Posts by Viviane

129

Does consciousness end with the death of the body

apparently, the carvakas in anceint hinduism were materialists and skeptics, arguing that consciousness ends with the death of the body and that therefore we should take pleasure in this life while we possess it and practice compassion toward others.

they also argued that direct observation is the only certain way to know anything, and thus the existence of supernatural forces and realities cannot be established and must be rejected.

Viviane

Read Lanzas book and view his research and that of others. Take a And then come back and make your assertions against his work.

That's been done, had you read the thread. You don't get a pass just by playing the "thinking like JWs" card.

Viviane to say atoms are invisable is not entirely true. Why? an atom is smaller than a single wavelength of visable light. You can't see it with the naked eye , dosent mean it isnt there or visable.

You stunningly managed to miss the point. So, can you see an atom with your naked eye? Can you see an electron cloud with your naked eye? No? Please explain to me how that's not "invisible". Also, no one ever said they weren't there. Terrible strawman.

MADS Giant Sorry for being a prick.? I think more asshole better explains you. Read the damm book, it is not a paper as you state ! Also Lanza is a very intelligent man not just one with a theory but as well an MD and surgeon and graduated from M I T.

You were wrong. Calling other people names doesn't change that. Lanza has a hypothesis with no evidence. It's been evaluated and found lacking.

I stand by my original statement. Most of you can not get rid of the JW thinking process. Witnesses in disguise!!!!!! Open your mind to the possibility of other things than those you have been told.

All you've done is remove evidence and critical thinking as criteria for evaluating ideas. You've put every single conceivable idea and concept on equal footing. It's lazy and inadequate thinking. It's got nothing to do with being a JW.

69

Said from the platform: "You are not surviving Armaggedon if you are spiritually weak"

by Daniel1555 in

today i was at the meeting (i go there about once a month now).

in the service meeting they had a part where they interviewed the secretary of the congregation.. so one question was: "why are the service reports so important?".

our secretary explained that the reports are important, because the elders can see, who is spiritually weak.

Viviane

She gladly accomplishes her wifely tasks out of deep love and respect for her husband.

So what, exactly, is a "wifely" task? Laundry? Dishes? Sex on demand? Cooking? Making lunches for the kids? Why is that a "wifely" task rather than something a couple needs to get done together? What is a manly task?

Think very very carefully before you answer.

129

Does consciousness end with the death of the body

by givemejustalittlemoretime in

apparently, the carvakas in anceint hinduism were materialists and skeptics, arguing that consciousness ends with the death of the body and that therefore we should take pleasure in this life while we possess it and practice compassion toward others.

they also argued that direct observation is the only certain way to know anything, and thus the existence of supernatural forces and realities cannot be established and must be rejected.

Viviane

Can I just point out something obvious, how can we possibly know one way or the other?

There are a lot of things we can't know with 100% certainty. However, there are degress of probablity and observational evidence we can use to decide.

For instance, and apologies to the people I borrowed this from (Sagan, Bertrand Russell, etc.), it's possible:

- There is a blue china teapot orbiting between Earth and Mars

- There is an invisible, non-corporeal dragon dragon floating that breaths heatless fire that lives in my neighbor's garage

- We are all living in a giant computer simulation

There is no proof of any of those things, however. Should they have equal footing with the idea of dark matter and energy? Let's look!

Matter is the only thing we know of that causes gravitational effects. It's the only thing we know of that causes lensing in space. Using both Newtonian and relavistic math, we have a pretty good idea of what the graviational effects of a given amount of mass are. If we didn't, we couldn't launch space ship, probes, rovers, lunar landers, etc.

When we look at what we can see in space, things appear to be moving way too fast for the amount of matter we see to produce the gravitational effects we see. Hence, given that there is no evidence that how we measure mass and gravitational effects, the assumption and working hypothesis is that there is some type of matter we aren't seeing. We know there is matter that very weakly interacts with atoms, so it's not a huge leap to the idea of dark matter. It's a hypothesis, not a fact. Scientists are investigating it. That idea may well turn out to be wrong, but given everything we know, it seems like the most likely explanation.

How does that relate to life after death? Simple. If we figure out what's real based on independantly verifiable evidence and observation, the so far we have nothing like that for life after death, for spirits, for Bigfoot, for God, Jesus, Allah, Zeus, Thor, etc. There simply is no independant or verifiable evidence for those specific claims.

Once you suspend evidence, critical thinking and verifiable observation as evidence for things, all ideas suddenly gain equal footing. The teapot is just as likely as Zeus and gobling and fairies and Jesus.

129

Does consciousness end with the death of the body

by givemejustalittlemoretime in

apparently, the carvakas in anceint hinduism were materialists and skeptics, arguing that consciousness ends with the death of the body and that therefore we should take pleasure in this life while we possess it and practice compassion toward others.

they also argued that direct observation is the only certain way to know anything, and thus the existence of supernatural forces and realities cannot be established and must be rejected.

Viviane

OTOH, I wrote "intelligents" vs. "intelligence", so there's that :)

129

Does consciousness end with the death of the body

by givemejustalittlemoretime in

apparently, the carvakas in anceint hinduism were materialists and skeptics, arguing that consciousness ends with the death of the body and that therefore we should take pleasure in this life while we possess it and practice compassion toward others.

they also argued that direct observation is the only certain way to know anything, and thus the existence of supernatural forces and realities cannot be established and must be rejected.

Viviane

LOL, so glad there are some intelligent posters on this board able to cut thru bullshit and poor reasoning

WMF, In my opinion, there are a lot of intelligent posters here. It take a lot of work to change the way we think and a desire to do it. Critical thinking isn't just something we acquire once we leave the cult. I think a lot of people here have deeply held beliefs and it's a fair amount of work to realize they may need to be evalutated critically and potentially discarded.

The point I am making is that intelligents doesn't necessarily have anything to do with having learned and had the opportunity to practice critical thinking.

129

Does consciousness end with the death of the body

by givemejustalittlemoretime in

apparently, the carvakas in anceint hinduism were materialists and skeptics, arguing that consciousness ends with the death of the body and that therefore we should take pleasure in this life while we possess it and practice compassion toward others.

they also argued that direct observation is the only certain way to know anything, and thus the existence of supernatural forces and realities cannot be established and must be rejected.

Viviane

I know I am late to the party however having read Dr Lanzas book I also feel that life and consciousness are seperate.

Why?

Also the fact that atoms are not solid and yet solid objects are full of atoms.

Atoms are invisible and I am made of atoms, therefore I must be invisible.

Do you see the fallacy there? Also, look up the strong nuclear force.

To me it sounds reasonable and I think that there are many things that we do not yet understand.

True, but not understanding something we see is different from assuming something exists for which there is no proof.

129

Does consciousness end with the death of the body

by givemejustalittlemoretime in

apparently, the carvakas in anceint hinduism were materialists and skeptics, arguing that consciousness ends with the death of the body and that therefore we should take pleasure in this life while we possess it and practice compassion toward others.

they also argued that direct observation is the only certain way to know anything, and thus the existence of supernatural forces and realities cannot be established and must be rejected.

Viviane

Mad Giant, With all due respect you have not even attempted to explain the entangled particle experiment which clearly demonstrates that the OBSERVER ALONE generates the outcome of partical formation and not the measuring apparatus, let alone the time distortion characteristics. If you could explain it, you would immediately receive the nobel prize for saving naturalism.

Perry, you haven't shown that to be the case. At all. Not even close. You have all your work ahead of you. You've not even explained what time distortion you are referring to.

Your fine tuning argument is the equivalent of a puddle claiming how the hole was perfectly designed to fit it. If the universe were any other way, we wouldn't be here to comment upon it.

Now, back to your original argument. Please answer the questions you've been asked and demonstrate your leap from superposition of states to Jesus. Connect the dots. Be specific.

129

Does consciousness end with the death of the body

by givemejustalittlemoretime in

apparently, the carvakas in anceint hinduism were materialists and skeptics, arguing that consciousness ends with the death of the body and that therefore we should take pleasure in this life while we possess it and practice compassion toward others.

they also argued that direct observation is the only certain way to know anything, and thus the existence of supernatural forces and realities cannot be established and must be rejected.

Viviane

I have an opinion just like everyone else.

Not all opinions are equal.

129

Does consciousness end with the death of the body

by givemejustalittlemoretime in

apparently, the carvakas in anceint hinduism were materialists and skeptics, arguing that consciousness ends with the death of the body and that therefore we should take pleasure in this life while we possess it and practice compassion toward others.

they also argued that direct observation is the only certain way to know anything, and thus the existence of supernatural forces and realities cannot be established and must be rejected.

Viviane

The body is surrounded by an aura.

The aura contains all the pertinant data of the body, knowledge and experience

What is this aura made of? How dies it store information? How does it receive and transmit this information? How does it differentiate between experience and knowledge?

Another 2 cent possibility is that all our thoughts everything that goes through our brain/mind

goes directy to God.

It's also just as possible that we live in a universe made from unicorn lava teacups. As soon as reality, observation and evidence are removed as a criteria, any and all ideas, no matter how ridiculous, suddenly acquire equal footing.

129

Does consciousness end with the death of the body

by givemejustalittlemoretime in

apparently, the carvakas in anceint hinduism were materialists and skeptics, arguing that consciousness ends with the death of the body and that therefore we should take pleasure in this life while we possess it and practice compassion toward others.

they also argued that direct observation is the only certain way to know anything, and thus the existence of supernatural forces and realities cannot be established and must be rejected.

Viviane

But it has been PROVEN that the measuring device is NOT involved in the collapse of a particle's wave function.

Show me where that has be proven.

Once this is demonstrated, the idea of "mind over matter" is further bolstered by even more precise experiments that will allow for only, say a 70% chance of knowing which slit the particle emerged from. The result? You guessed it - 30% wave pattern and 70% double band pattern.

Actually, no one guessed it. You just entirely made that up.

Further, the fact that time is irrelevant and that the "knowing" is what produces the effects, even "after" the fact, demonstrates that if the mind is creating the results, then this apparatus exists at some level outside of "time" as we normally experience it. - Bye, bye Naturalism.

Except you just also made that up.

Explain how time is irrelevant. Show one source that says the observer can rig the results. Show how, even if that were true, it makes time irrelevant.

You've still got all your work to do ahead of you.