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Man claims to have seen the afterlife

You have never encountered a materialist. You just make up straw men materialists. Materialists don’t say that dreams don’t exist, they just say how they exist. As physical phenomena in the physical brain.
That's a funny moving of the goalposts. :ROFLMAO: The original goalposts can be seen in the OP. To pursue the football metaphor, either you belong to the anti-materialist team, which tries to score between the posts that read "NDEs indicate that the afterlife is real," while the opposing materialist team is trying to score between the posts that read "NDEs do not prove that the afterlife is real." You have made the very funny attempt to pretend that the interpretation of NDEs as dreams provide the only goalposts on the field. The materialists have formed what you call the dream-hypothesis (which is not even a good statement of the OBE hypothesis) in reaction to the statements of the anti-materialists. You forfeit and the ball goes to your opponents for a kickoff.
 
Yet you claim to read his mind and know exactly what motivated him. You have no idea either but make claims based on your own need to believe that people are motivated purely by ideology and belief. So we are at a stalemate.
Lisa attempted to stigmatize religion by attributing to all practitioners the desire to escape rationality.

You are confusing religious belief with ethics. Religious belief is far from being ethical. Religion a ritualistic concept that protects people from having to think rationally about life, morality and death.
You of course did not object to this nonsensical interpretation. But when I point out that Stalin committed mass murder in defense of a supposedly rational system, you quibble about whether or not he believed it and choose to believe that his Communist rhetoric doesn't matter because you read his mind and don't think he was a "believer." To an accurate ethical POV, it doesn't mean if either Stalin or Torquemada really believed in their professed beliefs. Lisa falsely aligned all bad ethics with religion. Stalin had bad ethics and he professed non-religious Communism, so conflating religion with bad ethics is a false notion.
 
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NDE is much like or part of what Japanese Buddhists called satori. It is knowing, an experience, an understanding that as far as I know cannot be adequately explained. It must be experienced to be understood.

Once years ago I had a very strange experience though it was not an NDE. I think I might have a smidgen of understanding as to how NDEs exist and WHY they cannot be adequately explained in human language, which beyond the material world is limited.

I knew next to nothing of Buddhism at the time. The experience was most certainly real as is the understanding I gained. What I do know is the knowledge I gained came in being, not in explanation or language; just being in the experience. As result of the brief and completely unexpected event I know a few things that I cannot adequately explain.

Briefly I will give it a shot, which will be unsatisfactory to everyone. It's not in the telling. It is in the knowing and I cannot produce such an experience. In fact, as of yet I am unable to replicate it even for myself.

We are truly one with everything. I have experienced that. I can tell you that and brilliant minds may tell you that but you cannot comprehend it because you have yet to experience it.

Animals, water, the wind, all living things, all things are ONE. It is a knowing, a feeling or a being beyond explanation. It is a feeling of complete peace, freedom and love (I suppose). But those words, like trying to explain an NDE, in no way give you the knowledge. I understand why many or most people cannot accept it.
 
NDE is much like or part of what Japanese Buddhists called satori. It is knowing, an experience, an understanding that as far as I know cannot be adequately explained. It must be experienced to be understood.

Once years ago I had a very strange experience though it was not an NDE. I think I might have a smidgen of understanding as to how NDEs exist and WHY they cannot be adequately explained in human language, which beyond the material world is limited.

I knew next to nothing of Buddhism at the time. The experience was most certainly real as is the understanding I gained. What I do know is the knowledge I gained came in being, not in explanation or language; just being in the experience. As result of the brief and completely unexpected event I know a few things that I cannot adequately explain.

Briefly I will give it a shot, which will be unsatisfactory to everyone. It's not in the telling. It is in the knowing and I cannot produce such an experience. In fact, as of yet I am unable to replicate it even for myself.

We are truly one with everything. I have experienced that. I can tell you that and brilliant minds may tell you that but you cannot comprehend it because you have yet to experience it.

Animals, water, the wind, all living things, all things are ONE. It is a knowing, a feeling or a being beyond explanation. It is a feeling of complete peace, freedom and love (I suppose). But those words, like trying to explain an NDE, in no way give you the knowledge. I understand why many or most people cannot accept it.
Exactly how Jeremy Renner described it

 
Wow! Bingo. There it is. In my experience it was much the same. The peace and the calm can’t be described. The experience was far beyond words.

One is all. Seamless. Everything. I say love because all the negatives that we experience in human form was gone. No beginning, no end. No anger, no hatred.
And you only experienced the very early parts of an OBE.
Once you go deeper into the astral world it gets more and more beautiful
 
NDE is much like or part of what Japanese Buddhists called satori. It is knowing, an experience, an understanding that as far as I know cannot be adequately explained. It must be experienced to be understood.

Once years ago I had a very strange experience though it was not an NDE. I think I might have a smidgen of understanding as to how NDEs exist and WHY they cannot be adequately explained in human language, which beyond the material world is limited.

I knew next to nothing of Buddhism at the time. The experience was most certainly real as is the understanding I gained. What I do know is the knowledge I gained came in being, not in explanation or language; just being in the experience. As result of the brief and completely unexpected event I know a few things that I cannot adequately explain.

Briefly I will give it a shot, which will be unsatisfactory to everyone. It's not in the telling. It is in the knowing and I cannot produce such an experience. In fact, as of yet I am unable to replicate it even for myself.

We are truly one with everything. I have experienced that. I can tell you that and brilliant minds may tell you that but you cannot comprehend it because you have yet to experience it.

Animals, water, the wind, all living things, all things are ONE. It is a knowing, a feeling or a being beyond explanation. It is a feeling of complete peace, freedom and love (I suppose). But those words, like trying to explain an NDE, in no way give you the knowledge. I understand why many or most people cannot accept it.
I know exactly what you are talking about, I have experienced the same thing. The experience belongs only to the person having the experience, you can not explain it because unless another person had a similar experience it's very hard to understand. It's not a material mind thing, it is a knowing that resonates with every part of your being and it can not be adequately put into words because words don't do it justice. When I came away from my experience I had a knowing that all things belongs to this Oneness, there is nowhere to go to separate yourself from it. Knowing this shattered by belief system, I no longer believe, I know, and like you, this brought me such a peace and calmness. I no longer have to defend my understanding, because for me, I know.
 
Stalin killed millions in defense of a non-religious belief system.
Stalin was a megalomanic. Megalomaniacs are known for killing millions. Has nothing to do with religion, though religion has typically been used as a defense.

Was his materialism the result of his having thought rationally about life, morality and death?
You think megalomaniacs think rationally. So cute.
 
Stalin was a megalomanic. Megalomaniacs are known for killing millions. Has nothing to do with religion, though religion has typically been used as a defense.
The point you've conveniently ignored is that I responded to a poster who claimed that religion was illegitimate because it had been used for mass murder. Regardless of what Stalin personally believed, he used a materialistic belief system to coax others into helping him commit mass murder. The parallels should be obvious.
You think megalomaniacs think rationally. So cute.
I have no reason to think Stalin didn't use his rational intellect to dope out how he could hoax others into committing his murders for him, so that he could better consolidate power-- at which goal he was pretty damn successful.
 
The point you've conveniently ignored
Wring answer.

is that I responded to a poster who claimed that religion was illegitimate because it had been used for mass murder. Regardless of what Stalin personally believed, he used a materialistic belief system to coax others into helping him commit mass murder. The parallels should be obvious.

I have no reason to think Stalin didn't use his rational intellect to dope out how he could hoax others into committing his murders for him, so that he could better consolidate power-- at which goal he was pretty damn successful.
Wrong blah blah.

Stalin. Megalomaniac. Stay focused.

You've really outdone yourself. Atheism bad because Stalin. :LOL:
 
Wring answer.


Wrong blah blah.

Stalin. Megalomaniac. Stay focused.

You've really outdone yourself. Atheism bad because Stalin. :LOL:
"Stay focused?" Focused on what? You conveniently ignoring the fact that the "megalomaniac" convinced hundreds if not thousands of Russians that he was not any sort of maniac, but the key to the success of the Russian people?

Mine was not specifically an anti-atheism post, but Lisa's was false in making claims for atheism that she could not support.
 
Evidence for an afterlife is at a similar level to that for Bigfoot and werewolves.
 
That's a funny moving of the goalposts. :ROFLMAO: The original goalposts can be seen in the OP. To pursue the football metaphor, either you belong to the anti-materialist team, which tries to score between the posts that read "NDEs indicate that the afterlife is real," while the opposing materialist team is trying to score between the posts that read "NDEs do not prove that the afterlife is real." You have made the very funny attempt to pretend that the interpretation of NDEs as dreams provide the only goalposts on the field. The materialists have formed what you call the dream-hypothesis (which is not even a good statement of the OBE hypothesis) in reaction to the statements of the anti-materialists. You forfeit and the ball goes to your opponents for a kickoff.

Not a moving of any goalposts. Pointing out your strawman approach to everything. There are not teams in philosophy. NDEs and dreams are both things that take place in an individual’s brain. They require the physical person and their brain to take place. They don’t exist without physical equipment in which individuals experience them. They are all brain experiences. There is no interpretation of them that makes them not brain experiences of individuals. Just like any other activity in the human brain that people attempt to attribute some greater meaning to.
 
There are thousands of these accounts every year


There are countless number of things that take place solely in human brains every minute of every day. And some human beings will always want to attach great significance to some of those things. We like making up meanings for what appears to us as mysterious but it all comes down to physical brain activity.
 
Lisa attempted to stigmatize religion by attributing to all practitioners the desire to escape rationality.


You of course did not object to this nonsensical interpretation. But when I point out that Stalin committed mass murder in defense of a supposedly rational system, you quibble about whether or not he believed it and choose to believe that his Communist rhetoric doesn't matter because you read his mind and don't think he was a "believer." To an accurate ethical POV, it doesn't mean if either Stalin or Torquemada really believed in their professed beliefs. Lisa falsely aligned all bad ethics with religion. Stalin had bad ethics and he professed non-religious Communism, so conflating religion with bad ethics is a false notion.

I am not Lisa. I am not required to respond to her or address her views in any way.
 
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