Seeing dead people?

[Mali]

There are more things in heaven and earth, young Pali, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

[Pali]

You seem to think I'm implying somehow that we've made all discoveries there are to make or know everything there is to know about the universe. That is not the case. I'm just saying that the supernatural claims people commonly make to fill in gaps in their knowledge or to explain odd experiences lack sufficient evidence for me to accept them as credible explanations.

I fully recognize the mysteries of the universe. Moreover, I grant those mysteries the respect they deserve by admitting my ignorance and recognizing the need for further investigation of them (and even the possibility that we might never know the answers) rather than using magical thinking to give them explanations that don't really explain anything (for instance, saying God created the universe doesn't explain the universe's origins, if it even had such, in any meaningful way because it just moves the line of questioning up to "what are God's origins?").

In short: My mind is plenty open to changes and new ideas - it just has a filter in place meant to sort between good and bad ideas, and supernatural explanations seem to always fall into the latter category.

[Imoutgoodbye]

Pali, here's what I'm seeing when you post:

Science is a proven method. Therefore, if it cannot be solved to the same outcome (proven hypothesis) then it is not a good idea, it is a bad idea. It must be shown to be true. There must be some form of physical evidence. Even if you can't see the wind, you know what it does, you feel it, and you see its actions. EDIT: Not using the wind as an example of lack of evidence, but more as something you can't see, but science has ways of explaining.

Hence, why I am not arguing my case anymore. Your philosophy is based on a set of principles firmly rooted in science. The rules for this discussion, in your mind, are based upon those principles as a filter for good and bad.

*shrug* To the original poster: I'm deeply sorry I helped derail your thread.

To the others who had these experiences, take heart.

[Kyzarius]

Again' date=' while this is certainly true, it is also a fairly meaningless tautology that does not support believing in any supernatural claims - it only means "we don't know everything yet", not that we should be so carelessly open minded that we believe anything. I am not trying to argue anything as absolute truth[/quote']

I am not as much of an extremist, denying or comfirming anything. I only gave out resources, to let folks draw their own conclusions.

Crush the dreamers?

You sound like the "scientists" who nearly had Galileo hung, and last I checked we are still flying around the sun.

[jibber]

Pali, here's what I'm seeing when you post:

Science is a proven method. Therefore, if it cannot be solved to the same outcome (proven hypothesis) then it is not a good idea, it is a bad idea. It must be shown to be true. There must be some form of physical evidence. Even if you can't see the wind, you know what it does, you feel it, and you see its actions. EDIT: Not using the wind as an example of lack of evidence, but more as something you can't see, but science has ways of explaining.

Hence, why I am not arguing my case anymore. Your philosophy is based on a set of principles firmly rooted in science. The rules for this discussion, in your mind, are based upon those principles as a filter for good and bad.

*shrug* To the original poster: I'm deeply sorry I helped derail your thread.

To the others who had these experiences, take heart.

Exactly why I haven't posted again, even after my smart-ellec post above.. even though it was -very- very true in many many ways. When someone has his mind set (and in this case, it's religion versus science goers) they won't take a 'maybe', 'yes' or 'possibly' answer. It's simply "No, the way I believe is this, and that's final."

Although some of you may say you're open for discussion (as Pali did, saying he gave an open mind and claimed ignorance to the philosophy of the mystical/after-death life) but in every post he shoots it down with scientific responses.

Woe are discussions between Religion and Science!

[Dead Voodoo Doll]

Pali, here's what I'm seeing when you post:

Science is a proven method. Therefore, if it cannot be solved to the same outcome (proven hypothesis) then it is not a good idea, it is a bad idea. It must be shown to be true. There must be some form of physical evidence. Even if you can't see the wind, you know what it does, you feel it, and you see its actions. EDIT: Not using the wind as an example of lack of evidence, but more as something you can't see, but science has ways of explaining.

Hence, why I am not arguing my case anymore. Your philosophy is based on a set of principles firmly rooted in science. The rules for this discussion, in your mind, are based upon those principles as a filter for good and bad.

*shrug* To the original poster: I'm deeply sorry I helped derail your thread.

To the others who had these experiences, take heart.

Exactly why I haven't posted again, even after my smart-ellec post above.. even though it was -very- very true in many many ways. When someone has his mind set (and in this case, it's religion versus science goers) they won't take a 'maybe', 'yes' or 'possibly' answer. It's simply "No, the way I believe is this, and that's final."

Although some of you may say you're open for discussion (as Pali did, saying he gave an open mind and claimed ignorance to the philosophy of the mystical/after-death life) but in every post he shoots it down with scientific responses.

Woe are discussions between Religion and Science!

[Pali]

It must be shown to be true. There must be some form of physical evidence.

Yes, exactly. How else would you know if it were true? What other method do you have for distinguishing between good ideas and bad ones? How else are you testing your ideas against reality to confirm that they actually apply? Sure, by guessing or faith you might by chance hit upon a correct idea about reality - but even then you don't have a way to tell whether it is correct or not.

You sound like the "scientists" who nearly had Galileo hung' date=' and last I checked we are still flying around the sun.[/quote']

Kyz, I take that as a fairly insulting statement - I am not trying to equate anyone here with witch burners or Inquisitors, and I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from ad hominem attacks as well. Now first, the last time I checked, it was the Catholic Church that nearly had Galileo hung for contradicting church dogma, and second, he was nearly hung for relying on the EXACT SAME METHODOLOGY of hypothesizing and testing against observations that I am arguing in favor of (many of the "scientists" of his time were in fact philosophers and mathematicians who felt that we could learn everything about nature by just sitting and thinking about it rather than via examination of reality while Galileo thought that the best way to learn about nature was to study it - and I am definitely on Galileo's side on this one).

Although some of you may say you're open for discussion (as Pali did' date=' saying he gave an open mind and claimed ignorance to the philosophy of the mystical/after-death life) but in every post he shoots it down with scientific responses.[/quote']

Being open to a concept does not mean one has to accept every claim of it. I'm open to the idea of faster-than-light travel, but that doesn't mean I'm expecting warp drive to be developed anytime soon - if ever. I shoot down the proposed claims because they lack sufficient evidence for me to accept them - not because the conclusion is one I refuse to draw no matter the circumstances. What am I supposed to do, accept every story of someone being haunted as a good depiction of reality based on their word alone? Should I also then accept claims of alien abductees, and people who have seen Bigfoot or Nessie? How about the people following the various savior figures alive today and the miracles they say they've witnessed these people perform? Am I to just accept all these stories and the incredible claims within them based solely on the testimony of witnesses? What do you expect of me here, that I be incredibly gullible rather than trying to distinguish between fact and fantasy? Do you have a better method of determining reality from fantasy? If so, please, tell me. Until you do, I will require that an idea be tested before I accept it - and it is not my fault that supernatural claims fail to pass that test.

[jibber]

Not asking you to accept. Simply asking you to have an open mind. Having an open mind doesn't mean you agree with it, but it also doesn't mean you disagree with it. If because of no evidence, and you DO disagree with it, don't claim you have an open mind. It's closed, obviously..

And should science prove all of the above in the short years to come, you can then change your view to agree/believe, and we'll all be friends again.

[Pali]

Having an open mind doesn't mean you agree with it' date=' but it also doesn't mean you disagree with it. If because of no evidence, and you DO disagree with it, don't claim you have an open mind.[/quote']

Wrong. An open mind is not one that refuses to come to any conclusion. An open mind is a mind willing to consider new ideas (definition courtesy of Wikipedia). No one here has posted anything resembling a new idea - life after death and non-physical souls are old ideas that I have considered a great deal and found not only lacking in support, but contradictory to the vast amount of evidence we do have that our conscious existence is a product of the workings of the brain. That is why I disagree with them, because they contradict what we do know and have no evidence of their own beyond anecdotes to support them. I'm willing to be proven wrong on these subjects and have no objection to considering new related discoveries, but thus far, every single discovery in the entire field of neuroscience (edit: or rather, neuroscience, psychology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, anatomy... the list goes on and on) supports the idea that our minds exist purely within the workings of the physical brain - and it'd take more than unsubstantiated stories to overturn this.

Another thing... if you think you have a more open mind than I do, let me ask you this: can you think of any hypothetical evidence or scenarios that would change your mind? Because I can think of hypothetical examples that would change my mind when it comes to every single belief about the nature of reality that I hold. I REQUIRE, as a prerequisite for me to hold such a belief, that there be a plausible hypothetical way in which its predictions could be shown to be wrong and therefore the idea would be invalidated (evolutionary theory, for example, could have been easily overthrown by the findings made in genetics, or by finding fossils in the wrong places or wrong times - this isn't what happened, but it could have been and still can be).

I can tell you what would change my mind (in this instance, objectively verifiable evidence of disembodied souls that does not rely on anecdote and can be replicated under controlled conditions - this is a fairly normal standard of evidence for existence). Can you do the same? If you cannot, then you seriously need to reconsider which of us is the more open minded here.

EDIT: I mean this last part very seriously. You may believe in life after death and souls, but no one here has even attempted to argue in their favor beyond reciting anecdotes and telling me that I'm not open minded enough. You seem to recognize that you do not have solid evidence in your favor (if you do, by all means, present it), but you still hold fairly tightly to your beliefs - and yet I'm the one who is told he has a closed mind because I won't accept your claims and will present arguments against them, despite your inability to actually support them in any meaningful way?

EDIT 2: I forgot that Kyz brought up EVP early on (before the discussion started, which is probably why I forgot about it). The Wikipedia article on EVP contains a fairly good summation of why I don't find that to be convincing evidence. However, if EVP ever gave us testable predictions that held up (such as an EVP recording that specifically predicted an event or revealed some previously unknown fact about the world [and, very critically, was interpreted correctly as doing so prior to the confirming event/discovery - vague prophecies are easily attached to all sorts of things after the fact]), that would be quite impressive and I'd revise my opinion of it... but until it can do something along those lines, it's about as convincing to me as the bad video footage of Bigfoot is. Edit 3: Please note that this is an example that I would find to be very strong support for EVP, but more importantly, it's an example that should be perfectly within the bounds of what is possible assuming EVP is real (I would be surprised to find a proponent of EVP who would say otherwise). I am not asking for a straw man example like a crocoduck or an impossible level of detail such as a fossil to represent every single mutation along an evolutionary chain - I'm only asking for just enough detail to make the conclusion "EVP (and all the attendant assumptions therein) best explains what is happening here" a better one than other already well-established possibilities like pattern recognition altering perception.

[Imoutgoodbye]

Pardon, but here's my definition of an open mind:

Having an open mind consists of having patience and acceptance of all views no matter how dissimilar to your own that they may be. Each person's opinions are their own and like it or not, having an open mind precludes a person from the chance of trying to hold another person back because their views are different.

[Pali]

Excuse me, but where have I advocated in any way holding another person back because I disagree with them? Where have I advocated intolerance of differing viewpoints? I may be arguing against those viewpoints, but that is how conversation works - we discuss our ideas. That's all I'm doing here. Are you saying that it is now close minded, intolerant and "holding another person back" to say that I disagree with them and why?

[Imoutgoodbye]

That's my definition, not aimed personally at you, Pali.

However, I would note that your giggling (which somehow started this entire debate with one question on why the giggling) and dismissals (arguments against) the beliefs held forth by the people with stories, is in fact, intolerant as this has become a HUGE derailment of which I am guilty of allowing myself to participate in.

Being a somewhat spiritual/religious person, I've noticed many, many, many times that you have some, uhm, let's say "aggression" towards religion in particular. You want people to change their minds about this "old idea".

Now, I, on the other hand, respect science. However, I won't let it dictate my beliefs and will not use it as the ultimate measuring stick. It's one of my favorites, but I don't believe it's the be all end all.

Not saying you can't disagree, I just don't believe this was a relevant place for either of us to perform a Crusade.

[Pali]

However' date=' I would note that your giggling (which somehow started this entire debate with one question on why the giggling) and dismissals (arguments against) the beliefs held forth by the people with stories, is in fact, intolerant as this has become a HUGE derailment of which I am guilty of allowing myself to participate in.[/quote']

If people started a thread about their UFO abduction stories, I'd have giggled at that too. I have not dismissed anything out of hand, which is what you seem to be implying. I explained quite clearly why I do not accept anecdotal evidence. Again, I must ask, how is it intolerant to say "this is where I disagree with you and why"? Should I just not say anything when someone starts talking about things that I think are fractally wrong? I will not abide by that, sorry. If your ideas are worth having, they should be able to weather a little criticism from me. If they can't, then you may want to rethink whether they are worth having or not.

Being a somewhat spiritual/religious person, I've noticed many, many, many times that you have some, uhm, let's say "aggression" towards religion in particular.

I would say disrespect is a better word than aggression. I'm sorry if it bothers you, but I see no reason to respect faith-based beliefs - I see them as primarily wrong and secondarily dangerous. EDIT: However, I would ask you... go through my wording here and see how neutral it is in regards to the people. Where have I denigrated anyone personally? Where have I attacked anyone's character? Where have I attacked anyone's intellect? Where have I done anything other than criticize or promote ideas?

You want people to change their minds about this "old idea".

You bet I do. Like I said, I think faith-based thinking is flawed and dangerous, and I think we would be better off without it. For someone who seems to be trying to champion tolerance, you seem remarkably intolerant of the people who think religion is a bad thing actually voicing their opinions.

Now, I, on the other hand, respect science. However, I won't let it dictate my beliefs and will not use it as the ultimate measuring stick. It's one of my favorites, but I don't believe it's the be all end all.

And yet, despite me having asked multiple times, you still have not actually stated what other epistemology you use and how you find it worthwhile, how you use it to tell fact from fantasy. Keep in mind that the kinds of beliefs I'm talking about here are those relating to the nature of reality - beliefs regarding personal interactions, morality, political theory, etc. are different kinds of beliefs and are built on different foundations.

Not saying you can't disagree, I just don't believe this was a relevant place for either of us to perform a Crusade.

Really? I'd say that a discussion about seeing dead people is the perfect place for a discussion about whether or not it is even possible to see dead people.

It is not intolerant for me to voice my view that you are wrong. It is not intolerant for you to voice your view that I am wrong. We start becoming intolerant when we start telling the other to stop voicing their view - and I am not the one doing that here, buddy (arguing against that view is not the same thing). You're coming close.

[Imoutgoodbye]

Telling these people that they are wrong is intolerant. It was a thread created for people to share their stories. Not for us to come along and begin debating whether or not what they believe in is right or justifiable or scientifically possible or plausible. Is it so wrong when people find amusement or solace in what they believe, that it might give them some kind of hope, real or not?

Yes, I'm asking you to stop. On this thread. I've also only stated that you MIGHT be wrong. At no point, anywhere that I can recall, have I told you are 100% wrong. But I cannot stand to watch a scientific mind tread on other people's dreams/hopes/beliefs so callously when there's no evidence to refute the possibilities.

And, like, OMG, please don't call me buddy.

*extends an olive branch* How about a truce and we just put this behind us, eh?

[Pali]

I was specifically prompted to post my thoughts by someone else, and that is me jumping into a thread to destroy people's hopes and dreams? And that's an olive branch? You have got to be kidding me.

when there's no evidence to refute the possibilities.

You also did not read my posts closely enough if you think I agree with this statement (depending on which possibilities you're talking about, anyways).

[The-Nameless]

If I told you that the sun is blue, you would argue it is not. You know it is not blue. You know that the sun itself is absorbing the blue, and reflecting yellow. You know this because you have already defined what yellow is. BUT if you have not defined what an afterlife actually is, how can you take a measurement to determine if it exists? I don't need it proved to me, I know it is there. You ever think you getting robbed was a scare tactic instituted by higher powers? You ever think that your lack of faith is because you have not taken the chance to gain it that god has given you? When you where at work, and got robbed. I would be curious what words went through your head right after he walked out. I would wager it is something along the lines of God damn, or oh my god. If you ask god for patience, he does not make you instantly more patient. He gives you opportunities to learn patience. Teach a man to fish and all that jazz. I asked god for patience once. You know what happened? I was in a car crash, my mother was diagnosed with Leukemia, and my license was suspended. Thanks god, because of what I asked for, I am now much more patient. That is how I look at that. I had a close girlfirned of mine go to rehab years ago. She was in a halfway house, and thinking alot about god etc. So one day she is thinking to herself, and god, about signs. She said to god "If you exist, send me a sign. Make it a butterfly" then she thought "No. Not a butterfly, they are everywhere. Make it a bright balloon." Two, three days pass. So normally she does not sweep the rehabs dayroom when they leave, but something motivated her to. She opened the cleaning closet as she had before to get cleaning supplies many times in her stay there. Guess what was hanging up in the closet deflated? A purple balloon with a butterfly on it, under it it said Thank you. You can claim coincidence, but I feel that is just a cop out. Like saying a UFO was a weather balloon. Or swamp gas. I saw that as a power from after this life is showing her the truth.

I realize my post leaned more towards god, but any christian knows that God, and the afterlife are hand in hand. So proving god exists, will prove the afterlife exists. So I feel it is easier to just confront the larger issue.

[Pali]

Well, I was going to bow out as requested, but...

First, the Sun emits light across nearly the entire spectrum, it doesn't reflect it (the sky is blue because the gases in the air scatter the blue wavelengths emitted by the sun). Second, unless you have a definition for the term, what the hell does "afterlife" even actually mean? What is a soul? What is a god? Unless you have some working definition for these words, you are just spouting nonsense. Third, do not try to read my mind. The various times I have come close to dying in my life, lots of things popped into my head - but prayers or gods are not among them. Please do not disrespect me or other atheists by repeating the kind of "no atheists in foxholes" garbage that is so common and so very false.

The things you posted are not things that can only be explained by a deity's intervention. I'm sorry, but I do not find them any more impressive than any other sorts of anecdotal evidence - they can be explained just as well by various well-established quirks of the human mind, such as finding patterns where they do not exist, confirmation bias, memories changing over time, suggestion, etc. A huge part of the problem with anecdotes is that, without you consciously lying at all, we have no way to judge if what you are saying is anything close to an accurate representation of what happened. Even if I were to grant that they point to something intervening with you, that does not give us the logical grounding to call that something a god, much less any specific one of the thousands of gods humans have believed in over the millennia. People use the kind of reasoning you are to support their beliefs in all sorts of things, from gods to spells to Xenu.

And unless you can specifically show certain facts about the nature of a god, no, proving a god's existence does not prove an afterlife. You would have to show how it is specifically the Christian incarnation of Yahweh (although, which Christian incarnation is also a question... is he the Mormon, Orthodox, or Catholic Yahweh?) that exists, and not, say, Hindu gods watching over the karmic wheel (resurrection and an afterlife are very different concepts).

Another thing... if I came up to you talking about how a few weird little things in my life were signs I'd pieced together from an alien transmitter in my brain, would you really take me seriously? Frankly, I find the whole self-centered nature of what you're talking about fairly egotistical... God gave your mother leukemia and caused you to be in a car crash (I assume with other people) to teach you patience? So, at least two or more other people are suffering... so that you could learn patience? Even if I ended up agreeing with you that God had done it, all it does is make him a prick for not teaching you a lesson in ways that involved only you. It's the same kind of self-serving thinking that people are using without realizing it when they thank their god for specifically saving them from a disaster, because they must be so much more important than all the people who still died, or who thank god for making them so wonderful that they won the winning touchdown or what have you. I'm not impressed by it - it's egotism and illogical thinking wrapped together in a neat little package.

[The-Nameless]

I can't really say a whole lot, you seem to be taking offense. I am not approaching this topic in any type of sarcastic tone. I am legitimately offering these scenarios up in the event you had never considered that as an option. You are only restricted in advancement by the knowledge offered to you pali. I would hate to see someone stifled because an option was never presented to them.

As far as ignorant. Religion has remained largely the same since each faith was established. Religious sects exist yes, but each sect follows a similar set of base principles. I do not take offence to atheism because God gave you a choice, and you have of course made it. I can point out that throughout all this it has yet to be pointed out the flaws in science. Religion has kept more, or less, the same view throughout time. Science however has flipped more than a quarter in the NFL. Science has led you to adamantly question everything layed before you. You have to know why, you have to find the flaws so they can be corrected, or the course changed to avoid them. Where with my faith, I do not need it proven now. I do not need to know why. I know, and that is all that matters.

I would really like to get your opinion on a mildly unrelated topic. Just a quick quote I wanted you to analyze, and tell me what you think it means. You can pm me if you want.

"I think, therefor I am."

***PS*** Please do not take this as any sort of offensive. We are both stubborn, and I enjoy good debates. I know you can keep it a debate, not an assault. I will do the same.

[The-Nameless]

I can't really say a whole lot, you seem to be taking offense. I am not approaching this topic in any type of sarcastic tone. I am legitimately offering these scenarios up in the event you had never considered that as an option. You are only restricted in advancement by the knowledge offered to you pali. I would hate to see someone stifled because an option was never presented to them.

As far as ignorant. Religion has remained largely the same since each faith was established. Religious sects exist yes, but each sect follows a similar set of base principles. I do not take offence to atheism because God gave you a choice, and you have of course made it. I can point out that throughout all this it has yet to be pointed out the flaws in science. Religion has kept more, or less, the same view throughout time. Science however has flipped more than a quarter in the NFL. Science has led you to adamantly question everything layed before you. You have to know why, you have to find the flaws so they can be corrected, or the course changed to avoid them. Where with my faith, I do not need it proven now. I do not need to know why. I know, and that is all that matters.

I would really like to get your opinion on a mildly unrelated topic. Just a quick quote I wanted you to analyze, and tell me what you think it means. You can pm me if you want.

"I think, therefor I am."

***PS*** Please do not take this as any sort of offensive. We are both stubborn, and I enjoy good debates. I know you can keep it a debate, not an assault. I will do the same.

[The-Nameless]

I can't really say a whole lot, you seem to be taking offense. I am not approaching this topic in any type of sarcastic tone. I am legitimately offering these scenarios up in the event you had never considered that as an option. You are only restricted in advancement by the knowledge offered to you pali. I would hate to see someone stifled because an option was never presented to them.

As far as ignorant. Religion has remained largely the same since each faith was established. Religious sects exist yes, but each sect follows a similar set of base principles. I do not take offence to atheism because God gave you a choice, and you have of course made it. I can point out that throughout all this it has yet to be pointed out the flaws in science. Religion has kept more, or less, the same view throughout time. Science however has flipped more than a quarter in the NFL. Science has led you to adamantly question everything layed before you. You have to know why, you have to find the flaws so they can be corrected, or the course changed to avoid them. Where with my faith, I do not need it proven now. I do not need to know why. I know, and that is all that matters.

I would really like to get your opinion on a mildly unrelated topic. Just a quick quote I wanted you to analyze, and tell me what you think it means. You can pm me if you want.

"I think, therefor I am."

***PS*** Please do not take this as any sort of offensive. We are both stubborn, and I enjoy good debates. I know you can keep it a debate, not an assault. I will do the same.

[Pali]

I can't really say a whole lot' date=' you seem to be taking offense. I am not approaching this topic in any type of sarcastic tone. I am legitimately offering these scenarios up in the event you had never considered that as an option. You are only restricted in advancement by the knowledge offered to you pali. I would hate to see someone stifled because an option was never presented to them.[/quote']

This shows me that you have not put much thought into this. We live in a culture where about 85-90% is religious. References to gods, souls, spirits, and other supernatural concepts are all over the place. Do you seriously think that no one has suggested to me before to try faith, that I haven't considered these things at all before, that this is new to me? I grew up in a religious family, I was confirmed in the Presbyterian Church when I was younger. None of this is new to me - and for the record, it's not new for any atheist I've ever met. Don't keep making this assumption that we just need the ideas clearly explained to us and we'll accept them - we've had them explained and we still find them to be flawed.

As far as ignorant. Religion has remained largely the same since each faith was established.

Actually, no, they haven't. Nearly every major religious institution has changed a great deal in just the last century, not to mention the last couple thousand years, in terms of theology, moral teachings, and interactions with the world.

Religious sects exist yes, but each sect follows a similar set of base principles.

No, they don't. Within Christianity alone you have a wide range of beliefs on all topics ranging from the Trinity, Mary, homosexuality, abortion, exactly how loving God is and to whom, what the natures of Heaven and Hell are, whether Jesus was entirely human or entirely God or a mixture of the two. The view of religion you seem to be offering is much more narrow in scope than reality is.

I do not take offence to atheism because God gave you a choice, and you have of course made it.

See, I would disagree with you on this. I do not think that people actually choose what they believe - I think people are convinced of things based on a combination of experience and intuition. One difference between what you think and what I think is that I can point to findings in neuroscience and human psychology that would support my position. Another is that I'm fully willing and prepared to change my mind if well supported arguments can be made in favor of doing so - are you?

I can point out that throughout all this it has yet to be pointed out the flaws in science. Religion has kept more, or less, the same view throughout time. Science however has flipped more than a quarter in the NFL.

A couple of things here. First, as I mentioned above, you are wrong to think that any religion has laid out the same theology over time - it has evolved over time just as life has, in usually small steps from Pope to Pope and ayatollah to ayatollah, to the point where it is very different from what it used to be.

Second, as I mentioned in a previous post - the concept that science has changed radically in its models is actually a false one. Outside of a few major shifts centuries ago when science was in its infancy (Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Darwin, etc.), most scientific models have been pretty much the same in their core concepts for a long time. The exceptions would be the rise of quantum physics, neuroscience, and other very small or large scale areas of inquiry in which we only recently developed the technology to explore them... but even in those fields, while our models have been refined by new discoveries, the core ideas have not been challenged. The concept of common ancestry of all life and evolution via natural selection has not been challenged except by a very loud but very tiny fringe (I'm talking 0.1% of people in related fields here), and is as established as the Periodic Table or a heliocentric solar system. Certain scientific finds have been shown to be hoaxes or have revised the details of some part of a theoretical model, but major overhauls of well-established scientific concepts don't happen very often - quantum mechanics didn't disprove relativity, it just showed the limitations of both models in their predictive power.

Also, in many respects, even the establishment of heliocentrism over geocentrism can be viewed in much the same way as the establishment of the Big Bang model over a steady state universe - as two competing models that, for a time, did not have enough evidence to support a conclusion either way (geocentrism was more intuitive and easier to assume), but eventually enough was found to recognize that one was superior. That is how science works, not a failing of it - we come up with various ideas and investigate which ones better explain the things we find, and we change our minds when we learn new things. The only reason the first debate was bloodier was because of the Catholic Church's attachment to Aristotle's ideas.

Science has led you to adamantly question everything layed before you. You have to know why, you have to find the flaws so they can be corrected, or the course changed to avoid them.

Yes. I find this to be a fairly good way to tell good ideas from bad ones. It's not foolproof at any step of the way, but it's self-correcting over time, and it's the expansion of our knowledge rather than any specific idea that we should be focusing on.

Where with my faith, I do not need it proven now. I do not need to know why. I know, and that is all that matters.

"Where with the chip in my head, I do not need it proven now. I do not need to know why. I know, and that is all that matters." Please tell me you can understand why I do not see what you said there as a good thing.

"I think, therefor I am."

Descartes made a good point with this, that even if we cannot know for certain that what we experience is real, we can know for certain that the one doing the knowing has to be real in some sense because something must be doing the thinking - the thinking thing itself is at least real. I'm not aware that he gets any real challenges when it comes to this specific quote. Solipsists go crazy with the idea that because we cannot be certain of everything that we shouldn't ever conclude anything, which I think to be a fairly pointless way to view things - even if this world isn't real, I'm forced to exist within it and act as if it were, so I may as well figure it is for now. Maybe I'll change my mind once Morpheus pops me out of the Matrix, but for now, I figure it's as real as I am.

[Kyzarius]

The only reason the first debate was bloodier was because of the Catholic Church's attachment to Aristotle's ideas.

actually they got pissed because the heliocentric ideology claimed they had been wrong for quite a while..

the church is never wrong...never...

The church didnt really care for evidence, they were right and everyone else should hang for thinking otherwise.

Your approach, Pali, is harsh and close minded imo. You take subjects that have no real scientific evidence to support OR deny, and laugh at the topic when it is hard to imagine it being anything more than a hoax. Hence my point earlier. You would be one of the scientists mocking Galileo as he used tools you had never seen, and presented ideas so backwards that you cant believe them.

It is the same thing here, ironically, nobody even claimed to or remotly hinted at having any proof other than some interestting tales nor does anyone really care that you believe or not..yet here you are denouncing us as heretics.

I find it a flaw in your way of thinking that over the course of history almost every single major breakthrough that redefined our way of thinking as a society of a whole was kicked down, thrown out, and slandered by people using the same rhetoric you are. Yet always, when hindsight is applied year later, we discover that we should of listened.

You know, it is possible to be critical, yet open minded to possibilities. After all, it is those of us who dream up new ideas, and unproven methods to achieve things that truly drive innovation and discovery.

[Evangelion]

I love everyone and everything.

[f0xx]

I love everyone and everything.

I second that.

[H&R]

My mother is a very spiritual woman and once she went to see a psychic medium. The medium claimed to have contact with my mother's grandfather, who told things to the medium about her sons. One of the sons was described as the good-looking one (me obviously ) who seemed to be working a lot with papers and designs and he (the "ghost") would very often sit in a rocking chair. That's what my mother told me when she came back from the medium. At that time I was studying hard and sharing apartment with a friend (Thenewguy here on FL actually. I never told him this, because I knew he wouldn't believe it anyway ) and our tables were filled with papers and pads, and we had a rocking chair in the living room. The medium told my mother things that she couldn't possibly know without extensive research. And my mother is a very honest person, so this kind of freaked me out a bit. I am now more open to supernatural things than I was before.