Skyhook

So I guess the basic difference here is in our own evaluations of the data we each have to work with.

Whereas I accept my own first-hand observation as sufficient proof, you do not deny the possiblitiy, but have no first-hand experience with it and do not accept the existing second-hand data as sufficient proof.

No problem there.



Krimsa:

I guess that would be an accurate assessment of the situation we have occurring between us right now. I always find issues with this research and studies that are done. I dont necessarily go looking for it, but it always arises.I just cant go along with something if it is bothering me for some reason or I find their rendered conclusions erroneous in some capacity.

I dont know what kind of "first hand experience" you are talking about here? Can you control your ability to remotely view images or locations and can you do this over an over again at will? Thats what I would like to see accomplished. Thats probably what many people would like to see. Or it is high up on a list of requirements to substantiate these claims to their own satisfaction. Im probably not being a stickler for the details here.

Well I don't know. You say that delusions are not natural and they are therefore 'malfunctions'.

Well wouldn't that also apply to OBEs?

For most people they are not natural and thefore an OBE itself would be a 'malfunction' by your definition.



That's my all-time favorite movie.

Yes, we know that delusions are possible. We also may have more delusions that we ever realize!

Besides, I'm not denying OBEs. All I'm saying that I have no personal evidence to support them. The OBE that I did experience COULD have been a delusion. Or it COULD have been real.

Which is was I honestly can't say.

The reason I can't say is because I can't PROVE to anyone including myself that it wasn't a delusion.

Delusions can seem very real. It most certainly did seem real to me at the time. But that doesn't remove it from the realm of delusion.

That's my point.

I think many people simply refuse to accept 'delusion' as the answer because they think that means that they've lost control of their mind or whatever.

Well, hell's bells!

If they had an OBE that means that they lost control of their ENTIRE BODY!

Now he's a stickler for the details! Im easy compared to Billy.

No. I said it is my opinion that OBE's are natural occurrences. They are as natural as dreaming. I think more people have them than you realize, they just ignore them or forget them.



I guess most people are just not used to them and are frightened of them. They are just uninformed about them, it is only their opinion that they are not natural, probably because they listen to other people who have the same opinion. But if everyone experienced them, and if no one else thought they were unnatural, then everyone would just think they were natural. Its all public opinion and frequency of experiences that determine what people think about them.




I can't PROVE to anyone else that I have them either, but my experience is enough proof for me. That is my point. I don't doubt my own experience over what other people think, or what I can prove or disprove to them.

The only real proof is to prove it to yourself, and that takes some practice, and you have to take notes on what you see and check them out for accuracy etc. In any case, it does take dedication. It's certainly not for everyone.



I disagree. I think many people refuse to accept it as a 'real and meaningful' personal experience of an out of body experience because of what they (and other people) can or cannot 'prove.'




No not at all. I can gain control of my physical body at any time when I am either dreaming or having an OBE. You just have to think about where you want to be and you are there.

During what they call "sleep paralysis" all you have to do is focus on moving one finger and you can come back to full control of your body. It just takes practice like anything else.

jb

haha, yea. Seriously. I would feel strongly about its probability as truth if you had a margin or error of only 1x10^-6, id settle for that.

ha ha I am sorry, I am totally in the dark where math is concerned so I don't have a clue what you are talking about.
In idiot's terms please... one out of ten?

In this circumstance, the premise that is being offered by Abra is that of the definition of God in the scripture, and how by the text itself - that God cannot exist. That is his conclusion - assuming of course, that his premise is acceptable. Since we have the text to draw from - than it should be demonstrated from the text that his definition of God is an acceptable premise. This would be done through context. However - Abra establishes his argument through pretext - sighting one or two verses - out of it's context to illustrate a point. Bad logic. Now - if he were to demonstrate a comparison with the God that he worships - which he tends towards Pantheism, then whatever premise he states is one that would either need to be agreed upon, or just accepted - as there is no context by which to establish a definition of this God, other than how he defines it.



They can have a reasonable discussion - but the validity of the conclusion cannot be esablished as representing any "truth". Merely a conclusion of the stated premise. If the premise is reasonable to boh parties, yet two different conclusions are reached - either one is wrong and the other right, or both are wrong. Two different premises just means that no conclusion can be reached.



But that only follows whar you take the "being" out of it's contextual parameters. The text (bible) is quite explicit on how it describes the God refered to. While it may be difficult to establish a belief in this being, it is merely a matter of reading the text to understand the "definition" of this being. But because the definition is found throughout the text - it requires a slightly more vigerous exegesis than a mere quoteing of a verse or two - or a paraphrasing of generally accepted traditions. To state a mere "God is love" as a definition of the biblical supreme being is a misrepresentation of all that "He" is described as being.



Perhaps - but what it definitively shows is that those who tend to not believe do so through a gross lack of understanding what the text defines God to be. I generally find that those who express a profound disbelief in the God of scripture have done the least amount of exegesis on determing who and what the God they profess doesn't exist is even about. They constantly and consistantly claim attributes to this God which cannot be supported by the text itself. If one is going to profess a disbelief in something - it generally is a more acceptble position when it comes from at least experiencing the concept - rather than through ignorance of it.

Yes, I quite agree that what you said you would like to see is generally what is considered to be the requirement for conclusive proof. I wish I could provide that proof but I cannot. I did not make any kind of written record of it so the only existing first-hand data I have is my own memories of what I perceived during the incident. And I cannot even call it an ability because I cannot consciously control it.

So from your perspective, there is no proof at all, and hardly anything worth even considering as evidence.

And from my perspective, there is no evidence to indicate that it was a dream or an illusion or a hallucination or anything else other than exactly what I perceived it to be – me observing my body and its surroundings from outside of the body.

Eljay the issue is that the bible does not detail gods thoughts often or very well on issues he took action on.

So to say his intentions are thus from his actions are all nothing more then a guess made by man.

Ask yourself what attributes can you assign to god.

Write them out. What adds up to god. If you take the Bible as your basis for gaining knowledge of gods attributes then go ahead do your due diligence, do your exegesis and list that out here and now.

All of this extra blah blah blah is just smoke and mirrors, it just adds static to the signal.

So if god is more then love, then list what else god is . . . .

List it all here . . . . as soon as you do this we can go through point by point and analyze it against the actions that are stated in the bible . . . . It should be easy to then determine if this list is accurate . . . . AND to assign certain attributes to certain actions . . .

JB this is scientific notation it is equal to .0000001

1x10^6 would equal 1,000,000
1x10^-6 is .0000001

This can also be expressed as 1/1,000,000 or one in a million.

a negative power is usually a very small number, a positive power is usually a very large number. So my comment was to say when the margin of error is extremely small, then I will add it as fact within my paradigm, until then it is either highly probable, probable, highly unlikely, or the probability is nearing nil.

To the original poster, my comment ment to illustrate that science makes guesses that have an extremely high probability of being accurate.

Its silly to call a probability of being wrong of 1x10^-12 or .0000000000001 to be a guess. Most of science live in the realm of 1x10^-6 to 1x10^-12 chance, 1 in a mill, or 1 in a bill.

A guess is 50/50. An educated guess is around 30% or 1/3 . . . a ball park guess would be 1/10 or 10% . . . its no guess 1/bill

Well yeah, you are right. I would have a hard time relying on what you just described there as any kind of viable account. No, Im not saying that there is no proof that I would consider. Not at all. I do hold stock in some psychic abilities. This is because I have some experience with this as far as law enforcement utilizing psychics under certain circumstances when they have exhausted all leads. They are very often embarrassed and are not very vocal about it, but it occurs. I think in actuality if I was moved to examine this phenomena closer, that is what I would want to hone in on specifically and investigate. Not so much the OBE or NDE. Bleh.

Well - to begin with, it can easily be determined that God is omniscient, and omnipresent. Just two examples amoung many. I'm not going to do the exegesis for you - you're perfectly capable of doing it for yourself. You can list all of the attributes of God that the text demonstrates and reach the conclusion quite easily that God is more than just "Love". That is the point. However that is not to say that a definitive understanding of God can be determined. That cannot be gleaned from the text.

But that is not the point of my OP. All I need do is come up with an additional attribute to prove my point. Are you venturing off in another direction? If so - I'm not getting the point you are trying to make.

So Eljay, is god an entity within the universe, or is the universe a subset of god?

As far as my desire to analyze the bible (more then I already have), I have more desire to analyze Green Eggs and Ham. I do not use that book for any basis for any of my beliefs . . . so it is up to those that do to make that analysis.

To the point of my previous post . . .
If someone wants to talk about god, they must explain to me what they mean by god, to do that you must assign attributes to this god head. What this god does and does not that makes it real to them.

Otherwise it is a scenario much like you spoke of with no real context . . . only pretext. I was merely explaining a clear way to assign context to a discussion lacking it otherwise.

I will not eat them, Sam I am! Not in a box! And not with a fox!

Well you were discussing remote viewing with him and responding to his post, so I assumed you were implying that he was one of these people and that he would then know best how to answer such a question.

Why do you think people invariably attempt to assign all that they cannot understand to the realm of the mystical and to magic?

jb

I feel bad for Atheist and evolutionist.

I mean if they really look at their belief system and take it to heart than they must ultimately realize a few facts about the path they have chosen.

1. There is no law with out God. So, if evolutionists believe we are just advanced forms of Monkeys then why shouldn’t we live by the law of the jungle? In the animal kingdom only the strong survive right. Animals don’t follow laws so why should humans/monkeys? I mean if we are evolved apes then let’s act like apes…right? If there is no God then why worrier about the judgment of man or a soul that does not exist? Evolutionists are backing anarchy and they don’t even know it.


2. Evolutionist have a void of nothingness to look forward to when they die. So how can they find meaning in life? Why help your fellow man if it all means nothing in the end right? Just blackness and nothingness to look forward too. So, in a manner of speaking evolutionists are part of a culture that worship death/nothingness/void.

No thanks evolutionists, I will believe that my creator has bigger and better plans for me and my fellow believers after this brief existence in this troublesome dimension of confusion. .

THEORY:
Noun
• S: (n) theory (a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena) "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses"; "true in fact and theory"
• S: (n) hypothesis, possibility, theory (a tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena) "a scientific hypothesis that survives experimental testing becomes a scientific theory"; "he proposed a fresh theory of alkalis that later was accepted in chemical practices"

I’m sure someone could read these definitions out of context and come up with something supporting your claim that imagination and theory are synonomous. However, that might take some imagination.



The above is not a theory according to the definition. What else would you call it then, besides imagination?

Eljay, you are so far off base I can't even believe that you posted this.

You claim that the 'premise' that God is always Just and Righeous must be accepted!

But then the bible goes on to tell story of a God that is not Just as Righteous!

There is nothing just or righteous about asking people to judge their neigbors and stone them to death if they feel they are sinners!

You're just DEMANDING that your premises be true NO MATTER WHAT!

But that's total bull crap!

That would be like Science telling you that their PREMISE is that electricity can't hurt you.

So you stick your finger in a light socket and turn it on.

What are you doing to do then?

Clearly you're going to tell the scientists that their PREMISE is bull crap!

Science can't just make up a premise and pretend that that's cool. They have to establish that there premises are worthy of beliving in! And they have to show evidence that if you do believe in them they will lead to results that are demonstrably provable.

Religion doesn't do that at all.

You can't just claim that all is all-wise, all-powerful, and all-loving, and then continue on with a whole lot of stories that reveal a God that's stupid, had no control over anything, and doesn't even seem to know what the meaning of the work LOVE even means!

The bottom line is simple. If you claim the premise that the biblical God is all-wise, all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving, then you better stick with that the whole way through your story.

Otherwise you're just giving a premise that even the bible itself doesn't adhere to!

You forgot to mention one VERY IMPORTANT thing. Where and how does one come by this information?

I feel bad for Atheist and evolutionist.

I mean if they really look at their belief system and take it to heart than they must ultimately realize a few facts about the path they have chosen.

1. There is no law with out God. So, if evolutionists believe we are just advanced forms of Monkeys then why shouldn’t we live by the law of the jungle? In the animal kingdom only the strong survive right. Animals don’t follow laws so why should humans/monkeys? I mean if we are evolved apes then let’s act like apes…right? If there is no God then why worrier about the judgment of man or a soul that does not exist? Evolutionists are backing anarchy and they don’t even know it.


2. Evolutionist have a void of nothingness to look forward to when they die. So how can they find meaning in life? Why help your fellow man if it all means nothing in the end right? Just blackness and nothingness to look forward too. So, in a manner of speaking evolutionists are part of a culture that worship death/nothingness/void.

No thanks evolutionists, I will believe that my creator has bigger and better plans for me and my fellow believers after this brief existence in this troublesome dimension of confusion. .

Edited by GOALLTHEWAY on Wed 09/24/08 04:45 PM