Materialism (championed by Darwinists) makes reason Impossible.

[Aepervius]

So I am indulging in magical thinking am I. This sounds like a claim that phenomena not yet known to science is magic.

I have only experienced this kind of emotional phenomena twice. Both times it was strikingly different to how I normally experience feelings.
It did not originate through an activity or phenomena I was experiencing myself, but rather was somehow delivered to me from elsewhere. As such I did not forget the experience and am sure it has not happened at any other time.

The problem is that there is nothing in what you said which point to a new phenomena, as it is actually already explanable from what we know from, human psychology, and its bias ! We all suffer from those, so it is not an attack on your feeling, jsut pointing out that you cannot demonstrate that there was a correlation, and indeed almost certainly it was a selection bias at play. We all suffer from it as human !

 

[joobz]

It is not hiding int he statistic. It is simply that we human have a lot of BIAS into what we remember and when. A classic example of that is the premonitory dream, which are not remembered when nothing happens, but clearly and vividely remembered for a long time when a correlation happens. The things is , it is a bias and statistic effect, not a true premonition !

Last night, I dreamt that I was renting a car. The car I rented was taken by another person, so to make it up they gave me an upgrade. The upgrade was a super fancy red sports car like one I've never seen. It had a heads up display on the dash, full glass sliding doors, and seated 4. I had a hard time getting the seat right to where I was comfortable with driving it away. Once I did, I woke up.

So was this a premonition or a dream?

 

[Hokulele]

Malerin: "Is there a culture that does not report any religious experience among its members?"

That is rare.
Also, most cultures explain how their part of the world was created.
There is variation, however, in how seriously people believe in these stories.
Education level seems to have an inverse correlation to religiosity.

The Piraha.

 

[zooterkin]

So I am indulging in magical thinking am I. This sounds like a claim that phenomena not yet known to science is magic.

I have only experienced this kind of emotional phenomena twice. Both times it was strikingly different to how I normally experience feelings.
It did not originate through an activity or phenomena I was experiencing myself, but rather was somehow delivered to me from elsewhere. As such I did not forget the experience and am sure it has not happened at any other time.

Did you watch the video Sideroxylon linked to?

And how on earth are you determining that the feeling was delivered to you from elsewhere?

 

[yy2bggggs]

Addendum:

I can think of no other way in which I was experiencing the same emotional shock as the other members of my family.

I'm curious, why do you say you were experiencing the same emotional shock? By your account, your emotional state was out of proportion for the situation until you were informed what the situation was.

 

[lemurien]

I had a dream that I made love to another woman and my girlfriend left me.
Maybe I should.

 

[lemurien]

I do have an alternate solution to the spread of anguish.
People who are close (like a family) read each others' body language subconsciously.
Even animals do that.
That's a way to communicate and spread emotions without saying a word.

 

[Malerin]

The Piraha.

Since the publication of Everett’s book, the Pirahã have been used by many writers skeptical of religion to showcase a society in which religion has no place (for one example, see here). The Pirahã have also been cited as a counterexample to the common claim that religious beliefs are human universals. But there’s a problem with these arguments, and Everett himself highlights it: in his many articles and interviews about the Pirahã, he reports that the Pirahã world is chock-full of spirits, including sky spirits, forest spirits, and evil spirits. Rather than being taken on faith, however, the existence of these incorporeal beings is simply assumed, since nearly everyone in the Pirahã society claims to actually see and interact with these beings.
http://www.ibcsr.org/index.php?opti...l-experience&catid=25:research-news&Itemid=59

 

[Paulhoff]

Spiritualism (championed by Jesus believers) makes reason Impossible.

That makes must more sense now.

Paul

 

[NavyPack]

in his many articles and interviews about the Pirahã, he reports that the Pirahã world is chock-full of spirits, including sky spirits, forest spirits, and evil spirits. Rather than being taken on faith, however, the existence of these incorporeal beings is simply assumed, since nearly everyone in the Pirahã society claims to actually see and interact with these beings.
http://www.ibcsr.org/index.php?opti...l-experience&catid=25:research-news&Itemid=59

I followed that link, interesting article, but you must admit that the site is dedicated to the promotion of religion in the most general sense. Not competely unbiased on this issue.

Reading about the difficulty in translation to & from Piraha, how can this site say that the "spirits" mentioned automatically equate to our conception of a non-corporeal spirit.

In reading the different types, my first thought was, "Couldn't that just mean mythical/atypical examples of birds (sky spirit), large forest dwellers (ground spirits), & dangerous predators (evil spirts).

Either way, none of these concepts match up with anything like the major monotheisms, more similar to pagan "nature" spirits.

No where was the claim made that there are societies who do not suffer from cultural "magical" thinking. But there are societies without any deities, which really is the crux of the matter.

 

[zooterkin]

With lack of evidence for any other theories for NDE, the thus far assumed, but never proven, concept that consciousness and memories are localised in the brain should be discussed. How could a clear consciousness outside one's body be experienced at the moment that the brain no longer functions during a period of clinical death with flat EEG?

Interesting that the largest ever study of NDE's would end on a note like that, isn't it?

Interesting, doesn't prove anything though. I suspect it may reflect a lack of knowledge on the current understanding on the way the brain works.

True and true. Kids can be convinced they were molested when they never were. Does that mean we should ignore all molestation claims of children? Are you claiming that every child that claims to have remembered a past life was "made to remember" it? Evidence?

Do you have evidence that any remembered past life was real?

How is this true? Countless people report experiencing God's presence. Experiencing the presence of an entity is clearly a "detection" of it.

Not if it doesn't exist. People have reported the presence of many things for which there is no other evidence. Does that mean they all exist too?

 

[Malerin]

I followed that link, interesting article, but you must admit that the site is dedicated to the promotion of religion in the most general sense. Not competely unbiased on this issue.

There's also a Wiki article that references spirits, but I wanted something more in depth. But I wasn't going to kill myself researching it.

Reading about the difficulty in translation to & from Piraha, how can this site say that the "spirits" mentioned automatically equate to our conception of a non-corporeal spirit.

In reading the different types, my first thought was, "Couldn't that just mean mythical/atypical examples of birds (sky spirit), large forest dwellers (ground spirits), & dangerous predators (evil spirts).

Either way, none of these concepts match up with anything like the major monotheisms, more similar to pagan "nature" spirits.

No where was the claim made that there are societies who do not suffer from cultural "magical" thinking. But there are societies without any deities, which really is the crux of the matter.

The claim was about the universality of religious experience.

 

[Hokulele]

Since the publication of Everett’s book, the Pirahã have been used by many writers skeptical of religion to showcase a society in which religion has no place (for one example, see here). The Pirahã have also been cited as a counterexample to the common claim that religious beliefs are human universals. But there’s a problem with these arguments, and Everett himself highlights it: in his many articles and interviews about the Pirahã, he reports that the Pirahã world is chock-full of spirits, including sky spirits, forest spirits, and evil spirits.

Please explain how you get from "belief in spirits" to "religion". Is Ghosthunters a religious broadcast?

ETA: If you had read Everett's book, one of the most glaring differences between Piraha culture and most religions is the fact that they do not have creation myths.

 

[Dancing David]

Now, David. Pleasure having discussed with you.


Unknown what you are trying to say.
just says about it all.

Maybe you could reference a post?

 

[Dancing David]

Actually, we do. NDE's, veridical OBEs, past life recollections of children, universality of religious experience, reports of certain paranormal acticities by reliable witnesses, etc.

You have a very low standard of evidence.

 

[The Norseman]

Thanks Norseman for your interest, I respect your openness on such issues.

Thank you! I didn't mean it to be a "call out" type thing; I would have respected your privacy if you hadn't wished to share it and made no judgments about you because of that.

 

[lemurien]

I have hard time understanding how could the religious nature of human beings be taken as an evidence of the 'soul stuff'. OK so people have their experiences and their beliefs.
Have they ever affected the ways of the material world outside of the human imagination?

Galileo did not put the moons to orbit Jupiter, he just was the first to make a big noise about them. The Earth never was flat no matter what the people believed.

Now we should believe that people believe in deities and have religious experiences because the Creator left his thumb mark in his favorite toys?
Sure, we are naive but that naive?

I do not know if the results have been duplicated but I read recently about a study where an atheist, a catholic nun and a buddhist monk were meditating while monitored by fMRI. Religious people, the catholic and the buddhist share the same activation patterns whereas the atheist was different.

I am for the theory that religiosity is in the way we are wired from birth but not 1 or 0, rather like everything in nature, populations that can only be described statistically.

The argument that 'many people believe in deity so gods must exist' can be turned upside down to 'since there are atheists, gods do not exist'. Of course, then the majority would say that god exists because there more of us.

And if ever the situation changes –with education for example, as the trend seems to be– gods could be voted to nonexistence.

And that again would mean that they were imaginary creatures all along.
Real ones would rig the polls.

 

[lemurien]

...I did not mention the 'spiritual world outside of the human imagination' because I have never heard anybody observing such a thing.

 

[Craig4]

Actually, we do. NDE's, veridical OBEs, past life recollections of children, universality of religious experience, reports of certain paranormal acticities by reliable witnesses, etc.

Got some studies?

 

[Malerin]

Got some studies?

Seriously?