Afterlife: Matt Take Notice!!! (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, January 10, 2012, 06:19 (4680 days ago) @ xeno6696

Why don't you believe in the Risen Christ? There were a host of witnesses. Enough that many were willing to be brutalized in the following years than reject what they saw. Saul claimed that the "dead" Christ spoke to him on the road to Damascus. What's different about some of these NDEs from NT stories, save the source?

The gospels are reproductions of spoken tales told over an over to a generation of unsophisticated folks who believed in miracles and magic. The Apostles had a religion to sell. I think the morality Jesus preached is right on. The miracles, all the invented miracles were selling a religion of Jesus. I don't believe he ever expected that.On the other hand these NDE stories appear on the first hand, not 80 years after, and many have verification.

If you want me to state it bluntly: I reject faith. This means that when someone makes a claim like NDE/OOB, that while I won't call them fraudulent, I can never go beyond "accept."

That's OK. Just spend a little time to listen.

...

Are you saying that the list of verified experiences, observations, items of knowledge David and I asked you to consider were also “fantastical”? Why do you persistently focus on those aspects of such experiences that are NOT verifiable, when we are expressly asking you to consider those that ARE?

One of my programming instructors survived two parachute failures.

THAT is just as fantastical as these veridical NDE claims. Fantastical is the correct word.

Yes, fantastical, but verifiable.

The problem I have is that there is a definite "picking and choosing" going on. You want to concentrate only upon one part of NDEs, when I don't think you can really do that. > The verifiable parts rest on a bed of the unverifiable.

I don't see it that way. Not all the NDE's have verificaation, but what about the plethora of those that do?

...

So observations of REAL events and the acquisition of VERIFIED information are not to be taken seriously?

See above. You already admitted yourself that you lack an explanation. David emphatically lacks an explanation. I lack an explanation. Where exactly do you want me to go here? It seems to me that the discussion halts here.

4) “I have a difficult time believing this story as-is. Part of it is because the only solution is Cartesian dualism. And nearly every philosophy that ever existed has extremely good arguments against dualism – Buddhism notwithstanding.”

Philosophic answers are not fact. And those answers did not know about these new findings.

Except, of course, those philosophers from Socrates and Plato onwards who believed in an immaterial soul, but I guess they don’t count.... That is not scepticism, it is prejudgement.

Why do people from different cultures (including their demons!) have different experiences? I don’t know. Why is it only a small percentage of people who have these NDEs? (If dualism is correct, shouldn’t all the patients have experienced the separation of soul from body?) I don’t know. What is the source of consciousness? I don’t know. How do some people (not just during NDEs) gain access to information that is not accessible through normal channels? I don’t know. Does the brain operate the mind, or does the mind operate the brain? I don’t know. If you don’t know either, why don’t you keep your mind/brain open? Come on, Matt, take agrippan yourself!

Open to what? If I don't know, and you don't know, and David doesn't know, there is literally nothing to be open about!

Yes there is. You just want to avoid it, as you have really admittted.