Minimum requirements for heaven.....

Though the supernatural is interesting to think about and often useful to believe, it IS super natural...as in outside of the natural. To my mind this places it into a realm of borderline falsehood. Until or unless there is some minimal data to even hint at possibility a thing does not achieve serious contemplation for me. This does not make it an absolute impossibility to me, as that denies the point of scientific thought, it does however eliminate it from scientific consideration.

 

The basic question of "from whence did the Big Bang came?" points at something outside our Universe. Everything we've learned says that every inside has an outside so what is outside the Universe? The Universe is expanding, possibly ad infintum. There many questions and "hints" that point to something that exists outside the Universe be it multiverses, different planes, different dimensions, etc.

Most intelligent, educated people here heard of the "Cargo Cults" of WWII; the association of a religious event with a natural one. Perhaps spirituality and religion are similar in that they misperceive an existence beyond our current mortal one. No old men with white beards sitting on golden thrones, but certainly something beyond the physical.

 

This pretty much says what I did with a focus on highlighting the supernatural as possibility. The "Big Bang" is often used against science in that it does not explain what was there before it....it is not intended to. Many attempts have been made to confirm spiritual experiences and have yet to offer data confirmation thus all the hypothesis dismissed.

 

There are theories of the fourth dimension, Time, but no time machines. No certain proof except what we experience from moment to moment. Science offers no theories of what is outside or came before the Natural Universe because it is limited to only studying the Natural Universe.

Going into religion: The only logical position is Agnosticism since both Atheism and Theism require faith, unsupported belief.

 

Ah something we can agree on. Agnosticism being the only logical position. For now anyways.

 

Yes what is the Universe expanding into?

I find Campbell's idea of a Virtual Reality interesting. Consciousness being fundamental instead of matter. Matter being composed of information, from a metaphorical computer outside of the Universe. I think he and another physicist just released a paper on it. There are other fields in science entertaining something similar.

 

Yes, there is indeed doubt about that from many people. Including scientists. So how can you say that? This isn't a Kipling novel where the monkeys says..."we all say so, so it must be true". Consciousness is still the hard problem, unsolved. You are simply stating a claim by a hard materialist. That matter is fundamental is still an assumption. An assumption that became dogma.

 

All of which points to existence being beyond what we see in front of our noses. No old men in beards, but some fundamental level of existence beyond the physical.

 

Right, no old men in beards, in our physical image. LOL. That is rather an infantile image, IMO, fine for our ancient cousins, but hardly sufficient or credible for the modern mind. Of course what can be more mysterious than a human being? LOL

I think though that this information idea is being taken more seriously, slowly, and as we know, science seems to move ahead at the pace of tombstones. But it would be a tremendous break through if evidence was discovered to support it. And perhaps a paradigm shift. For it seems to me that much of science is still purely of a materialistic mindset. Even some physicists are staunch materialists, trying to figure out the quantum level through those eyes. Like Krauss. Who says he can understand QM. Or I thought that is what he said. I guess he is brighter than Feinman? Or the founders? Or just arrogant. I find many materialists to be so. But this is a human nature thing, IMO.

 

Of course there are questions of exact definition, of when (in terms of evolution) and how. But, there is nothing to siggest that the brain is incapable of the feat.

The only alternative I know of is the supernatural. The idea of there being a "soul in the machine" supplied by a god and operating humans like do many automata.

 

The assumption made in materialism is just as supernatural as the assumption made in idealism. Both are assumptions. But is matter fundamental or is consciousness fundamental? We at this point do not know.

There is also nothing to suggest the brain is not a transciever of consciousness. What is seen in the brain might not be causation but correlation. We already know that consciousness can affect a machine, a random number generator, above chance, according to Princeton Engineering. There are other studies which show consciousness can affect other things. So it isn't just inside a material brain. And science shows it isn't woo. But it is ignored. For the odd reason that...no, it is impossible for the brain creates consciousness, and there must be something wrong with the experiments. But there isn't. So, it is materialistic dogma which is the problem, to date.

 

It is true that PEAR was within Princeton Engineering, but that does not mean Princeton Engineering was any more than tolerant of their presence as a self funded and extremist enclave. As they said, they didn't believe in that stuff, but were fine with people trying.

And, the trying generated results that weren't duplicable and papers that weren't accepted. So, yes, it was pretty much ignored.

Let's remember that science heavily favors models that are successful. And, the idea that the brain creates the mind has been hugely and constantly successful. We can reliably trace features of experience back to physical features in the brain. We can often even change those brain features and see the associated difference. The idea that our brains are really just capturing "high level" directions from some separate entity would lead to the finding of features of the mind that can not be mapped like that.

 

This is very similar to a statement made by our buddy here AboveAlpha:


http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?threads/ruby.444300/

 

I would quibble with that on two or three points:
- in scientific method, a fact is a documented observation. It isn't something that can be created by using logic or math. This is just a matter of definition. The word fact has that as its definition.

- in scientific method, there is nothing more "absolute" or "true" than a theory. There is no next step other than broader acceptance of the theory as testing and usage continues. So, we use the theory of evolution in the exploration of our biological world and find it to be a powerful tool. So, it gains acceptance - even to the point of being one of the founding principles of all modern biology.

- a corollary of that is that a theory in scientific method can not be proved to be true. It's not like math, where you CAN prove a theorem (which is not the same as a theory). The difference is that a theorem has a very strong definition that covers all eventualities within the defined space. In the natural sciences, we do not have any idea what all the eventualities might be.

For example, we were happy with Newton's ideas on gravity for a couple hundred years until Einstein showed that the speed of light was involved! THAT was a surprise! Newton would surely have been shocked.

The result is that every theory from scientific method today has nothing considered to be a proof, because we don't know all aspects of our universe. Our theories could well have holes that either invalidate the theory or require an expansion such as was made by Einstein concerning gravity to include factors not hitherto imagined. The whole process of scientific method is designed to deal with the problem that we need to have confidence and progress even though we can prove hypotheses to be false, but not to be true.

 

You sure do not get your take by reading from their site....

And these publications...

And these experiments outside of PEAR...

SO, are you sure you really researched this? And do you have a link to back up what you said? It is rather odd that this random number experiment was run thousands of times over many, many years with evidence to support their conclusions and yet no one can repeat it? Sorry, but it is still being run online I think, and the evidence is huge. Not repeatable? I cannot believe that given what I already know based upon other scientists who have spoken about this.

 

To continue, yes in academia this is the attitude most have. They do not believe in it, and they ignore the results. This is an issue with this particular field, and is well known.

Again percieved causation could be correlation in regards to the brain. Sorta analagous would be observing by instruments the inner workings of a TV set. One could look at this, if one had no idea how a TV set worked and say that the signal being received was created by the TV. For they could find particular components being active. Not the best analogy for we have none really.

An injured brain or one manipulated would be like manipulating a TV set. It would make you think you were seeing something when indeed you were not. So consciousness remains the hard problem. One can arrive at a materialistic based understanding, and yet it may very well be false.

 

Yes. Absolutely. That is, I've researched it enough, covered enough of the subject to be satisfied.

Your "huge evidence" thing is an absolute myth:

"C. E. M. Hansel examined the studies done after 1969 and before 1987 that attempted to replicate Schmidt’s work. He notes: “The main fact that emerges from this data is that 71 experiments gave a result supporting Schmidt’s findings and 261 experiments failed to do so” (Hansel 1989: 185). That is the beauty of meta-analysis: you can transform a failure rate of nearly 4 to 1 into a grand success."
==>http://skepdic.com/pear.html

They even used a person believed to be a PEAR employees in 15% of the 14 million runs of one test. And, she was responsible for nearly a quarter of the "excess hits" - "excess hits" being the number of hits above what would appear to be random. Extracting her data left the study with nothing out of the ordinary.


There is a lot written about PEAR. Those who want to believe are willing to go the extra mile.

I'll readily admit that I come to this from a skeptical position. However, among the many criticisms it isn't hard find reputable scientists who examine this work and see evidence of it being seriously contaminated, or who simply can't duplicate the results.

 

Yes, I don't like analogies very much, as you can beat an analogy and all it means is that the analogy didn't work.

In your case, one would expect to be able to find a region in the TV that created the material and sent it to be played, for example. Also, some might think that directions are coming from outside the human brain - in which case one would expect to find function oriented to reception and conveyance of those directions - at least I would guess.

If you take that dualist approach to the brain vs. mind (that is, that the brain is executing a set of transmissions from some non-biological source, I guess), one would expect to find aspects of that kind of transmission when probing the brain's function.

 

Within two to five decades I believe that experts will look back at our generation and will wonder why in the world Dr. Chaim H. Tejman was not take far more seriously.


http://www.politicalforum.com/index...man-deserves-the-origin-of-life-prize.382144/

Dr. Chaim Henry Tejman deserves the "Origin of Life Prize."

 

You mean you found fodder for your self admitted confirmation bias. I think more work should be done, given that there is a possible phenomenon that the beliefs of an experimenter, a skeptic, can affect outcomes. Especially with an experiment such as this. I find it odd that there can be such a difference between the small number of different experimenters. Radin certainly isn't buying into what the skeptics say. He also recognizes the extreme bias against such things. I think Radin is an honest and respectable researcher, not a charlatan. But thanks for taking the time, even if it was a Skeptic(or debunker) site you linked to.

Speaking of Radin, if you are interested as a skeptic I invite you to peruse a talk he gave at IONS, where he talks about his own experiments, the results and others who have replicated a particular one, or the experiments that others are planning on doing to see if they come up with similar results. He seems rather adamant about the results he has seen produced.

 

There are many sites. I cited one. BFD. It includes some pretty damning ideas that are documented by others as well.

And, yes, I'm willing to state my opinion on this topic up front.

And, yes, I'm not opposed to further experimentation. We should be open to those investigating all sorts of fringe ideas. And, I don't mean to be deprecating - nobody can call paranormal investigations "mainstream". I certainly do not believe they will find anything, but I'm not in favor of manufacturing more ways to shut down honest scientific investigation.

However, the rules of scientific method need to be applied. And, there is strong evidence that such is NOT the case with PEAR and others. If someone wanted to apply public funds to PEAR or PEAR-like efforts, I would certainly oppose.

 

Not in the case of Shared Death Experiences.........
http://www.politicalforum.com/index...ezra-levant-rebel-com.540352/#post-1069533954


Oh.. .I found out some more about the minimum requirements here after the eight minute mark.......

Basically.... you can widowed young.......
live to be over a ninety or so........ be wracked with arthritis........
become bitter and angry and spend your time "biting saints"... and still make it into heaven.......

 

This hits me as being like sharing dreams.

You have a population that has shared experience (same religious teachings, same life fragments, same cultural memes, similar age, same circumstance leading to death, etc., and various collections of these).

The result is that a couple of these dying brains with diminishingly competent input flash similar images.

I wouldn't be surprised if those images could be tied back to elements in the person's life - beliefs, events, etc. There certainly are people who analyze dreams.

 

That is a good point... .I will have to pass this on to the author. She may wish to answer this herself?

Here is her website:
https://sharonprentice.com/product/becoming-starlight

Here is a summary/ trailer :

 

Some could be. I have no idea. All I know is that when I had mine as a junior in HS, it was unlike anything I've ever experienced before or since. The only bright light I saw was a bronzish golden warm sun and sky over a pristine snowed landscape. There was a group of people having fun about a half mile or so away; laughing, talking, skiing, sledding, sliding. I was laying in the snow side down watching them and really wanted to join them. A voice behind me say "You have to go back". I don't know who it was but I had no choice. Back to mortal life I returned. I've explored your theories though altered states of consciousness. I even majored in behavioral psychology to explore my experience. I've been knocked out, anesthetized, sick to the point of deliriousness but never, ever has that single experience ever been duplicated.

I was an atheist then, but became a believer that there is more to existence than what we see in front of our faces and what we can touch or feel. I'm not a Bible-thumper and do not believe "God" is some old man with a beard on a golden throne with angels around him singing hosannas. There's a lot more to existence than what we know and I think that may be part of the reason for mortal existence, to explore it. Atheists are free to believe they are just ambulatory meat computers reacting to biochemical programming and of no more value than their component parts, but that day changed the course of my life. I think atheists and Bible-thumpers alike are limiting themselves by putting on blinders. They should look around more and explore this great gift we are experiencing IMHO.