She Brings Wicca to Psychotherapy With Tangible Results |329|

She did seem to be kinda desperate that Christianity had to be false.

That level of certainty is an odd thing in some proponents, personally I think there are way too many possibilities about the nature of reality to pin things down definitively.
 
not sure I understand yr position... I mean, millions and millions have encountered Christ consciousness thru the centuries. This is explained away with a wave of the materialist hand... harder for the rest of us.

Materialism can be false without any afterlife or God being real though?
 
I don't think it is necessary to be rude to Alex's guest in order to disagree with her!

Yeah it is, because this is someone with scientific accredditation saying things so unscientific that it can only mean one of two things

1: She does not meet the requirements for such accredditation and continuing to allow someone who does not meet those requirements to have it damages the reputation of the accredditation and the institutions that gave it to her and recognize her for having it.

Which leads to the perception if not the reality of,

2: The institutions that gave her the accreditation and recognize her for it are themselves not fit to claim that they can accreddit people

Either way she should know better. It's no different than if a cop went around murdering and stealing left and right. Are they still a cop if they do that? Or is it just the fancy monkey suit and shiny badge that defines them as a cop?

For someone in academia to say something as ridiculous as "I don't think the scientific method can work for everything" defines her as NOT BEING part of academia. It is people like her that give academia itself a bad name and it's also people like her that give the study of the paranormal a bad name as well. so yes, I'm going to hold her feet to the fucking fire, and if the best you or anyone else can come back with is "*sniff* well you don't have to be so mean about it" Then you've proven my point and you're not worth my time.

By the sounds of it, your take on reality isn't exactly standard materialism

I suppose that would depend on our respective definitions of "materialism." Can magic not be part of materialism? Can the idea of other realms/planes of existence not be part of materialism? Let's say someone one day developed wormhole technology and they used that to go to realms where "spirits" live, are they now an astral traveller? If not, then what makes them different than someone who trains themselves to pop out of their body and float there? What's the difference between technology and magic?
 
That level of certainty is an odd thing in some proponents, personally I think there are way too many possibilities about the nature of reality to pin things down definitively.
I don't know what proponent means with regard to this forum. I assume it suggests an openness to, or belief in, the primacy of mind. If so, that's an open playing field, though it does set us at odds with most rationalists.
 
I don't know what proponent means with regard to this forum. I assume it suggests an openness to, or belief in, the primacy of mind. If so, that's an open playing field, though it does set us at odds with most rationalists.

You mean "rationalists" right? :)
 
Materialism can be false without any afterlife or God being real though?

And it can be true with some warped form of "afterlife". I have read some insane-sounding interpretations of MWI that seem worse than the idea of "hell". Imagine perpetual repetition for all eternity, or worse, "jumping" from your deathbed here to another dimension where you just die a few seconds later... Ad nauseam.
 
And it can be true with some warped form of "afterlife". I have read some insane-sounding interpretations of MWI that seem worse than the idea of "hell". Imagine perpetual repetition for all eternity, or worse, "jumping" from your deathbed here to another dimension where you just die a few seconds later... Ad nauseam.

There's also the bizarre nonsense about uploading your brain into a Turing Machine.

Materialism is very much like the new Cheeto-Chicken Fries at Burger King. Lacks substance but tries to cater to multiple whims to sell itself.
 
Absolutely. Rational and rationalism are barely on speaking terms.

What's interesting is even some in the transhumanist crowd are catching on to this:

Ben, a card-carrying transhumanist and a renowned expert in Artificial Intelligence and other futuristic, scifi-like technologies, often throws stones at the sacred cows venerated by the dull, ultra-rationalist bureaucrats of science and philosophy. In this post, he admits that he is at least open-minded about a certain class of paranormal phenomena that seem related to religious notions of “survival after death.” He says a lot of forbidden, totally unkosher words like psi, paranormal, spirit, soul, reincarnation, afterlife, and even dares to mention the theories of, God forbid, Rupert Sheldrake. I am sure that Ben’s post will be savagely criticized by the dull bureaucrats, but Ben doesn’t give a damn: “Peer pressure doesn’t really work on me.” I most certainly don’t give a damn either.
 
Yeah it is, because this is someone with scientific accredditation saying things so unscientific that it can only mean one of two things
There are plenty of people who have scientific acreditation, who hold all sorts of views. Perhaps you are familiar with Rupert Sheldrake, who was a director of studies in biology at Cambridge University before exploring some very novel ideas. He certainly accepts that science - at least in its current form - is very limited.

I suppose that would depend on our respective definitions of "materialism." Can magic not be part of materialism? Can the idea of other realms/planes of existence not be part of materialism? Let's say someone one day developed wormhole technology and they used that to go to realms where "spirits" live, are they now an astral traveller? If not, then what makes them different than someone who trains themselves to pop out of their body and float there? What's the difference between technology and magic?
Are you unaware of the NDE experience, in which a substantial proportion of people who suffer a cardiac arrest (or are otherwise close to death) experience a separation of their consciousness from their body? Once out of their body, the report seeing their body, and then travel to another place. The OBE experience (which Jane described) is also reported by many people, though much less common than NDE's (I think). If you aren't familiar with any of this, then it might be worth listening to some of the many podcasts on that subject.

The Kruger Effect didn't GOOGLE well for me - a lot of other stuff came up - however it sounds very similar to some of the reports in "Irreducible Mind" - a book you might well wish to read. That book documents a range of phenomena of this sort, including some that are explicitly paranormal (unless false).

We want discussion here, not verbal aggression, so please moderate your tone.

David
 
She did seem to be kinda desperate that Christianity had to be false.

That level of certainty is an odd thing in some proponents, personally I think there are way too many possibilities about the nature of reality to pin things down definitively.
Well I suspect she shares my view - that Christianity is supposed to be exclusive, so that you can't assert it is true without devaluing the ideas/experiences of those who are not Christians.

David
 
Well I suspect she shares my view - that Christianity is supposed to be exclusive, so that you can't assert it is true without devaluing the ideas/experiences of those who are not Christians.

David

I think that's a particular version of Christianity that gained prominence through various historical incidents. Have you checked out Elaine Pagel's Gnostic Gospels?

Shows a very different path for where Christianity might've gone.
 
...But the fact that you both seemed disparaging towards the ideas of "power, control and self indulgence" when compared to "love and selfless service towards others" is very telling. First and foremost selflessness doesn't exist, ask /r/philosophy if you disagree. Secondly it shows an interesting perception that power, control and self indugence are opposed to love and selfless service to others. A dichotomy that likely exists as an extension of your aforementioned belief in good and evil.
you've gotten to the heart of it here! my take is that every great spiritual master past and present has taught that "love and selfless service towards others" is the path.... but you disagree... ok, at least we've honed in on the issue.
 
Evidence like Jeffery Long's poor research?
"poor" compared to what? again, I don't think I understand yr position. are you saying consciousness survives death, but accounts of an afterlife (NDE, mediumship, reincarnation accounts, shared death experience, OBE, and on an on) are suspect?
 
In my research and experience I've encountered a thing I call The Kruger Effect which is defined as the ability for things encountered in projection to have direct, physical effects on the body under certain conditions.
I can't find any mention of The Kruger Effect. Can you point to some reference?
 
"poor" compared to what? again, I don't think I understand yr position. are you saying consciousness survives death, but accounts of an afterlife (NDE, mediumship, reincarnation accounts, shared death experience, OBE, and on an on) are suspect?

Well not so much as they are all suspect but taken together it's not clear what's real and what's not.

That people see Jesus, a figure who likely has some of the highest levels of global recognition, during NDEs isn't at all surprising. Counter this with the commonality of seeing a Harlequin Trickster when on DMT.

Admittedly even there you have the possibility, especially now, of people expecting such a figure to appear but this unusual commonality seems much more striking to me than people seeing Jesus? Especially when it occurred in earlier times before the internet really got off the ground. (There may even be a pre-internet recording of these Trickster sightings but haven't been able to track down a copy of the study.)
 
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