We Actually Do Know that Literal “Spirits” Aren’t Real

[Damien the Leper]

14 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Read my post after that post.

So there is no governing authority, then? The early Utah members, including authorities, were an epic failure of the Law.

[ZealouslyStriving]

12 minutes ago, Damien the Leper said:

So there is no governing authority, then? The early Utah members, including authorities, were an epic failure of the Law.

Read that post as many times as you need until it becomes clear why it failed- and why we don't have those conditions now.

[longview]

3 hours ago, Calm said:

I am not mindlessly demonizing or demonizing free enterprise at all.  Idealistically free enterprise is great, but the world is not ideal.  Realistically there are problems with full out free enterprise due to the human nature you agree exists that needs to have some sort of control since no one lives in a Zion society these days.  

Of course. This world is a fallen planet. A Pandora Box that released all the bad effects for the natural man to grapple with.

3 hours ago, Calm said:

The idea that free enterprise brought down the USSR is a simplistic, idealized view and ignores the very real result of whatever happened there.  Pointing to the tragedy in Russia as some magical result of free enterprise at work as if some beautiful miracle happened is being blind to what actually happened and is happening.  That portrayal is what I am critical of, not of free enterprise in general.  

I did NOT in any way contend that it was free enterprise that made USSR collapse. It fell only because its marxist theories were NOT sustainable and they went utterly bankrupt.

3 hours ago, Calm said:

My husband had a friend who believed in the power of free enterprise.  He was assassinated in Moscow in front of a metro station.  No one was held responsible.  Free enterprise did not protect him.  

Was this friend bringing pressure and discomfort to vested interests in Moscow? This has more to do with Russian culture and their inability to establish and strengthen democracy. Sadly there was too much apathy.  Not the fault of free enterprise.

3 hours ago, Calm said:

My in laws were told by the US Consulate there not to come back to Russia because the US wouldn’t (couldn’t?) offer any hope of protection from the mafia that was taking over their travel company…a travel company whose premise was to take American business people over on a tour, invite Russians along and let the magic of  networking and free enterprise make wealth for them all while doing good as well (they did a lot of charity projects in conjunction with their work).  My husband, the so not liberal university professor who taught entrepreneurship/business startups, went along on several cruises to teach the Russians the how to part.  I hitched along on two of them.  The business was quite successful, despite the endless problems of making things work in Russia and so  attracted the attention of another mafia group.  Along the way the chef ran off with the money he got from the sale of the quality food for the tours I went on, so we ate millet, borscht, and dried fish for breakfast and lunch for six weeks.  Later they discovered one of the Russian priests running one of the charities they were helping out big time was selling the clothes they collected for the orphan kids—Utahns were very generous with their donations at the time—in order to line his own pocket, free enterprise at work in real life Russia.

So it was the tragedy of Kleptocracy. Again, NOT the fault of free enterprise.

3 hours ago, Calm said:

We had a Russian business professor live with us for four months while teaching and learning at the university my husband taught at as well as my family living in Russia on a Fulbright grant for four or five months while my husband taught business over there at her university.  My husband walked away with the distinct impression they didn’t really care about him teaching any classes (they had to scramble to get him set up as they were unprepared even with 6 months or more warning he was coming over), they were quite satisfied with how they taught business, but the money they got from the US government was well worth the hassle of hosting him and finding two classes he could teach.

The vagaries of human nature. The US government was hoping to replicate the success of helping Japan and South Korea become powerful and vibrant democracies.

3 hours ago, Calm said:

The Russians really did not like Americans coming over and telling them how to do business, but it was easy enough to pretend to listen while counting the money the Americans brought.

Too bad there was insufficient transmission of free enterprise throughout the soviet culture and system.

3 hours ago, Calm said:

The idea I am demonizing free enterprise is ridiculous.  I am criticizing your superficial, honestly ridiculous praise of what went down in Russia. It was all so wonderfully magical if you ignore the body count and Putin and the oligarchs and the mafia and the endless list of tragedies that occurred and are occurring.  To wave them away as incidentals not worth being mentioned while extolling the magic of free enterprise is not being factual…At the very least.

Again you are putting words into my mouth. I did NOT praise "what went down." Just simply commented on the Russian people's difficulty in overcoming the gangsterism inherent in the Soviet system.

3 hours ago, Calm said:

The communist countries you are referring to as evidence that the ideals of communism are evil were never practicing the ideals of communism.

Yes, today's enthusiasts of socialism and communism fervently claim that they will NOT repeat the mistakes of previous communist tyrannies. I hate to break it to you - - - the ideals of communism is inherently EVIL. All totalitarian systems inevitably contain within it the seeds of its own destruction.

[Damien the Leper]

20 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

Read that post as many times as you need until it becomes clear why it failed- and why we don't have those conditions now.

Still doesn't explain the failings of the early church in Utah. The Utah church will likely never be able to fully live that Law.

[ZealouslyStriving]

11 minutes ago, Damien the Leper said:

Still doesn't explain the failings of the early church in Utah. The Utah church will likely never be able to fully live that Law.

It does. Here read it again:

"I think this is where some people get confused. A Zionic society is not a function or initiative of government, but is a natural result love, purity of heart, and honoring covenants:"

[Calm]

4 hours ago, longview said:

I did NOT in any way contend that it was free enterprise that made USSR collapse. It fell only because its marxist theories were NOT sustainable and they went utterly bankrupt.

4 hours ago, longview said:

Again you are putting words into my mouth. I did NOT praise "what went down." Just simply commented on the Russian people's difficulty in overcoming the gangsterism inherent in the Soviet system.

On 5/10/2024 at 5:29 PM, longview said:

In the glorious days of the USSR, the commissars were forced to "wink" at the underground economy in order to make up for deficiencies of the communist five-year plans. That made it possible for incentives (read free-market) to work its magic! There is NO substitute for free choice when it comes to willing buyers and willing sellers.

Hard imo not to conclude you were praising the outcome or that it was free enterprise that led to the collapse in your view given you called the free market magical and didn’t mention anything else in your first post directly above.

 Thanks for the clarification 

[Damien the Leper]

4 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

It does. Here read it again:

"I think this is where some people get confused. A Zionic society is not a function or initiative of government, but is a natural result love, purity of heart, and honoring covenants:"

Apologies. I like that there is no physical or divine authority in your Zionic living.

[Peacefully]

8 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Oh yes, I instantly knew it was a joke, @MiserereNobis and I often kid each other.  I would love to meet the guy some day- I think we would be instant buddies!

But imo it started to go too far in the comments, and bugged me, so I thought I would explain the truth to all.   I just didn't want the idea that "Bukowski thinks that JS was a Marxist" floating around in somebody's half-memory of the comments.  Memory can be tricky!

I know it was over-kill but I wanted to scrub everyone's mis-memory before it got out of hand!  🤕

Yeah, I can see why you would want to clarify that. 

[longview]

4 hours ago, Calm said:

On 5/10/2024 at 5:29 PM, longview said:

In the glorious days of the USSR, the commissars were forced to "wink" at the underground economy in order to make up for deficiencies of the communist five-year plans. That made it possible for incentives (read free-market) to work its magic! There is NO substitute for free choice when it comes to willing buyers and willing sellers.

Hard imo not to conclude you were praising the outcome or that it was free enterprise that led to the collapse in your view given you called the free market magical and didn’t mention anything else in your first post directly above.

 Thanks for the clarification 

That the Soviets allowed this underground economy to continue was to help take some of the pressure off their failing system. It was NOT to give credit to free enterprise for what happened with the collapse of the Soviet system (except it might have delayed the inevitable). I would suggest you re-read our exchanges to get that "big picture" to straiten out the confusion in your mind.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, longview said:

That the Soviets allowed this underground economy to continue was to help take some of the pressure off their failing system. It was NOT to give credit to free enterprise for what happened with the collapse of the Soviet system (except it might have delayed the inevitable). I would suggest you re-read our exchanges to get that "big picture" to straiten out the confusion in your mind.

You clarified your point of view, I got it the first time you did it.

[Malc]

On 5/11/2024 at 2:19 PM, Okrahomer said:

Pardon me:  

I was looking for the discussion about spirits? 🤡

You may have to start another thread for that.

I understand that "Do We Actually Know that Literal “Spirits” Aren’t Real?" may be available as a title, and may elicit the discussion that you want to participate in.

[Teancum]

On 5/11/2024 at 12:43 PM, ZealouslyStriving said:

That is why it has never worked. We really need to believe what a prophet of the Lord (ETB) had to say about Communism and it's little sister, Socialism.

ETB was a radical right winger and John Bircher. His political views were his own and never had the authority of sanction by the church and its presiding authorities.  President McKay and others tried to reign him in.  He even turned against Eisenhower after serving in his cabin at.  He was a strident right wing nut job and it is to bad that so many Mormons latch on to his opinions as if they were scripture. Benson, McConkie and JFS did a lot of lasting damage to the church and its members. 

[Analytics]

On 5/11/2024 at 2:52 PM, ZealouslyStriving said:

It does. Here read it again:

"I think this is where some people get confused. A Zionic society is not a function or initiative of government, but is a natural result love, purity of heart, and honoring covenants:"

How much do you know about what Karl Marx actually taught? I’ll admit I don’t know very much about Marx’s teachings. I took a 4-credit college course on Marxist economics, read the Communist Manifesto, and read Volume I of Das Kapital. That’s about it.

In broad strokes that I believe are generally reflective of how Marx saw the world, Marx was actually a fan of capitalism and he thought it was a necessary step in the evolution of society from feudalism towards his vision of Utopia. The reason we need to move beyond free-market capitalism is because when it comes to sharing the wealth that the economic system creates, Adam Smith’s invisible hand doesn’t work and can’t work. That is because the owners of the means of production have an inherently stronger negotiating position than the people who do the actual work. This results in the ownership class (i.e. bourgeoisie) getting richer and richer while the working class (i.e. the proletariat) staying poor and barely getting by. Marx thought that big government was inherently a capitalist thing--the ownership class needed government to prevent the workers from taking position of the wealth that the workers created through their toil.

Using Marx’s definition of things, “communism” was the name of his vision of Utopia, which wasn’t that different than the Utopia as described in Sir Thomas Moore’s book by the same name. The basic vision was that everyone would belong to the working class, and that the working class would be richer and would work fewer hours, because the wealth they created through their work would be shared among the workers rather than given to a distinct ownership class that hoarded wealth and didn’t work. With everyone working a reasonable number of hours, everyone being wealthy, and everyone belonging to the same class of brotherly love, there wouldn’t be a need of laws, law enforcement, or a government. There wouldn’t even be a need to have locks on your doors. That is what “communism” aims for and that is why anarchism, i.e. the political belief that we’d all be better off without any government whatsoever, is generally considered an extreme left-wing belief.

That is what Marx actually believed, and that is why I think @Damien the Leper was basically right that Marx’s vision of communism was essentially Joseph Smith’s vision of the united order, only without God. Your claim that  “a Zionic society is not a function or initiative of government, but is a natural result love, purity of heart, and honoring covenants” proves his point. Replace “honoring covenants (with God)” with “being an honorable human being”, and you basically have what Marx envisioned communism to be.

Edited May 13, 2024 by Analytics

[ZealouslyStriving]

https://iai.tv/articles/life-and-consciousness-what-are-they-auid-2836

* "29 Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be.

30 All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence." (Doctrine and Covenants 93)

[Damien the Leper]

On 5/11/2024 at 12:52 PM, ZealouslyStriving said:

"I think this is where some people get confused. A Zionic society is not a function or initiative of government, but is a natural result love, purity of heart, and honoring covenants:"

This is quite the fantasy that mortals will never accomplish.

[ZealouslyStriving]

2 minutes ago, Damien the Leper said:

This is quite the fantasy that mortals will never accomplish.

You are probably right. It will likely be ultimately accomplished in it's fullness in the Millennium- when we are semi-mortal (some form of translated).

[longview]

18 hours ago, Teancum said:

ETB was a radical right winger . . .

"Right wing" is only a negative for people who want more massive governments and an entrenched bureaucracy, accountable only to itself. There was nothing "radical" about the teachings of Ezra Taft Benson. His reasoning was foundational and very well elucidated. There are many excellent books about his philosophy and his advocacy for the original intent of the US Constitution. I recommend reading "An Enemy Hath Done This."

18 hours ago, Teancum said:

and John Bircher.

The John Birch society origins are described in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Birch_(missionary) I occasionally read the online magazine articles like this: https://thenewamerican.com/world-news/argentinas-chainsaw-president-already-seeing-positive-results/

18 hours ago, Teancum said:

His political views were his own and never had the authority of sanction by the church and its presiding authorities.  President McKay and others tried to reign him in. 

Not necessarily. While President McKay did send ETB to preside over a mission district (probably to cool him down), he was also a conservative and a vigorous defender of the Constitutional Republic. When ETB became president of the church, his focus was to present a peaceable message and he was also careful about avoiding the polarizing effects of politics.

What the church was trying to do was to avoid having the members become ever more polarized. This is why, to this day, the church will make annual reminders to to all the congregations to NOT use church facilities for the purpose of politics and for members to be self-accountable in working to become knowledgeable in their duties as citizens of their nations. The same reason this MDDB is being careful to stanch polarizing arguments by banning overboard contentions.

Now in our day, we still have various general authorities that touch upon the important Constitutional Principles and the defense of liberty. President Oaks gave another foundational talk at general conference back in April of 2021 titled "Defending Our Divinely Inspired Constitution" ( see https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2021/04/51oaks?lang=eng )

18 hours ago, Teancum said:

He even turned against Eisenhower after serving in his cabin at.  He was a strident right wing nut job and it is to bad that so many Mormons latch on to his opinions as if they were scripture. Benson, McConkie and JFS did a lot of lasting damage to the church and its members. 

Not necessarily. Their thoughts and perspectives are still greatly appreciated. The members are wise enough to balance and to give and take with the big picture in mind.

[Teancum]

18 minutes ago, longview said:

"Right wing" is only a negative for people who want more massive governments and an entrenched bureaucracy, accountable only to itself.

No it is not.  And only a right winger says things like this.

18 minutes ago, longview said:

 

There was nothing "radical" about the teachings of Ezra Taft Benson. His reasoning was foundational and very well elucidated. There are many excellent books about his philosophy and his advocacy for the original intent of the US Constitution. I recommend reading "An Enemy Hath Done This."

I have read the book. I think he was radical and was inappropriately so based on the high office he held in the church,.  His advocacy for the constitution and opinions on it, were framed, like all persons are, based on his political views.  Radical views can be reasoned out and well elucidated and still be radical.

 

18 minutes ago, longview said:

Not necessarily. While President McKay did send ETB to preside over a mission district (probably to cool him down), he was also a conservative and a vigorous defender of the Constitutional Republic.

Based on the book David O McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism and Watchman on the Tower: Ezra Taft Benson and the Making of the Mormon Right I disagree with you and I think the case can be made that the LDS leadership was not happy with Benson's political activities. I also think it is telling that the Mormons I run into that are right wing agitators and more radical than Benson was rely on his words to make their case.  My father was a conservative republican and I recall in the 60s my dad would often commit negatively about Benson and what a nut job politically he was.  I would have been around 4 to 10 years old when I started hearing my dad talk like this.

[Teancum]

27 minutes ago, longview said:

 

What the church was trying to do was to avoid having the members become ever more polarized. This is why, to this day, the church will make annual reminders to to all the congregations to NOT use church facilities for the purpose of politics and for members to be self-accountable in working to become knowledgeable in their duties as citizens of their nations. The same reason this MDDB is being careful to stanch polarizing arguments by banning overboard contentions.

Yet the result of Benson's activities was a polarization. 

27 minutes ago, longview said:

Now in our day, we still have various general authorities that touch upon the important Constitutional Principles and the defense of liberty. President Oaks gave another foundational talk at general conference back in April of 2021 titled "Defending Our Divinely Inspired Constitution" ( see https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2021/04/51oaks?lang=eng )

Not necessarily. Their thoughts and perspectives are still greatly appreciated. The members are wise enough to balance and to give and take with the big picture in mind.

 

[ZealouslyStriving]

A prophet of God caused division? Interesting. 🤔

 

[BlueDreams]

On 5/9/2024 at 5:20 PM, Analytics said:

True. I was using the word “proof” in a colloquial sense, trying to fairly but concisely relay Sean Carroll’s point. 

I need to stop you there. Does it really make sense for a disembodied spirit to literally see a stain on a neck tie? When people see things, it’s in a lit space. Light rays bounce off objects, are focused through a lens, go into a dark eyeball, strike retina, which generates electrical signals that travel through the optical nerve to the brain. That’s what it means to see. If an disembodied spirit was capable of seeing, we should be able to clearly see how it distorts the light it is gathering to see, not to mention its eyeball. So does a disembodied spirit see actual light rays? Or is the argument that the spirit is in another dimension or is interacting with some sort of spirit matter? If that’s the case, when Greyson was eating physical spaghetti to feed his biological body, did the spaghetti have a spiritual essence that his spirit was eating? Did that spiritual spaghetti sauce fall onto his spiritual tie and leave a spiritual stain? If that is what the disembodied spirit saw, it raises the question of why blind people can’t use their spiritual eyes to see what’s going on in the world.

The same line of reasoning goes for hearing--how can a spirit hear a conversation without disturbing the sound waves, etc.

For me, believing the transcendental explanation of NDE's is the correct one would take a lot more evidence than the anecdotal evidence that I’m aware of. I think NDE’s happen, but not very many constitute evidence of actual spirits literally leaving the body. That’s the way I see it.

It's estimated that 1 in 20 people have NDES. There's a ton of people and many do have events in their NDE'S that can be corroborated, though there are those that are far more esoteric. I'm delayed in an airport and wrot most of this on a plane. So bare with me in terms of likely errors and messy order in what follows: 

Perception is not that clear. There are the physiological methods to seeing yes. And they explain the vast majority of what we see here, even within physiological exceptions (ex. color blindness, physiological sensitivities). But that's not enough to dismiss the experiences of people who experience clear perceptions while physiologically dead, near death, or completely unconscious and unable to use normal means of perceptions. Many of said experiences are not overtly esoteric. I'm finishing a book right now called near death in the ICU by a doc who's open to these as real phenomenon but veers away from trying to explain them or insist they prove anything beyond, these being important experiences worthy of further study and healthier engagements by medical staff while in care.

 

Because of the stance, she collected some really interesting stories that do not fit the norm. One chapter included stories of people who had an out of body experience and their OWN belief systems rejected any form of acknowledging that as a possibility. Or at least they never came to the realization that what they were experiencing was impossible. 

There's one of a man who was completely immobile from a massive car wreck that wanted to get a nurses attention that he needed to pee. He also had a ventilator and was unconscious with an uneven heart beat and bruised lungs. He tried talking to a nurse but they "ignored"him. So frustrated he "got out of bed" (ie his consciousness left the bed) and went down the hall to give him a piece of his mind. The nurse continued to ignore him. He woke up insistent on filing a complaint about the nurse, describing her and the area of the hospital he hadn't physically been conscious to experience in detail (she was a visiting nurse only lines up to work the night he arrived, completely unconscious and immobilized...which pieces together the timeline). When the doc suggest he may have experienced something abnormal, he quickly dismissed it and continued on with the reality he'd convinced himself of being ignored by the nurse he never actually met. 

 

 

NDE's can also shift how people perceive things once the return to physical consciousness. 

 

It also ignores that many NDE's describe a difference in how they perceived things while out of body. There can be a a bluring of senses, perceptions that seem more clear/vivid than what they experienced in body, and even perceptions they couldn't have known in body, like one where a doctors thoughts were reported by the patient post NDE. What all this at least suggests to me is that this form of perceiving may not be within our conventional understanding of physiological perception. 

Let me give an example from the book that gave details to how they experienced perception while out of body:

Different means of perceiving:

 

Quote

She noted a couple of vases of flowers on the windowsill and perceived, more than actually smelled, their intoxicating fragrance. The flowers were the most vivid colors she had ever seen and the petals, stems and leaves all seemed to be made up of tiny particles that vibrated very fast. Remarkably, there was a palpable, humming energy emanating from the flowers that vibrated across the atmosphere, entered into her body, if she could call it that, and presented itself in such a way that she could feel the flowers.

 

Different intensity and way to perceive stimuli seen here

 

Quote

She perceived the sound a blinker would make even though she was too far away to actually hear it. She observed that when she looked at the blinkers she could hear them and when she looked away the sound faded. She saw the deliveryman come back to the truck and, when she looked at him, she could hear his padding footsteps on the pavement. When she looked away, the sound was gone.

So it would seem that whatever she visually locked in on – from the hospital room where she had seen the flowers, to the roof and then the parking lot below – she gained an instant awareness of the sounds, smells and colors in hyper-sensory detail from a great distance.

 

- this account would later gets more and more esoteric. I would note, even when they go esoteric there can be aspects that can be hard to give materialistic explanations. This woman's NDE starts fairly normally in terms of NDE with descriptions of meeting dead loved ones but with a distinct difference of a girl that she was told would be named Crystal who would have some serious mental health disorders but and help those around her learn of love and acceptance. She also had a doc dismiss her experiences when she came back and then told basically no one about what she experienced. Over 20 years later her daughter got pregnant and named the grandchild Crystal. She would have autism and serious audioprocessing issues. The grandmother didn't tell her daughter about her past experience but would be very active in helping to raise the child. One day out of the blue and without previous knowledge about what happened to her grandmother, Crystal tells her GMA that they met before, when she died. She told her details about the experience she'd told no one, let alone a young child.

 

 

There's an account not of an NDE but it's near cousin: and out of body experience. This was during anesthesia with a curtain covering any chance of physical viewing during an out of body experience. The person saw the entire surgery in clear detail, including that the person performing the surgery wasn't the doc he expected but a student....and the experience was dismissed and it couldn't happen by the doctor because it doesn't fit our current understanding of perception. That there is a capacity for us to "see" beyond our physiological methods in the right circumstances shouldn't be readily dismissed. It may not lead to an esoteric belief of an afterlife or a consciousness completely separate from the body, but it still indicates that what it means to perceive may still be limited in our current models that ignore exceptions to the rules. That's a problem 

 

I've never died but I've had a couple esoteric experiences of my own. Ones that I don't have a clear naturalistic explanation for. So it's easier for me to believe something more might happen to someone else. I get if this is not within one's parameters of perception and belief that it would be dismissed via materialistic explanations that don't really explore why this may happen by refusing to engage with the limitations in understanding via naturalistic/empiricist methods of exploration and understanding. 

On 5/9/2024 at 5:20 PM, Analytics said:

Those are all good points. People I read tend to use Bayesian reasoning to create extremely high thresholds for things that contradict established laws of physics. On the one hand this is an effective way of dealing with fake science and the accompanying replicability crisis. But on the other hand, it does limit what you take seriously. It’s definitely conceivable that there could be a thing or two that are lumped in with pseudoscience that really are true. 

NDE's are ones that I would guess have a solid case. Much of it can be proven because it doesn't deal with our tangible plane as we know it. But the consistency in reports and themes across people, cultures, and beliefs gives me plenty of pause before dismissing it.

On 5/9/2024 at 5:20 PM, Analytics said:

Yuval Noah Harari is actually a historian and not a biologist. Historically, Mormonism has taught that have a distinctive anti-evolution. For example, Russell M. Nelson is on record as saying, "to think that man evolved from one species to another is, to me, incomprehensible. Man has always been man. Dogs have always been dogs. Monkeys have always been monkeys. It's just the way genetics works.” More to the point, Joseph Fielding Smith said, "There is not and cannot be, any compromise between the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the theories of evolution......It is not possible for a logical mind to hold both Bible teaching and evolutionary teaching at the same time."

Of course Joseph Fielding Smith being an apostle at the time he said such things doesn’t make such teachings official or binding on Mormons, and as far as I know fewer and fewer Mormons see the world in the same way he did. But in general, a lot of Christianity is very threatened by Evolution. 

I would say there have been and there have been elements that haven't been at all and ones that were fairly neutral or nuanced in their assertions around evolution. I lived in Texas in the bible belt when I first learned about evolution. My response compared to the mainstream largely protestant literalist stances on it were very night and day. So I deeply get that there's still a Christian sense of threat to evolution that was around at least in the last 20 year. I'm not sure the significance of pointing this out though. I would note that the sense of conflict between religion and science seems to beost tangible with a specific interpretation of faith that was found especially in the US and UK. That doesn't say much beyond said derivative that tend to be more literalist, conservative and/or fundamentalist in their religious practice. 

On 5/9/2024 at 5:20 PM, Analytics said:

Harari’s point was definitely a broad generalization that doesn’t fit with all conceptions of souls, but it is still illuminating.

I would probably still go for interesting for me, personally. What illuminates a person is often subjective to their contexts

On 5/9/2024 at 5:20 PM, Analytics said:

I think you would really like the Book Who’s In Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain. Despite his superlatively strong credentials, Gazzaniga is very down to earth and sympathetic. While telling the story of the research that led to the conclusions he shares in this book, he actually provides a definition of consciousness. In context, he says:

I'm curious how you read that. Because the full paragraph is kinda like a non-definition to me. It starts out assertive and quickly devolves into a glorified 'we dunno as it's squish' and even hints and the inherent unknowableness of consciousness in thoroughly empirical/modern scientic terms. It does 

On 5/9/2024 at 5:20 PM, Analytics said:

Gazzaniga, Michael S.. Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain (pp. 67-68). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

Those are all excellent questions. Gazzaniga’s research doesn’t start out by answering those questions. Rather, he starts in the clinic doing research, and the research leads to tighter and tighter constraints on what answers are plausible and which are not.

That makes sense...it fits some of the reductionist orientations in science to isolate variables and tighten relational constraints between them. Among other things.

On 5/9/2024 at 5:20 PM, Analytics said:

I appreciate you thinking about it and am glad you found my thoughts interesting. I wasn’t trying to convince anyone so much as explain where I was coming from. The good news about my belief structure is that I don’t believe people will be punished after their dead for not agreeing with me.

Neither do I. I'm not a fan of beliefs that assume as much or impose more protestant assertions of hell on LDS etiologies. I do think those are harmful to believe here in whatever form they take. But dismissing these events and illusions can also being problematic if not harmful. This book started with the account that first made her interested in these phenomena. She discussed a man who refused to go through a surgery due to a previous traumatic OBE he had when being put under. Refusing said treatment was a death sentence. But no one knew how to engage with his experience as a real event. So no one could address the trauma. If these were assumed to be potential side effects to unusual physical experiences there could be space for people to address and share with other what happened and receive support when what they experienced was negative. But because these aren't, patients often keep it to themselves, medical staff can continue to ignore or dismiss them, and experiences and our understanding of what's happening remains limited. Even in just naturalistic temporal based concerns, tphat should be seen as a problem.

We all carry beliefs and constructs that support our current understanding of life around us. When we believe them we tend to focus on the values in them. The good in them. We struggle to toggle or recognize their potential pitfalls, restrictions in understanding and their inevitable shortcomings. 

 

With luv,

BD 

Edited May 14, 2024 by BlueDreams

[Analytics]

14 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

It's estimated that 1 in 20 people have NDES....

Hi BlueDreams,

First of all, thank you for thinking about what I’ve written and for the thoughtful reply. I read it twice.

Something my mind kept going back to as I read this is the brain research about how our perceptions and memories are typically related to perceptions of outside things that are real, and how they are also driven by the brain interpolating, extrapolating, and in general trying to make sense of what’s going on, including things the body does that aren’t driven by the conscious mind.

Here is a longish quote from Gazzaniga about how the brain makes up stories:

Quote

 

We showed a split-brain patient two pictures: A chicken claw was shown to his right visual field, so the left hemisphere only saw the claw picture, and a snow scene was shown to the left visual field, so the right hemisphere only saw that. He was then asked to choose a picture from an array of pictures placed in full view in front of him, which both hemispheres could see. The left hand pointed to a shovel (which was the most appropriate answer for the snow scene) and the right hand pointed to a chicken (the most appropriate answer for the chicken claw). Then we asked why he chose those items. His left-hemisphere speech center replied, “Oh, that’s simple. The chicken claw goes with the chicken,” easily explaining what it knew. It had seen the chicken claw. Then, looking down at his left hand pointing to the shovel, without missing a beat, he said, “And you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.” Immediately, the left brain, observing the left hand’s response without the knowledge of why it had picked that item, put it into a context that would explain it. It interpreted the response in a context consistent with what it knew, and all it knew was: chicken claw. It knew nothing about the snow scene, but it had to explain the shovel in his left hand. Well, chickens do make a mess, and you have to clean it up. Ah, that’s it! Makes sense. What was interesting was that the left hemisphere did not say, “I don’t know,” which truly was the correct answer. It made up a post hoc answer that fit the situation. It confabulated, taking cues from what it knew and putting them together in an answer that made sense. We called this left-hemisphere process the interpreter.

We have numerous examples of this process at work in our split-brain patients. For instance, we flashed the words bell to the right brain and music to the left brain. The patient reported that he had seen the word music. When asked to point to a picture of what he just saw, our patient chose the bell, even though there were other pictures that better depicted music. Then we asked him: “Why did you pick the bell?” He replied, “Well, music, the last time I heard any music was the bells banging outside here.” (He was referring to the bell tower.) His speaking left brain had to concoct a story to explain why he had pointed to the bell. In another experiment, we flashed the words red to the left hemisphere, and banana to the right hemisphere. Then we placed an assortment of different colored pens on the table and asked him to draw a picture with his left hand. He picked up the red pen (which was the left hemisphere making an easy decision), and he drew a banana with the left hand, (which was the right hemisphere). When I asked why he drew a banana, his left hemisphere, which had no clue why his left hand had drawn a banana, replied, “It is the easiest to draw with this hand because this hand can pull down easier.” Once again, he did not say, “I don’t know,” which would have been the accurate answer.

 

Gazzaniga, Michael S.. Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain (pp. 91-92). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

If someone is experiencing cardiac arrest and remembers details about what was happening while her heart was stopped and experienced the event from floating above the room, I think the best explanation is that the physical body still received some stimuli from its immediate surroundings that was weak and confused, and that the interpreter functionality of the brain constructed the experience. A near-death experience isn’t necessarily going to be the same thing as a total-death experience. 

Stories about things that take place away from the physical body are more impressive, such as the story about Crystal. But they are anecdotal in nature. I can’t help but wonder if there was conscious or unconscious embellishment going on, or whether the stories that are highlighted are just the ones that are most lucky--a broken clock is still right twice a day; if hundreds of millions of people have NDE’s, we’d expect that luck would result in a few of them sounding more impressive than they really are in terms of proving an actual spirit leaving the body and having an authentic real-world experience.

Regarding the stories of people who described what they saw in terms of more vivid colors and seeing things made up of particles, etc., to me the accounts sound identical to how some people describe the experiences they have when taking mushrooms, LSD, or related drugs. And its interesting that people who take such drugs often do so because it results in what is to them an authentic, deeply spiritual experience. I have nothing against finding transcendence through such means if done responsibly, and if the experience is real to them then that is great. But it doesn’t mean the events aren’t driven by brain chemistry that is being altered either by drugs or by the brain going through the stress of dying.

Regarding the definition of consciousness, I think I read that quote the same way you do; the hard problem of consciousness is indeed hard, and that includes defining what it is. Another Gazzaniga book that I recently started reading is The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind. Currently I’m in the middle of Chapter 3. What’s really interesting is that Gazzaniga tells the story in some detail of how thinkers thought about consciousness from the ancient Egyptians through Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, etc., all the way to the present day. The original semi-modern thinkers back in the 17th century (e.g. Rene Descartes) believed that the body contained some sort of spirit that was driving things behind the scenes, and they were earnestly looking for how the spirit connected to the brain. This is what was originally believed by the top scientists who studied the topic back then, but the theory was eventually abandoned by mainstream neuroscientists for the belief that the brain makes the mind. This shift didn’t take place based on a materialistic philosophy. Rather, it took place because that is where the evidence led. 

If there are any other specific things you’ve said that you’d like me to reconsider or comment on, please let me know.

Best,

Analytics

 

[manol]

Hi Analytics, obviously I'm not @BlueDreams, but I hope you don't mind me replying.  I respect you and your skepticism.

On 5/14/2024 at 3:13 PM, Analytics said:

Stories about things that take place away from the physical body are more impressive, such as the story about Crystal. But they are anecdotal in nature.

My understanding is that anecdotal evidence is considered to be the least reliable type of scientific evidence, but sometimes it is all that is available. Medical case studies, for instance, are based on anecdotal evidence. NDE studies conducted by medical professionals are in the same general category. All of the authors I mentioned in my previous post are medical professionals, though I do not know how many of them have published peer-reviewed research on near-death experiences. I have encountered at least one  such paper by Dr. Jeffrey Long but did not read it as it was behind a paywall.

 

On 5/14/2024 at 3:13 PM, Analytics said:

I can’t help but wonder if there was conscious or unconscious embellishment going on, or whether the stories that are highlighted are just the ones that are most lucky--a broken clock is still right twice a day; if hundreds of millions of people have NDE’s, we’d expect that luck would result in a few of them sounding more impressive than they really are in terms of proving an actual spirit leaving the body and having an authentic real-world experience.

A broken clock being right twice a day is a mathematical certainty.  NDE accounts accurately describing events the patient could not possibly have witnessed normally are not.  Nor would it be trivial to reliably estimate the probability of NDE accounts accurately describing events the patient could not possibly have witnessed normally.   Without such an estimate any dismissal of such NDE accounts which have been documented by medical professionals as being due to "luck" or some version of "it was bound to happen anyway" is conjecture, in my opinion.

Regarding embellishment, I do think that happens.  Years ago I bought a book by an NDEer and in it he described his life and accomplishments before his NDE and my BS meter went off at one of his claims.  I finished reading the book but my skepticism about him and his account continues to this day.  

From the dawn of human history up until fifty years ago we would not have been having this conversation because medical resuscitation technology was not sufficiently advanced.  It is possible that future research into near-death experiences will advance well beyond where it is now.  Until then, I understand but obviously do not share your skepticism about them. 

The following I post not because it is a persuasive argument (it most certainly is not!), but because it is a snapshot of the alternative perspective that near-death experience accounts offer to the rest of us. From an NDE account in an online article by Dr. Jeffrey Long:

"There was not one single part of me or part of anything else that was not love. Individuals did not exist in the same way as we do here. I was still me, but I was also part of the loving. I KNEW things without hearing a single spoken word. I WAS love. I KNEW that all religions had it wrong. There is no way rules and judgment could flow from this place. Earthly religions made it complicated when it was very easy. There is only love, and all of us are part of it. There is NO way that we cannot be loved. We ARE love. Time did not exist. I have always loved my family on earth, but I did not miss them. I did not think of them. I was more joyful than I ever have been. I felt utterly connected to everything and everyone. We ARE inter-connected as one. There is no such thing as 'death'. This experience has changed me."

Link to the article: https://www.espiritualidades.com.br/Artigos/L_autores/LONG_Jeffrey_tit_Evidence_survival_consciousnee_in_Near-Death_experiences.pdf

 

Edited May 15, 2024 by manol

[teddyaware]

On 5/13/2024 at 3:39 PM, ZealouslyStriving said:

A prophet of God caused division? Interesting. 🤔

 

Just goes to demonstrate how utterly clueless those who reject the Savior and his enlightening Spirit end up being. After all the persecutions and martyrdoms recorded throughout the scriptures, these people are actually shocked and astonished that a prophet of God would end up causing division?! Meanwhile the world is rapidly ripening in iniquity and devolving into a cold blooded, high tech dystopian tyranny, but they’re either blind or indifferent to the multitude of woes and tribulations that are so obviously being caused by the rejection of God and his holy commandments. The Book of Revelation testifies that in the days that lead up to the Second Coming quite nearly the entire population of the world is going to be deceived by the adversary and by his host of earthly minions, so I guess no one who’s in the know should be perplexed or surprised to see such woeful spiritual ignorance and blindness.

Edited May 15, 2024 by teddyaware

[Peppermint Patty]

Teddy,

You might find this interesting.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ4aBaofwDc