• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Proof of reincarnation

gerg said:
People who discuss spirituality and science in the same breath, are vehemently accused of the same ignorant tendencies as fundamentalists waiting for Jesus to return tomorrow. So why be skeptical at all? What science has defeated is the great tradition of idealism. This tradition has hundreds of branches, but let’s accept the simple dictionary definition: idealism is “a theory that ultimate reality lies in a realm transcending phenomena.” By nature most people are idealistic. They accept God and have a will to believe. They are open to experiences beyond their five senses, such as love and beauty. They assume that there is an ultimate Truth.

Idealism thus persists in popular culture, but science has felled it on practically every academic front. To be honest, the assault was stunning, and victory was based on the simplest tactic. “Show me what you can prove, not what you believe.” Using experimental proof as its standard, science sent idealism scurrying in baffled confusion. Darwin defeated teleology, the age-old principle that Nature has a goal and purposeful design. Materialism relegated God to an unprovable hypothesis, along with everything associated with the numinous, such as the soul, the afterlife, and religious inspiration. Philosophy scrambled to shed Plato and Hegel and become scientific through the efforts of G. E. Moore and Wittgenstein, later morphing into the work of Austin and the ordinary language school of British philosophy.

Idealism failed to strike back. True, the French philosopher Henri Bergson, who theorized about an invisible life force or “elan vital,” won the Nobel Prize in 1926, but that was for literature, a stark acknowledgment that any theory about invisible realities deserved to be considered imaginary, or at best a matter of faith.

To say that the victory of science was the victory of skepticism is misleading, however. If science had been merely skeptical, it would have merely replaced belief with disbelief. This it didn’t do; science gave new grounds for knowledge that belief couldn’t match. To disdainfully dismiss any immaterial phenomenon, as skeptics do, actually betrays the scientific method, which allows any hypothesis into argument in an open-minded tolerance for the next ridiculous speculation that may turn out to be true.

Skeptics defend the necessity to keep science and religion in their own proper place. Imagine a man walking into a room, and the skeptic who is there to vet his credentials says, “Well, I see you believe in God, but you also do good science, so come on in. Just don’t mix the two.” It disturbs me that the man being vetted could be Albert Einstein, Wolfgang Pauli, or Erwin Schrodinger. Asking a great mind to separate faith and science asks too much, and I think it asks too much of lesser minds, too. Why not try to see if the schism can be repaired?
Click to expand...

Um, no.

The thing is you have theories, they are approximate models that try to model the behavior of observed reality.

If your theory matches the data it is likely a better model until another comes along and matches the data to a finer degree.

So yes all human thoughts are equally true and equally false, but in science, the value is judged by the ability of the model.

So 'god' may or may not have predictive validity as a concept, that is the scientific judgment. Now other judgments exist as well and they may have other values to some people.

You however are using appeals to emotion, metaphors and analogies to amke some sort of political point to this. The value of spirituality and the emotional intuitive perception may be just as a way of coping with the human condition.

So if it provides comfort to people to believe that they have a spirit or soul that is fine, if it gives them some sense of purpose and meaning, that is fine as well.

However if they charge people money for 'spiritual' cures for cancer that are not effective, that is a problem, if they cause people to avoid effective treatments, that is a problem.

Now this is where I stand on the reincarnation, sure , you can have that perception and that is fine, and that experience and that is fine. however if you really want me to believe in the validity of that perception/experience as indicative of the transmission of information through spirits, then I want to see the data.
 
gerg said:
Just because something is testable doesn't make it real or true..and more importantly, so far the tests have concluded "evolution is not a fact" end of story. move on.
Click to expand...

By the same standard, 'nuclear fusion' is not a fact. Nor is 'gravity' a fact. Duh.

The question is : Does the approximate model match the data?
 
gerg said:
Straight from Wiki > "For all these features, however, it is clear that Tiktaalik was simply a fish; its lobed fins appear better suited for swimming in water rather than crawling on land, and other fish, such as the Coelacanth, were also thought to be "missing links" until they were discovered to be some form of fish. It has been placed by evolutionists alongside Archaeopteryx, but they fail to see that neither animal was a transitional form; archaeopteryx was a full bird, tiktaalik was a full fish. "

Give it up resume, you've got nothing.
Click to expand...

Sorry gerg, Tiktaalik is seen as an imtermediate form by paleontologists,
and does demonstrate the predictive abilities of paleontology. Crack a book once in awhile.
 
gerg said:
Straight from Wiki > "For all these features, however, it is clear that Tiktaalik was simply a fish; its lobed fins appear better suited for swimming in water rather than crawling on land, and other fish, such as the Coelacanth, were also thought to be "missing links" until they were discovered to be some form of fish. It has been placed by evolutionists alongside Archaeopteryx, but they fail to see that neither animal was a transitional form; archaeopteryx was a full bird, tiktaalik was a full fish. "

Give it up resume, you've got nothing.
Click to expand...
Unlike the bible and gerg, things are updated in science.


Also, they do know how a bee flies, and also that we use way more than 10% of ours brains, well some of us do.

Paul

:) :) :)
 
gerg said:
In steps the "complexity" guy and starts talking mathematics like it has anything to do with anything. Heard of the phrase "price of fish in China"? No evidence of reincarnation!? I suppose you're going to go on about Trigonometry or something now! You gotta get out more boy. There's a big world out there beyond your computer.
Click to expand...

It is my experience in the big world out there that leads me to think that there is no such thing as reincarnation.I have never seen any evidence to the contrary.Do you have any?
 
gerg said:
Tell me about it on this website if you say you are not religious skeptics don't believe you. Why? Because Skepticism is the attitude of doubt. If you feel that nobody can be trusted, then keep your allegiance to skepticism, and enjoy its attitude of self-reinforced doubt.
Click to expand...

It has nothing to do with doubt,in my case skepticism means ''show me the evidence.''
 
Why is it that when a person that cannot back himself up, has to point out spelling and starts making abusive replies?



I Am He
 
Ian Wishart being the one who hates gay activists and sex ed in schools, of course. Great scientist's resume.

I, for one, am very familar with regression hypnosis therapy. I don't exactly dismiss it, but the central problem is that it's not eliciting what it claims to, so it's pretty irresonsible. It doesn't have anything to do with past lives, but rather with the fact that the people who respond to it have serious psychological problems that need to be treated in helpful ways instead of pandered to with this kind of idiocy. Anyway, what interests me about discussing reincarnation is the only thing that I think you can really discuss usefully: why is it that people do believe in it? I think that the answer is very complex and can't be easily summed up.
 
Maia said:
Ian Wishart being the one who hates gay activists and sex ed in schools, of course. Great scientist's resume.

I, for one, am very familar with regression hypnosis therapy. I don't exactly dismiss it, but the central problem is that it's not eliciting what it claims to, so it's pretty irresonsible. It doesn't have anything to do with past lives, but rather with the fact that the people who respond to it have serious psychological problems that need to be treated in helpful ways instead of pandered to with this kind of idiocy. Anyway, what interests me about discussing reincarnation is the only thing that I think you can really discuss usefully: why is it that people do believe in it? I think that the answer is very complex and can't be easily summed up.
Click to expand...

You offer that regression therapy is "pretty irresponsible." Is there any scenario where it is responsible? You seem to have real-world experience in this regard.
 
I Am He said:
Why is it that when a person that cannot back himself up, has to point out spelling and starts making abusive replies?
Click to expand...

Especially after I had been so good as to compliment him on his ability to spell 'evolution'. You'd think misspelling that tennis player's name would have paled into insignificance.
 
Resume said:
You offer that regression therapy is "pretty irresponsible." Is there any scenario where it is responsible? You seem to have real-world experience in this regard.
Click to expand...



As it's practiced, I can't see it. I think that most practitioners have good intentions and are sincerely trying to help, but the premise is so unfounded in basic reality, and the people are so untrained, that I have serious, serious problems with the ethical nature of the entire thing. For instance, take a look at this:

One of the best known forms of PLR is working with traumatic memories from past lives. We use this method for discovering the source in the subconscious mind of an emotional or physical problem. Or we can look at the source of a core belief in the client’s subconscious mind which is limiting their success in life. Some examples could include a phobic reaction such as a fear of entering the water, not explained by any present life experience, or a pain or disease which a client was born with, or a limiting core belief that "anyone I love will always abandon me." The procedure for accessing these memories is simple, and is often quite effective whether the client believes in past lives or not. We simply use a standard induction technique combined with instructions that the subconscious mind will now take us to the source of the client’s presenting problem. The hard part, which requires substantial training, is knowing what to do when the memories emerge.
Click to expand...

This is a quote from a website for the Alchemy Institute of Hypnosis in Santa Rosa (well, the setting is beautiful, anyway.) They're talking about issues that could and should be addressed by standard therapeutic techniques, but there are good reasons why therapists are required to have extensive training. (I'm an LMSW, and I couldn't do individual therapy without two more years of supervision.) But anyone can become a hypnotherapist with as little as ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY HOURS of classes. (I am not kidding. It's right here, on this page. And what happens if a more serious mental illness emerges? How likely do you think a hynotherapist is to refer the person to an actual physician for psych meds?

I'm not sure which bothers me more-- that the entire premise is based on such past-life-regression crap, or that the practitioners are so ridiculously unprepared. Messing around with people's heads this way is SERIOUS stuff, and the untrained should not be allowed to do it. I cannot believe that somebody isn't regulating these people more strictly. Maybe I should just start an entire thread on this subject...
 
Maia said:
As it's practiced, I can't see it. I think that most practitioners have good intentions and are sincerely trying to help, but the premise is so unfounded in basic reality, and the people are so untrained, that I have serious, serious problems with the ethical nature of the entire thing. For instance, take a look at this:



This is a quote from a website for the Alchemy Institute of Hypnosis in Santa Rosa (well, the setting is beautiful, anyway.) They're talking about issues that could and should be addressed by standard therapeutic techniques, but there are good reasons why therapists are required to have extensive training. (I'm an LMSW, and I couldn't do individual therapy without two more years of supervision.) But anyone can become a hypnotherapist with as little as ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY HOURS of classes. (I am not kidding. It's right here, on this page. And what happens if a more serious mental illness emerges? How likely do you think a hynotherapist is to refer the person to an actual physician for psych meds?

I'm not sure which bothers me more-- that the entire premise is based on such past-life-regression crap, or that the practitioners are so ridiculously unprepared. Messing around with people's heads this way is SERIOUS stuff, and the untrained should not be allowed to do it. I cannot believe that somebody isn't regulating these people more strictly. Maybe I should just start an entire thread on this subject...
Click to expand...
I'll choose to ignore the drivel from the previous posters and respond to yours for now, although Dancing David put forward some reasonable arguments, but does appear a bit stuck in his ways. So Maia, do you have an issue with people who have overcome their phobias by way of a PLR and are now leading happy lives? Do you also have any examples of hypnotherapists who on top of not being able to help people have also failed to refer those people they can't help to the right person or people?
 
gerg said:
I'll choose to ignore the drivel from the previous posters and respond to yours for now, although Dancing David put forward some reasonable arguments, but does appear a bit stuck in his ways. So Maia, do you have an issue with people who have overcome their phobias by way of a PLR and are now leading happy lives? Do you also have any examples of hypnotherapists who on top of not being able to help people have also failed to refer those people they can't help to the right person or people?
Click to expand...

When it comes to drivel,we could take your correspondence course.
 
gerg said:
I'll choose to ignore the drivel from the previous posters . . .

<snip>
Click to expand...


Nothinig drivelous about this simple question, gerg:

In what way does "Eve's Bites" by Ian Wishart totally discredit Dawkins?


Your continued evasion of the question is starting to suggest something.
 
Resume said:
You offer that regression therapy is "pretty irresponsible." Is there any scenario where it is responsible? You seem to have real-world experience in this regard.
Click to expand...

I do not approve of it , but as a way to explore the contents of your psyche. Your know, entertainment or just finding out. There are other methods as well, you can use the techniques of shamanism for example.

The point to remember is that there may be validity as emotional exploration but not as 'past life' recreation. Just as guided visualization is something people enjoy.
 
gerg said:
I'll choose to ignore the drivel from the previous posters and respond to yours for now, although Dancing David put forward some reasonable arguments, but does appear a bit stuck in his ways. So Maia, do you have an issue with people who have overcome their phobias by way of a PLR and are now leading happy lives? Do you also have any examples of hypnotherapists who on top of not being able to help people have also failed to refer those people they can't help to the right person or people?
Click to expand...

And the data and evidence are?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom