For me the materialist world view is almost as bad in some ways as a religious view, both tend to be very dogmatic and self-sealing. — Sam26
but what one believes in terms of their world view should hang on the evidence to support the argument. — Sam26
I couldn't have summed-up the Atheist Materialist world view, and its conclusions and consequences any better than that. — Michael Ossipoff
If our minds and indenties are based entirely off physical brain functions that people are naturally greater or lesser quality based on the quality or fiction of these structures and their function. — MysticMonist
Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there’s no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die. If you claim that some form of soul persists beyond death, what particles is that soul made of? What forces are holding it together? How does it interact with ordinary matter?
Morphic resonance is the influence of previous structures of activity on subsequent similar structures of activity organized by morphic fields. It enables memories to pass across both space and time from the past. The greater the similarity, the greater the influence of morphic resonance. What this means is that all self-organizing systems, such as molecules, crystals, cells, plants, animals and animal societies, have a collective memory on which each individual draws and to which it contributes. In its most general sense this hypothesis implies that the so-called laws of nature are more like habits.
On the back of the head of a little boy in Thailand was a small, round puckered birthmark, and at the front was a larger, irregular birthmark, resembling the entry and exit wounds of a bullet; Stevenson had already confirmed the details of the boy’s statements about the life of a man who’d been shot in the head from behind with a rifle, so that seemed to fit. And a child in India who said he remembered the life of boy who’d lost the fingers of his right hand in a fodder-chopping machine mishap was born with boneless stubs for fingers on his right hand only. This type of “unilateral brachydactyly” is so rare, Stevenson pointed out, that he couldn’t find a single medical publication of another case.
Very roughly speaking, when most people think about an immaterial soul that persists after death, they have in mind some sort of blob of spirit energy that takes up residence near our brain, and drives around our body like a soccer mom driving an SUV.
But that belief itself is "groundless" or aesthetically grounded. — t0m
I also think karma flows from life to life and karma is a highly misunderstood concept. — MysticMonist
But these conceptions occur in two radically separated domains of discourse. (Although, incidentally, Buddhists don't deny hell - the Buddhist hells in traditional literature are numerous and ghastly, although they're not eternal.) — Wayfarer
I have practiced Zen now for nearly twenty years. At the heart of this practice are the ideas of letting go, of non-attachment, and of no-self. The idea is not that there is no self at all, but that the self is not what we commonly think it is. ‘I' am not a persisting entity separate from the world, but a flowing, ephemeral, ungraspable part of that world. As anyone who has had a mystical experience knows, everything is one. I think those lessons, and many more, were thrust upon me in that original experience. They gave me not only an academic desire to understand strange experiences but the motivation and insight to pursue a spiritual life.
As happens with many NDErs, my experiences and my research have taken away the fear of death, not because I am convinced that 'I' will carry on after this body dies, but because I know there is no one to die, and never was. If others, like ZipZap, disagree that is their prerogative. All any of us can do is seek the truth to the best of our ability, and - even if that truth turns out to be quite different from what we hoped or expected - to accept it when we find it. — Blackmore
As someone who is very interested in both Platonism and Buddhism, this can create some cognitive dissonance. — Wayfarer
can't differ with anything said in that piece, but you’re right in guessing I’m not a Sam Harris fan. Those are aspects of the ‘secular Buddhism’ debate. The secular Buddhists want to divest Buddhism of what they see as the religious trappings, the traditional Buddhists think the secular Buddhists are a Trojan Horse trying to smuggle scientific materialism into Buddhism. (I lean towards the traditionalists.) Interestingly, Sam Bercholz, who started Shambhala Publications, one of the largest Buddhist publishers in the US, had a near-death experience. He didn't see the white light, in fact he had a vision of hell, which he described in his recent book A Guided Tour of Hell. — Wayfarer
Sure, by "relevant" I mean "relevant to someone", and so a universe isn't relevant to someone unless there's someone--That's a tautology (and circular?). — Michael Ossipoff
So the analogy I'm speaking of is the analogy between dream states and waking states, and waking states and NDEs. We know, for example, that moving into a dream state is moving from a higher level of awareness to a lower level of awareness. — Sam26
You guys are taking the thread in a different direction. I was looking at the evidence based on NDEs, and where the evidence leads. — Sam26
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