by AmyWatson916 33 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Wozza - Blindfold everybody at the ouija board table and I guarantee it will not work.
How do you explain this fact?
are you going to reject one hundred percent of these experiences just because of your belief system? - Coldsteel
The plural of anecdote is not data.
O.P :-
" Can the dead hear?
The words of a David Bowie song enter my head " We are the dead." I believe those words to be true. " We are the dead"
To clarify, I love my son and I love him to death. I hope my son will have a son/ daughter. If so my grandchildren are born, and I hope they grow to be teenagers. If I am around in their teenage years I will have become old and all sorts of physical and mental issues will confront me. Then I will die ....in my opinion this is the only death that can be heard.
Cofty » The plural of anecdote is not data.
That's true, and there are a number of cases that I find disturbingly suspicious, just as there are in UFO sightings and reports of hauntings. The father who wrote a book about his son Colton's near death experience (Heaven Is For Real, by Todd Burpo) was a best-selling book made into a movie. From the beginning, the account seemed scripted. It began as a book, was adapted into a children's version and then was offered as a study guide with notes and then as an Audible Book before being released as a movie. I'd bought it when it first appeared because Todd was a minister and I wanted to see how the story played out. After only about twenty minutes I realized it was fabricated, and as the supplemental material came out (not to mention the movie), the account itself was far too different from the other, more believable and consistent, accounts I had read.
Each case by itself is anecdotal, but as a body they begin to look a lot more like data in their consistency. The same is true about the UFO stories. They cannot be universally accepted, but neither should they be universally dismissed. There are just too many of them and many of them have been witnessed. To be skeptical is one thing; to dismiss them all as anecdotes is quite another.
They cannot be universally accepted, but neither should they be universally dismissed.
They can be scrutinised and dismissed one by one. So far there is not one single credible scrap of evidence for the supernatural. It's all superstition and hysteria.
That seems to be the argument of people making ludicrous claims - that all unprovable claims have equal merit.
There's more evidence that Barbara Streisand is a lizard overlord ... after all, we've all seen her and know she exists. Is that equally valid as a claim to be scrutinized?
Thanks Amy for responding. Good to hear from you and your thoughtful comments!
Cold Steel - in any other context I would consider your comments about evidence for the afterlife as "sweet" and it would be churlish to try to awaken you.
But in the context of this post's claims and counterclaims, I invite you to google-translate the following very old Latin phrase: "Mundus vult decipi".
Heartening to see the sentiments it captures alive and well even in the 21st Century.
I think the dead can hear ... at least from my experience.
At my Grandfather's funeral, I was alone with him for a minute or so as I looked into the casket.
I told him I loved him and he gave me a thumbs up.
Rub a Dub
I like Cicero's observation better: “A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation.”
We have a body of information in near death experiences that bears serious examination. I say that because of the consistency of many of the accounts. I'm not saying we should accept that body as a whole. Like UFO sightings (which also bears further investigation) one has to go on a case-by-case basis. If someone was in a hospital and it was a matter of record that they actually had a death experience (some revived in hospital morgues); and if that person's account is remarkably like others, such as a multitude of thick vegetation and colors, large spacious buildings, meeting and having intelligent conversations with loved ones who had passed, etc., and if they had solid reputations with those in their communities, they bear further examination. If they were in their studies, spoke in tongues at their local Pentecostal churches, see angels with large white wings and are willing to send you their stories for a twenty-dollar "gift offering," that's in another category. And if they sound like Jonathan Winters as the farmer who saw a flying saucer, they go in still another pile.
There are good, honorable people who have had, to me, fully credible stories. They are not ridiculous, absurd or easy to dismiss any more than UFO stories.
COFTY
Yes if we were blindfolded.....................but then it could be said that the writer (my mother) of what was said wrote down not what appeared on the table . Also note that no-one was touching the glass ,they were and the glass did not move ,but when I put my hand above the glass and they removed their hands that's when it started going from letter to letter . If my mother had rigged it somehow I don't know how she did it (like magnets), but I remember feeling like my skin on my back was lifting off when I approached the table.
The table was just a Formica covered kitchen table ,letters and yes / no written on ordinary writing pad strips torn off a page and the glass used was an upturned Vegemite glass that was now used as a drinking vessel (every Australian home had a few of these).
I can't explain this and won't attempt to convince anyone but my mother especially had a history of dabbling in occult practices as the JWs say ( telepathy etc) I've stopped searching for answers to this and many other things I've witnessed and just getting on with life ,the things we can see are enough to deal with let alone things we can't see.
