I feel like we are going in circles. Electricity does not equal emotion.
You are wrong and probably stupid.
Alternatively:
Oh look, an unqualified assertion.
Electricity only enables us to feel emotion. Emotion is something we feel. Electricity is electricity. This distinction exists whether you like it or not. My questions were pertaining to whether or not these feelings are "real".
Stimulus-response. Jesus ****ing christ, this is not rocket science. This is neuroscience 101. What you refer to as "emotion" is our body's chemical reaction to outside stimuli. Again:
you are still invoking an additional step which is unnecessary. There is NO NECESSITY for this "qualia". Our body provides electrochemical reactions within the brain which offer the construct of consciousness that is created by said processes certain feelings and emotions. I feel like I'm kind of begging the question here, but this is deeply related to the idea that, well, our consciousness is not some ethereal soul thingy, but rather simply a bunch of electronic and chemical reactions. So all right, I'll give you this:
Assuming that there is a soul, then qualia is needed to "bridge the gap". That said, who is really begging the question here, eh? This argument leads in circles because either explanation begs the question, one way or another.
1- How do you define "exists"? The way I define it is something that has any kind of effect, whether observable by us or not, on reality.
I disagree, because if it is unobservable by us,
there is no way to determine it existing. It's akin to the problem of "if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to observe it in any way, does it make a sound", but instead of answering that, I'm questioning how the hell we even know the tree exists. On a hypothetical level I agree, but on a practical level, I cannot–if we cannot observe something some way or another, there is virtually
no way of determining its existence (inb4darkmatter).
2- Can something that does not actually exist have any kind of effect on reality? No, it cannot. Otherwise it would exist.
This we are in agreement on.
By this criterion things like emotions, ideas, and consciousness exist, not as physical entities, but as subjective experiences. Do you disagree with any of this?
No, I don't. But I fail to see how it supports your point. These "subjective experiences" could
just as well be simply all that much electrical data running around a biological computer which simulates a reality (i.e.
our brain). Once again, in order to get
anywhere on this line, you have to beg the question and assume that the soul exists. This is, of course, not a valid line of argumentation. Regardless of how you frame it, you are not any closer to demonstrating the soul.
I'm not going to bother with any of this. Apparently we have, among other things, two entirely different and irreconcilable ideas of what the term "reasoning" means. So let's agree to that and focus on the arguments relevant to free will so that we don't get off-topic.
I'll just say "Kalam Cosmological Argument" and hope you realize what you're doing wrong.
Hold up. What are you talking about? Provide sources?
I
did. Read the post again and you'll see two PubMed links documenting naturalistic explanations for both out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences. At that point, the soul, once again, becomes an unnecessary complication.
Of course you would dismiss these experiences people have had. That is certainly understandable. But like I said before, you don't truly have the right to completely disregard what I said as a possibility because you have not experienced them yourself.
This paragraph just made me lose a few IQ points. Congratulations, you are approaching SaveMeJebus levels.
Side note: Haha. I saw what you wrote before your edit. "Well if evolution is true, then where are the transitional fossils?" Indeed. But we'll get to
that later.
Oh right, I almost forgot about that... The evolution example was chosen simply because the science involved is so well-established and well-supported. On that note,
please, PLEASE make that thread soon. Debates where I can cleanly and decisively stomp the living **** out of people with scientific facts tend to be
much more fun than debates where this degree of Philosophical ******y(tm) is not only good, but probably necessary.
MOVING ON.
But anyways, I want to focus more on that specific case I presented to you which you so callously glossed over. I know AltF4 didn't even read it.
Yes, I callously glossed over it. Why? Well, first off, the site you mentioned was not a primary source, I couldn't
find a primary source, and I'm about as likely to trust a site so clearly shilling as a source as I am, say, CreationScienceMinistries.org. Secondly, I'd like to make a point about the following things:
-A Bone Saw
-The exact run-down of an operation
-The statement that her veins and arteries were very small
-The amount of hair taken
These are the things she brought up that land in the realm of reality. Each of them have a naturalistic explanation beyond "her consciousness was floating around outside her body".
SL, have you ever experienced a Deja Vu? Yes, knowing you, it's probably clairvoyance, but let's just pretend that the scientists have a clue what they're talking about, and that it's simply the brain having a slight malfunction, probably something to do with short-term/long-term memory.
Such things are also common to happen during dreams: you dream something, and then the next day it happens! Actually though, this has a very different reasoning behind it: natural confirmation bias. That is, you remember the part of your dream where you had a bowl of cereal in your kitchen in the morning alone, and then when it happens, you think "oh wow, precognition", while ignoring the part of your dream where you tried to escape from an off-world prison through a drain pipe that was obviously way too small and clogged with feces, and your body ends up stretched and squeezed to abnormal lengths (I have weird-*** dreams).
So, how does this relate to the case before? Hmm... Well, let's look down that list again.
-A Bone Saw
-The exact run-down of an operation?
-The statement that her veins and arteries were very small
-The amount of hair taken
The Bone Saw is easy: how the hell are you even going to begin to claim that she had never seen one before? She was in a hospital. Even if she hadn't seen it before on, say, TV for example, it's not exactly unlikely that such a thing would be lying around somewhere for her to see.
The rundown of an operation is generally something that the hospital personell gives you before any major operation. This is not news.
During the countless injections that she had before the operations, it's very,
very likely that
someone brought up the fact that her veins and arteries were very small–that's the kind of thing that the surgeon team should know before attempting a procedure like that, and claiming that she wouldn't overhear it at some point is kinda ridiculous.
She could easily see how much of her hair she had left after the operation.
So here we have four pieces of information that she almost
certainly had, at some point or another, before or after the operation. We have established very,
very well that the subconscious mind is very good at playing tricks on itself, especially in favor of believing what we want to believe (when we speak in tongues at the pentecostal church for example, it is not us performing some bull**** ritual, it is god speaking through us–stuff like this is what I mean)...
That said... I don't have all the information. There's a lot of stuff involved that matters that we simply
do not know. But failing further information, I'd say that this
easily throws reasonable doubt on the issue, to the point where if this is your best evidence for a NDE, then your case is really fairly weak. And seeing as you're trying to establish a case for the supernatural, you're really going to have to do better than that.
Let me restate the salient aspects of the account for you:
-She accurately recalled conversations that occurred while she was clinically brain dead and her heart and breathing were stopped.
-She accurately described a surgical instrument that she had never seen before.
Just FYI, this is bull****. Both of 'em.
These are precisely the things that I have been arguing for. Now do you have any real objections to this account?
Yep. It's, for all intents and purposes, the
only well-established non-anecdotal piece of evidence, and it's
still fairly poor as far as such things go.
Way to jump to conclusions. First of all, many people cannot control their OBEs. OBEs are something that we know very little about. You would have to find a lot of people who had some degree of control over their OBEs for a study like you suggest. Maybe it is simply too difficult to test a large number of people in a feasible study. And because most people assume, not know, that OBEs are BS they won't want to test it anyways.
I'll take all but the last sentence. But that leaves an interesting question... How the hell do you
ever want to establish the truth of any OBEs? Come on, do science. Let's have
some kind of controlled test.
Besides, the case I presented is one of many
Calling bull**** on that claim.
that show that people do in fact observe events/details while experiencing an OBE, that they could have never known about, that are later verified to be true.
You must be a real fan of John Edward, AKA the cold reader, AKA biggest douche of the universe. ^_^
There are scientists that do research on this topic and collect various accounts of NDEs that have verifiable details in them. Like I said before, just give me the word and I'll bring these accounts to you. So this proves that OBEs/NDEs cannot be just hallucinations.
Let's limit this a little bit to something that could be more than playing darts in the dark and occasionally get me a hit: give me something that is
specific in both content and timing, that they truly
could not have known, that isn't self-fulfilling, and that has better than anecdotal documentation.
Have fun.
