Religion — Page 38

Whoa! Twis, I feel like you are comparing apples to chocolate bars to belugas. You're all over the place.

The fact that everything that is happening to the brain during near-death and out-of-body-experiences can be explained and replicated, is to say that we have an understanding of what is going on in the brain during these experiences, to such a degree that we can replicate the experience. It isn't a case of something artificial imitating something real, it is a case of something real being understood to a degree that we know how to make it happen. We can replicate heart attacks too, because we know exactly what is happening to the heart during a myocardial infarction. This doesn't mean "faking" a heart attack, this means we have the ability to force a real heart attack. At one point we may have thought a heart attack was any one of many gods striking someone dead, now we know better.

It is really fascinating, and is one of many remarkable and complex things about the human brain; but it is scientifically understood and most certainly not evidence of anything supernatural.

twister111 said:

After all the basic idea behind it is that God or some other supernatural force has decided "it's your time to die" and only through some extraordinary free will determination are you saved. That is impossible for humans to fully recreate. It's basically your time on the schedule of death being rescheduled due to massively unlikely free will choice being exerted. Or at least it's supposed to be. Consequently if it does hold relevance at all and if any of them are true supernatural occurrences it's simply impossible for us to really recreate such events. We lack the essential data of exactly "when" we should test for such a thing. Also if we ever did obtain access to such data the testing would be futile. The proof that a supernatural entity can plan a time for our deaths and has an afterlife waiting for us would be the result that any such testing would be looking for.

You're invalidating demonstrable studies based on a series of assumptions stacked on one another. Working at your assumptions backwards; for the sake of argument, we'll just presume God does actually exist, but now you are taking it a stretch further and assuming near-death experiences happen when people out will God and force him to reschedule their death? You're also assuming that God has a time table or schedule for our deaths. A lot of things you could never know for sure, and you are taking them as fact and using them to explain why scientific testing on this matter is bogus. If there is a God, maybe the phenomena we describe as "near death experience" is a nifty feature he built into our brains, and not us defying him after "he calls us" and our spirit returning to our body after departing.  

Like I said, you're all over the place. We can trigger the near death experience, but you claim it isn't the same thing even though physiologically it is 100% the same thing. It isn't just the same in looks (toy gun), but it is the exact same in functionality. The brain does the same things, the person experiences the same strange experience.

^I actually stumbled across the very same thing* yesterday.  It made me smile :)

*JEDIT: I should have said article.  Let the record show, I've never found a particularly exciting goldfish in my snack bowl.

Companies do that on purpose every so often just to mess with people like her.

Not to mention it doesn't look like anything.

Well, I certainly didn't believe it was a sign from Heaven.  But I thought it was funny.

Rereading my post made me realize it may have sounded like I too found a special goldfish.  I meant I stumbled across the same article and it made me smile.  I jedited my previous post.

If you are religious, you probably shouldn't watch this due to language/sexual themes.  You have been warned.

The rest of you may find this song hilarious (and oddly charming).

**** Me In The *** Because I Love Jesus

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pieces%20of%20flair

I am precepting now for nursing. My preceptor is a very nice and knowledgeable male nurse who has been in the field for years and years. But today he let me know he's got some strange ideas about the present pope: he's not Jesus Christ, but rather the antichrist! He had one of those things where he takes a few verses and pieces them together with some historical junk like Babylonian numerology and ultimately concluded this. I'm usually very open about my faith, but considering the way this guy thinks, I'm just a Protestant Christian to him. Don't get me wrong, I really like the guy, but I really am not a fan of these bizarre theories that people develop that predict the Second Coming and all the Rapture and all that.

Nobody wants to be a James Harmston in that regard.

http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/14831/20130423/second-child-dead-parents-rely-prayer-heal-judge.htm

I think any adult who wants to ignore medical care has that right, based on any reason they so choose.

I think denying medical care to a child should be illegal, even to a child old enough to say "No, you can't save my life with a blood transfusion!" 

The parents in that article should be locked up and the key thrown away. There children should be taken care of by someone who won't piously watch them die.

I was thinking a little bit more about this link Fink posted in the Boston Marathon Bombing thread: http://deadspin.com/the-tsarnaev-brothers-allegedly-followed-9-11-conspirac-476607277

In short, it is someone going on about how ridiculous Alex Jones is for his wild conspiracy theories, crazy speculation, and how quick he is to jump to conclusions. The author links to a blog post made by a woman who knew the bombers' mother and retells how their mother believed that 9/11 was done by the US to make Islam look bad and justify war. The author then goes on to do exactly what he condemns Alex Jones for and wildly speculates that maybe the reason these guys did it wasn't because they were Islamic fundamentalists, but because they were paying back America for the evil America has done to them with framing Muslims for 9/11.

Yeah. At least Alex Jones is talented enough to make his wild speculation seem plausible, in a convoluted crazy sort of way.

Anyway, the blogger also goes on a good deal about how religious they were, which seems like a kind of an important point for the author of that article to ignore.

This got me thinking. I'm generally very harsh on Islam, while I tend to let Christianity slide quite a bit. While ultimately, I feel we'd be better off without either one of them, I tend to be far more defensive of Christianity than I sometimes feel I should be. Which always leads me to ask myself, is it just ethnocentrism? Probably to a good degree it is. I have close friends who are both Muslim and Christian, but I was raised Christian, my family, relatives, and closest friends are Christians. It would be almost impossible not to be biased. But even so, I try to be as fair as possible.

Why is it fair that I feel Christianity has redeeming factors, and at the same time feel that Islam has none? I've lived in one primarily Islamic country, and traveled through many others, and have seen misogyny, homophobia, and violence in those places directly associated with their religion. It is backwards and disgusting, and very real and prevalent, even today. The Judeo-Christian culture is certainly guilty of the same crimes, and plenty of others. So where is the redeeming factor?

Bingowings hit this nail on the head for me. Not too long ago he described his fondness for Jesus and his teachings, stating that Jesus is his Buddha. And there is where I find the redeeming factor in Christianity. Jesus was pretty badass, he taught his followers to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and visit the sick and imprisoned. He was all about sacrifice and benevolence. He was all about turning the world upside down and doing the unexpected, selfless good, when all reason pointed to the opposite.

While Muhammad carried around a big ass sword and spread violence in the name of God, Jesus led around a group of lowlifes: fishermen, assassins, thieves, whores, and tax collectors, the dregs of society, and he personally showed them a selfless way of life and rubbed it in the faces of the pious. He practically showed the status quo the middle finger, while living his life for others, and urging everyone around him to do the same. Real or not (probably not), Jesus is absolutely one of the coolest figures ever depicted on any medium.

Islam doesn't have that. Maybe someday we'll be able to toss out all these crumby Judeo-Christian religions, leave all their backwards and harmful teachings buried in the past, but still keep the tradition of Jesus alive.

Just become a Quaker.

You can then buy into or out of whatever is personally revealed to you through silent contemplation and a general Gandhian approach to conflict.

You can even be a bit Buddhist on the side and they let whales marry in most countries.

Quakers are cool.

Cooler than these Buddhists at least.

The ones who felt nothing are certainly lefties, because they don't feel anything when alive either.

Creationists are the people who make me laugh. They are, without doubt, lefties Mr Frink.