s5o8

How to deal with premonitions, ghosts and the like if you're an atheist ?

About 20 months ago I woke one morning with a date in my head no dreams nothing just the date and the knowledge that my father would die on that date. I told my partner about the date but remain quiet about the rest. The date was 5 days off and I did not say much more to anyone and left if at that.
It was a Wednesday morning and at about 10 in the morning when I received the phone call, it was my brother and is exact words to me was “I know that you already know, but I thought that I would call anyway…… He died” We have never talked about this between us. I do not know how my brother knew that I knew or what he knew, I have not even discussed it with my partner.
This was not a case of a retroactive premonition because I have external verification, I told my partner that this date would be significant

This does not bother me a lot but I do ponder about it occasionally. I classed this experience as one of those things that is unknown.

I would like to know how you deal with these types of experiences and what they typically are.
Thanks

Ronin

Pure chance...selective recall...how often have you recalled dates or numbers that did not end up meeting with any significance?

Was your father gravely ill or was the death sudden and otherwise unexpected?

Koyaanisqatsi

Or, even simpler, a result of a misconstrued analysis of the nature of our universe. Recent theories expand upon the "normal" three/four dimensions of our universe, expanding it to ten and twenty six dimensions (string theory). The perception of linear time is just that; a perception. That doesn't mean, necessarily, that time (or events) don't occur in a linear fashion, just that we perceive them to happen in a progressive, "a + b + c = d" fashion. We organize according to our evolutionary needs. It just so happens that, IMO, we're on a brink of evolutionary progress, where the body is no longer the mechanism of change so much as the psyche is; the intelligence that we have, for so long, called the "soul."

Take a film. Due to it's size (typically 35 mm), it has to be projected at a certain speed (24 frames per second) for it to be perceived as "reality." If it's projected at more than 24 frames per second, you get slow motion; less than 24 frames per second, it looks like a silent film (all sped up). So, the natural question that follows is, how many "frames per second" are we projected at in order for us to perceive "reality?"

We know from quantum physics that we're a complex fog of "flashing" atoms. Does our figuring out how photographic representation (including the pixels) can be projected at a certain speed in order to mimic "reality" teach us some possible lesson? I would argue, yes.

I've read that a certain faction of dream anaylists think that dreams occur in very short intervals (split second in some theories; throughout the duration of REM sleep in others; etc.). The dream itself may seem like it took years or decades or an eternity, but the "actual" physical tandem to that dream could have taken just seconds (as measured in three/four dimensional, linear time).

I take that (and philosophical as well as theological ideology) as speculative evidence that we simply don't understand the totality of our existence. I know this borders on the, "But hey, that's what theists say...", but the fundamental difference is that it's part of nature, not "super"nature.

We currently theorize, for example, a dynamic model of the universe (quantum loop gravity theory), wherein the system is not "background dependent," but rather dynamic; ever expanding in tandem to the needs of the expansion. It raises questions, but then, what doesn't about the nature of our "reality?"

We have clues, however (believe it or not ) in theology, where people believe (primarily because they're conditioned to believe it, but there's a nugget) that an omnimax god exists and due to that god's omniscience, all existence is a fait accompli. In other words, everything that has happened has already happened in the instant this god created reality.

Well, obviously, that's mythogology, but it betrays, IMO, a nugget of "intuitive truth" (to properly qualify); which is that existence is actually simultaneous; everything we have and will do happens at the exact same time (the only problem being, how does one define "time").

If you expand beyond the fourth dimension (a square, squared) into ten and possibly twenty six and possibly beyond dimensions, then doesn't it seem logical that what we think of as linear existence on a three/four dimensional plane, might actually be simultaneous on a tenth or twenty sixth dimensional plane (or "higher"). Religion is replete with the concept of a "higher realm." Well, is it so much of a stretch that such a "higher realm" is nothing more than a natural phenomonon that we're only beginning to explore in theory and fact?

And if so, is it too much of a stretch to conclude that "deju vu" is nothing more than a quick "flash" of experience from a future "event" from the perspective of an ultimate "being" (us) existing in a simultaneous timeline instead of the three/four dimensional perception of a linear timeline?

It doesn't have to have anything to do with "super"nature, just further nature; an element to our existence not yet discerned. I realize the more moderates of the cults claim this is the path to their god, but isn't the path to their god ultimately a glimpse into our true "natures" simply personified in mythology?

If we can extrapolate from current quantum mechanistic process for the purposes of philosophy, then wouldn't it make natural sense that we exist more in a multi-dimensional, non-linear time reference? After all, we have direct evidence of this every night when we dream and every day when we stop for a "moment" and analyze what's going on around us.

Here's a simple exercise I'm sure you're familiar with. Describe to somebody what you can remember that happened to you the day before as if it were a dream and see how they analyze that description as if it were a "snapshot" of time. For example, if I called you up tomorrow and said, "I had this weird dream. I was confined within this familiar, electronic box where all I could do was type and type and type. I was aware of 'life' going on about me, but for some reason, I was intently focused on this illuminous box. I was responding to someone who had made some point about existence and here I was, sitting at my desk (with the sound of jackhammers from outside my window, no less) and all the while these little smiley things were dancing just to the side of my little 'window.' One was smiling; one was rolling its eyes; one was smashing its head against a wall; one was playing a violin in a macabre, melencholly way. I was doing this, not on paper, but on an electronic 'matrix' of some kind unknown to me and every once in a while--as I was making my greatest point--I would get disconnected from this 'realm' and had to start all over again to finish whatever it was I was doing. I didn't know who these people were that I was communicating with, but I could sort of picture some of them that were more familiar and seemed to know who I was interacting with in some way. The argument I was making was all about simultaneous existence instead of linear existence."

What would you tell me about my "dream?"

A very long winded way of saying, materialism is only as complete as the knowledge of how materials interact and/or truly exist. Human perception, IMO, has ways of projecting itself upon a screen of "reality" in order to give us clues as to what may actually be happening, but that does not mean that materialism is "wrong," just, again IMO, incomplete.

We know, for example, that simple radio waves, such as our first radio broadcasts, travel through spacetime. Does this mean that an alien spaceship first picking up our initial radio waves will think that what they are hearing is "live?" "Live' becomes relative and linear progression an illusion, but that is to be expected in a seemingly chaotic universe.

Actuality can only be measured by perception. That's why we posit gods; because we inherently recognize the truth and seek to anchor it with non-truth as a result of the recognition of truth. It can't be the truth, so we'll augment it with a comfortable familiarity in order to buffer the truth. That doesn't change the truth.

Which is yet another long winded way of saying, it is perfectly logically possible that simultaneity of existence is the "norm" and linear perception of existence is a fallacy of conditioning; just as you look at your CDs and only think of them as a linear progression once played. They are "total" in your hand and "linear" when played; thus we have two examples of a possible "higher" construct, as natural as one dimension, two dimensions, three dimensions, and four dimensions (that we currently accept).

Wouldn't it make sense that the square of a square could incorporate either simultaneity or, at least, overlap of "lower" dimensional experience; thus making it plausible that an event experienced in the "lower" dimensions (i.e., three/four) could, likewise, be indicative of a fifth or sixth dimensional overlap?

Doesn't "god" ultimately come from our own intuitive understanding of our "true" natures, at least to more of a degree than it represents actual reality?

I would argue, of course, "yes." I'm not sure if that addressed your question, but I had fun trying to explain the theoretical extensions of one, two, three and four dimensional "known" paradigms in relation to the logical extensions of fifth, sixth, tenth, twenty-sixth, nth-dimensions.

And all of it perfectly natural; without any need for positing an actual, objectively standing "first cause."

EDITED TO ADD: Most original "ghost stories" were about murdered people reliving their last moments and not necessarily interacting with the "living;" a past event playing over and over and over again (from a certain perspective; the perspective of the witness of the alleged event). As with anything else, when you go to the source, you'll find a closer approximation to a possible truth; which, in this case, would easily be explained by an overlap of a particular event within a perception of nature that is not limited to one, two, three, or four dimensions, just as we are not, theoretically, limited to one, two, three, or four dimensions.

We know that we are multi-dimensional beings from at least those four dimensions. We also know that those four dimensions are not necessarily the only dimensions and that the complexity of just those four dimensions is vast. We also have the beginnings or "hints" (mathematically) of what would happen in "higher" dimensions; vis, human experience. Dreams, ironically enough, demonstrate that perfectly to us every night. So, is it a question of supernature? Not necessarily. Merely as yet unexplored nature; a state, however, that still does not require magical fairy god kinds in the sense of the absolutist "first cause."

It just means that there are more things dreamt of in your philosophy, just not pointlessly quantified by a forced concept of a restrictive "god."

IMO, of course .

s5o8

Hi Ronin

Those are the same type of possibilities which I considered. My father was ill but not terminally. The last time we spoke was about 7 week before his death, my brother and I were abandoned by him as toddlers and although we settled our differences more skeletons came out of the closet during his illness and he basically told us again to get lost last we spoke.

I did consider that the whole thing was bothering me and that lead me to randomly come up with that idea one morning.

I do not however wake up regularly with number or dates of any kind it never happen before and it has not happened since.

Aquila ka Hecate

Koy,

That was one hell of a read, thank you.

I lay claim (in my own head only, until now) to a similar

experience to that of s508.

Could you point us to some further explanatory material?

(PS what do you know? I'm having a similar dream to your's,

complete with surreal smiley experience!)

Jamie_L

People don't usually like to hear my interpretations of stuff like this, because I take a very skeptical view, and that view tends to feel like a personal attack. A friend of mine claims to have had many such experiences, and when he challenges me to explain them, I pretty much just shrug and let it drop. Not because I don't have an answer, but because he wouldn't like my answer, and I don't like to argue over stupid stuff like that.

With that being said, I'll give an answer this time because we're on the internet where I'm safely anonymous. I've done a bit of reading on the science of human memory, and what I found was rather disconcerting. Namely that our memories are a lot more faulty than we believe, and that our confidence in the accuracy of our memories has no correlation to the actual accuracy of those memories.

Not knowing much information (which never makes for a good guess), here would be my guess to explain this:

Despite your belief that it is not retroactive premonition, I believe it is retroactive premonition. The external verification, coming from someone close to you, whom you care about, is not more infallible than you are, and that person is likely also buying into your retroactive memory creation, and doing likewise.

I could envision a scenario like this:

You were worrying about your father. You woke up with a disconcerting feeling that he would die soon. Maybe there was a date in your mind, maybe it was more vague. Perhaps it was "Thursday" rather than a specific date, which is a 1-in-7 chance of being dead on - not bad odds really. You mentioned it to your partner. When he actually died, you projected the more detailed information back into the memory of waking up. Perhaps your partner did the same independently. Or, perhaps your partner did not have as clear a memory of that night, and took your "clearer" memory of the date as truth, in the process creating a new memory of the event involving the date.

How did your brother know you knew? Well, that may have just been an assumption on his part (not a bad one either, when he called, he must have known that you could expect his call to be bad news). If he had a similar experience of remembering worries as premonitions, then he was already set up to believe in a premonition of your father's death. People have these kinds of feelings fairly frequently, so it's again not out of the question to expect someone who lost an ill loved one to feel like they "knew" when it was coming, or that it had happened.

Of course, I'm just a hard-core skeptic with only casual education about the way these things work. On the flip side, these are simple explanations that do not require the supernatural, and O's Razor makes me think that this is much more plausible than supernatural premonitions that seem very similar to other "phenomena" which I am confident are false.

Human's perception of things is often highly suspect, especially when intense emotions are involved. Then again, being human, my perceptions may be suspect to.

Just remember: you asked.

Jamie

Koyaanisqatsi

Wow. It was coherent?

Thank you.

? What is "s508?"

Of "s508" or my own theory?

Fascinating. And how would you interpret that?

beth

Last night my husband got me out of bed urgently telling me to come outside. I swear to dog, it looked like two UFO's hovering. They weren't planes and they didn't seem like helicopters, but that was what I concluded, as the mosquitoes were biting and I wanted to go back in. But for a moment, I was like, "Wow! A UFO!" but then I remembered I didn't believe in them.

Aquila ka Hecate

It's the result of a badly-parsed sentence from me!

I meant that I had had a similar experience to the experience

experienced by poster ' s5o8' .

I also mistook the 'o' for a '0'.

So with that cleared up-could you
please point us (coll:me) to further expositions of your theory?

T'anks a mill.

scumble

That is very interesting thought there, Koy.

I have been somewhat skeptical about extra dimensions actually being there, mind you. Physical theories that use extra dimensions are no doubt highly mathematical, and it's difficult to say if they are pointing to something real.

You are essentially postulating vague awareness of higher dimensions, and I guess that's not easy to verify. Hmmm.

I guess I'm interested as Aquila. Is it something you've come up with previously, or was it just an on-the-spot pontification?