My dude, think of it in the context of Schrödinger's cat.No, something may well be impossible even thought we could never prove that. So, it doesn't necessarily follow that if we cannot prove it is impossible, then it must be possible — Janus
Yes, and that sort of approach has wider implications in philosophy. It is deeply immoral, is it not? Intellectual honesty is right up there as a fundamental value. — S
Sure, things are relative. We should all spend more time thinking about how extraordinary it is that we exist in this vast, cold, amazing universe.
And yet, it's just blatantly ridiculous to claim you can't tell the difference between claims of eating cornflakes and of eating dragon eggs. That's just being disingenuous on your part. Don't pretend things cause you want to make your argument stick. — NKBJ
You do realize that if rebirth doesn't extend beyond my personal belief in it, then it's not real? — NKBJ
There is evidence of children recalling previous lives. See this article. — Wayfarer
Your example is flawed because dragon eggs do exist. Komodo dragons lay eggs. — Andrew4Handel
You are begging the questioning by already assume afterlife claims are going to be absurd. — Andrew4Handel
I didn't say they are absurd, I said they are extraordinary, because ordinarily people don't make such claims — NKBJ
You can have an accurate belief that can be later validated by public or personal evidence. — Andrew4Handel
You don't have to prove to someone one else that your mental states exist or are valid. — Andrew4Handel
So what was your inaccurate diversion on Dragon eggs about? — Andrew4Handel
So that's just a purposeful fallacy of equivocation — NKBJ
In which case it would, and always would have, extended beyond just your belief. — NKBJ
It is your problem that you were ambiguous. If you want to give an example of something absurd you probably should check that it doesn't exist. — Andrew4Handel
rich variety of strange phenomena — Andrew4Handel
I don't think you can just assume mental states have a relationship to some kind of metaphysically secure external reality. We are not obliged to make metaphysical commitments about the nature of our mental states. — Andrew4Handel
I mean, I could play that silly game too and interpret: — NKBJ
Well, in that case, anyone's belief about the afterlife is not evidence for the afterlife. — NKBJ
Nope. If I say "leprechaun" and you interpret "person afflicted with dwarfism," or I say "ghost" and you interpret "semblance or trace" then you're just purposefully misreading me, which is simply not my problem. — NKBJ
Caveat: the matter is subject to strong cultural taboos in Western society, for obvious reasons - such beliefs having been declared anathema in the early Christian church and also challenging current scientific understanding of the nature of mind. — Wayfarer
There just aren't enough reports with enough accuracy to make past life memories plausible over unspecified random mechanisms associating categories with grammatical english strings. I've read a few of these reports, and I've never seen anything in them that can't be explained by either the Barnum effect or random chance. — fdrake
Janus
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You are still failing to recognize the distinction between something being possible as far as we know, and something being actually possible.
For example as far as we know it is possible that there is a planet where all the cartoon characters ever created on Earth reside, and that they are psychic beings who projected images of themselves into the minds of their "creators' on Earth. But given the nature of nature such a thing might not be physically possible at all. — Janus
Seriously? — fdrake
A Turkish boy whose face was congenitally underdeveloped on the right side said he remembered the life of a man who died from a shotgun blast at point-blank range. A Burmese girl born without her lower right leg had talked about the life of a girl run over by a train. 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. — Jesse Bering
I think there's too much data presented in these cases to all be written off as coincidence or conspiracy. Also it should be noted that Stevenson never said that these cases amounted to proof of the veracity of past-life memories, only that it was suggestive of it. — Wayfarer
A Turkish boy whose face was congenitally underdeveloped on the right side said he remembered the life of a man who died from a shotgun blast at point-blank range. A Burmese girl born without her lower right leg had talked about the life of a girl run over by a train. 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. — Jesse Bering
If Stevenson spent most of his life studying these reports and could only conclude the strongest examples are merely suggestive of his thesis, I wonder how this counts as evidence for typical 'past-life remembrance' candidates not being due to more mundane causes. Obviously, it does not, and even for Stevenson the absence of effect dominates.
You're paying lipservice to scientific thought when it suits you, it's an old game of snake oil and equivocation. I hope you're not buying. — fdrake
In Sri Lanka, a toddler one day overheard her mother mentioning the name of an obscure town (“Kataragama”) that the girl had never been to. The girl informed the mother that she drowned there when her “dumb” (mentally challenged) brother pushed her in the river, that she had a bald father named “Herath” who sold flowers in a market near the Buddhist stupa, that she lived in a house that had a glass window in the roof (a skylight), dogs in the backyard that were tied up and fed meat, that the house was next door to a big Hindu temple, outside of which people smashed coconuts on the ground. Stevenson was able to confirm that there was, indeed, a flower vendor in Kataragama who ran a stall near the Buddhist stupa whose two-year-old daughter had drowned in the river while the girl played with her mentally challenged brother. The man lived in a house where the neighbors threw meat to dogs tied up in their backyard, and it was adjacent to the main temple where devotees practiced a religious ritual of smashing coconuts on the ground. The little girl did get a few items wrong, however. For instance, the dead girl’s dad wasn’t bald (but her grandfather and uncle were) and his name wasn’t “Herath”—that was the name, rather, of the dead girl’s cousin. Otherwise, 27 of the 30 idiosyncratic, verifiable statements she made panned out.
Even the great Gautama stressed that we should believe nothing that is not based on our own experience; — Janus
Although this discourse is often cited as the Buddha's carte blanche for following one's own sense of right and wrong, it actually says something much more rigorous than that. Traditions are not to be followed simply because they are traditions. Reports (such as historical accounts or news) are not to be followed simply because the source seems reliable. One's own preferences are not to be followed simply because they seem logical or resonate with one's feelings. Instead, any view or belief must be tested by the results it yields when put into practice; and — to guard against the possibility of any bias or limitations in one's understanding of those results — they must further be checked against the experience of people who are wise. The ability to question and test one's beliefs in an appropriate way is called appropriate attention. The ability to recognize and choose wise people as mentors is called having admirable friends. According to Iti 16-17, these are, respectively, the most important internal and external factors for attaining the goal of the practice. — Thanissaro Bhikhu
any view or belief must be tested by the results it yields when put into practice — Thanissaro Bhikhu
and — to guard against the possibility of any bias or limitations in one's understanding of those results — they must further be checked against the experience of people who are wise."
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