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Split Thread Scorpion's Spiritualism

Scorpion said:
The only thing you can do to determine if these authors are telling the truth is to subject their writings to critical analysis.
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Well, it's not the only thing you can do, but it's a big thing.

Much as you do to me.
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How do you think you're doing?

That can be complicated, and take a long time.
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You said you've arrived at your conclusions -- and become entrenched in them -- because you have spent a long time studying and musing upon sources such as these. If you've spent a long time, but haven't spent it critically analyzing your sources, what have you spent it doing?

This is your eternal soul at stake. Why aren't you vigorously critical about the things that it's important to get right?

But not all books contain such easily refuted claims.
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Why is refutation the sine qua non? Are you assuming they're correct unless they're blatantly wrong? Have you started with obvious questions like, "What's their evidence that they are right?"
 
JayUtah said:
How do you think you're doing?
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I conclude I cannot win a debate on spiritualist beliefs against atheists
Which is hard to reconcile with my view that I am probably right about most things.

JayUtah said:
You said you've arrived at your conclusions -- and become entrenched in them -- because you have spent a long time studying and musing upon sources such as these. If you've spent a long time, but haven't spent it critically analyzing your sources, what have you spent it doing?
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I have tried to build an overall picture of what may be true about the afterlife and its implications for us.

JayUtah said:
This is your eternal soul at stake. Why aren't you vigorously critical about the things that it's important to get right?
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I am as critical as I can be without direct information from the spirit world.
They do not tell me anything so I have to try to work things out for myself.

JayUtah said:
Why is refutation the sine qua non? Are you assuming they're correct unless they're blatantly wrong? Have you started with obvious questions like, "What's their evidence that they are right?"
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Their evidence purportedly comes direct from the spirit world. I am open to believing some of them are right, but remain uncertain.
 
Scorpion said:
I conclude I cannot win a debate on spiritualist beliefs against atheists
Which is hard to reconcile with my view that I am probably right about most things.
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That's what often happens when narcissism collides with fact. If your beliefs fail even an informal critical analysis from a convenience sample of comers, what on Earth leads you to think you're still right? Plus, this splits a hair common to a lot of fringe claimants: they fault their debate ability while still claiming something of a moral victory by insinuating they must still somehow be right. It insults their critics by suggesting that their upper hand in a debate is simply because of sophistry or debate tactics and not because they have facts and logic on their side.

I have tried to build an overall picture of what may be true about the afterlife and its implications for us.
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That didn't answer my question. I'm asking what activities you undertook to build this picture.

I am as critical as I can be without direct information from the spirit world.
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Are you sure that's as critical as you can be? Your defense is so circular it's making me dizzy. If there's no spirit world, then how can there be any information from the spirit world to confirm or deny claims made about it?

Their evidence purportedly...
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I'm going to stop you right there. You probably know why.
 
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Scorpion said:
People that have been cruel and done evil things in their lives initially find themselves in a dark region of the spirit world. Eventually it is made clear to them that the only way out of that dark place is to reincarnate and take the consequences of their actions. That may well mean they have an incarnation of suffering. This is not so much a punishment as a way of forcing changes in their soul. Pain and suffering may make them more compassionate to others.
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Hang on a minute. This makes absolutely no sense.

Let's work this backwards...

People get given an incarnation of suffering because the've been cruel/evil in their previous life.

Why were they cruel and evil? Because they were incarnated by one of the Angels who apparently decided that they'd have a life of inflicting suffering on others.

Why should they be punished when it's the Angels who make these decisions? After all, for one person to receive suffering requires another to inflict it.
 
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Scorpion said:
I think that since I did not know the spirits were going to give me money until they did, I don't think I owe any karma on it. It was a decision they made to help me when I was down.
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So the Angels of karma borked the karma you were due by interfering directly in a way you claimed was forbidden?

Surely that screws up the angels karma let alone yours.

And how do you feel about your ill gotten gains obtained by fiddling in the pockets of the weak and most vulnerable?
 
JayUtah said:
The various schools of Judaism are no better postured than any other way of thinking to resolve the inherent contradiction between predestination and free will.
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I once asked an ultra-orthodox Jew whether God knows the future. He thought for a second and answered, "Well, he has a very good idea." And you know it's a Jewish answer when it could have been a line Gene Wilder said in The 'Frisco Kid.


Scorpion said:
Their evidence purportedly comes direct from the spirit world. I am open to believing some of them are right, but remain uncertain.
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There's your problem right there. Everything you know about the spirit world is hearsay. It wasn't told to you by angels, it was told to you by people claiming to speak for the angels. There's a a big difference between the two. You can't ask the angels questions or weigh their credibility. You can only hear the words the person speaking for them chooses to say, filtered through that person's perceptions and biases. You can only weigh the credibility of the person vouching for their credibility. You have no way to actually test any of the things you've been told, just hope that the person who told you was really, really sincere this time, pinky swear.

It's not evidence. It's not evidence that could ever be used to establish anything - in court, scientifically, or anywhere.
 
I remember a friend of mine who said "If there were a 100 rules in Judaism we will find 101 ways around them".
 
Darat said:
Please explain to me why a 3 year old child is raped multiple times by soldiers and then killed. The following reasons are the reasons you have given for suffering, which is it?

Is it the karma angels that decided it was right for the 3 year old to be raped and killed so the spirit can evolve.

Is it the spirit of the child that decided it needed to "evolve" and it required the 3 year old child to be raped and killed?

Is it a test the karma angels have set up for the soldiers' spirits to see if they will do something so terrible?
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Now you have returned could you and would you please answer my questions above.
 
Scorpion said:
People that have been cruel and done evil things in their lives initially find themselves in a dark region of the spirit world. Eventually it is made clear to them that the only way out of that dark place is to reincarnate and take the consequences of their actions. That may well mean they have an incarnation of suffering. This is not so much a punishment as a way of forcing changes in their soul. Pain and suffering may make them more compassionate to others.
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How is being forced to a certain incarnation by the Angels of Karma, who have foreseen the suffering in said incarnation in order to make this determination, considered free will? According to you, no matter what the spirit chooses to do when living in the incarnation, it is going to experience the suffering foreseen by the Angels of Karma.

Taking this a step further, the suffering that was seen within the incarnation by Angels of Karma have to be carried out by other spirits/incarnations. This is the only working model for your beliefs.

There is no free will anywhere in what you believe. You are preaching the following scenario:

There is an evil spirit in the dark region of the spirit world waiting to incarnate. An Angel of Karma looks into all the incarnation available and finds one that shows a spirit will endure great suffering (rape/torture/murder) at the hands of another spirit/incarnation. The Angel of Karma determines that this suffering is what is needed for the evil spirit to endure in order to continue to evolve. This means that another Angel of Karma had to put a spirit into the incarnation that was going to cause this suffering to the other spirit. There is no way out out. No amount of free will from any spirit is going to change what the Angels of Karma have foreseen in any incarnation.
 
Scorpion said:
Spirits have the choice to incarnate or not, but if they have not achieved a state of grace they eventually realize the only was to spiritually evolve is to reincarnate.
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What drives their choice Scorpion? What do you think makes a spirit choose or decline an incarnation chosen by an Angel of Karma? They have no clue where their karmic balance is at, only know their one, recent past life, and have no clue what the incarnation picked by the Angel of Karma holds for them? Especially the spirits would have horrible past lives and that's only what they remember. They're going to take a chance on an Angel of Karma picking another horrible incarnation?

Scorpion said:
They do not get to choose the circumstances of the future life, because that is decided by the angels of karma.
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Right! How is that free will? The spirit will be forced to live out the circumstances foreseen by the Angel of Karma that picked its incarnation.

Scorpion said:
Hitler's actions may have been foreseen, but it was still his choice to act as he did.
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If Hitler had a choice, then how were the Angels of Karma so sure that the evil spirits chosen to incarnate and experience that suffering would actually experience it? They're supposed to by balancing their karmic account and NEED that suffering to start on the path to enlightenment?
 
Scorpion said:
I think that since I did not know the spirits were going to give me money until they did, I don't think I owe any karma on it.
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That's a lie Scorpion...

Scorpion said:
Ok! explain this. I was told by a voice in my head that I would win money on the lottery in 1998. Earlier in the week I was worrying about not having enough money to buy christmas presents, and about not being able to buy a decent computer. At that moment a female voice spoke in my head, and said " help is coming from an unexpected source". That is all it said and I had never heard that voice before.
Then later in the week I was picking the lottery numbers and I felt as if there was a presence with me that was guiding my hand to pick the numbers.Then came the saturday draws and I picked up the ticket one hour before the draw and thought to myself. Maybe this ticket is worth a fortune, then I though no, and threw it down. At that moment the same female voice in my head said " You won".The voice had never spoken to me before and has never spoken to me since, but I did get a five number win which was enough money to pay my credit card and buy a good computer.
As far as I am concerned this is subjective personal experience I have had of telepathy from the spirit world, and the odds against it being a hallucination must be astronomical. Because I only ever heard that voice twice in my life and it told me I would win and I did.The odds against winning are high enough so what are the odds a voice would tell you you won an hour before the draw on the only occasion that you did win?
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Read all the hilited parts above in your quote and tell me you didn't know PRIOR to actually winning the money that you would win. You had a spirit telling you that you would win money.
 
Scorpion said:
People that have been cruel and done evil things in their lives initially find themselves in a dark region of the spirit world. Eventually it is made clear to them that the only way out of that dark place is to reincarnate and take the consequences of their actions. That may well mean they have an incarnation of suffering. This is not so much a punishment as a way of forcing changes in their soul. Pain and suffering may make them more compassionate to others.
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Except that since we know nothing of this in our incarnations, we are not able to learn to change our souls. It would have helped greatly if we had kept the knowledge of our previous incarnations.
 
Gamolon said:
That's a lie Scorpion...



Read all the hilited parts above in your quote and tell me you didn't know PRIOR to actually winning the money that you would win. You had a spirit telling you that you would win money.
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No they said help was coming, but they did not say I was going to win the lottery until one hour before the draw.
 
steenkh said:
Except that since we know nothing of this in our incarnations, we are not able to learn to change our souls. It would have helped greatly if we had kept the knowledge of our previous incarnations.
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The soul might not be able to bear having knowledge of past lives, knowing we had done terrible things might drive us mad. It is hard experience that forces changes in the soul.
 
Scorpion said:
The soul might not be able to bear having knowledge of past lives, knowing we had done terrible things might drive us mad. It is hard experience that forces changes in the soul.
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It's the memory of hard experience that forces change. If someone contemplates doing something and remembers that there were painful consequences the last time he did it, then he is more likely to refrain from doing it. If he can't remember having previously done it, or the consequences, then each trial is de novo. That's pointless if the goal is progression.
 
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