Objections To The Idea That Their Is a Soul

First is that materialist's say that people believe that only homosapiens have souls. Not everyone thinks that some believes we all have souls which is what I agree with.

Another is our thoughts, feelings appear to be fragile when the brain is affected. This argument though true to an extent. It does have a major flaw. That being it doesn't entail that thoughts, feelings etc.] can't go on without a brain. Why? Because as mentioned before their is more than one way to look at the mind brain relationship. If their's is an astral body which i believe their is those memories, thoughts, feelings are transmitted to that body when we die.

Of course I can only speculate but one thing is certain, at least to me that their is overwhelming scientific evidence for an afterlife of some kind.

Another piece of data that I haven't come across until now which also appears to support the view that the brain acts like a radio.

Doctor Gerald Schroeder has put forward a theory that the human brain acts as a “radio” - picking up the data of the mind, the mind which is external to the body, and adding individual experiences and feelings back into the collective.

This is supported by experiments conducted by the David Lynch Foundation - whereby where a large collective focus and meditate upon peace and love, the crime level is statistically and dramatically reduced for a short time in that locality.

My New Computer I Love It

I like my new computer I got from my sister.

Here's the details of it

352 Intel Celeron D Processor
512mb of memory
160gb hard drive
dvd-dual drive


It's a lot faster than my old computer was and the hard drive is a lot bigger . Right now I have window's xp I heard their are too many bugs on window's vista.

Update On My Father

My father last night and my mom and brother went out to grab some coffee at tim hortons. My mom told me that my father wanted a bottle of wine she said no they went to time hortons. My father open the car door and tried to jump out. Luckily my brothers grabbed him. Today, my other brother, sister and her husband, mother took my father to the hospital, they admitted him. I feel so depressed right now I wish things will turn around. Right now we got to try to get his mental condition back to normal. It looks he may not be able to go to Halifax on the first week of december for tests done on his heart.

this is because of his mental condition. My mom is rightly worried that he may try to jump out of the vehicle before they get to halifax. Well I am typing this my mother is still over the hospital with my father.

Materialists Say Ghosts, Esp And Other Paranormal Phenomena Are Impossible

This is a typical response from a materialist. I was once a strong atheist myself until i started to have paranormal experiences that defy conventional explanations. I tried fitting them into possibilities such as fraud, seeing patterns but none are there etc.] But those explanations couldn't fit the facts of what I was experiencing. Another ridiculous response from materialists is that mostly it's religious people would experience ghosts etc. Completely untrue, that is if you research this topic you would find out that isn't true.

One materialist which his screename is Hyndis did make one good point. He said that a lot of ghost pictures are blurry out of focus photography. I agree to a certain extent that pictures of supposed ghosts won't work. Because, anyone can doctored up a picture or we could be seeing patterns. I saw some pictures that do look like ghosts, however you could say they were doctored up or i was seeing patterns where nothing exists at all. However how about the evidence collected by psychical research on apparitions? Like the work done on apparitions by FWH Myers, among other phenomena.

http://www.survivalafterdeath.org.uk...pparitions.htm

I didn't get any response from him. He probably never even went to the article on apparitions. No surprise there.

Survival After Death Or Oblivion?

Keith Augustine in his article the case against immortality. He says the evidence for survival and psi is very weak compared to the evidence produced in neuroscience. Well true of course neuroscientific evidence is stronger however does it really support the view that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. I would say no one of the data points Keith Augustine mentions a lot is the brain split experiments which don't really show two conscious streams of consciousness.



The brain split experiments don't show two conscious minds. http://kaffee.netfirms.com/Papers/PhilofMind3.htm

According to more than one author, the theory of two conscious minds seems incompatible with the over-all unity of mental functioning shown in split-brain patients outside the experimental (split-brain) setting. This unity would not be explainable through the dominance of one hemisphere and it would include complex motor skills such as playing the piano that involve the active participation of both the cerebral hemispheres. As Wolfgang Gasser formulates it nicely: "Cutting the lines of communication between the two sides of a brain (split brain patients) has incredibly few consequences. Primarily it is the soul which continues maintaining the coordination of the two sides." The unity of behavior after splitting the brain is even observed in non-human mammals, which in flagrant moral contradiction with the fact they are 'sacrificed' for research clearly suggests they are substantial selves just like humans.

Also in general, we already know that there are complex non-conscious or subconscious cognitive processes and that they may have a strong impact on behavior. Therefore, it is more parsimonious to explain split-brain phenomena by such known processses than to prefer an exotic new theory of the creation of two conscious minds by the severing of the corpus callosum, just for the sake of debunking radical substance dualism.

You can find more about this here

In Titus Rivas paper called a few remarks on the death of dualism.

http://www.geocities.com/athanasiafoundation/Dualismlives.htm

Now another bulk of evidence Keith uses is from this site here.

http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/ghost.html

I will leave it up to you does this evidence in this site show consciousness is an emergent property of the brain? or does it show that consciousness is filtered by the brain?.

About the Phineas Gage case. It appears the case is not a well supported case at all. Which can we found on wikipedia under the heading Distortion and misuse of case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

Unknown Structures Tuggings At Universe Says A New Study

This is called ''dark flow'' which is a named nodded up with two other unexplained astrophysical phenomena[dark matter and dark energy].

The article continues on by saying

The presence of the extra-universal matter suggests that our universe is part of something bigger—a multiverse—and that whatever is out there is very different from the universe we know, according to study leader Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

The theory could rewrite the laws of physics. Current models say the known, or visible, universe—which extends as far as light could have traveled since the big bang—is essentially the same as the rest of space-time (the three dimensions of space plus time).

You can check out the article here. Which was published in national geographic.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081105-dark-flow.html

Winter Is Coming I am Excited

All weather models are in full agreement that the northeast and eastern canada will experience a very cold blast of cold air. This will bring lake effects snows for Ontario among many other areas. Their is a possibility of a noreaster or 2 in the long range too for Atlantic Canada. The Euro shows that the cold air will stay in place with some relaxation after thanksgiving then the pattern repeats. It appears the weather models want to blow up and storm or two. One of them appears to happen by the middle of next week. These storms could impact Nova Scotia and possibly Southern New Brunwick, Prince Edward Island. It will all depend on where the snow/rain line is.

Here's the Noaa's prediction for the 6-10 day temperatures

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/

8-14 day temperatures

http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/predictions/814day/

Now let's look at the arctic oscillation[AO] which is one of major players for bringing cold arctic air into north eastern America and Eastern Canada. When it is negative.

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/daily_ao_index/ao_index_mrf.shtml


As you see it remains negative throughout the period.


Also look at the negative arctic oscillation[NAO] which if negative also brings down cold arctic air.



http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/nao_index_mrf.shtml

It also remains negative thoughout the period to somewhat neutral.

Finally the Pacific/North American Pattern. When positive it brings helps bring cold weather to Northeastern America and Eastern Canada

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/precip/CWlink/pna/pna_index_mrf.shtml

It also says mostly positive throughout the period.

Keith Augustine's Response To Neil Grossman's Article In The Journal Of Near Death Studies

Here's some citations from Neil Grossman's article. Unforunately as Michael Prescott says his article is not online.

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2008/11/four-errors.html

Let me go though some of Keith Augustine's responses in the comment section he made in Michael Prescott blog.

Keith Augustine says, "being unconvinced of the reality of the supernatural, paranormal, or survival doesn't make one a dogmatic, close-minded, or "hard-core" skeptic; it simply makes one a skeptic."

Really a lot of scientists were skeptical of survival, paranormal and the supernatural until they could no longer ignore the massive amounts of evidence. Also, Keith is trying to protect an outdated worldview. We know now that reality is much bigger than we ever imagined.

Keith calls people a pundit because they disagree with him. No one likes to be called names.

I have always considered that materialism could be true. Of course you can say I don't consider materialism which is downright false.

Also I think we know the evidence Keith, it was summarized in the article the case against immortality. Their is ways to falisfy the transmission theory one would be to demonstrate that the brain is a generator. Now you can say that has already happened. But what most of us argue is that the brain is a complex receiver of consciousness.For example some of the evidence Keith uses is from the brain split experiments and Wilder Penfield's experimental findings. Benjamin Libet's finding that brain activity precedes a conscious decision, which is routinely presented by sceptics, in their dull way, as 'another nail in the coffin for dualism' (Blackmore, Dying to Live, p. 237), and which of course is open to contrary interpretations, as Libet himself pointed out. Wilder Penfield's experimental findings on the neurological basis of memory is also used by sceptics in an anti-dualist sense which Penfield himself did not endorse.

“Edwards puts the last nail in the coffin for a version of astral body theories when he observes that:”
“If the astral body is an exact duplicate of the regular body it must die along with the regular body ... If the secular body died as the result of a brain tumor or as the result of being shot through the heart, the astral brain and astral heart must have been similarly injured (22).”

Wait a second, what dualist says the astral body is made of ordinary matter?. None that I know of. This is a straw man. I see the astral body as a different type of matter but isn't affected by death. But this different type of matter can mimic the physical body.

I found an interesting comment down in the footnotes that read: "[1] We have no more reason to believe that human consciousness continues to exist after death than we have to believe that water buffalo or other animals continue to have experiences after they have died."

Umm no reason to believe?. How about our inner life?, experiences, empirical evidence that support psi and survival after death. Now if that isn't reason to believe that what is?. Also, the multiverse theory doesn't fit well with materialism. I mean the mystics have been saying for a long long time now that their are other realities/universes/dimensions.

Very Mad And Sad

Well I was just chatting to a girl, that I have feelings for and got my heart stopped on. You told me, that she has gotten engaged to a guy and is possibly pregnant. I got very upset and took her off my yahoo messenger friend's list. She used me the nice guy. She said by possibly feb of 2009, she would visit me and that was the plan. Now, she has gone back on that promise too.


It's bad enough that my family is going through hell right now. But to have someone I had feelings for tell me that's she engaged and possibly pregnant with another guy. It has my blood boiling.

Professor Ray Hyman Skeptical Inquiror Article

Professor Ray Hyman believes that if mainstream science accepted psi was real that it would change science forever. But isn't science about breakthroughs?. Of course it is.

Here's where Hyman makes that clear

The first request is that the scientific community accept the claim that psi is real. The second is that they do so by exempting parapsychologists from the requirement that they provide evidence according to acceptable scientific standards. Both requests amount to changing science as we know it. Obviously, the scientific community will not, and should not, acquiesce to these requests.

Hyman also claims in the article in the skeptical inquiror that some parapsychologists say such as Dick Bierman, Walter Lucadou, J.E. Kennedy, and Robert Jahn, that the evidence for psi is inconsistent, irreproducible, and fails to meet acceptable scientific standards.

Now this is contrary to Bierman's success in replicating the presentiment experiments of Dr Dean Radin (where human reactions seem to occur marginally before an event occurs.

Nevertheless, Hyman's essay is disingenuous at best, if you do a little investigation and pay attention to his choice of ideas. First of all, I've read the papers by Bierman and Kennedy as well as a letter by Kennedy in response to Bierman's paper. In no case do they deny the REALITY of psi, only the ability of the evidence to be replicated based on consistent decline effects. This is due in great part, Kennedy poses, that we're not dealing with chemicals or continents but with thinking, complex human beings with a dizzying range of motivations, beliefs and fears. The concept that emerges should be that we still do not know how to study psi with consistency...YET. But of course Hyman jumps right to his preferred conclusion, which is that psi is nonexistent because of this supposed shortcoming.

Second, we have the cherry picking of experts. What makes Bierman and Kennedy more reliable than Radin and Utts, a professional statistician? Why, they reach the conclusion that support's Hyman's pre-existing bias, of course--that psi is non-replicable and therefore must be bunk. This is to say nothing of the other work out there, such as the experiments by Rupert Sheldrake, that show consistent replication. Those are ignored.

Finally, note how cleverly Hyman jumps to an uncalled for conclusion in order to discredit parapsychology in general. He says that what is implied by the conference is that psi advocates are asking the scientific community to give them a free pass--to set aside experimental rigor for psi as a special case. I have NEVER seen nor heard a parapsychologist express such a thing, just that their work be judged according to the same criteria as other research.

One can only conclude that this is another Hyman hit piece using selective data and questionable conclusions to preach to the CSICOP (excuse me, CSI) choir.

Barack Obama The Us President

Hopefully he will bring peace and order. His plan to help fix the economy is get the american people to give up some things. All his plans sound good, is it too good to be true?. That certainly is the question i am pondering. I mean are these promises all the really are? nothing more. Time will certainly tell. I for one, ain't a Obama supporter as of yet. But, I could be soon that is if his plans really do come to fruition. One of the major problems right now, of course Iran has an nuclear programme. Are they building nuclear weapons?. The Iranian president says no we are not building weapons of mass destruction.

Who are we to believe?.

Does God Exist?

This is a good question, that has got me thinking for a long time. First of all, I think that god is not a person more like something that is very difficult to describe. Maybe god is a light in other realms of reality?. It sure does make a person think eh?. The evidence for survival of bodily death doesn't necessarily show that their is a god but it does make it more likely.

Some questions to ponder

1. Does god exist?
2. Is their more than one god?
3. Is any religious concepts of god correct?

I would say yes to the first question and no two the last two questions. That's just my opinion.

New Skeptiko Podcast

Here's another new skeptiko podcast

Dr. Jon Klimo on Channeling and Consciousness


Guest: Dr. Jon Klimo, discusses his 30 plus years of research into channeling and other unexplained aspects of human consciousness.

You can watch it here

Enjoy

http://www.skeptiko.com/index.php?id=67

Things Are Pretty Bad

My father is getting panic attacks bad ones. He panics about almost everything. he is on new medication that hopefully will help him. I still get the odd panic attack myself, i found that counselling was the best medicine. My brother Tommy is also going through some tough times, such as his two kids he made with a girl named Melissa. Well she's got custody of them but now my brother does get partial custody to see his kids, which is good. One of the kids has autism, my my mother and father told my brother that he should be in a special school.