Belbab,
A very interesing post! Thank you.
Would accessing past lives, however, be of any benefit?
Ian
PROOF OF REBIRTH?
by Dansk 53 Replies latest jw friends
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Abaddon
All there is to 'prove' rebirth are STORIES. Thus far nothing has ever been observed under controlled circumstances. Doesn't mean there is no rebirth, but there is a proven tendancy for old religious beliefs that do not respond to scientific observation to turn out to be superstisious nonsense. Whether this is the case with rebirth remains to be seen, but on the balance of the evidence AND THE LACK OF IT, I'm not betting on it.
However, if I had a choice of afterlife, rebirth would be my fave option, so please don't mistakenly conclude I don't want to believe. I just can't lower my standards of evidence enough to let myself as otherwise there's SEAS of unproved bollocks I'd have to regard as 'fact'.
I also should mention my fiance is convinced she knew me in a previous life.
metatron
Instinctive knowledge in animals - It makes no sense to me to think that specific complex behaviors are actually programmed into the genome.
Well, stick a pair of beavers hand-reared into a bare concrete cell and watch them MIME dam building activity. Then see your opinion of what makes sense is wrong and change it. There are loads of other examples which prove complex behaviours are often not learned but transmitted genetically.
As funky points pout, Vivekananda was writing before the modern rediscovery of Mendelian Genetics, so he was uninformed.
Likewise, you are stuck in old fashioned views of the genome (funky uses the good counter of recepie to your canard of blueprint), and rather than reading fluff about Remote Viewing (never ever proved in reputable and repeatable scientific experiments - please provide evidence to the contrary) would be well advised to read some modern text books before being so sure you are right and modern science is wrong.
I also think that reincarnation would explain homosexuality, if a soul/spirit/thetan can return as the other gender.
Why do you need to 'explain' homosexuality?? What did gay people do to you you need to 'explain' them like you need to 'explain' juvenial delinquents? Break into your house and decorate it? Dress smarter than you? Dance better?
Get over it, some boys like boys some girls like girls, stop making 'excuses' they probably don't want and definately don't need.
Oh, and what's with the thetan crap? WE KNOW that's wrong.
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funkyderek
Dansk:
Ah, but now we have come full circle! YOU say it doesn't go anywhere, but you can't prove that any more than I can that it does.
Granted, but you can't prove that velocity doesn't go somewhere when a car stops moving, or that it's not transferred from one car to another - even though it seems that velocity is simply a property of a car under certain circumstances and not an independent intangible entity. Similarly, I can claim that my consciousness does not continue to exist when I am unconscious, or that it cannot exist outside my brain, but I cannot prove it (except in the sense that such a definition is very different to the normal definition of consciousness).
I still think the whole concept of rebirth - the transmigration of consciousness (?) - one's essence (?) - is tremendously interesting with, as yet, no satisfying answer either way.
I don't understand what it is that's supposed to be transferred. It's obviously not physical matter or energy, and nothing else is known to exist. If there is indeed a new class of "stuff" that exists in the universe, can we detect it? If we can't detect it directly (because all our instruments are calibrated to look for matter or energy) we should still be able to detect where it interacts with the physical universe. To the best of my knowledge, no such interactions have been detected. There is also no reliably recorded phenomenon that requires such "stuff" to exist. For those reasons, I lean towards the default position that it does not.
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Satanus
Funky
detect where it interacts with the physical universe.
I think that is the key. The afterlife is another dimension (arguably) which has little interaction w this universe. Perhaps the only interaction is w the parts of some people which are also of that dimension, which is sometimes called the spirit. So far, this registers only in the brains of some people who have learned or have a natural ability to notice those interactions. There are many false alarms or innaccurate signals.
If the brains of some people can do this, then, perhaps scientists will one day be able to do so w synthetic machines. But, if my above statement about it requiring spirit essence to interact w that of the other dimension, then it would require the presence of spirit within that constructed machine detector.
S
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funkyderek
Satanus:
Perhaps the only interaction is w the parts of some people which are also of that dimension, which is sometimes called the spirit. So far, this registers only in the brains of some people who have learned or have a natural ability to notice those interactions. There are many false alarms or innaccurate signals
My question, then, would be: How can we tell the difference between an undetectable interaction that happens to only a few people, and something that is just made up?
If the brains of some people can do this, then, perhaps scientists will one day be able to do so w synthetic machines. ; But, if my above statement about it requiring spirit essence to interact w that of the other dimension, then it would require the presence of spirit within that constructed machine detector.
No it wouldn't. For "spirit essence" to have a tangible effect on the physical universe, it would need to interact with matter and/or energy, thereby changing the physical universe in ways that could - in principle - be detected by solely physical machines
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metatron
Complex behaviors transmitted genetically? Nonsense. There's no proof of any such thing. Clearly, there is a link between
genes and the behavior of the animal but that doesn't prove that we can break down genetic code into specific units that exactly
program precise behaviors. Is there a line of code that can be carefully reduced into dam building in beavers or alpha wolf greeting
behavior in dogs? If you like reductionism so much, feel free to produce such.
So, the genes have a dambuilding program? a blueprint? or no blueprint? Which is it? Or just more handwaving and Kipling "just so"
stories?
This nonsense can't go on forever because science is running out of reductionism - in critical areas such as mind/consciousness,
genetics and nuclear physics. Eventually, you hit bottom in trying to explain all effects in the macro world as originating in micro
effects - and then, it becomes simply arbitrary. Even noted skeptics like Victor Stenger acknowledge this point ( as in his
explanation of decoherence). Quantum physics development has already hit this 'bottom rung' of reality and other sciences
like genetics will follow eventually because mechanistic explanations can't go on indefinitely.
metatron
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metatron
and remote viewing by the CIA? Let's all ridicule and laugh at it:
www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/CIA-InitiatedRV.html
and that stuff about President Carter using a psychic to find a downed plane? Obviously he's nuts too
www.nydailynews.com/front/story/375209p-318847c.html
metatron
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acadian
Hello Dansk,
Here's a few scriptures I thought are interesting...
Matthew 22:32
'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob' ? He is not the God of the dead but of the living."Mark 12:27
He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!"Luke 20:38
He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive."What was Jesus really saying, I think the best way to know would be to, research what Jesus believed, the bible at Acts 24:5 gives us a clue
Acts 24:5
"We have found this man to be a troublemaker, stirring up riots among the Jews all over the world. He is a ringleader of the Nazarene sectHe was of the Nazarene/essene community at Mt. Carmel in Northern Isreal, do a search and see what you come up with.
After my research, I would agree with you Dansk that Jesus taught rebirth, but unfortunitly the Roman/Pauline church have tried to hid that fact.
It's hard to control people when they know the truth.Kind regards
Acadian
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BrendaCloutier
It's hard to control people when they know the truth.
And "the truth" is not always knowable, nor quantifiable, etc. Nice statement Arcadian. I agree Jesus taught rebirth. He was raised Essene, as were his parents. THAT is where he dissappeared for those years, to be taught by them.
In spite of all the tampering done to the bible, and the crap that isn't relevent in general, there are snippits of truth there. The energy of the universe is explained, simply: God "Said" "Let there be light" = "god" is sound energy. Jesus said "I am the light and the way". Jesus being is light energy. Jesus being is responsible for the earth and it's inhabitants - a relay of sorts for the universes' energies.
But, alas, I am off-topic.
To know about our past is to begin to understand our present, and have a clue as to our future. Not just in this life, but in past lives/future lives.
Dansk, I'm reading a book that really ties into this ... and I just realized it last night.
"The Temple of my Familiar" by Alice Walker, who wrote "The Colour Purple". It even refers to characters from that book, and one character is a decendant.
It is several people who are interconnected and dont really know it ... yet. Each is finding out who they are, now, in this life, or teaching another. Some already know who they are, and who they have been. One know's pretty much every life she has ever lived! She manifests this by her ever mercurial personality - AND photographs!
It's a facinating book. I hope there aren't too many "americanisms" in it for an Englishman.
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Satanus
Funky
How can we tell the difference between an undetectable interaction that happens to only a few people, and something that is just made up?
Pretty tough. You could look at the persons history, and compare their info to other info in the field.
No it wouldn't. For "spirit essence" to have a tangible effect on the physical universe, it would need to interact with matter and/or energy,
It's my understanding that scientists can only measure matter and energy. It's possible that spirit may be an energy form, perhaps a subtle one. Then they should be able to measure it, one day when there instruments are sensitive enough and tuned appropriately. On the other hand, if it's a new form, then new ways of measurement would be needed. That this issue has not been settled so far is demonstrated by the dark matter/dark energy issue. The research field there is still in flux. If something, say a dimension or a material does not interact w scientists, then, as far as a scientist is concerned, it doesn't exist, when really, it could still be there, but refusing to play. And so, there could be whole universes intersecting ours, but having little or no interaction w it, we wouldn't know, nor would the intersticial universe.
S