Cipher Girl

HD, in this as in a couple of other posts if I were to change your goddess to god and wicca to christian, you would sound just like so many christian fundamentalists. At the heart of your beliefs is the fear of death. Almost everyone fears death, just like they do heights. How you handle your fears is what's important.

HD, what you have in common with christian fundamentalists is to suppress those facts that you don't want to deal with. Just because you are uncomfortable with certain facts of life does not mean that everyone else is. After all when I die, I won't be aware and won't worry.

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[ September 19, 2002: Message edited by: Cipher Girl ]

[ September 19, 2002: Message edited by: Cipher Girl ]</p>

VirusInTheSystem

quote:Just because you are uncomfortable with certain facts of life does not mean that everyone else is. After all when I die, I won't be aware and won't worry.


first of all, to some people the idea of being "not aware" after death is the most terrifying concept possible. perhaps more terrifying than "hell". Its a matter of personal make-up. So you are probably doing more to scare HD than comfort her.

also, what are "certain *facts* of life?". What are these facts, and what definate proof do you have to support them?

just curious. Your post seemed kind of vague.

peace,
-justin

galiel

Note to VirusInTheSystem: This is not the Secular Lifestyle and Support forum. This is the "Science & Skepticism" forum. Comforting the superstitious or justifying fear of "hell" is not the focus of this forum.

Ah, a superstitious supernaturalist raises their head behind their compassionate duckblind and fires a shot across the bow.

Oops. They ducked down again, having sniped away--but with a smile of concern and compassion.

Despite your efforts to turn this into an Origin of the Universe/Existence of the Soul/Comforting the Theologically Afflicted forum, the topic is about medical research that provides a possible electro-chemical explanation for yet another experiential illusion once attributed to metaphysical causes. This time, the "phantom limb" is near-death perceptions. It is especially sensitive, since it runs over not only the dogma of the traditional theists, but offends the mystical new-agers as well.

The more we know, the less room there is for god or other supernatural explanations. Kinda makes certain people quite uncomfortable, doesn't it.

[ September 19, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]</p>

cjack

I think this speaks to why such research is controversial and difficult to accept.

Face it, most people (at least in Western society) have been taught to fear death. Every single religion is based upon the assumption that there IS an afterlife, and most of them hang on the possibility of an extremely unpleasant afterlife should the tenets of the faith not be followed closely enough.

The idea of an afterlife is and has been a cherished belief of just about every single human society since the beginning of recorded history.

In the last few centuries, science has been hacking away at cherished beliefs. Geocentrism has been destroyed, creation myths have been debunked, and once-powerful gods have been revealed as mundane, if still fearsome forces of nature.

OBE's and NDE's seem to point to the possibility of an afterlife, and that is very, very comforting for even those of us who no longer accept the notion of gods playing with our fate. The striking similarity of modern NDE's, and the fact that the described "journey" matches much older accounts of the afterlife (the Tibetan Book of the Dead, for example), provide enough circumstantial evidence to at least leave the door open for the possibility that death is not the end of our existence.


Now science is taking a crack at what may be our most deep-seated collective belief, and exposing us to the notion that death is indeed final, and the glimmerings of hope provided by NDE's and OBE's are just the last fevered dreams of an electrochemical system shutting down.

I can certainly understand why someone would fear such a discovery.

Queen of Swords

Science should not have to tiptoe around myth.

galiel

There is an even more fundamental issue here, one which so arouses us skeptics to speak out.
As a careful analysis of your own choice of adjectives in the paragraphs above reveal, faith starts with a conclusion and then seeks evidence that justifies that a priori dogma, ignoring contrary evidence. Despite the "seeking the truth" rhetoric common to both traditional religions and mystical offshoots, there is no search for answers, merely for confirmation of biases. No new knowledge is uncovered, no contribution to the common good. Merely a self-centered search for comfort in being right.

In contrast, science starts with a willingness to be guided by results, in an effort to increase understanding. Legitimate science welcome evidence disproving an hypothesis as much as evidence confirming it, because the goal is not rationalization of a priori biases but the advancement of human knowledge.

galiel

Here:
you acknowledge that the concept of an afterlife was deliberately created, it has been taught, by religions, as a cudgel to encourage obedience.

Yet here:
you suggest that the pre-science explanations of superstitious human beings provide empirical evidence of the reality of a phenomenon you just admitted was fabricated by theocrats with an agenda.

Of COURSE current accounts of "OBE's" match ancient accounts. The same humans with the same electro-chemistry "experience" them, and the idea of an afterlife is a compelling myth. That doesn't make it true.

You might as well use biblical accounts of a flat, four-cornered Earth topped by a heavenly bowl as confirmation of modern Flat-Earthism.

Or cite the widespread tales about a jolly guy who flies around giving good little children presents in winter as confirmation that there might, indeed, be a Santa Claus.

And how can you reconcile such a self-contradictory statement that "OBE's and NDE's seem to point to the possibility of an afterlife, and that is very, very comforting for even those of us who no longer accept the notion of gods playing with our fate."

Whence came your afterlife if you have rejected the existence of the supernatural? Ah, but you have not really shed yourself of supernaturalist superstition or the anti-science approach of starting with a conclusion and seeking its justification by any means. You have simply put hip new threads on old-time religion.

I am suprised at the number of superstitious supernaturalists who post here thinking that they should be considered "nonbelievers", just because their supernatural force happens not to manifest as an anthropomorphic male god.

You have just replaced Jehovah with a hipper power. That is all new age Western mysticism is about. Crystals replace rosaries, a wounded Earth replaces a tormented Christ, pyramid-power replaces holy water, mantras and chants replace "Hail Mary's", gurus replace priests (complete with a tradition of sexual exploitation), John Edwards and Deepak Chopra replace Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggert, faux-techie three-letter acronyms like "OBE" and "NDE" replace oh-so-gauche traditional concepts like literal heavens and hells. It's all little bits of history repeating.

[ September 20, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]</p>

abe smith

YES: LET HD ALONE; she has the right , as we all do, to whatever she can muster to make her life bearable. JUST let her not try to promote those LIES for the rest of us!.

Cipher Girl

Hi VirusInTheSystem you said:
Well, I for one view death as a FACT. We all die and our dead bodies are evidence of that fact. Until someone comes back from being truly dead (not just heart stopping and starting again), I don't think there is any reason to think there is any existance after death.

I guess I'm not worried about nonexistance so very much as about 10 years ago, I was in the emergency room bleeding to death, and it took the doctors several tries to get my heart started again. I was in a light coma for about a day before I woke up. I have no memories of that time, other than some weird dreams, and just a few memories about being in the emergency room and the doctors yelling and rushing around before I passed out.

I know that this scares some people and they use religion as a security blanket for these fears. That's fine with me, but don't use YOUR fears to stifle research because YOU are uncomfortable and I am not.

In another thread in RRP, Pray To The Goddess, HD wanted every one to pray to his/her goddess, insisting that it would do everyone some good wether they believed or not. I haven't had time to figure out how to put a web link in, I'll do it later today. HD, why this need for everyone to cater to what YOU want and to keep from upsetting you?

Veil of Fire

Seems to me like she's expressing a desire to supress a light correlational finding that's being touted as the end-all-be-all of death research on this forum.

Skeptics have their own biases too. They seem to revel in doing whatever they can to 'disprove', however dubiously, anything they think is silly, and any result, no matter how vauge or contradictory, towards that end is seen as a 'successful debunking'.

I assume REAL scientists don't have that problem, but this board certainly does.