An poll going on at dailygrail.com was recently forwarded by Pz Myers to his fellow commenters on his science blog. I made an response on Pz Myers blog.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/maybe_wed_get_better_answers_i.php
I said,
I voted all of the above evidence. Hijacking a poll about rather their is evidence for an afterlife or not is typical of materialists.
One of the best evidences for evp an experiment that shows evp's are not stray radio signals.
http://victorzammit.com/book/chapter04.html
As far as induced gi loc out of body experiences this has been refuted.
One of the earliest and most persistent of the physiological theories proposed for NDEs is that lowered levels of oxygen (hypoxia or anoxia), perhaps accompanied by increased levels of carbon dioxide (hypercarbia), have produced hallucinations.... One study frequently cited is that of Whinnery (1997), who compared NDEs to what he called the "dreamlets" occurring in brief periods of unconsciousness induced in fighter pilots by rapid acceleration in a centrifuge... He claimed that some features common to NDEs are also found in these hypoxic episodes, including tunnel vision, bright lights, brief fragmented visual images, a sense of floating, pleasurable sensations, and, rarely, a sense of leaving the body. The primary features of acceleration-induced hypoxia, however, are myoclonic convulsions (rhythmic jerking of the limbs), impaired memory for events just prior to the onset of unconsciousness, tingling in the extremities and around the mouth, confusion and disorientation upon awakening, and paralysis, symptoms that do not occur in association with NDEs. Moreover, contrary to NDEs, the visual images Whinnery reported frequently included living people, but never deceased people; and no life review or accurate out-of-body perceptions have been reported in acceleration-induced loss of consciousness.
For those who say their is no evidence for an afterlife you surely haven't done any research of your own. Have you?
User named knockgoats said this
Hijacking a poll about rather their is evidence for an afterlife or not is typical of materialists. - Leo MacDonald
Inability to put together a coherent sentence is typical of wooists.
So an personal attack is obviously this commenters resort to my factual remark.
I know like to rebut Pz Myers post on some of the evidence for an afterlife.
He says
I don't get the popularity of the NDE "evidence". I had a friend once who told me that he had the most awesome experience on 'shrooms — he'd melted into a purple puddle that soaked into the earth, and he had spiritual sex with tree roots. I'm pretty sure that didn't actually happen, and I wouldn't use it to argue that human beings were capable of phase changes into a fluid state or that intimate congress with plants was fun and rewarding, but people use the same logic all the time in arguing that while they were in a brain-damaged state, befuddled by anoxia, their perception of the hallucinatory state afterwards is evidence that there is a heaven.
Because a lot of people who have them are often flat lined with no measureable EEG. How funny come up with an apparent hallunication account then use that as an comparision. Lol has he ever look at these nde accounts? apparently not.
He says
I have no idea what "crisis apparitions" are. I don't care to know either.
By that sentence he clearly shows he ain't interested in this phenomena and doesn't care to look into it. Closed minded skeptic wouldn't you say?.
This is what he says about evp [electronic voice phenomena]
I have heard of EVPs — they're all the rage right now thanks to all those horrible 'ghosthunter' shows on TV. Leave a tape recorder running in an empty room, then play it back with lots of amplification of the background hiss and crackle of noise. If you are gullible and really want to believe, you will hear random splutters that you can imagine are sort of voices. And the really cool thing is that if you tell someone that this scrap of noise says something like, "Paul is dead", then their pattern-forming circuits in their brain will impose your interpretation on the noise for you, and they'll hear the same thing! Very convincing, I'm sure.
Has he ever heard of the Pye record experiments probably not.
He then says
I voted for no evidence. If you vote otherwise, maybe you can come back here and explain your evidence to us. We need a good laugh on a Saturday morning.
Yeah and i got a good laugh out of someone who proclaims to be a scientist with rationality and reason. But insists their is no evidence for an afterlife. Before you make that decision maybe you should research the evidence first, then come to an conclusion.
User named GT says
"Total votes: 666"
LOL, and "There is no evidence" is in the lead with 37% (246 votes).
Greed + Mortality = belief in eternal afterlife.
My response: Greed? if their is evidence for an afterlife which apparently their is lots of it it isn't greed.
Kel says
When one can simulate this phenomenon through mind-altering substances or though physical interaction (such as sleep deprivation), or when one can see these patterns through mental illness - why would anyone jump to the highly speculative and seemingly impossible conclusion that life carries on after death, but the dead are in contact with us?
My response: But mind altering substances don't even come close to that of an near death experience.
Stu says
Me:For those who say their is no evidence for an afterlife you surely haven't don't any research of your own.
Him?You don't know what research means.
My response: Well, Please inform me then what research is?
http://dailygrail.com/news/pharyngula-fail
Showing posts with label Pz Myers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pz Myers. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
Rebuttal To An Post Made By Pz Myers
First, before I get to the rebuttal their was a comment on his blog that i need to address.
Posted by: Kel
Interesting side note to all this:
It's interesting that people who believe in some sort of afterlife fear death the most. While those content with effectively ceasing to exist, aren't as scared of it.
My response
Not true i for one feared death a lot when i believe in materialism.
Now to the post
We never personally experience the extinction of our consciousness, of course, except for the limited loss of sleep — and we always wake up from that (at least, until the last time), so we at least have personal evidence that would inductively imply immortality.
Response: True agree.
It's also a set of beliefs that are remarkably pervasive. Our language and culture and habits of thought make the idea of survival after death continually crop up.
Even when we want to believe that our minds end at death, it is a real struggle to think in this way. A study I published in the Journal of Cognition and Culture in 2002 reveals the illusion of immortality operating in full swing in the minds of undergraduate students who were asked a series of questions about the psychological faculties of a dead man.
Richard, I told the students, had been killed instantaneously when his vehicle plunged into a utility pole. After the participants read a narrative about Richard's state of mind just prior to the accident, I queried them as to whether the man, now that he was dead, retained the capacity to experience mental states. "Is Richard still thinking about his wife?" I asked them. "Can he still taste the flavor of the breath mint he ate just before he died? Does he want to be alive?"
You can imagine the looks I got, because apparently not many people pause to consider whether souls have taste buds, become randy or get headaches. Yet most gave answers indicative of "psychological continuity reasoning," in which they envisioned Richard's mind to continue functioning despite his death. This finding came as no surprise given that, on a separate scale, most respondents classified themselves as having a belief in some form of an afterlife.
What was surprising, however, was that many participants who had identified themselves as having "extinctivist" beliefs (they had ticked off the box that read: "What we think of as the 'soul,' or conscious personality of a person, ceases permanently when the body dies") occasionally gave psychological-continuity responses, too. Thirty-two percent of the extinctivists' answers betrayed their hidden reasoning that emotions and desires survive death; another 36 percent of their responses suggested the extinctivists reasoned this way for mental states related to knowledge (such as remembering, believing or knowing). One particularly vehement extinctivist thought the whole line of questioning silly and seemed to regard me as a numbskull for even asking. But just as well--he proceeded to point out that of course Richard knows he is dead, because there's no afterlife and Richard sees that now.
Response: True, a lot of people believe in an afterlife, so what? the evidence is what we are after. Attacking people for believing in an afterlife doesn't make any apparent evidence for it go away.
Bering also does not discuss (in this piece, at least) another important factor: we rapidly learn that death is not a game of peek-a-boo, it has significant differences from ordinary departures. We learn from our experience that death is permanent. As we get older, we experience this more and more often, and we learn fairly rapidly that there is something about the nature of death that makes it more tragic, since we feel grief and loss. We build psychological coping mechanisms there, as well, and once again, fraudulent religion is ready to leap in and take advantage of another normal human reaction: denial. Promoting denial is a short-term tool for deepening a dependency on superstition, but it is again no virtue to foster irrationality by using personal fears and heartbreak.
Response: The same can be said of materialists, especially if the evidence for survival is true, the psychological fear of persisting forever is also terrifying to many materialists and even some non materialists. Why? because of it getting repetitive, boring over time. This would be true, however it appears that many souls get reincarnated which means that not every soul spends eternity in a afterlife realm.
Update: I have posted a comment on PZ Myers post. Yuu can find it here.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/10/where_will_you_be_after_youre.php
Posted by: Kel
Interesting side note to all this:
It's interesting that people who believe in some sort of afterlife fear death the most. While those content with effectively ceasing to exist, aren't as scared of it.
My response
Not true i for one feared death a lot when i believe in materialism.
Now to the post
We never personally experience the extinction of our consciousness, of course, except for the limited loss of sleep — and we always wake up from that (at least, until the last time), so we at least have personal evidence that would inductively imply immortality.
Response: True agree.
It's also a set of beliefs that are remarkably pervasive. Our language and culture and habits of thought make the idea of survival after death continually crop up.
Even when we want to believe that our minds end at death, it is a real struggle to think in this way. A study I published in the Journal of Cognition and Culture in 2002 reveals the illusion of immortality operating in full swing in the minds of undergraduate students who were asked a series of questions about the psychological faculties of a dead man.
Richard, I told the students, had been killed instantaneously when his vehicle plunged into a utility pole. After the participants read a narrative about Richard's state of mind just prior to the accident, I queried them as to whether the man, now that he was dead, retained the capacity to experience mental states. "Is Richard still thinking about his wife?" I asked them. "Can he still taste the flavor of the breath mint he ate just before he died? Does he want to be alive?"
You can imagine the looks I got, because apparently not many people pause to consider whether souls have taste buds, become randy or get headaches. Yet most gave answers indicative of "psychological continuity reasoning," in which they envisioned Richard's mind to continue functioning despite his death. This finding came as no surprise given that, on a separate scale, most respondents classified themselves as having a belief in some form of an afterlife.
What was surprising, however, was that many participants who had identified themselves as having "extinctivist" beliefs (they had ticked off the box that read: "What we think of as the 'soul,' or conscious personality of a person, ceases permanently when the body dies") occasionally gave psychological-continuity responses, too. Thirty-two percent of the extinctivists' answers betrayed their hidden reasoning that emotions and desires survive death; another 36 percent of their responses suggested the extinctivists reasoned this way for mental states related to knowledge (such as remembering, believing or knowing). One particularly vehement extinctivist thought the whole line of questioning silly and seemed to regard me as a numbskull for even asking. But just as well--he proceeded to point out that of course Richard knows he is dead, because there's no afterlife and Richard sees that now.
Response: True, a lot of people believe in an afterlife, so what? the evidence is what we are after. Attacking people for believing in an afterlife doesn't make any apparent evidence for it go away.
Bering also does not discuss (in this piece, at least) another important factor: we rapidly learn that death is not a game of peek-a-boo, it has significant differences from ordinary departures. We learn from our experience that death is permanent. As we get older, we experience this more and more often, and we learn fairly rapidly that there is something about the nature of death that makes it more tragic, since we feel grief and loss. We build psychological coping mechanisms there, as well, and once again, fraudulent religion is ready to leap in and take advantage of another normal human reaction: denial. Promoting denial is a short-term tool for deepening a dependency on superstition, but it is again no virtue to foster irrationality by using personal fears and heartbreak.
Response: The same can be said of materialists, especially if the evidence for survival is true, the psychological fear of persisting forever is also terrifying to many materialists and even some non materialists. Why? because of it getting repetitive, boring over time. This would be true, however it appears that many souls get reincarnated which means that not every soul spends eternity in a afterlife realm.
Update: I have posted a comment on PZ Myers post. Yuu can find it here.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/10/where_will_you_be_after_youre.php
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