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Sand
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31 May 2008, 3:18 pm

No doubt your experience was disconcerting and I cannot claim it was not supernatural. But perhaps it was a large bird or a raccoon or something. I cannot say and would not deny your experience was real. There is no way for me to be sure.

Insofar as the conservation principle is concerned, that has to do with the physics of energy and not complex arrangements like personalities. One might as well assume that one's computer software lurks in a cloud over a computer when one turns it off.



slowmutant
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31 May 2008, 3:29 pm

Have you no imagination at all, Sand? :roll:



Sand
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31 May 2008, 3:34 pm

I try not to be insulting, but that's the dumbest question I have ever been asked.

Let me be a bit clearer. As an industrial designer, an exhibition designer, a sculptor, a writer, a poet, a painter, a graphic designer, a jeweler and an illustrator I have made my living for my whole life with my imagination but I tie my imagination to a deep understanding of techniques and materials to create entirely ways to do and see things. I have been reading imaginative literature since I was 6 years old and am thoroughly familiar with physics, chemistry, biology and a good deal of the current speculation in these areas.

But I know enough not to be flimflammed by nonsense. I never doubted that many of the people here have had frightening and what seems to them to be extraordinary experiences. But I am also very careful to not accredit those experiences to anything paranormal without very hard and reproduceable evidence. Verification is a very tough process and so far as I am concerned the paranormal has not been verified.

It's almost midnight here in Helsinki and I have to get up early tomorrow. I'm signing off.



D1nk0
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31 May 2008, 3:50 pm

Sand wrote:
I try not to be insulting, but that's the dumbest question I have ever been asked.


Whats even DUMBER on your part is that you didnt even bother to answer my question so I'll ask again:

HOW do you know exactly what consciousness IS and WHAT makes you so certain that information(as well as consciousness) can violated the conseravation principle?



Sand
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31 May 2008, 3:56 pm

One more point. Neither you nor anyone else is sure exactly what consciousness is. But we are not involved with mere consciousness. You seem sure that some kind of spooky ectoplasm can be seen and can control matter in a way that solid human bodies cannot. You've got to prove that and you have no evidence other than your empty speculation in the matter. Good night.



skafather84
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31 May 2008, 7:30 pm

Sand wrote:
You've got to prove that and you have no evidence other than your empty speculation in the matter.



that was the point i was making with the 3d shadow of a 4th dimensional presence. the point was that there's any number of possibilities and until it's tested, all it is is unverified speculation and quite probably just someone's paranoid/overactive mind.

i've seen things but that's easily dismissed as either a. i smoked a LOT of pot and the dark makes such things easier to visualize or b. i'm somewhere between awake and asleep and my dream carried over for a few seconds because of the darkness (this happened once).

i'd never claim that such things were anymore than what they obviously were: figments of my imagination. maybe if i got something more consistent/reproducible, i'd change my tune.



D1nk0
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31 May 2008, 8:15 pm

skafather84 wrote:
Sand wrote:
You've got to prove that and you have no evidence other than your empty speculation in the matter.



that was the point i was making with the 3d shadow of a 4th dimensional presence. the point was that there's any number of possibilities and until it's tested, all it is is unverified speculation and quite probably just someone's paranoid/overactive mind.

i've seen things but that's easily dismissed as either a. i smoked a LOT of pot and the dark makes such things easier to visualize or b. i'm somewhere between awake and asleep and my dream carried over for a few seconds because of the darkness (this happened once).

i'd never claim that such things were anymore than what they obviously were: figments of my imagination. maybe if i got something more consistent/reproducible, i'd change my tune.



Lest we forget: absence of evidence is Not evidence of absence! If you make a Negation-a universal claim that something does NOT exist Anywhere or Cannot exist then You TOO bear the burden of proving it! I honestly have to say that NEITHER side has presented any direct evidence strong enough to make a definitive claim about the matter! Its all in the realm of Speculation.
Now I know of NO earnest scientific efforts to seriously investigate whether or not the Soul exists and can seperate from the body. But skafather84, you certainly have Piqued my curiosity about what modern physics has to say regarding higher dimensions! But I will say that superstring theory, if it Does turn out to be correct, could be used to provide a speculative explantion for spirits. When new agers say they exist on a different vibration could they be talking about different vibrational modes of superstrings? :lol:



skafather84
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31 May 2008, 8:23 pm

D1nk0 wrote:
Lest we forget: absence of evidence is Not evidence of absence!



do you seriously mean that?



skafather84
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31 May 2008, 8:24 pm

D1nk0 wrote:
If you make a Negation-a universal claim that something does NOT exist Anywhere or Cannot exist then You TOO bear the burden of proving it!


uh...no. the burden of proof is on someone trying to prove the existence of something. you cannot prove a negative...only disprove claims made.



Sand
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31 May 2008, 10:09 pm

Good morning. I see that the argument has come down to a feeling that since something has not been disproved there is indication of its existence. A most peculiar argument since an infinity of things have not been disproved but nevertheless it demands some sort of positive indication to make the effort of proof worthwhile. So far I have not seen that.

Insofar as the argument that information must be preserved is concerned we are left with a strange idea that information of everything is eternal. DNA, of course, is an arrangement of four basic substances in a code that conveys the information of a creature's structure. Every bacteria has its own DNA plus, of course, every more complicated animal has their own informational structure. By the theory of conservation of information all DNA information remains as some sort of ghost and the world is filled to the overflowing with ghosts of bacteria, dinosaurs, and, of course, all the people who have ever lived. There should be ghosts of all the Neanderthals wandering through the streets looking for their caves, ghosts of Tyrannosaurus Rex slavering after ghosts of whatever creatures they consumed, and all the hospitals where people die every day should have huge crowds of ghosts searching for their relatives. Perhaps I am insensitive but, up to now, I have seen none of this. But I am eager to do so. It would make life so much more interesting if Germany were filled with the ghosts of the murdered Jews or New York City's Central Park were filled with the ghosts of American Indian women and children murdered in the conquest of the West.



slowmutant
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31 May 2008, 10:48 pm

If the ghosts don't remain on the earthly plane but move to some other realm, our world would not be chock-full of them. Restless spirits remaining in limbo (earthly plane) usually has some unfinished business to have completed.



Sand
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31 May 2008, 11:11 pm

Aha! Another realm. How do you confirm that?



D1nk0
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01 Jun 2008, 1:52 am

skafather84 wrote:
D1nk0 wrote:
If you make a Negation-a universal claim that something does NOT exist Anywhere or Cannot exist then You TOO bear the burden of proving it!


uh...no. the burden of proof is on someone trying to prove the existence of something. you cannot prove a negative...only disprove claims made.


Incorrect. You CAN prove a negative by showing that its existance would contradict facts that can be demonstrated by repeatable experiments. A good example of that would be the resurrection of the dead, which is a Flagrant violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.Such would be like smashing a cup & saucer on the streat and then snapping your fingers and having all the broken shards come back together as a cup & saucer again :wink: .



BTW Sands, What sort of rigorous, serious scientific investigations have their been of Ghosts?
Now I recant calling you names but I want to know WHY you responded with sarcasm when I spoke of actually doing the WORK of investigating this for myself to find out the Truth? Truth is perhaps the ONLY thing in this Cosmos that I actually value more than myself :P .



slowmutant
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01 Jun 2008, 7:30 am

By proving a negative, you'd have to show the non-existence of something? How do you show non-existence if you have nothing to work with? You cannot prove a negative, only a positive. But first you'd have to figure out which is the negative (nothing) and wihch is the positive (something).



Sand
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01 Jun 2008, 9:36 am

Bringing dead people back to life is more in the nature of starting an automobile than using the tremendous power of a finger snap for the trivial exercise of defying the second law of dynamics. The secret government laboratories in charge of finger snap technologies have never revealed the secret work they are doing so I am not at liberty to disclose their latest discoveries involving not only left handed finger snaps but octopus tentacle snaps and the basic social forces released by a raised eyebrow.

Insofar as conservation of information and consciousness is concerned there is now a truth commission comprised of theologists, CIA electroencephalograph experts, morticians, and proctologists investigating reports of a ghost stegosaurus trapped somewhere in the New York subway system that is voraciously consuming ghost rats which is at odds with the current theory that stegosauruses were strict vegetarians.



slowmutant
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01 Jun 2008, 9:47 am

IMO, bringing the dead back to life is an act of God. The underlying biochemical processes may be mundane, but I believe they are both cause and symptom, just another link in the chain of cause/effect. When dead people are rescusitated, it is very much a miracle. To be sure, they are usually still on the operatibng table or in the ambulance. Has anyone ever come back to life putrid & rotting, like something out of George A. Romero?