life or any other bullshit.

Actually this bring up a good point. Between our two brain hemispheres is our pineal gland. It regulates our sleep and waking cycle, but recent research has revealed that it also contains endogenous DMT. In other words, our bodies can produce DMT, and it operates on the pineal gland.

DMT produces a state of consciousness, or reality, without the necessity of a physical body. Why would you take your friend's experience as not real simply because he preemptively initiated it by taking a drug that the body already produces? If your doctor induces a reflex by tapping your knee, is that any less real than if you were to spontaneously bump it? Is that proof that reflexes don't exist? In many cultures throughout history, the pineal gland became recognized as a "third eye", or the gateway to spiritual experiences. This was long before modern science even came on the scene.

What is of particular interest is what occurs at death. When a person dies, a massive amount of DMT is released. Many people who have come close to dying have all experienced similar things, of being transported to another consciousness, and being overwhelmed with a sense of serenity and peace. We call these near death experiences.

What is the evolutionary purpose of this? One may say, "Oh that's easy, to ease the pain of dying." But why would DMT be used over more effective pain relievers that the body already naturally produces, such as dopamine, serotonin, and so on?

MikeCF wrote an interesting article on his experiences with DMT, that poses a lot of interesting points to ponder: http://www.dangerandplay.com/2014/08/04/...-molecule/

Quote: (01-28-2016 01:18 AM)hwuzhere Wrote:  

God is real simply on the basis that my ass has been saved in near impossible situations by pure and complete luck almost repetitively. Moments where I thought I had no hope possibly surviving.

I've also had such an experience. A car crash with a trillion-trillion to 1 odds of coming out alive unscatched, and it happened. The tow truck driver who was driving me and my car to the junkyard had a pale white face when looking at me and was literally scared shitless. He could not believe I was sitting in next to him in his vehicle after seeing my car. I have pics, but I'm not ready to share it with anyone yet.

No since I went to school.

Quote: (01-27-2016 11:32 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

Quote: (01-27-2016 11:28 PM)rpg Wrote:  

I can understand how a being could be "uploaded", so to speak, to a parallel universe but he was even wearing the same clothes there that he had at the time of death.

It's funny you put that there.

The Matrix is a giant bible story.

Neo is an anagram for one (he is known as "The One" aka Jesus). Morpheus is John the Baptist. Trinity is well, the Trinity. Zion equals Israel.

Agent Smith is sin, his car's license plate has a bible quote:


IS 54:16

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Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy.

The whole Matrix trilogy is a massive Bible story using Gnostic story telling elements. In fact, when I read the Gnostic texts I keep seeing massive parallels to the Matrix. The programs for one which control the Matrix are "spirits" and are explained in Gnostic texts as the beings who bring the Matrix world to life.

When you really take a hard look at Gnostic texts, the Matrix is the best example we have as to what the spirit world is sans the battery enslavement thing. Though, there may be something related to that as spirits use human emotions for something. I don't know nor did I stumble upon this in my readings. This is mentioned somewhat in Scientology which follows Gnostic texts as well.

Quote: (01-27-2016 11:31 PM)The Father Wrote:  

Quote: (01-27-2016 11:28 PM)rpg Wrote:  

I personally know a guy who was killed in an accident, went to the next place, and came back. He sits in his wheel chair and can barely talk about anything else. Now what I dont get is this. I can understand how a being could be "uploaded", so to speak, to a parallel universe but he was even wearing the same clothes there that he had at the time of death. He saw translucent winged beings and interesting enough, birds. Our God seriously likes birds. That is mind blowing.

Tell me more. What were the extent of his injuries. Physical. Mental. How does he KNOW he went to another place. Could he have been dreaming? What was the place like? What did he take away from all this? Were the winged beings judgmental? Or accepting? Did he have to EARN his way there? Did he see dead relatives? Most significantly...how do you know he didn't hallucinate it all?

He was splattered from behind so he never saw it coming. It was night. He thought the traffic light went out. Then he saw a bright light like a high intensity spotlight. It opens up and he was somewhere else. He is standing on the edge of a meadow. Animals are walking around and eye balling him but with no fear at all. Two huge translucent beings drop out of the sky and stand there looking him up and down and talking to each other. They grab him and fly back into the dark where he came from. They come back to the scene and he is standing looking around. He notices his body is laying on the ground. He is thinking, how can he be in two places at the same time? Then he wakes up on the ground, guts hanging out and all busted up. Over 2 dozen broken bones. The cops see him wake up and freak out. They had to call for life flight. He is still messed up. But he got a settlement from the moron that hit him.

Quote: (01-28-2016 09:23 AM)joost Wrote:  

No since I went to school.

Not since you went to school?

Dude, I heard there is a part of the brain that lets your consciousness be projected beyond your body. If you put a needle in that part of the brain, it would project your mind as if you were looking down your body.

I believe that life and maybe even consciousness and self awareness itself are facets of a physical force in the universe.

A force that balances entropy in the universe. A sort of Star Wars esque "life force" that brings order to matter to counteract the tendency of entropy to create disorder. Much like gravity attracts matter, the life force in the universe expresses itself through sufficiently complex and sufficiently arranged material that may constitute a living creature or even a single cell.

Whether viruses are alive or not is a matter for debate but it may be that the level of consciousness and awareness determines how alive an entity is.

But a living creature has to be working well enough to support the life force which in turn maintains the complexity of that life. Once the life leaves the body of the creature then decay sets in increasing entropy again, breaking down complexity of the living entity into component parts.

Quote: (01-28-2016 11:41 AM)avantgarde Wrote:  

Dude, I heard there is a part of the brain that lets your consciousness be projected beyond your body. If you put a needle in that part of the brain, it would project your mind as if you were looking down your body.

Fine, but your eyeballs are still in your head...how can you see down on yourself? I'm not saying I believe all these out of body experiences. I just don't understand the rationalizations. People looking down and SEEING doctors operating on them, and remembering what they did! I'm sure there is a scientific explanation, but I don't know what it is.

Quote: (01-28-2016 12:02 PM)The Father Wrote:  

Quote: (01-28-2016 11:41 AM)avantgarde Wrote:  

Dude, I heard there is a part of the brain that lets your consciousness be projected beyond your body. If you put a needle in that part of the brain, it would project your mind as if you were looking down your body.

Fine, but your eyeballs are still in your head...how can you see down on yourself? I'm not saying I believe all these out of body experiences. I just don't understand the rationalizations. People looking down and SEEING doctors operating on them, and remembering what they did! I'm sure there is a scientific explanation, but I don't know what it is.

You 'see' with your brain, not your eyeballs. Your eyeballs focus photons of various wavelength and intensity through your rods and cones in the eye, project them through nerve impulses to the brain.

All of the image processing, recognition, and ascription of meaning occurs within your brain. Your brain also stores images, and images can be created under a dream state. What we call the waking life is just one state of consciousness.

Quote: (01-28-2016 12:02 PM)The Father Wrote:  

Quote: (01-28-2016 11:41 AM)avantgarde Wrote:  

Dude, I heard there is a part of the brain that lets your consciousness be projected beyond your body. If you put a needle in that part of the brain, it would project your mind as if you were looking down your body.

Fine, but your eyeballs are still in your head...how can you see down on yourself? I'm not saying I believe all these out of body experiences. I just don't understand the rationalizations. People looking down and SEEING doctors operating on them, and remembering what they did! I'm sure there is a scientific explanation, but I don't know what it is.

It's hard to explain The Father. I've had a few out of body experiences during some experimentation with DMT when I was in college. I explicitly remember looking down directly at me. Whether this was hallucination of the mind or not is to be debated.

As for what avant gaurde mentioned, there are a few tricks that can be done to induce it either surgically, electrically, or chemically (drugs). Stolen from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-bod...xperiences

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Atheism is a purely negative doctrine. Before all you Dawkinists reading this get butt-hurt over that sentence I want to clarify that when I say negative I don't mean "bad" but rather that atheism is merely a negation and has no actual content on it's own. I've seen many religion debates over the years and a common thread that always gets brought up is the people who are defending religion will bring up Stalin, Mao, and other modern age dictators as an example of atheists just being as capable of mass terror and destruction while the people who are against religion will bring up that none of these dictators did what they did in the name of atheism. I would agree with that. I would also say that people in general aren't going to do ANYTHING in the name of atheism - whether for good or bad since as I said before it is a negative doctrine that doesn't stand for anything except not believing in any sort of gods. It posits nothing and stands for nothing and hence can't motivate anyone to do anything based on it.

I don't think it's any coincidence that it's the most atheist societies like Sweden that are taking the most damage from the migrant crisis and are the most vulnerable to leftists causes. Remove any sort of transcendental dimension (I'm not just merely referring to the afterlife when I say "transcendental I want to note) to the meaning of life and what do you get? A bunch of YOLOers who thinks the most pressing moral issues in the world are Caitlyn Jenner and patting the head of the pet minority group at the moment and at the moment looks like the pet minority group are Muslims. These are people who rely on Carl Sagan and Neil Degrasse Tyson and similar thinkers for their pseudo-metaphysical/spiritual views - and indeed I think the reason these two men are so influential with the secular "educated" class today outside of their personal charm and magnetism is because they have managed to cast their scientism-based world view in a quasi-religious light and are providing for the spiritual needs of these people, the needs which still remain despite their degeneration of spiritual matters.

The great irony is these people who confine their focus solely on the temporal physical world and look at any notion of a further world with disdain are losing the temporal physical world to those who believe that there are worlds besides this one. The Muslims seem to have more of a will to survive and spread their culture across this physical world and are inheriting it from their secular hosts who are glad to give it up to them.