P.J. Denyer
Penultimate Amazing
I'll raise a well aged glass of Beaujolais Nouveau to that!
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Why Are the Majority of Those in Hell the Poor and Oppressed Masses?
- Thread starter Emre_1974tr
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I'll raise a well aged glass of Beaujolais Nouveau to that!
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
But if there's no spiritual realm then they are experiencing something else. How would you go about proving to a skeptic with evidence that this is in fact what is happening?
People who dream report seeing and hearing things that never happened. This does not require any part of the organism to have gone anyplace other than where the sleeping is taking place, nor the existence of a soul. Now that we have clear evidence that the brain is capable of such things, how would you go about proving with evidence to a skeptic that an NDE is evidence of a soul and proof that the soul is operating separately from the organism?
The only reason we're talking about courts is because you claimed NDEs were suitable enough evidence to be admitted as eyewitness testimony in court. Do you understand now why that's not true according to the rules of evidence used in courts?
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
"Clinical death" is an arbitrary medical criterion. It is defined as when breathing and circulation stop under circumstances that convince clinicians than it is unlikely to restart. That it does restart in some cases confirms that the term is not especially useful in describing the cessation of all biological function. Specifically, clinical death does not inquire into whether there is still activity in the brain and nervous system. That activity is all that's required to explain veridical NDEs, so it does not serve as evidence of spiritual claims.
Mojo
Mostly harmless
The soul being able to leave the body is what you are arguing for here. You can't do that by assuming that the soul leaves the body.
"If we assume that the soul leaves the body in NDEs, then there is evidence that the soul leaves the body in NDEs" is not a valid argument.
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Yeah - I'm a simple soul I just go off what the bible says:
Matthew 25:41 Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
Matthew 25:46 Then they will go away toeternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.
Mark 9:47-48 And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.
Carrot Flower King
Janitor of Lunacy
Have we got to "They're all dead, Dave" stage yet?
Personally speaking my soul couldn't leave my body, as it is well known that I don't have a soul, a bunch of soul music, but no soul.
Personally speaking my soul couldn't leave my body, as it is well known that I don't have a soul, a bunch of soul music, but no soul.
Carrot Flower King
Janitor of Lunacy
I do believe the underlying agenda is now on show...
And we'll get more complaints about nasty sceptics picking on folk for making un-evidenced, faith-based claims using the same old bunch of "arguments" we've seen and heard over the years, but are yet again required to treat as if they were newly minted, squeaky fresh and original and TRUE...
And we'll get more complaints about nasty sceptics picking on folk for making un-evidenced, faith-based claims using the same old bunch of "arguments" we've seen and heard over the years, but are yet again required to treat as if they were newly minted, squeaky fresh and original and TRUE...
P.J. Denyer
Penultimate Amazing
Taken care of, post 157.
Carrot Flower King
Janitor of Lunacy
Damn! Missed that one.
P.J. Denyer
Penultimate Amazing
We've gone from deep space to Peckham since then!
Carrot Flower King
Janitor of Lunacy
How can you tell?
Helen
Implicitly explicit
And I'll raise a glass of first press whisky! (You have to sell your soul to buy a bottle of first press, so mine has already left my body.)
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JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
"Clinical" death is more a legal distinction than a medical one. That's why we call it that: it's a milepost in the extrinsic assessment of a clinician's duty and performance.
A determination of "clinical" death begins the clinician's duty to resuscitate. A patient's inability to sustain breathing and heartbeat autonomously used to be the medical standard of a determination of death. And biologically speaking, if that condition persists, biological death will inevitably ensue. With the advent of effective resuscitation treatments (chest compressions, adrenergic agonists, etc.), it not only became possible to resuscitate a clinically dead patient, it became obligatory to try. Insufficient effort toward that end following clinical death is grounds for a charge of medical malpractice. So adept has medicine become at resuscitation following clinical death that we now have legal directives to the contrary—"do not resuscitate" orders—that address the capacity of clinicians to mitigate biological death almost indefinitely by means of external life support.
Identifying clinical death merely starts the clock. There is the so-called 20-minute rule that says if clinical resuscitation efforts have not succeeded in 20 minutes, the clinician's duty has been discharged for legal purposes. But while that constitutes a legal "bright line," it's not really consistent with a modern medical standard of care. Hence a determination of biological death is a holistic judgment based on a number of factors. Since clinicians face more legal consequences for taking too few measures than for taking too many, clinicians are motivated to err on the side of enthusiasm. That naturally results in a few corner cases in which self-sustaining life was restored when similarly situated patients had previously expired. These cases are legitimately remarkable and deserve attention. But the attribution of the patient's subjective experience to some specific hypothetical supernatural cause is premature.
"Clinical death" is a particularly problematic term to use for this purpose for a number of reasons. The first, already belabored, is that it's a legal formalism defined by a purely imposed notion of a clinician's social responsibility. It's difficult to imagine why a purely natural or supernatural process would operate according to such an arbitrary distinction.
Second, the identification of clinical death as the beginning of a gradual and reversible process begs the question that the purported separation of a spirit from its host is a gradual and reversible process. Yes, in science when the observations we proposed to explain with some hypothesis become more complex than we first thought, the hypotheses must expand to embrace that complexity. But this affects the prima facie plausibility of the hypothesis. You need to supply a reason appropriate to the hypothesis for why it should expand in exactly that way and still be plausible. So far there seems to be little interest in equating near-death to the eviction of the spirit according to anything beyond circular reasoning.
Third, clinical death expressly does not preclude brain activity. In fact, it presumes and requires it. Ongoing brain activity is one of many processes that resuscitation is intended to preserve. This creates a typical parsimony dilemma. It is clearly understood that imaginative mental states occur that have little to do with the sensory perception of an external reality. These states are so ubiquitous that they are regarded as healthy and necessary. These states can be affected by an off-nominal condition in the organism—e.g., "fever dreams." They can be affected by unconscious sensory input. Because these are so well established, they form an effective null hypothesis that a supernatural hypothesis must overcome. The departing-soul hypothesis has to identify a part of the observation that cannot be explained by the null.
Gulliver Foyle
Penultimate Amazing
Largely because we're calling you out on your PRATTs.
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
You are welcome to your opinion.
Rusty Tyler
Graduate Poster
Aionios mistranslated as "eternal" or "everlasting" in Matthew 25:46.
All these verses below use the same NT Greek word, "aionios", the Greek word mistranslated as "eternal" or "everlasting" in Matthew 25:46. See bold below. This shows that "aionios" cannot mean eternal or everlasting.
Matthew 13:22
The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful.
Romans 12:2
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
1 Corinthians 1:20
Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
1 Corinthians 2:8
None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
Ephesians 2:2
in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
Galatians 1:4-5 KJV
Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father:5 To whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Luke 18:29-30
“Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God 30 will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.”
Compare: Matthew 12:32; Mark 10:30; Luke 18:30; Luke 20:35; Ephesians 1:21
Aionios, the Greek word mistranslated as "eternal" and "everlasting" in the Bible (eternal hell?)
Gulliver Foyle
Penultimate Amazing
Souls are another thing for which we have no evidence in favour and strong evidence against.
Your sense of youness is an emergent property of the complexity of your brain and of society.
Gulliver Foyle
Penultimate Amazing
OMD is best says Miracle Max!
JayUtah
Penultimate Amazing
As you are to yours, except that you're trying to say that your opinion is better supported by evidence. That's a claim that can be tested. And your posting it in a skeptics forum suggests you are at least somewhat open to such a test and perhaps interested in participating in it.
P.J. Denyer
Penultimate Amazing
Because one's a cold and desolate void where no-one can hear you scream, and the other is deep space.