Afterlife: Matt Take Notice!!! (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, January 11, 2012, 00:21 (4679 days ago) @ David Turell

David

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.

Verification on only one level: Someone else agrees that they obtained information they couldn't otherwise have known. But there exists no explanation about the means. Even if you have 1000 confirmed cases of this: The state of the problem is one where no verifiable solution exists.
<--This is the part that gives me heartburn. If a reproducible, empirical case can be made, I&apos;m all for it. I&apos;ll believe it.

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&apos;t call them fraudulent, I can never go beyond &quot;accept.&quot;

That&apos;s OK. Just spend a little time to listen.

I do listen. (Hence why I&apos;m still here!)

But you should know by now that reliability is king of the hill in my ranking list for solutions to problems. The solution must be reliable.

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

Yes, fantastical, but verifiable.

Exactly. I can look at his x-ray for the first one, and see how he fractured 102 bones. I don&apos;t remember what caused the parachute to fail, but the cause of that exists as well.

There is physical evidence for this event. It is reliable.

An NDE that leaves nothing but the spoken word--is not.

I don&apos;t get why you&apos;re pushing so hard about this. If you can convince me that reliability isn&apos;t the best measure for a solution, I&apos;m game. Otherwise, you&apos;re attacking a position I backed myself into about 11 years ago: The acceptance that methodological materialism is the benchmark for finding out about our world.

The problem I have is that there is a definite &quot;picking and choosing&quot; going on. You want to concentrate only upon one part of NDEs, when I don&apos;t think you can really do that. > The verifiable parts rest on a bed of the unverifiable.

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

I think I&apos;ve been pretty honest in my objections: From day one at this site I said that I lean materialist, and the reason is because I value reliable explanations that allow me to predict. If evidence is unclear and no explanation exists, the tiebreaker is personal experience. If I lack personal experience, whatever it is I&apos;m dealing with goes on the &quot;unsolved&quot; pile. <--Can I be any more honest? How on earth can I be more open? What magic pill am I missing?

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.

No, but I actually put more credit to the Hindus and Kabbalistic Rabbis: They explored the universe by exploring the inside. Many of their answers harmonize with you.

Open to what? If I don&apos;t know, and you don&apos;t know, and David doesn&apos;t know, there is literally nothing to be open about!

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

Every problem to be solved, has to have a comprehensible solution-->Else we lack a solution.

And that&apos;s kind of unfair-->I&apos;ve offered up what I&apos;ve found in regards to Buddhist interpretations. You just need to accept that this isn&apos;t a subject I take lightly, and have thought deeply about-->and came to the conclusion that I lack the information necessary to work a solution.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"