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Author | Topic: Are visions from God, or the Devil or indigestion? | |||||||||||||||||||||||
nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: I dreamed that alien spacecraft bombed the whitehouse a few days ago. I interpret that as my mind's creative manifestation of my opposition to the attack on Iraq. You almost certainly have dreams every night, but you don't remember them. If you were hooked up to a monitor and were woken when you went into REM sleep, you would be able to recount every dream.
quote: I dunno. What's a vision?
quote: I dunno. What do you mean by "significance"?
quote: Very doubtful. So far, any psychic who has been tested under standard controlled conditions has done no better than chance would predict. People like von Pragh and Sylvia Browne refuse to be tested, because they probably know that they will fail. Psychics are skilled cold readers, and people like Jon Edwards of "Crossing Over" infamy, cheat.
quote: I don't think we need to start wondering about "real" psychics until one crops up.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: To be accurate, I would suggest that you believe that you have received 'massa'.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: The people who believe they have been abducted by aliens have just as much surety and conviction in that what happened to them is real as you have that you have received "massa". The problem is, you both have exactly the same amount of evidence to support your claims. Why should I believe either of you?
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Who told you that? Uh, wow, that is some explanation. It's also wrong. In fact, lowering of body temperature is being used to prevent brain damage in people in cardiac arrest who have a sudden loss of blood pressure, and slightly lowering body temperature during heart surgery protects the brain. http://www.mercola.com/2002/mar/6/cardiac_arrest.htm I suggest maybe reading up on sleep and dreams from a scientific/Biological perspective.
quote: Why is it sad? I think it is amazingly cool and deeply fascinating that our brains are so complex.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: So, is the reason you believe someone is the conviction with which they believe what they are saying? I'll be there are at least 30 or 40 people who believe that they are Jesus, and they hold this belief passionately, with all theiir hearts.
quote: You are not one to judge? You don't think you have any power or ability to discern the likely from the unlikely, and that which is supported by reliable evidence and that which isn't? So, do you believe that gravity is caused by invisible fairies which push down on everything all the time?
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: Well, what I described is how sleep/dream research is done. Subjects get hooked up to an EEG monitor through electrodes stuck to their scalp, they go to sleep, and when REM waves show up on the monitor and they are woken up, they almost always report a dream. If you wake them up during stages of sleep where other kinds of brain waves are going on, they do not report dreams. It's really very consistent.
quote: Hmm, I am skeptical of this, sorry. Are these dreams really leading up to this unpredictable event, or did you dream the car crash because you heard the bookcase crash to the floor? The timeline is very important here, but it is difficult to be clear because you are in a semi-awake dreaming state where fantasy and reality can be blurred. Have you recorded the number of times this kind of thing has happened, and is it greater than chance would predict, or are you just remembering the times that it has happened and ignoring all the times that it hasn't?
quote: Might be. I don't know.
quote: I certainly agree that this is how the brain often works.
quote: Well, it is certainly quite easy to implant false memories in a large percentage of the population, and they can be wide awake.
quote: Nah, it's clear that people are almost always dreaming when they are in REM sleep, and the EEG can tell us when that is happening, and we can confirm it by waking people up and asking them if they were dreaming.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: quote: Yes, I would, but that is physical evidence, isn't it? Without such physical evidence, all we have is your assurances that you have received "massa", just as all we have are a bunch of people who assure me that they are Jesus.
quote: Really? Like what?
quote: Can't wait.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: And you know this how?
quote: Really? How do you know this?
quote: They might also be called "cold readers", or "frauds", depending.
quote: More common is the non-religious huckster or self-deluded self-promoter, such as Sylvia Browne, VonPraugh, and Jon Edwards.
quote: Skilled cold readers, regardless if they are knowingly pretending to have mystical abilities or if they are self-deluded, can be amazingly accurate. However, when they are not led by people, given information to help them, and basically made to perform under normal experimental protocols, they fail. Not just some of them; ALL of them fail or perform no better than chance would predict.
quote: In the Metaphysic world, we believe that a person is actually "astral-projecting" or leaving their body during the dream state. In fact, we believe that is the entire purpose of having to sleep. We are not actually our bodies--we are spirit beings, and those spirits can only endure being cooped up in bodies for so many hours at a time. When we begin to feel tired and exhausted, it is an indicated that the spirit has been "housed" for too long and needs to get out. We also believe that there are many planes of "existence" and many "realities" occurring similtaneously, and during the dream time, the spirit is able to visit some of these other planes & realities--sometimes what we would refer to as "past life" experiences, (although there is actually no such thing as past, present, or future). This is why we might see ourselves in events that to our knowledge have never taken place. In some other reality, these things may very well be taking place.[QUOTE]
Sorry, this is nice and all, but is not any kind of explanation. It's really just a story.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: ?
quote: I am sure of this, too, despite there being a $1,000,000 prize to anyone demonstrating their stated abilities under standard wxperimental protocols.
quote: No, it is often very well-understood if examined critically. They are observed in the act of cold-reading. Their subjects remember the hits and disregard the misses, and also feed the cold-reader information which helps them. It is a very-well understood phenomena that illusionists and magicians have used for a long time, and charlatans and the self-deluded have also used for a long time. Just because every single self-proclaimed psychic has not been tested doesn't mean they are all self-deluded or frauds. However, the fact that not a single one who has been tested has been able to do what they said they could do, combined with the fact that cold-reading can appear as psychic ability when controls are not in place, tends to weigh heavily against the idea that psychic ability is real. See this for more information: cold reading - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com Error 404 - Australian Skeptics Inc
quote: Yes, I have heard of remote viewing, and it has not been demonstrated to be a real phenomena under controlled conditions. Governments are filled with politicians, not scientists nor skeptical thinkers, so it does not surprise me that some would be attracted to RV. See this for more info: remote viewing - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
That's more evidence that doctors are not scientists.
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nator Member (Idle past 2200 days) Posts: 12961 From: Ann Arbor Joined: |
quote: There are lots of problems with the Ganzfield experiments: ganzfeld - The Skeptic's Dictionary - Skepdic.com
quote: It's not pseudoscience, exactly. It's more like sloppy science.
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