teo123 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:47 pm
brimstoneSalad wrote:Look at Jehovah's Witnesses
OK, what about them?
teo123 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:47 pm
brimstoneSalad wrote:Can you quote it here?
Then stop calling me lazy for not doing the research about what Jehovah's Witnesses believe about eschatology. I quoted it right in the Opening Post: "How do people who believe in souls explain away the fact that epileptic patients who have the middle of their brain severed appear to have two distinct personalities governing halves of their bodies?".
You seemed to be referring to something different. See your comment to me. I don't know what you're looking for here.
The relatively large Christian group that you're ignoring contradicts your very broad statement about souls: they don't believe in them.
And contrary to your shallow scriptural reasoning (scripture is full of contradictions, and no scripture is not a credible historical document) Jehovah's witnesses use about the most literal and conservative reading of the Christian bible possible.
teo123 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:47 pmThis coming from a guy who insists all tribal societies are violent...
Stop strawmaning me Teo. You'll only get banned again.
teo123 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:47 pmOK, now, weren't some testimonies about NDEs recorded by Plato?
Possibly, he also wrote plenty about Alchemy and other mystical subjects. He wasn't a historian first by any means, he was a philosopher and like all philosophers before the age of modern science he saw what he wanted to see; what confirmed his hypotheses.
teo123 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:47 pmYes, that history is sometimes backed up by harder sciences. And that the testimonies of ancient historians should probably be accepted as long as they don't contradict harder sciences.
Testimonials about mundane historical events. Not anecdotes on the level of individual UFO sightings or worse.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That X army invaded Y location and killed Z people is not an extraordinary claim; it happens all of the time WITH hard science to back it up.
IF there were hard science to back up SOME claims of NDEs then additional claims would no longer be extraordinary.
teo123 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:47 pm
Well, the NDEs being true also doesn't strictly contradict harder sciences, it doesn't assert that the little what we know about how brains work is false, it just asserts that there is something we don't know about where consciousness actually gets generated.
Which is an extraordinary claim, unlike most historical claims which are not at all extraordinary. We don't look for novel information on science from historians who knew nothing of science and weren't skeptical enough to tell if something is a con, a delusion, or real.
teo123 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:47 pm
brimstoneSalad wrote:Are you not in the slightest bit less gullible than you were as a flat Earther?
What do you mean by "gullible"? If anything, this is the opposite of Flat-Earthism. Flat-Earthism is rejecting strong evidence because it contradicts what you already believe.
No, Teo, it's the same. You didn't start out a Flat-Earther, you learned about Flat-Earth and you bought into it because you're gullible. Just like now with the NDE stuff. And learning about this stuff makes you feel like you're discovering something important; it inspires you and excites you in some way. I get it. Your home life sucks, you're struggling with existential questions, you probably don't have that many friends where you live. You're dying for stimulation and purpose. But Teo: you're barking up the wrong tree yet again. Don't make the same mistake you did with Flat-Earth with NDEs.
teo123 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:47 pmSo, why can't we reject the witness testimonies of the Vukovar Massacre the same way? Let's pretend we don't know about the Ovčara Site (the mass grave).
Three key differences:
1. Massacres are not extraordinary. There's physical evidence of OTHER massacres. IF there were physical evidence of NDEs then additional NDEs would no longer be extraordinary claims.
2. Massacres like that are corroborated by multiple people. IF two people who didn't know each other had NDEs at the same time and met in that NDE and were able to relay identical accounts that would be intriguing. If DOZENS of people did the same, that would be much more convincing.
NDEs, by their nature, are personal experiences and can't be corroborated. We might be able to see similarities BETWEEN NDEs, but it turns out they contradict each other just as much as any cultural or religious belief does. There's no corroboration there.
3. A fabricated massacre would be relatively easy to throw into doubt by conflicting evidence. It's falsifiable. NDEs and other anecdotal claims of the paranormal tend to dodge falsifiability which makes them very suspicious.
If there had never been physical evidence of a massacre before anywhere ever with human beings AND there was only one person reporting the event, it would be entirely appropriate to reject it. If on top of that the person claimed the massacre happened in a time and place that was conveniently beyond the bounds of falsification (like at ground zero of a nuclear blast right before it happened) it would seem appropriate to ridicule the claim.
teo123 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:47 pmI just don't see how can you know when "Well, some stories just get popular. There doesn't need to be a conspiracy. It's just mythology." applies and when it doesn't apply.
See above.
Sometimes one or two of those facts may apply, which makes skepticism more understandable, but when all three do that makes believers nothing but gullible.
teo123 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:47 pmIt's quite hard to imagine how the journalists could convince themselves that the story about the man receiving the information about a child that needs to be saved in an NDE was true if it were false.
Have you never heard of yellow journalism?
Many and perhaps even most Journalists don't print stories to spread the truth or important news, they do it to sell papers.
Journalists in general are not usually that well educated, particularly in scientific matters, and in that ignorance it's very easy to convince yourself of something's credibility when you think it'll sell well.
teo123 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:47 pmUnless you will assume that the man and everybody who was helping him save that child (and the people whom he talked to after he woke up in hospital and before he went to save that child) were lying, or that a truly amazing coincidence happened.
There may have been a small coincidence, and then the story had probably been gradually embellished to make the coincidence more impressive.
See Maria's Shoe. When you investigate these things critically (if you waste time doing so) you find not so much that people are trying to lie (they usually aren't) but that people are ignorant and that their retellings are gradually embellished (even without them realizing it). Even in the case of fabrication they often think they're conveying the idea truthfully.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_memory
Can false memories apply to historical events? Sure. Like maybe there was a lot of blood in this massacre but people remember it as rivers of blood flowing down the streets and carrying bodies away... and it was at most a trickle in the gutters.
The kinds of embellishments we see are usually more subjective matters of perception or things that make a better storytelling flair.
It doesn't make a better story to *make up* a massacre, but to exaggerate the blood and add in some evil laughs from the soldiers? Sure.
The kinds of embellishments you see in NDE reports are the kind that make it a better story: thus small adjustments that make the event more improbable. These embellishments are more focused and less random.
teo123 wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2019 2:47 pmWhat would be convincing piece of evidence that the conciousness is generated by the brain itself would be if there were some credible evidence that the damage to the middle of the brain caused two different personalities to govern halves of the body. But there doesn't appear to be credible evidence of that claim.
There is, but the claim is a little off. The kind of communication issues are more complex and weird than that. You really just need to study this issue better.
And it's not limited to left/right brain stuff either.