Can you believe in certain things without being religious? - Page 5

GaSSPaNiCC · #41 11-30-2007, 12:50 PM

No your missing the point, research like this is to act as a wake up call, suggesting we may not know as much about as reality as we think. It isn't to disprove any scientific fact, it's to broaden our perspective if anything on phenomena such as the nature of our cosnciousness. Your mixing this with religion, it has absolutely NOTHING to do with religion. The scientist's conducting this research are skeptical, but want to seek the truth about reality without letting any presuppositions affect their judgement.

luckyme · #42 11-30-2007, 01:23 PM

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The scientist's conducting this research are skeptical, but want to seek the truth about reality without letting any presuppositions affect their judgement.

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yep, sticking to the presumptions is why we know nothing about relativity and evolution and anatomy and ...
you seem to confuse science and scientists with mechanics. Are they spending all the money on atom smashers because they think they already know and just need a job? or are they trying to test claims that may or may not be 'true'.

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It isn't to disprove any scientific fact

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why not? that would be a basic reason, if we can skip over what it means to ' ..disprove scientific FACT' . ( there's some good food for thought for you in that skipped part).

luckyme

GaSSPaNiCC · #43 11-30-2007, 01:57 PM

Ok, since we don't let our presuppositions effect our judgment, then why is it most skeptics/scientists won't even consider research done in the paranormal, re-incarnation, or NDE's? We know nothing about consciousness, and these phenomena may be the most crucial in understanding who we are as human beings. Sure as of right now, they might be hard to investigate, but that doesn't mean they should be ignored. Why don't they even consider? We have nothing to lose, but everything to gain.

luckyme · #44 11-30-2007, 02:13 PM

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We know nothing about consciousness ..

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Nothing's not as large as it used to be ( or WE is smaller).

It's worthwhile reading a couple books, articles, or googling sites dealing with consciousness research.

Just reading 'Consciousness Explained' :-) will give you a taste of one corner of the field. But get into neuroscience relating to it perhaps by Damasio or Ramachandran.

Sure, it's one of the last frontiers but 'nothing known' is false and 'being ignored' is worse.

luckyme

GaSSPaNiCC · #45 11-30-2007, 02:39 PM

I'm familiar with some research on consciousness (koch, dennet, hameroff), sure our understanding is increasing and will continue to increase, but my point is we have no idea how the brain if at all can create consciousness, and we have to accomodate for all phenomena if we truely are going to understand this dilemna.

madnak · #46 11-30-2007, 03:05 PM

You keep talking about the research being done, but you're unwilling to link to the research itself or to the journals in which it's published. You do realize that science isn't just going out and talking to people who claim to have experiences?

luckyme · #47 11-30-2007, 03:08 PM

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but my point is we have no idea how the brain if at all can create consciousness,

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If you insist on "no idea" and "if at all" then you are ignoring what they knew even 20,000 years ago from empirical testing ( konking on head rather than on foot). Are you going to stay adamant that we know Nothing about it? You make it difficult to go forward if you brush aside everything we find out and start each morning from zero.
Are you suggesting that if you go in for an operation you may suggest they put your elbow in butter rather than use any new-fangled 'make me unconscious' crap on you because, hey, we know nothing about how the brain makes consciousness - if at all. Would you stick to your claim of our state of knowledge?

luckyme

GaSSPaNiCC · #48 11-30-2007, 04:05 PM

There is plenty of literature on the subject of the paranormal, look up books such as Irreducible Mind, The Afterlife Experiments, Entangled Minds...there are many more, and are serious and scientific and present evidence for their claims, their evidence is not anecdotal either. For example here is an excerpt about NDE's from the book Irreducible Mind.

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/m...cible_min.html

http://www.deanradin.com/NewWeb/EMindex.html
If you want me to post more i shall.

vhawk01 · #49 11-30-2007, 04:23 PM

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Ok so since i'm the idiot and your the genius, WHY is it reincarnation research should be avoided? Of course some of the cases aren't perfect, and it's hard to draw a conclusions, but there is enough data there to suggest something is going on. It is research like this which challenges the modern scientific viewpoint, and to be honest a lot of skeptics and scientists are uncomfortable because it does just that. So of course the only the way around it, is to berate the research that way it's easier to ignore. Which is essentially the case here, for some unstated reason i'm a crackpot because i support this research. Anyways i doubt i'm going to get an explanation, but if i do, i'll gladly admit i'm wrong, but of course it has to be valid one.

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So this is like your tenth post in a row now that has failed to answer luckyme's simple questions, and now you are starting to get indignant about it and pretend like he is calling you a moron or pretending to be a genius.

In this forum, if you have some interesting material or research that you've read that you want to discuss, you should, first, READ that research, second, try your best to understand it, and THEN third, finally, present it in the OP and be prepared to discuss it. All you've done is link it. Tell us what parts of it were particularly convincing to you. Tell us up front how rigorous and legitimate you find it to be. The reason we want to know this is because if, 50 posts from now, we've found out that its all a bunch of BS, you arent able to backpedal and say "Well I just found this on the internet its not like I vouched for it." Get it?

vhawk01 · #50 11-30-2007, 04:26 PM

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There is plenty of literature on the subject of the paranormal, look up books such as Irreducible Mind, The Afterlife Experiments, Entangled Minds...there are many more, and are serious and scientific and present evidence for their claims, their evidence is not anecdotal either. For example here is an excerpt about NDE's from the book Irreducible Mind.

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/m...cible_min.html

http://www.deanradin.com/NewWeb/EMindex.html
If you want me to post more i shall.

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We want you to post what parts of your search you've found interesting and then attempt to defend them from criticism and answer questions to the best of your ability. This really is like Splendour II.