Topic: Why I'm an atheist - page 93. (Read 89022 times)

Actually, Randi's prize is not a scientific way to investigate paranormal phenomena.
For one, applicants are legitimately afraid the prize is some sort of worthless trick.
Why are you trying to pass this off as science? If I do not believe you, I should be able to validate your claim myself; you should not need an authority (JREF) to back up your scientific evidence. Please, I provided evidence that these memories are at least as real as valid memories. Where is the evidence that these memories are all hallucinations?

See:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/05/randis-unwinnable-prize-million-dollar.html

You have only presented rhetorical opinions but have not met your burden of proof. Science has proved that NDE is a hallucination? How so?

Scientific attempts to subdivide and explain the individual elements of what is clearly a complex syndrome of related phenomena indicate that scientists are resigned to the fact that their efforts to date at developing a more comprehensive explanation have largely failed. They seem to be reduced to explaining a complex system by examining a small portion of the data available and filtering out or ignoring the rest. Such an approach is not promising but it seems to have been accepted as the only research methodology available to them.

Science is a way of interpreting the results of an experiment, such as the one carried out by Thonnard, et al:

Since reports of NDEs are proposed to be imagined events, and since memories of imagined events have, on average, fewer phenomenological characteristics than real events memories, we here compared phenomenological characteristics of NDEs reports with memories of imagined and real events. Results showed that, in NDE memories group, NDE memories have more characteristics than memories of imagined and real events (p<0.02).

I provided evidence that these memories are at least as real as valid memories. Where is the evidence that these memories are all hallucinations? Oh, by the way, "We cannot assume from the fact that electrical stimulation of the brain can induce OBE-like illusions that all OBEs are therefore illusions"!

An NDE is not "anything goes" or "make believe"; actually, NDE memories are "at least as real" as valid memories.
Because NDEs have many common core elements, this suggests that they are spiritual voyages outside of the body.

Ummm no... that is incorrect

Science has shown that NDE are nothing more than a hallucination...

NDE can be produced using a magnetic field focused on the temporal lobe of your brain...

In a religious person, they see a while light, their family, "feel loved", etc...  In a non-religious person, they have all sorts of experiences, like alien abductions and anything their mind believes is real... this however does not make it legitimate by any means... quite the opposite

Michael Shermer Out of Body Experiment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCVzz96zKA0





Yes, all psychics are fraudulent... 100% of them... every psychic, to the man, is a con-artist... it is not real

If you do not believe me... go look up the James Randi foundation... they have a challenge, offering $1,000,000 if you can provide such evidence under scientific conditions... in over 50 years, nobody has even come close

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_Challenge

Actually, there are many relevant exceptions; you should firstly be aware that the research of Thonnard, et al. shows that memories during near-death experiences (NDE) are AT LEAST AS REAL as valid memories. The brain cannot function (i.e. have perceptions, form memories, etc.) until blood flow is restored, so a cardiac arrest patient with no brain function cannot possibly have perceptions (or even hallucinate) during that time before blood flow is restored, and yet this is what happened in numerous case studies, e.g. AWARE, Pam Reynolds, etc.

As another example, in the Eisenbeiss case, it seems that the only pragmatic way to avoid the conclusion of life after death is for the skeptic to claim fraud as the primary explanation. Is there any 100% reliable evidence indicating that the Eisenbeiss case is an example of fraud?  Is there any piece of reliable evidence that a skeptic can cite in favor of the fraud hypothesis? If not, then the fraud hypothesis is asserted without evidence and can be dismissed without evidence; conclusion: the Eisenbeiss case is not the result of fraud, and therefore it is most easily explained as a genuine example of after-death communication.

The Eisenbeiss case is one of the top cases demonstrating the survival of the human personality after the demise of the physical body:
http://www.aeces.info/Top40/top40-main.shtml

A summary of your "defense" of that hypothesis is quoted here:

You started off this thread with "everything seems to force [you] to conclude that you were nothing for an eternity and are going to be nothing again for another", but now you have basically claimed that "we are still forced to ask where everything came from, and why there are any laws to begin with". So for clarity let me combine your two claims together into one contradiction:
"Life comes from nothing and returns to nothing, but we don't know where everything came from nor how it got here."
If you are so certain that life comes from nothing, why don't you have any idea about how life actually got here?

Obviously, the hypothesis of Krauss and others does not have any explanatory power--his "nothing" is not true annihilation, his "nothingness" cannot be the true source of creation. You failed at defending the idea that the Universe comes from nothing; you even admitted that Krauss was a spectacular failure in his defense of this idea on philosophical (i.e. logical) grounds. Your post does not defend Krauss, it only brings his errors to the attention of everyone in this thread.
No one can defend the absurd idea that awareness comes from nothing.
I strongly advise that you point out your logical error in your OP. NOTHING CAN COME FROM NOTHING.

Are you actually saying that you WILL get to the answer on how something emerged from nothing??

To explain everything is impossible: not realizing this fact produces inhibition.

According to you, the most likely scenario is that "We simpl[y] emerged on a random universe with laws that allowed for this to happen".

Actually, simple mechanism can’t yield the brain, and there is plenty of evidence that proves this. Quoting Hammeroff:

Please excuse me, but could you please repeat where it is that you found empirical evidence or a logical defense for this claim of yours:
"you were nothing for an eternity and are going to be nothing again for another." ?

Why should we believe your claim that "nothing" is the true beginning and end of the reality business? Krauss failed to defend his theory of a universe from nothing because even ancient philosophers knew that "nothing comes from nothing". The claim that "nothing comes from nothing" is so intuitively true that you do not need a proof to see it; human intuition is all that is required to realize that your awareness came from something. Your claim that awareness came from eternal nothing is equivalent to the claim of "something coming from nothing", so therefore it is absurd on its face. In fact, everything seems to force you to conclude that awareness did NOT come from eternal nothing.

I believe that something like that was mentioned in the Atheism and Health thread.
Also: Absurdities and contradictions can be deadly if you ignore them. Your claim that awareness came from eternal nothing appears to me to be pure imagination in motion; I eagerly wait for your empirical and philosophical defense of this claim, but please do not tell me that you have defended Krauss' idea when the truth is that it is logically absurd and not backed by any evidence whatsoever.

You look like a nice person, BADecker; your nick doesn't make you justice.

However, most of the time I think we write in different languages, because I can't understand what you are saying. Not because of your English, but because of what you write.

Yes, Unamuno is wrong, his fear of nothingness made him religious. But he deserves a much better argument than yours. You simple don't give any ground for your allegation that "our souls and spirits are embedded within the core existence of the universe".

Anyway, you are talking about things I don't believe on. It seems you even think we have a soul and a spirit. I can't see any evidence to either of the two, but just to a brain with mental capacities and a conscience.

Even if I can't agree with what you say anyway, I see a basic logical contradiction between your statement the "soul and essence is connected at its core" and your allegation that they can "be removed from this universe and do not die".

But there is no use in answering me. We wouldn't be able to agree even on the rules of reason.

The scientifically understood facts of cause and effect, complex universe, and universal entropy, when combined, prove that God exists. Science doesn't tell us very much about God. The religions do that.

On homosexuality, on my experience, people that have the need to trash gays are usually individuals with doubts about their own sexuality. They need to trash gays in order to say to everyone "I'm not gay".

On a strategic approach, male gays don't compete with us, on the contrary, they remove competitors, why should I dislike them?

Since male gays like men, I can agree that they have bad taste. But straight women also have bad taste, they also like men. And I'm very happy with their taste, so it's better avoid debating tastes.

The bible condemnation of homosexuality (as usually, with the death penalty, what else could it be?) is immoral. We shouldn't condemn activities that don't harm other people.

Who cares if something is "normal" or not? The point is if it harms other people or not.

If you are against gay marriage, don't marry a gay. But let them do what they want between them.

Some made comments on the creator or on the way from which nothing can be converted on something.

Well, I wrote a post about the recent theory that defends that the Universe came from nothing here:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.14388816

The theory explains how the "physical stuff" was created, but doesn't explain what is the origin of the source of this stuff: the quantum fields that create something from nothing.

So the honest answer is: I don't know what is its source, but ignorance isn't a reason to believe in a god. We'll get to it, but probably to find new questions to ask.

Anyway, you also don't explain what was the source of your god. If you say everything has a beginning that must apply also to god.

No use to write to me about esoteric or metaphysic theories with no empirical evidence. That is pure imagination in motion.

I'm in the reality business. You know, that thing that doesn't go away when you stop believing on it.

Also the thing that can kill you if you ignore it.

There you go. Claiming that atheism doesn't make any claims. Do other atheists do this?

How exactly do you reject atheism as false?

Atheism does not posit any claims... it can be neither true nor false...

Atheism, in its most simple form is, "I don't believe you, show me some better evidence"... How can that be false?

I guess I have to go along with St. Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:19-21 where he says when he talks to the Corinthian church: "19 You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise! 20 In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face. 21 To my shame I admit that we were too weak for that!"


Natural selection is the process of taking on a design and implementing it.


Cause and effect is all around us, readily visible in everything. Randomness has not been proven, and even the theories that try to show that it exists are very shaky. You talk about "random" in a religious way, just like you talk about evolution. The least you could do is talk about evolution in a scientific way by saying that evolution has not been proven to have caused the things that exist to have come into being.


Two possible points about colorblindness:
1. The devil tricked Adam and Eve into becoming imperfect, and colorblindness is one of the ways that imperfection manifests itself;
2. Just as people have always had limits - including Adam and Eve - perhaps colorblindness was one of those limits, and existed as an exercise for people to overcome. We, outside of perfection now, have simply forgotten how to exercise the things that would overcome colorblindness.


Homosexual tendencies exist among the many tendencies that people have. The tendencies are not wrong. Exercising them is. Homosexuality doesn't fit nature regarding either evolution or religion.


Christians and people of other religions haven't always treated other people right. Too bad there isn't some better method to keep the corrupt homosexual practices from being taught to our children. Oh that's right. There is. Fight the tendencies.


If faggots didn't hate themselves so much, they would resist the tendencies so that they wouldn't be put down by those who are straight.



Poor little Eminem.

The bottom line is, get into the Bible. Pray to God. God will help you with your problems, be they colorblindness, homosexuality, or anything else. After all, we all go to the grave. The hereafter is what counts.

Thanks for your wishes. I didn't want to be harsh. I'll read your post on health, even if the premises seem strange, as I wrote. The truth is something, its advantages/disadvantages are another. I made the distinction on my post, leaving the consequences for last.

I think you would agree that the so-called "waves" (of course, no empirical evidence on them...) can't explain why something that you say are a simple receptor (the brain) can in the end affect not only the transmission but also its author, the "soul".

For me that doesn't make sense. Is even absurd because it seems that every time the brain blacks out the "soul" immediately goes out and don't have any recollection of that period, without any relevant exceptions.

I guess it must be a coincidence.

Let's try to keep this civilized and avoid insults or ad hominem arguments.

My rules of engagement are more or less a prompt permanent ignore, without a single warning or answer, on anyone that goes too far on me because of all his excitement on the pursue of the truth.

Yes, I know, that has some connotations with censorship, but I do believe on certain limits, especially when I'm involved.

You don't know shit about atheism

Please quit pretending you know anything about atheists

Anyone who claims, "atheists think"... (anything)... is wrong 100% of the time (in addition to being an ignorant hypocritical asshole)

I wouldn't even begin to presume that all christians think alike... only half of them even believe the story of the garden of eden is fact, the other half believe it is a metaphor...

I certainly wouldn't put words in someone else's mouth... telling them what they think... that's something an idiot might do

Why did Moloch just post an embarrassing all-caps reply shouting at me and telling me that he refuses to read what I wrote? At least he had the dignity to delete it after the fact! I appreciate that! Even if my statement is not true for ALL atheists, it is certainly true for the atheist in question, namely Moloch; perhaps that is why he has deleted his post; he knew that it was true as it applies specifically to him:

Atheists think of life as beginning at birth and ending in death. They have not yet learned to think of it as a continuity such as the cycle of a piston stroke in an expansion-contraction engine--yet one is as continuous as the other.

All who reject gods are typically accepting the idea that nature is indifferent to our individual existence (as evidenced by the existence of death).

OP made a bold claim of physicalism, the existence of death is implied as compelling evidence in favor of atheism:

How does the OP know that nature is indifferent to our individual existence? What makes him the authority? Has he experienced what he is talking about? And how can the OP possibly claim that something (awareness) came from eternal nothing?

Why are you such an asshole that you have to start every post with something equivalent to, "you are stupid so let me explain it to you"? (Way to represent christianity in a negative light asshole... WWJD motherfucker?)

1) Evolution does not design anything... you don't understand what evolution is

B) Evolution is based on 2 simple principles... random changes, both good and bad... and natural selection/survival of the fittest, which weeds out (most) of the bad traits, leaving mostly good traits

This does not mean that there are no bad traits, like colorblindness for example... 8% of men are colorblind, yet it's not bad enough to be 0%...

How does colorblindness fit into God creating perfect humans?

Homosexuality is the same thing... it doesn't help survival, but its really not enough of a hindrance to weed it out of the population...

Then, when you mix in thousands of years where gays were openly hated and murdered... they were forced into hiding, marrying women, having children, spreading their gay genes... it's really your own fault there are so many gays... if christians hadn't forced them to marry women and have children, there would be half as many homosexuals

If you didn't hate faggots so much, there would be fewer of them... the irony is thick

I suppose it will have to be explained to you before you will even be able to start to grasp it.

Evolution designs things with a purpose. The purpose is to expand and extend life. Heterosexuality extends and expands life. Homosexuality doesn't. Homosexuality doesn't fit in a universe that is built by evolution, except in a corrupt way.

You sound like you are hitting the bottle again.

That is equivalent to saying that color-blind people don't fit in the same universe... everyone is different in some way... get over yourself asshole

Just because a character trait doesn't increase sperm count or whatever your standard is... does not make it wrong, it only makes you wrong... and a bigot