Posted on 10/02/2006 8:52:07 PM PDT by neverdem
Nicely stated.
According to this, reality exists only in our heads. "Subjective Reality". The conclusion of this study is a great example of the effects of philosophy (and the death of Liberal Arts) on Scientists.
Tell that to Don Piper who was declared dead for 90 minutes and claimed to have gone to heaven.
Fascinating read by the way... "90 Minutes in Heaven".
No, the premise is that there is a spiritual entity that can leave the body and see without its eyes. Or, is there sight without eyes.
Do you have that one with that guy who was in the movie that was out last year?
The accident or the OBE?
I was fascinated, and although the memory has faded in 50 years, it hasn't gone away.
My experience did not include floating above the operating table. Visually it was more like the "beziers" screen saver. This was in 1955, and at the time I thought of myself as floating in space amid galaxies -- the only named objects I knew of that seemed similar.
The primary effect of the experience was to make me skeptical of claims to supernatural visions and such. That, and I found people wowing about drug experiences to be boring.
Interesting, thanks for sharing. Older folks often have viewpoints worth thinking about.
We had one of our children with us, a 3 week old baby, as we were out and about - an older woman (90+), asked to see the infant, and we were happy to share, as she was known to us. At the time, the child was in that deep sleep you see with infants.
The older woman smiled and looked at us and said "Oh, she must be back talking with her angel friends. When babies grow up they quit talking with angels, what a shame."
Our 'baby' is now a fully grown person, with babies of her own. Even today, I remember that conversation, it was quite striking. And, it does make you wonder.
Just because we don't have tools that can measure this stuff does not mean it doesn't exist.
The scientific method has proved invaluable over the past centuries to help us more accurately understand our world and our perceived reality. But I think it's a safe assumption that, on the evolutionary ladder of scientific exploration, we are really at one of the lower rungs. We need to find ways to explore that which extends beyond the normal range of human perception.
It's axiomatic that man ridicules that which he does not understand. And, yes, even science occasionally succumbs to this hubris, simply because science is done by men (and women, too!).
We're a long, long way from having all the answers. In fact, I think it's safe to say that which we do know is dwarfed by that which we don't.
There's a lot of crap out there, it is true, but you can say that about most any human endeavor. While most of it's bunk, I do try and keep an open mind.
Kind of like Phineas in "A Separate Peace" - "You should always pray to God, just in case there is one!"
CA....
OOOhhhh!!! NAVY Seals!
There's a double irony in that hauteur. Physicists know better than anyone else that new measurement tools lead to discoveries about the physical universe. This morning's Nobel Prize for Physics is a dramatic case in point: get the right telescope above the hot, opaque atmosphere, and you can see the shape of the heat from the Big Bang. It was always there; we just didn't know it.
The second irony is that the people who most often repeat the above reproof (a cliché by now) are the most likely to react towards scientific discoveries with disbelief, scorn and ridicule. Again, this morning's Nobel is a case in point: the Big Bang haters jumped all over it. There are entire subcultures of people who hate the idea of dark matter, black holes, extra dimensions, supersymmetry, quantum mechanics, relativity, you name it...but they all have the effrontery to demand that scientists be more open-minded with respect to their mysticism du jour.
As for astral projection specifically, I do have an open mind, but my credulity needs something to go on. Give me either a compelling theoretical reason to believe such a thing might be possible, or an unexplained phenomenon it seems to explain. You might previously have been able to point to OBEs as an unexplained phenomenon, but the fact that a material switch has been found to reproduce the phenomenon strongly indicates that a mystical explanation isn't required, and in any case should not be sought until after the material explanations have been ruled out.
Are you kidding me? I love this stuff. All of it. In fact, I can't get enough of it!
As for the rest of your rather excellent post, a cliche becomes a cliche because it has, and retains, a certain elemental truth. That's why they persist.
I don't have a problem with the tools. Discovering the afterglow, such as it is, of the Big Bang, is fascinating, but the more basic question I address is, is the observable, physical universe really all that was created at this instant? How do we know? And further, in our unending quest to find answers, are we indeed asking the right questions?
I will grant you that at the end of the day, most all things have an explanation. I'm not a believer in mysticism per se, but I do firmly believe that at this point in time, we don't have all the answers, scientifically speaking. The crux of my position is that I take issue with those who think otherwise, implicitly or explicitly.
Thanks for the post. I am enjoying this thread tremendously.
CA....
bookmark
When people are working up the nerve to die, the Angels (and family) come to take them home.
Unless they are Dems, in which case, they push.....
Enjoy today.
Did you click on the link to the pathologist's page I had earlier? The thing that struck him about operative OBE's was that the person saw and commented on things actually present within the operating room which they would not have a direct line of sight to while on the table; *and* that the things they saw (shape of the human heart in their own chest, presence of fat pads) corresponded to what was actually there, even when what they saw contradicted their own current beliefs of what those things would look like.
Until you can account for those particular OBE's (and not just "explain them away") then the electrical-stimulus-created OBE appears to be a related--but different--class of phenomena.
Cheers!
Tell me what you think.
For what is that thought, but immaterial.
The report is itself proof of the immaterial. Not just by the dream-like images reported, but by the fact that the report itself is a thing of thoughts immaterial projected onto pixel and ink.
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