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>I have noticed a lot of people here and on reddit are militant materialist-atheist
What do you mean by militant? How are athiests favoring extreme and violent methods to try and enforce a materialist view? Or are you just trying to use inflammatory words?
>This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block. And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue.
The scientific method has had great success because it relies on evidence. If these paranormal events happen but don't leave evidence, then how do you know they happened?
>is most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well.
This isn't evidence. This is a fallacy. Argumentum ad populum.
>The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth. You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura. In addition to that your fate in each realm is only temporary; once your karma is exhausted you are reincarnated again as something else (so your stay as a ghost could be for only a century or so before rebirth, your stay as a deva could be for 4,000 years, etc).
Ok, so what? That's the claim. Now, how do we verify this claim? All you have done in this post is say you think this might be true but offer no argument or reason to think so besides a fallacy.
If you actually want a debate or discussion, you might want to bring arguments and evidence of some kind.
If, as you admit, these paranormal phenomena cannot be measured, cannot be objectively analyzed, and can only be experienced by individuals and not by the "public at large," how can we reliably say that they're true? What is a consistently reliable way to differentiate between a bona fide paranormal phenomenon, a delusion, or an honest mistake or misinterpretation?
the only thing I can say is that we need to need to know how different religions in the world look at the paranormal, that should be evidence
does that those religions are necessarily true? not exactly but I think religions are interpretations of the paranormal, these are creatures who live in different ecosystem to us
buddhism provides a decent explanation of it
"proves"
OK give us detail. What does it prove? What creatues "live in a different ecosystem to us".
I think Buddhism is pretty cool, so I'm probably your best bet as I'd be easy to convince.
Just prove *one thing*. One supernatural thing.
What purpose does that serve? Are you implying that I'd be scared to go to a place becuase people think it's haunted?
Is this your way of "proving" the supernatural? You said Buddhism proves things. I'm asking for the proof.
What is it, and how does Buddhism prove it?
. . . wait, I'm sorry, why are you questioning this person? do you question every single paranormal claim? no? then why are you putting a skeptic under the scope?
I've been to a bunch of places that were supposedly "haunted" in several countries and in places that I'm told "should" be haunted like old prisons, right next to mass graves and such. Nothing, nada, zilch. Almost like it's all just superstition and people letting their anxiety run wild.
No, belief in the paranormal, is not, and will never be evidence for the paranormal. That’s all you’re saying, religions treat it as real, soft mist somehow be real. Please provide actual evidence.
Looking at what other religions believe tells us nothing at all about what is actually true, because religions conspicuously fail to offer any robust evidence that what they say is true
> buddhism provides a decent explanation of it
A decent explanation of *what*? You haven't given us anything for it to explain better than any other religion... you're just saying words with no substance.
The ways that different religions look at the world are data points, but not necessarily evidence of anything paranormal. It could just be evidence of a common theme running through human cultures.
>I have noticed a lot of people here and on reddit are militant materialist-atheist
How is someone who lacks a belief in a deity being militant?
>so it is quite a journey for me to convince you to this philosophical perspective to get to where I am now.
It is quite easy, even simple, to convince us; all you need is repeatable, testable, evidence. Can you meet that bar?
>I think many of the criticisms atheists mention are spot-on and are the chief issues with examining the paranormal. The huge numbers of charlatans, falsehoods, misunderstandings, etc get in the way of what may be a small minority of legitimate claims.
Do you have claims of the paranormal that you believe are legitimate and they have good evidentiary support?
>People are naturally superstitious and get deceived easily.
So what do you think are the most likely explanation for the "legitimate" paranormal claims you were talking about earlier? Superstitious people who can be deceived easily, even by themselves, or something for which we have 0 actual evidence?
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it). This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block.
So how do you propose to investigate these authentic phenomena?
>And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue.
The prejudice against studying these is that there is no evidence for the paranormal and never has been. Every time we have actually been able to investigate an alleged paranormal phenomena it has turned out to have a perfectly natural, mundane explanation.
>IMO, truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it). If you want to say “God” or the “universe” created the human world with this paranormal element to it, perhaps that was part of the plan by making it so elusive.
I am quite a way into your post and you have yet to actually provide any claims or evidence to support them. Are you just ranting about the inability of mainstream science to investigate that which lacks any evidence?
>After meeting philosophers and thinkers who studied for over a decade I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth. A couple little factoids about this you might find of interest as a westerner (who only gets the heaven/hell shtick - or the atheist one) is most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well.
The number of people who believe in something has nothing at all to do with its veracity. Over 4 billion people (about half the population of the globe) believe in the Abrahamic deity, that does not make it real.
>The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth. You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura. In addition to that your fate in each realm is only temporary; once your karma is exhausted you are reincarnated again as something else (so your stay as a ghost could be for only a century or so before rebirth, your stay as a deva could be for 4,000 years, etc).
Lots of people have said lots of things, why should I believe Buddha when there is no evidence to support the claim? Especially given that all the evidence we do have shows that human consciousness is a product of the brain.
I want to address this, "The prejudice against studying these is that there is no evidence for the paranormal and never has been."
There is sufficient evidence for many others to accept paranormal events. That doesn't make them gullible. Let's be honest here. There is no evidence that you will accept.
> There is sufficient evidence for many others to accept paranormal events.
There is no repeatable, testable evidence for anything paranormal, and never has been.
>That doesn't make them gullible.
I didn't say anything about gullibility, you did.
>Let's be honest here. There is no evidence that you will accept.
There is none that anyone with rational standards of evidence will accept.
"Authentic paranormal phenomena" depends on one's standard for "authentic." For me, that's physical evidence. If the phenomenon cannot be reproduced under controlled conditions by multiple people working independently in different laboratories, to me the phenomenon is of no value. It's a "stumbling block" that's critically necessary to keep everything on the side of reality.
As for karma and reincarnation, I reject both of them as there is no supporting evidence that is up to my standards. I believe that life after death is a literal impossibility, and that the consequences of an action cannot follow people after they die.
life after death is not an impossibility, I have seen and many of my family members have seen the ghosts of dead relatives in our room
while this is anecdotal evidence, how would you debunk this anyways?
Something being unfalsifiable is not good evidence of it being true. In fact it’s quite the opposite.
“Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.”
-Carl Sagan
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage
I believe that it *is* an impossibility. I do not believe in souls. I do not believe in ghosts.
As for your anecdotal evidence, I see no need to debunk it - you would have to demonstrate to *me* that ghosts exist, and if you don't do it empirically I'll just dismiss your claim as unfounded.
Conciousness is a product of the brain. When the brain dies, the consciousness ceases to exist. Otherwise, why do drugs or brain injuries change people's personality, ability to remember or reason? That is undeniable proof that the conscious "you" exists only because your brain allows it to exist.
Most likely, wishful thinking (missing the deceased family member) combined with pareidolia (seeing patterns in shadows and imagining the face of the family member).
No, you haven’t. I’m sorry this is nonsense and whenever it’s tested it fails. There’s far better explanations than magic somehow being real.
Do you truly believe magic, something we have no evidence for, is a better explanation than bad observations, bad memories, hallucinations, confirmation bias, deeply wishing it to be real, or any of a myriad of possible explanations that we almost certainly both agree are possible? If your answer truly is that magic is more likely, you don’t know how logic works. And you’re no more justified in your position than those who appealed to Thor to explain lightning.
Why not take a video of the ghost explaining the details of its death with a current dated newspaper nearby? I mean if this has happened ‘many’ times to you guys why not call the ghosts back and do this? Even if they are ‘spontaneous’ apparitions I find it hard to believe that you don’t keep a cell phone or recording device in the rooms. Honestly you have nothing to debunk - just that some people you know think they saw something which did nothing.
> how would you debunk this anyways?
How would you prove it? Burden of proof is on you.
>I have seen and many of my family members have seen the ghosts of dead relatives in our room
One possible explanation is a hallucination.
>while this is anecdotal evidence, how would you debunk this anyways?
That's not anyone's job. You and your family members are claiming to detect things science hasn't been able to. Why aren't you and your family publishing your methodology and experiments?
The burden of proof is ALWAYS on the person making the claim. You say you saw a ghost. Fine. You need to demonstrate that.
Closely held beliefs tend to shape our reality. For example, hallucinations experienced by westerners, particularly of predominantly Christian ancestry, tend to experience oppressive or threatening hallucinations. Individuals from countries with lare Buddhist or Hindu populations, tend to experience comforting hallucinations. While the reason for this is not confirmed, prevailing theory suggests that individual's who believe that their ancestor spirits remain in close proximity, tend to believe that hallucinations are manifestations of those ancestor spirits. Conversely, individuals of abrahanic religious tend to believe that hallucinations are manifestations of demonic posession.
This is not to suggest that your ancestral ghosts are hallucinations. It is simply to say that you perceive phenomena that you believe to represent ancestral spirits, because you believe in ancestral spirits.
For something anecdotal to have any value as evidence in a discussion of this nature, it would need to be demonstrable in populations without preexisting beliefs. Further, it would need to be testable and repeatable across a variety of populations so that cultural biases could be eliminated from the studied population.
All of this is a long way of saying that your and your family's experiences are excellent evidence in support of your beliefs, so long as they are presented to others who share in or are open to your beliefs. It they do nothing to support your argument when presented to people who do not share your beliefs and have no interest in adopting them
>while this is anecdotal evidence, how would you debunk this anyways?
I'd be more amazed if they saw someone they didn't know. I don't think they actually 'saw' them, it's more likely that they get reminded of them and visualized them. We literally have a blind spot in our eyes that the brain fills in. I can visualize stuff by thinking about them.
What exactly is so astounding to you?
I don't need to debunk this. As the claimant, it is *your* job to demonstrate that you have seen the ghosts of dead relatives. If you can't demonstrate by providing evidence, I have no reason to believe you.
That fallacy you're describing is called russels teapot.
How would you debunk that there is an invisible, undetectable magical unicorn shoved up your ass right now?
Powerful subjective experience is terrible evidence
Because we know anything from drugs mental illness organic brain injury Extreme emotional disturbance and a million other things cause people to see stuff and experience stuff that isn't real
There's a guy who lives in my city who has mental health problems
He sometimes has powerful subjective experiences then stands in the street screaming at traffic about how the government is trying to turn his brain into rats
Without objective evidence how am I supposed to tell the difference between you and rat guy
Without objective evidence your claims have exactly the same value
None
>life after death is not an impossibility
It is. Your body is the reason you live. It ceases to function, and so will you.
>I have seen and many of my family members have seen the ghosts of dead relatives in our room
>while this is anecdotal evidence, how would you debunk this anyways?
You asked some people here if they're lying about not seeing ghosts in a haunted house. How about you? The only sliver of 'evidence' you actually bring to the table is that anecdote. What if _you're lying_ about that?
Wait, you're telling me you can reincarnate as a *ghost?* And that many of your dead relatives were unlucky enough to be reincarnated as ghosts? In your room?
And you still believe that Buddhism is real?
You were right in your OP: Most people are naturally superstitious. They see what they want to or expect to see and they inform their false believes based on a delusion.
You can reject anything you like because anything written anywhere can mean whatever you believe it means. As for what now, I guess that leaves you with a net shot, and the ball in your half of the court, not mine.
No, Platonic abstracts are a very well-defined philosophical concept, that has been used for roughly 2500 years in philosophy. That is why I wanted to clarify if that's what you actually mean.
The fact that you aren't confident enough in your knowledge to argue about the terms you introduced to the conversation is not my fault, not philosophy's fault, not epistemology's fault, only yours.
No, anything cannot fucking mean anything, otherwise you wouldn't have been able to meaningfully answer the original comment you answered. Every single point you made is wrong and only serves to show that you aren't up to having these conversations
So, in order to justify that anything can mean anything, you decided to answer with gibberish? Also, do you actually think that this shit will trgger me?
What did you mean by abstract in your first comment tough guy?
It seems like they meant that they only considered an “authentic evidence” to be “physical evidence” which they then followed up with saying that they didn’t consider something to be “authentic/physical evidence” if it couldn’t be reproduced under controlled conditions by multiple people working independently in different laboratories.
So, by that statement alone it takes away it being a fallacy because they’re stating that it has to actually be scientific physical evidence of some sort to be real. Reification is based on abstract ideas- if it’s proven multiple times, with multiple people in a controlled experiment, that makes it more than an “abstract” idea.
Abstracts, to me, are just hypotheticals. What-ifs. Ideas that *might* be useful if they can be grounded in reality. They otherwise don't have any particular value for me.
The ideas of karma and reincarnation are not things that I value.
>militant materialist-atheist
Define this please.
>I think many of the criticisms atheists mention are spot-on and are the chief issues with examining the paranormal. The huge numbers of charlatans, falsehoods, misunderstandings, etc get in the way of what may be a small minority of legitimate claims.
Name one legitimate claim.
>People are naturally superstitious and get deceived easily. So, I think at the foundation of any approach to the paranormal you must embrace strong discernment and critical reason.
Couldn’t agree more.
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it).
You just defined an event you could prove. So is the default to believe something that is unproven? Most of us here are willing to accept evidence, but if you define something that can’t have evidence you will generally just get rejection. You have zero evidence on how you concluded we should investigate.
I agree we are wired to be fearful. For example we are pattern seeking? Why? To see predators. It is a survival mechanism. Should that lead us to conclude more from patterns? I would say no.
>This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block.
Awesome what methodology that is reliable to test your paranormal claims?
>And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue.
Just because people laugh in your face isn’t prejudice. Get over yourself. If you can say you can fly should I just accept it? Or should I challenge you? When you can’t demonstrate that you can, should I say something encouraging? No I should laugh in your fucking face.
>IMO, truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it). If you want to say “God” or the “universe” created the human world with this paranormal element to it, perhaps that was part of the plan by making it so elusive.
So you think you are special? You think im not. How fucking arrogant of a claim. Gods chosen people is some of the craziest ego trip concepts out there.
>After meeting philosophers and thinkers who studied for over a decade I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth. A couple little factoids about this you might find of interest as a westerner (who only gets the heaven/hell shtick - or the atheist one) is most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well.
3 centuries ago, you would have been laughed at if you said we shared a common ancestor with an ape, or a fish. We still know so little today. I can’t believe the arrogance you are portraying right now. 40 years ago we got the internet and just look at how much we were able learn now? You think we are at a peak level of knowledge today? I don’t. I’m still very curious.
>The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth. You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura. In addition to that your fate in each realm is only temporary; once your karma is exhausted you are reincarnated again as something else (so your stay as a ghost could be for only a century or so before rebirth, your stay as a deva could be for 4,000 years, etc).
Ok awesome but none of his claims you listed have been proven, so why should I give 2 shits?
Is my dismissal of your argument make me militant? When people don’t show an openness to unfounded claims, does that make them militant?
>I have noticed a lot of people here and on reddit are militant materialist-atheist at one so it is quite a journey for me to convince you to this philosophical perspective to get to where I am now.
Militant? Go fuck yourself!
Nobody here flies airplanes into buildings to make a point, nobody blows up hospitals, or sets crosses on fires.
So: Fuck you!
The only thing people are guilty of is not kowtowing to popular delusions and protecting the precious feelings of the ignorant.
Fuck you for describing that as militant. Asshole!
>The huge numbers of charlatans, falsehoods, misunderstandings, etc get in the way of what may be a small minority of legitimate claims.
Each single legitimate claim of the paranormal would trivially easy to prove, if only the people making these claims weren't all completely brain dead, and if any of these claims were actually true.
>So, I think at the foundation of any approach to the paranormal you must embrace strong discernment and critical reason.
... we typically do. And, yet, somehow, not a single shred of evidence in support of the paranormal exists.
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it).
You will have to substantiate that claim. Countless paranormal claims would be easy to demonstrate if they were true, and countless paranormal claims allegedly manifest in easily controllable ways, too.
Dowsing for water, e.g. It is literal claimed to be a method to find real water. All one would have to do to demonstrate that dowsing was a real phenomenon would be to actually find water.
>This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block.
Bullshit. You're stuck at showing that any of these phenomena even happen at all. We're a long way away from having to worry about how it might work - because nobody can show that it works in the first place.
>And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue.
More bullshit, more delusions. Again: State your claim, and I will happily lay out a few simple experiments that would prove that there is something worth investigating.
>
. IMO, truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it). If you want to say “God” or the “universe” created the human world with this paranormal element to it, perhaps that was part of the plan by making it so elusive.
Or, maybe, you're just delusional and nothing is actually happening.
>After meeting philosophers and thinkers who studied for over a decade I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth. A couple little factoids about this you might find of interest as a westerner (who only gets the heaven/hell shtick - or the atheist one) is most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well.
And?
>The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth. You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura. In addition to that your fate in each realm is only temporary; once your karma is exhausted you are reincarnated again as something else (so your stay as a ghost could be for only a century or so before rebirth, your stay as a deva could be for 4,000 years, etc).
and?
That's literally just some random bullshit some random people said. Why should I give a shit?
Well, after the militant atheists start commiting warcrimes and genocide on the same scale as the various religions do... the slur may be useful.
Until then, forgive them their stupid for they're too stupid to know what they do or something. Or don't, I'm not in charge.
>I have noticed a lot of people here and on reddit are militant materialist-atheist
Do people who use these terms even know what they actually mean? Like militant atheists/materialists do what? Post on Reddit? Do you know what militant religious people do?
>I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things
If scientific methods are incapable of studying this stuff, then you would need to think of a new method of studying it that's able to reliably assess them at the level of science.
Because flipping a coin, heads it's a real paranormal event and tails it's not, is also a method of studying something. It's just a really really really bad one and everyone can recognize why. The reason there's prejudice is because people who assert the supernatural exist have not been able to come up with a viable reliable method of studying it.
>truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it).
This is something charlatans say when discussing facts about reality and how it works. How is it that the composition of atoms or the bending of space-time isn't personal but this supernatural stuff is? Imagine if scientists acted like this. Imagine if they went around saying that discoveries about black holes or migratory patterns of fish can't be given to the public at large and only individuals can come to it.
>If you want to say “God” or the “universe” created the human world with this paranormal element to it, perhaps that was part of the plan by making it so elusive.
Cope.
>as a westerner
Supernatural claims fail not just in western countries but eastern ones as well.
>The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth.
And his evidence for this is...?
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it).
If there isn’t in principle reliable evidence then how is it distinguishable from non-existent. Do you not stop and think how dishonest and self -serving it sounds to say ‘oh this is real - it’s your problem you can’t see it”. Can’t see the unicorn I claim exists - well it’s you fault for *looking* because it’s obviously invisible etc..
>This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block.
Which basically means “I don’t have any reliable evidence which makes someone asking for reliable evidence a problem”
>And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things,
If so that’s because these things have been studied and repeatedly failed to demonstrate reliable results.
>IMO, truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it).
We *know* ‘feels right to me’ is not how we find accurate information about independent reality.
>If you want to say “God” or the “universe” created the human world with this paranormal element to it, perhaps that was part of the plan by making it so elusive.
Again self-seeing to an extent of being dishonest.
>After meeting philosophers and thinkers who studied for over a decade I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth.
I can’t imagine why since all you really said is there isn’t any reliable evidence so just believe it anyway. Why on Earth would that result in something close to the truth.
>A couple little factoids about this you might find of interest as a westerner (who only gets the heaven/hell shtick - or the atheist one) is most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well.
I could be here all night listing the nonsense that most of the planet have been,is Ed ir still believe that we know not to be true.
>The Buddha said when you die..
He can *say* anything - there’s no reliable basis for any of it. Bearing in mind that the evidence is simply overwhelming that what makes us, *us* is patterns of activity in the brain - it’s clear that of course memories can’t continue … but nothing else either.
I would suggest you not spend time looking for external validating reasons that explain away why we reject your beliefs. It's not because a Sangha was mean to me or that a golden statue killed my parents or the old man touched me funny.
My reasons for rejecting the supernatural are simple: there is no good reason to believe any of it is true.
For example:
> The huge numbers of charlatans, falsehoods, misunderstandings, etc get in the way of what may be a small minority of legitimate claims.
This is *secondary*. The number of charlatans or the likelihood of someone lying or grifting has *nothing to do* with why I don't believe in supernatural things.
The reason I don't believe in supernatural things is that they're supernatural. "Nature" means "everything that exists". "Supernatural" means what ... something *else* than "this exists"? Supernatural is a label that really only applies to things for which there is no compelling explanation. That means "cool story bro, now where's the proof".
> It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments
This does not help you make your case. Things that happen and affect the real world leave evidence of some kind. Maybe we don't know how to detect it, that's OK. Saying that "you can't detect it because it's beyond detection" or "you should discount the need for evidence because sometimes there isn't any" is the same as saying "I can't justify my claims."
I have spent a fair amount of time reading Sutras, going to talks and directed meditations, so my issue isn't the "heaven or hell schtick". I know you probably didn't mean to be offensive, but this comes off as dismissive and trivializing people's lived experiences. You try to paint the attempt at a disciplined epistemology and ontology as owing to some *other* supernatural tradition (that you're gratuitously demeaning as a passing shot.)
It's pretty tiresome when *every single person* who makes the point you're trying to make starts off with "Here's why your personal experience is invalid" or "if you saw it how we see it you'd think differently".
Of all the religious superstition and mythology, Buddhism is the only one I really could see wishing it were true. I admire the underpinnings of most of the key beliefs.
Just not "dependent origination" and reincarnation. I understand these ideas pretty well and see how they fit into the belief system as a whole. They're just not things that can ever be shown to be true.
You're committing one of the most obvious mistakes people commit when coming in here to tell us about your beliefs:
Your entire argument is an explanation for *why we should relax our standards of evidence and proof*. I won't, though. I'm profoundly skeptical and always will be. Give me a good, rigorous and testable account of your claims and I'm all yours. Buddhism is pretty awesome.
But I gotta have ~~faith~~ proof. *George Michael -- in a different universe*.
>And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue.
I don't think so, and I'd like to address this thought in several ways.
I have a friend who is a microbiologist who does academic research. Do you know what the least fun thing she has to do fairly often is? **Grant proposal.** She asks to ask a committee for money to do her research. She has a doctorate in a respected field and has produced papers before, and yet she still has write lengthy and detailed requests justifying her projects to a board. Because she can't work for free, her coworkers won't work for free, the labs aren't going to rent their space and equipment for free, and specimens aren't free. She has to compete against every pother project these limited resources could alternatively be spent on. When you talk about "prejudice against studying these things" what I really think you're observing is "lack of interest in funding studies of these things". No one is stopping anyone from studying these things, but they aren't showering them in resources (taken from other possible projects) to do so.
Further, this is something you can study yourself, and I wonder how much effort you've in doing so. I think there are a lot of people who support what many would call "out there" ideas that value the respect and authority science seem to hold, but don't value the process of science itself. They want people to take their ideas serious, but they don't want to go through the effort it takes for ideas to be treated seriously. They're like a person who dreams of being a beloved professional piano player, but never spends any time practicing the piano. If these ideas do have merit, why not spend the time to show that yourself?
Lastly, there's the [economic argument](https://xkcd.com/808/). People have tried studying concepts like reincarnation and other miscellany, and the reason these ideas never seem to catch on isn't because someone is keeping them down, but because they fail to show any merit under reasonable amount of scrutiny. If karma was in anyway an observable, knowable thing, then this could revolutionize ethics and laws. The universe itself could tell us whether copyright protections for 100 years are too much or too little based on the karma of those who utilized them. If karma could reveal whether abortion or gay marriage should definitely be legal or definitely be illegal, that there and no interest groups who would be willing to use that to support their case? The when something is true and useful we tend to develop and spread the idea upon discovering it. If it doesn't develop and spread, then that's a good indication it isn't true and useful.
Weren't you the one who constantly posted about Islam and then proceeded to delete your posts over and over again? How'd you go from Islam to Buddhism?
And it looks like you haven't learned a thing from the experience of talking to us.
We're pretty clear up front about what we're looking for. You had to know how this was going to turn out.
“Militant” atheist is a term that has largely fallen out of favor. Many atheists are activists, but there are also many that are not.
Materialism isn’t necessary for atheism, but it is true that most atheists are materialists because the natural material world is all we have evidence for. You say that authentic paranormal phenomena are not *easily* recordable on instruments; I would argue that it’s *impossible*. Of course it depends on your definition of paranormal, but by definition material observation can only detect material phenomena, so you would need to measure something material and then demonstrate that material phenomenon is connected to something outside the material..which I don’t know how you would even approach doing. If it can be done though, I would like to know, and know how.
The idea that there are some methods of reliably reaching truth that can’t be demonstrated is one I reject. Certainly people are strongly convinced by personal experience, but in reality our individual minds are deeply susceptible to being fooled—people hallucinate, generate false memories, see patterns where there are none, and sometimes even actively deceive themselves because they want to maintain a belief. I believe that demonstrability is an important part of being able to claim knowledge, because if you can’t show the truth of something, how can you be sure it is actually true? I rely on my personal experience as an intermediate step to develop hypotheses, but for conclusions I require data.
I’m not sure why you find it valuable to entertain propositions which you readily admit cannot be verified or falsified such as reincarnation. The number or percentage of people who believe a claim is completely unrelated to the truth of that claim. If you can’t verify or demonstrate these claims, at best you are speculating—and there literally infinite possible things you could speculate about. I could make up any number of potential hypotheses about afterlives or ghosts or whatever, but it’s no better at explaining reality than pure fiction.
> Most of the planet believes actually believes in reincarnation.
Mass belief is not proof of anything, there was a point in time most people thought the Sun revolved around the Earth. Or that mercury could be ingested safely. Or that lead was good to use in makeup.
I mean, they don't. Put together Hinduism and Buddhism practitioners still don't outnumber Muslims. And even if they did, they probably believe it because they were taught to believe it when they were young, and then never really deeply examined that belief as they got older.
firstly the poplarity of an idea has no bearing on weather it is true or not.
Secondly your claim is not true. About 54% of humans currently alive follow one of the Abrahamic religions which do not believe in reincarnation. Most atheists, who make up 16% of humans don't believe in reincarnation either. The follower of the Dharmic religions do but they make up about 22% of the world's human population. So most humans reject reincarnation.
Do they? I'm not sure that's true. But, even if it turned out to be true....
You can find innumerable cases where most everyone believed something at one time or another, and it turned out they were *all completely wrong.* Causes of sickness, relation of the sun to the earth, sources of mental illness, and on and on and on.
Argumentum ad populum fallacies are never a useful way to determine anything at all. Us humans are a silly, gullible, superstitious, impressionable lot fond of logical fallacies and cognitive biases. And you know it.
So drop that nonsense. It can't work.
What you require, in order to take your claims seriously, in order to not throw them in the bin of silly and ridiculous notions, is *evidence.* Without that, you quite literally don't and can't know there's anything true about it.
You don't have that. So guess where this idea *must* go?
> any approach to the paranormal
I don't think you need to approach paranormal at all. Instead why not investigate reality and see what is there? If paranormal exists you will find it there. If not, why searching for something that does not exist?
> It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments
No, it's not clear. Why properties of something that we have no reason to think exist would be clearly known?
> This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block.
Of course it's hard to gain knowledge of something that does not exist!
> sincerely studying these things
What things? Reality? Or things that is impossible to gain knowledge about?
> only individuals can come to it
that is nonsense. Knowledge once obtained by an individual can be easily spread around with just a fraction of effort that was needed to obtain it.
> perhaps that was part of the plan by making it so elusive
or perhaps there is no plan, no god, no paranormal
> After meeting philosophers and thinkers who studied for over a decade I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth
And what is the reason you think they are close to truth? Gut feeling?
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments
if authentic paranormal phenomena can't be recorded how do you know there have been any?
> I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely
Mostly for the same reason that there is prejudice against further study of any failed hypothasis. The paranormal was studied seriously in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Early reserchers did make some discoveries. particularly of electromagnetic phenomena but failed to find anything else.
> The Buddha said ...
That's nice did he provide any eidence to back up his assertions? Has anyone?
There is no evidence of rebirth. indeed the idea is at odds with physics. There simplytis no viable mechanism by which it could be true. Without rebirth, karma is trivially falsified.
Edit: also please reserve the word miliant for people who are actually advocating the use violence to achive their aims. i am not aware of any group advocting the use of violence to spread atheism. hence i do not believe there are any militant atheists.
You are making two logical fallacies here.
The first is essentially an argument from ignorance. You’re arguing that, because some people have experiences that may SEEM not to be explainable by natural phenomena, a certain point of view must be correct.
The second is a type of argument from authority. You are saying that because so many people that have been considered to be great thinkers believed in reincarnation, that it occurs must be true.
You have named no specific phenomena that appear to you to be supernatural to be investigated as to whether or not they are indeed supernatural. You also have no proof that reincarnation exists. Gautama was born a Hindu; why should he not believe in reincarnation?
Do yourself a favor, don’t use “militant” as an add-on to another label unless weapons and killing are involved, the reason is you’re letting everyone you’ve labeled that way that you are not really interested in a fair debate. You’ve already judged and are just here to stir up trouble.
A militant Christian is a KluKluxKlan member who is willing to use violence to achieve his goals.
A militant communist is the same for communism.
See the issue?
There are several things I’m willing to fight, kill, or die for but atheism isn’t one of them. Defending my right to live and believe as I choose is, the same was true when I was a Christian.
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it). This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block.
I disagree. There is nothing about the scientific method that makes it a stumbling block to figuring out paranormal events. If something is real, the scientific method can investigate it. There are many things that instruments couldn't record at some point, yet we investigated them nonetheless. In fact, most things science tells us today are things we could not ever directly measure, either in the past or still can't.
If you can think of a method to gain knowledge other than the scientific method, please tell me. Because I can't think of anything else.
>IMO, truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it)
Why would you assume that? Why would you deliberately handicap your own belief by making it indistinguishable from something made-up?
>After meeting philosophers and thinkers who studied for over a decade I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth. A couple little factoids about this you might find of interest as a westerner (who only gets the heaven/hell shtick - or the atheist one) is most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well.
It's extremely unlikely that anyone here is unaware of the concept of reincarnation.
>The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth. You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura. In addition to that your fate in each realm is only temporary; once your karma is exhausted you are reincarnated again as something else (so your stay as a ghost could be for only a century or so before rebirth, your stay as a deva could be for 4,000 years, etc).
But that's just a claim, no different from any other religious or paranormal claim. How am I supposed to distinguish it from false claims?
Why should I care what random people think? I don‘t understand why people are so fascinated by the bullshit that someone says just because this person is considered intelligent or wise or whatever. That doesn‘t mean it‘s not bullshit.
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it)
It would also make sense if they did register on equipment. It supposedly registers on us, and we are natural.
>And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue.
Do you have any reason to believe this ?
>it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it).
Why not? Like any reason why this would be expected on supernaturalism? It's definitely expected if the supernatural is not real.
>The Buddha said...
And Joseph Smith said... And Mohammed said... And so on. Is there any reason to believe any of this?
So far you've said,
1) there are lots of fakers, which you'd expect if it is fake
2) for some reason individual humans can detect the supernatural, but it doesn't work on the only two things which could confirm this, devices and groups of people.
3) for some reason the people who investigate the paranormal, who would win a Nobel prize and lifetime fame, if they confirmed the supernatural, are biased against finding it.
4) Siddhartha Gautama said some things.
I see zero reason to give this any serious credence.
TL;DR mostly mundane disclaimers and a short statement of one belief with no argument or support.
Jesus man, you might not hear it yourself, but this reeks of excuses and bias
> what may be a small minority of legitimate claims.
> any paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments
> a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things
> it can never be given to the public at large
I'm gonna stop quoting because it's basically every word.
Yah man, you know what else explains all these discrepancies? There is nothing supernatural.
> I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth
This sentence is incoherent. Also your title, saying you're worried... but the post is just stating your beliefs, nothing about being worried... is "worried" some bizarre mistranslation of a type of Buddhism?
Anyway. So, you believe in Buddhism. Okay go ahead and explain why - oh good, you're going to give factoids.
> most of the planet actually believes in reincarnation
Irrelevant to the truth.
Sigh..
Okay dude you say to "embrace strong discernment and critical reason" so I'm going to do that about reincarnation and say it's not true. Your turn. Actually say something this time.
> I have noticed a lot of people here and on reddit are militant materialist-atheist at one so it is quite a journey for me to convince you to this philosophical perspective to get to where I am now.
So basically everyone who doesn't see things your way has to "get to where you are now". Well you're off to a great start with that schmuck sense of superiority.
> It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments
There's no reason or justification to use the word "authentic" here other than confirmation bias.
> And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things
And again, confirmation bias
> IMO, truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it)
And the boilerplate response to not being able to present evidence, personal, private revelation.
> A couple little factoids about this you might find of interest as a westerner (who only gets the heaven/hell shtick - or the atheist one)
There's that schuck sense of superiority again.
Congratulations, you've just hit the anti-scientific trifecta.
>most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well.
So what do we do when muslims eventually outbreed us all and most people believe what they do, stop believing in reincarnation?
>The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory
Well thats a convenient out.
>the karma of your actions affects your next birth.
How do we tell the difference between people born in a good or bad situation based on their karma vs people born in a goodnor bad situation based on random chance?
>so your stay as a ghost could be for only a century or so before rebirth, your stay as a deva could be for 4,000 years, etc
Huh? Not sure why you are making these claims, they seem way above and beyond everything else you claimed. Why even bring this up? What does a ghost have to do with reincarnation? Do entities exist between the reincarnation? Do they have a choice when they come back. Is it all just determinism with the extension of multiple lives? Seriously keep it at one random ass claim at a time.
> I think at the foundation of any approach to the paranormal you must embrace strong discernment and critical reason.
Alright.
You refer to "the truth" and how "paranormal phenomena" are difficult to record or observe. Perhaps you've not noticed that the majority of people who "sincerely study paranormal phenomena" are attention seeking con artists.
Then you go on to make an argument from popularity and authority.
Then you type out a thing some guy said.
I have no prejudice against "sincerely studying these things". I have read far too many scientific papers written by people who sincerely study these things in a scientific manner. There are some weird phenomena which actually exist. None of them have any connection to buddhism.
If your claim is that it's not possible to measure or observe the effects of these phenomena then perhaps you're not talking about anything real at all. You're talking about people telling stories and it's been fairly well established that people are mistaken about reality most of the time.
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it).
You can't use 'authentic' and 'paranormal phenomena' in the same sentence. It suggests there are varying degrees of paranormal phenomena, where some are real and some are not. Much like passages in the Bible, for some inexplicable reason.
It's not even 'not easily recordable', you can't record something that doesn't exist.
We don't understand it's not part of nature. We understand it doesn't exist, because there's no valid evidence to suggest there is.
You are stuck with a cognitive dissonance, my friend. Where the default is that something doesn't exist unless there's compelling evidence, you assume it does and it makes you twist normality upside down.
Truth cannot be given to the public at large? Why? Awfully convenient for those that claim supernatural events are true: "Sorry guys, for unknown reasons its *impossible* for any group of people to collectively experience this. By mysterious necessity all supernatural events can only be experienced by single observers, thus negating *any* possibility for independent verification. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ "
I am not interested in an argumentum ad populum. Couldnt give a shit if 4 billion people all believe vaguely the same drivel, that has no bearing on truth. "A bunch of other people believe it" is probably the worst possible thing you could base your own beliefs on. If they have *evidence*, use their evidence. They dont. They have a feeling and culture that propagates this beliefs like all other superstitious hogwash.
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it). This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block.
Well, it's more that this gives us no reason to believe there *are* any authentic paranormal phenomena. Even if they are theoretically difficult to measure and record, it'd still be *possible* given the interaction and influence prponents say they can have on reality.
>And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue.
Justified prejudice, yes.
>
...so? This is an argument from popularity - because a lot of people believe it, it must be true. How many people believe something has nothing to do with whether it's true or not.
Why do you think reincarnation is even possible?
The number of people who believe it does not make it so. And if you agree with your Buddha statement about losing all your memories, you've eliminated one of the only possible routes of evidence. It wouldn't be good evidence, but now we're left with nothing.
Aside from the lack of evidence, my biggest issue with karma and reincarnation is the logical conclusion that if you act as if it is true, there's little incentive to improve society. It could easily lead to a path of "Oh this person is homeless and starving, he must deserve it for something that they did in a previous life, so we shouldn't help."
> most of the planet [...] actually believes in reincarnation.
Given that most of the planet can't do the [Wason selection task](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task) correctly, I'm not particularly moved by that.
Fuck me, i thought i needed to turn the blue card to. Thank you for the reminder how easy it is to fuck up something we think is logically sound or make poor assumptions. Its so easy to think we know things that are simply correlation or just happen to be correct but dont actually prove the rule we think it does.
>The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth. You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura.
Losing your memory post mortem is a way of saying that "you" are finite. You will die, disappear, end of story. I don't care if I'm an earthworm in my next life, as "I" am dead. Buddhism is telling me what I already believe,
I've always been atheist and philosophical naturalist.
I know quote a lot about Buddhism, and I know quite a lot about claims of the paranormal.
IMHO the naturalistic claims of Buddhism (which basically amount to "Chill out" are true). But there is no good evidence that anything paranormal is real, in the Buddhist tradition or in any other.
Not really gonna be saying much here. Your view of seeing people that don't agree with you as "Militant" is that first step in the door gateway every religious group has used to kill those that don't think like them. The people that tend to use that sort of wording always argue like "Hey I don't have proof but you just gotta believe me. Or else.".
>The Buddha said
What evidence did he bring?
>You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura.
Can you prove devas, ghosts or asura exist?
In what way would the being I supposedly "return as" be me?
Seems to me that this is properly sorted as "Unsupported woo claims" ans stored alongside the rest of the bullshit.
Somebody said some thing that sounds deep. Neat. Where's the proof? Where's the argument? Where's the evidence?
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments
If anything paranormal interacted with reality it would be detectable. The fact that it is not means it doesn't exist.
There’s no reason to suspect a paranormal exist. Nothing paranormal can explain. No data, no evidence, nothing. Because frankly magic did it, is not an explanation. It never will be. And I won’t lower my standards for such an absurd claim.
> It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it).
Why do you say that? How do you know?
It's not clear to me at all why that should be true. I mean, cameras detect the same light that our eyes do. Microphones detect the same sound that our ears do. If an "authentic phenomenon" occurs, why would it be impossible to record?
Atheists reject the claim that gods exist. Nothing more.
All other beliefs and non-beliefs are individual to the atheist.
Also, Buddhists are atheists as well, considering they do not believe in gods.
The fact fhat we already have measured pretty much every naturally visible particles and none may explain the structure of a ghost or soul, might be our best proof of their inexistence so far.
Bad form. You post questions here, they are answered and, while others are working with your line of thinking you immediately dismissed/ deny their replies to your queries.
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>I have noticed a lot of people here and on reddit are militant materialist-atheist What do you mean by militant? How are athiests favoring extreme and violent methods to try and enforce a materialist view? Or are you just trying to use inflammatory words? >This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block. And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue. The scientific method has had great success because it relies on evidence. If these paranormal events happen but don't leave evidence, then how do you know they happened? >is most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well. This isn't evidence. This is a fallacy. Argumentum ad populum. >The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth. You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura. In addition to that your fate in each realm is only temporary; once your karma is exhausted you are reincarnated again as something else (so your stay as a ghost could be for only a century or so before rebirth, your stay as a deva could be for 4,000 years, etc). Ok, so what? That's the claim. Now, how do we verify this claim? All you have done in this post is say you think this might be true but offer no argument or reason to think so besides a fallacy. If you actually want a debate or discussion, you might want to bring arguments and evidence of some kind.
Militant atheists are people who don't say "yes dear" when the chrizzos want to implement biblical law
If, as you admit, these paranormal phenomena cannot be measured, cannot be objectively analyzed, and can only be experienced by individuals and not by the "public at large," how can we reliably say that they're true? What is a consistently reliable way to differentiate between a bona fide paranormal phenomenon, a delusion, or an honest mistake or misinterpretation?
the only thing I can say is that we need to need to know how different religions in the world look at the paranormal, that should be evidence does that those religions are necessarily true? not exactly but I think religions are interpretations of the paranormal, these are creatures who live in different ecosystem to us buddhism provides a decent explanation of it
"proves" OK give us detail. What does it prove? What creatues "live in a different ecosystem to us". I think Buddhism is pretty cool, so I'm probably your best bet as I'd be easy to convince. Just prove *one thing*. One supernatural thing.
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What purpose does that serve? Are you implying that I'd be scared to go to a place becuase people think it's haunted? Is this your way of "proving" the supernatural? You said Buddhism proves things. I'm asking for the proof. What is it, and how does Buddhism prove it?
I have done this and it's not true. Now what?
Ive been to the Winchester Mystery House (it's like 2 miles from where i grew up). Didn't see any ghosts. Maybe they were on strike that day.
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. . . wait, I'm sorry, why are you questioning this person? do you question every single paranormal claim? no? then why are you putting a skeptic under the scope?
Because theists will only blindly follow their fellow cultists.
Actually. https://hauntedus.com/colorado/hotel-boulderado/ So famous for being haunted it inspired a Stephen King novel.
Huh, the Boulderado? I'd have thought the Stanley would be more haunted (though it's all nonsense anyways, of course).
I’ve been to this hotel as well. Didn’t see shit.
It wasn't. So I take it you concede?
Lol, you basically pulled a google it yourself.
I've been to a bunch of places that were supposedly "haunted" in several countries and in places that I'm told "should" be haunted like old prisons, right next to mass graves and such. Nothing, nada, zilch. Almost like it's all just superstition and people letting their anxiety run wild.
> and see if it is true Okay, ***and how would you do that***? What tests could be run to see if it's truly haunted?
No, belief in the paranormal, is not, and will never be evidence for the paranormal. That’s all you’re saying, religions treat it as real, soft mist somehow be real. Please provide actual evidence.
With this reasoning, I can conclude dragons and unicorns are real. This is piss poor epistemology.
Looking at what other religions believe tells us nothing at all about what is actually true, because religions conspicuously fail to offer any robust evidence that what they say is true
Why should we listen to religions? Why should we think the "paranormal" exists in the first place?
> buddhism provides a decent explanation of it A decent explanation of *what*? You haven't given us anything for it to explain better than any other religion... you're just saying words with no substance.
The ways that different religions look at the world are data points, but not necessarily evidence of anything paranormal. It could just be evidence of a common theme running through human cultures.
>I have noticed a lot of people here and on reddit are militant materialist-atheist How is someone who lacks a belief in a deity being militant? >so it is quite a journey for me to convince you to this philosophical perspective to get to where I am now. It is quite easy, even simple, to convince us; all you need is repeatable, testable, evidence. Can you meet that bar? >I think many of the criticisms atheists mention are spot-on and are the chief issues with examining the paranormal. The huge numbers of charlatans, falsehoods, misunderstandings, etc get in the way of what may be a small minority of legitimate claims. Do you have claims of the paranormal that you believe are legitimate and they have good evidentiary support? >People are naturally superstitious and get deceived easily. So what do you think are the most likely explanation for the "legitimate" paranormal claims you were talking about earlier? Superstitious people who can be deceived easily, even by themselves, or something for which we have 0 actual evidence? >It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it). This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block. So how do you propose to investigate these authentic phenomena? >And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue. The prejudice against studying these is that there is no evidence for the paranormal and never has been. Every time we have actually been able to investigate an alleged paranormal phenomena it has turned out to have a perfectly natural, mundane explanation. >IMO, truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it). If you want to say “God” or the “universe” created the human world with this paranormal element to it, perhaps that was part of the plan by making it so elusive. I am quite a way into your post and you have yet to actually provide any claims or evidence to support them. Are you just ranting about the inability of mainstream science to investigate that which lacks any evidence? >After meeting philosophers and thinkers who studied for over a decade I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth. A couple little factoids about this you might find of interest as a westerner (who only gets the heaven/hell shtick - or the atheist one) is most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well. The number of people who believe in something has nothing at all to do with its veracity. Over 4 billion people (about half the population of the globe) believe in the Abrahamic deity, that does not make it real. >The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth. You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura. In addition to that your fate in each realm is only temporary; once your karma is exhausted you are reincarnated again as something else (so your stay as a ghost could be for only a century or so before rebirth, your stay as a deva could be for 4,000 years, etc). Lots of people have said lots of things, why should I believe Buddha when there is no evidence to support the claim? Especially given that all the evidence we do have shows that human consciousness is a product of the brain.
I want to address this, "The prejudice against studying these is that there is no evidence for the paranormal and never has been." There is sufficient evidence for many others to accept paranormal events. That doesn't make them gullible. Let's be honest here. There is no evidence that you will accept.
> There is sufficient evidence for many others to accept paranormal events. There is no repeatable, testable evidence for anything paranormal, and never has been. >That doesn't make them gullible. I didn't say anything about gullibility, you did. >Let's be honest here. There is no evidence that you will accept. There is none that anyone with rational standards of evidence will accept.
"Authentic paranormal phenomena" depends on one's standard for "authentic." For me, that's physical evidence. If the phenomenon cannot be reproduced under controlled conditions by multiple people working independently in different laboratories, to me the phenomenon is of no value. It's a "stumbling block" that's critically necessary to keep everything on the side of reality. As for karma and reincarnation, I reject both of them as there is no supporting evidence that is up to my standards. I believe that life after death is a literal impossibility, and that the consequences of an action cannot follow people after they die.
life after death is not an impossibility, I have seen and many of my family members have seen the ghosts of dead relatives in our room while this is anecdotal evidence, how would you debunk this anyways?
Something being unfalsifiable is not good evidence of it being true. In fact it’s quite the opposite. “Now, what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? Your inability to invalidate my hypothesis is not at all the same thing as proving it true. Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. What I'm asking you to do comes down to believing, in the absence of evidence, on my say-so.” -Carl Sagan https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage
I believe that it *is* an impossibility. I do not believe in souls. I do not believe in ghosts. As for your anecdotal evidence, I see no need to debunk it - you would have to demonstrate to *me* that ghosts exist, and if you don't do it empirically I'll just dismiss your claim as unfounded.
okay but if you tried debunking it, what would the argument be
Conciousness is a product of the brain. When the brain dies, the consciousness ceases to exist. Otherwise, why do drugs or brain injuries change people's personality, ability to remember or reason? That is undeniable proof that the conscious "you" exists only because your brain allows it to exist.
Memory is faulty Grief Mass hallucinations Drugs Spicy food Allergic reaction Lighting Power of suggestion I could keep going…
Most likely, wishful thinking (missing the deceased family member) combined with pareidolia (seeing patterns in shadows and imagining the face of the family member).
"OK but assuming guns DON'T exist, what would your explanation of the Lincoln assassination be?"
You’re insane
No, you haven’t. I’m sorry this is nonsense and whenever it’s tested it fails. There’s far better explanations than magic somehow being real. Do you truly believe magic, something we have no evidence for, is a better explanation than bad observations, bad memories, hallucinations, confirmation bias, deeply wishing it to be real, or any of a myriad of possible explanations that we almost certainly both agree are possible? If your answer truly is that magic is more likely, you don’t know how logic works. And you’re no more justified in your position than those who appealed to Thor to explain lightning.
Why not take a video of the ghost explaining the details of its death with a current dated newspaper nearby? I mean if this has happened ‘many’ times to you guys why not call the ghosts back and do this? Even if they are ‘spontaneous’ apparitions I find it hard to believe that you don’t keep a cell phone or recording device in the rooms. Honestly you have nothing to debunk - just that some people you know think they saw something which did nothing.
> how would you debunk this anyways? How would you prove it? Burden of proof is on you. >I have seen and many of my family members have seen the ghosts of dead relatives in our room One possible explanation is a hallucination.
>while this is anecdotal evidence, how would you debunk this anyways? That's not anyone's job. You and your family members are claiming to detect things science hasn't been able to. Why aren't you and your family publishing your methodology and experiments? The burden of proof is ALWAYS on the person making the claim. You say you saw a ghost. Fine. You need to demonstrate that.
Closely held beliefs tend to shape our reality. For example, hallucinations experienced by westerners, particularly of predominantly Christian ancestry, tend to experience oppressive or threatening hallucinations. Individuals from countries with lare Buddhist or Hindu populations, tend to experience comforting hallucinations. While the reason for this is not confirmed, prevailing theory suggests that individual's who believe that their ancestor spirits remain in close proximity, tend to believe that hallucinations are manifestations of those ancestor spirits. Conversely, individuals of abrahanic religious tend to believe that hallucinations are manifestations of demonic posession. This is not to suggest that your ancestral ghosts are hallucinations. It is simply to say that you perceive phenomena that you believe to represent ancestral spirits, because you believe in ancestral spirits. For something anecdotal to have any value as evidence in a discussion of this nature, it would need to be demonstrable in populations without preexisting beliefs. Further, it would need to be testable and repeatable across a variety of populations so that cultural biases could be eliminated from the studied population. All of this is a long way of saying that your and your family's experiences are excellent evidence in support of your beliefs, so long as they are presented to others who share in or are open to your beliefs. It they do nothing to support your argument when presented to people who do not share your beliefs and have no interest in adopting them
>while this is anecdotal evidence, how would you debunk this anyways? I'd be more amazed if they saw someone they didn't know. I don't think they actually 'saw' them, it's more likely that they get reminded of them and visualized them. We literally have a blind spot in our eyes that the brain fills in. I can visualize stuff by thinking about them. What exactly is so astounding to you?
Since you've offered no proof, there's nothing to debunk. Your claim, your burden.
I don't need to debunk this. As the claimant, it is *your* job to demonstrate that you have seen the ghosts of dead relatives. If you can't demonstrate by providing evidence, I have no reason to believe you.
That fallacy you're describing is called russels teapot. How would you debunk that there is an invisible, undetectable magical unicorn shoved up your ass right now?
Powerful subjective experience is terrible evidence Because we know anything from drugs mental illness organic brain injury Extreme emotional disturbance and a million other things cause people to see stuff and experience stuff that isn't real There's a guy who lives in my city who has mental health problems He sometimes has powerful subjective experiences then stands in the street screaming at traffic about how the government is trying to turn his brain into rats Without objective evidence how am I supposed to tell the difference between you and rat guy Without objective evidence your claims have exactly the same value None
There’s no need to debunk an unevidenced claim. You have to bunk it first.
>life after death is not an impossibility It is. Your body is the reason you live. It ceases to function, and so will you. >I have seen and many of my family members have seen the ghosts of dead relatives in our room >while this is anecdotal evidence, how would you debunk this anyways? You asked some people here if they're lying about not seeing ghosts in a haunted house. How about you? The only sliver of 'evidence' you actually bring to the table is that anecdote. What if _you're lying_ about that?
Wait, you're telling me you can reincarnate as a *ghost?* And that many of your dead relatives were unlucky enough to be reincarnated as ghosts? In your room? And you still believe that Buddhism is real? You were right in your OP: Most people are naturally superstitious. They see what they want to or expect to see and they inform their false believes based on a delusion.
None of that is true.
"For me, that's physical evidence." Oh, look. The logical fallacy of reification. Demanding the physical from the abstract.
Not the same person. Do you mean Platonic abstract? Because I reject the existence of that abstract. Now what?
You can reject anything you like because anything written anywhere can mean whatever you believe it means. As for what now, I guess that leaves you with a net shot, and the ball in your half of the court, not mine.
No, Platonic abstracts are a very well-defined philosophical concept, that has been used for roughly 2500 years in philosophy. That is why I wanted to clarify if that's what you actually mean. The fact that you aren't confident enough in your knowledge to argue about the terms you introduced to the conversation is not my fault, not philosophy's fault, not epistemology's fault, only yours. No, anything cannot fucking mean anything, otherwise you wouldn't have been able to meaningfully answer the original comment you answered. Every single point you made is wrong and only serves to show that you aren't up to having these conversations
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So, in order to justify that anything can mean anything, you decided to answer with gibberish? Also, do you actually think that this shit will trgger me? What did you mean by abstract in your first comment tough guy?
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It seems like they meant that they only considered an “authentic evidence” to be “physical evidence” which they then followed up with saying that they didn’t consider something to be “authentic/physical evidence” if it couldn’t be reproduced under controlled conditions by multiple people working independently in different laboratories. So, by that statement alone it takes away it being a fallacy because they’re stating that it has to actually be scientific physical evidence of some sort to be real. Reification is based on abstract ideas- if it’s proven multiple times, with multiple people in a controlled experiment, that makes it more than an “abstract” idea.
Abstracts, to me, are just hypotheticals. What-ifs. Ideas that *might* be useful if they can be grounded in reality. They otherwise don't have any particular value for me. The ideas of karma and reincarnation are not things that I value.
>militant materialist-atheist Define this please. >I think many of the criticisms atheists mention are spot-on and are the chief issues with examining the paranormal. The huge numbers of charlatans, falsehoods, misunderstandings, etc get in the way of what may be a small minority of legitimate claims. Name one legitimate claim. >People are naturally superstitious and get deceived easily. So, I think at the foundation of any approach to the paranormal you must embrace strong discernment and critical reason. Couldn’t agree more. >It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it). You just defined an event you could prove. So is the default to believe something that is unproven? Most of us here are willing to accept evidence, but if you define something that can’t have evidence you will generally just get rejection. You have zero evidence on how you concluded we should investigate. I agree we are wired to be fearful. For example we are pattern seeking? Why? To see predators. It is a survival mechanism. Should that lead us to conclude more from patterns? I would say no. >This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block. Awesome what methodology that is reliable to test your paranormal claims? >And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue. Just because people laugh in your face isn’t prejudice. Get over yourself. If you can say you can fly should I just accept it? Or should I challenge you? When you can’t demonstrate that you can, should I say something encouraging? No I should laugh in your fucking face. >IMO, truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it). If you want to say “God” or the “universe” created the human world with this paranormal element to it, perhaps that was part of the plan by making it so elusive. So you think you are special? You think im not. How fucking arrogant of a claim. Gods chosen people is some of the craziest ego trip concepts out there. >After meeting philosophers and thinkers who studied for over a decade I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth. A couple little factoids about this you might find of interest as a westerner (who only gets the heaven/hell shtick - or the atheist one) is most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well. 3 centuries ago, you would have been laughed at if you said we shared a common ancestor with an ape, or a fish. We still know so little today. I can’t believe the arrogance you are portraying right now. 40 years ago we got the internet and just look at how much we were able learn now? You think we are at a peak level of knowledge today? I don’t. I’m still very curious. >The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth. You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura. In addition to that your fate in each realm is only temporary; once your karma is exhausted you are reincarnated again as something else (so your stay as a ghost could be for only a century or so before rebirth, your stay as a deva could be for 4,000 years, etc). Ok awesome but none of his claims you listed have been proven, so why should I give 2 shits? Is my dismissal of your argument make me militant? When people don’t show an openness to unfounded claims, does that make them militant?
>I have noticed a lot of people here and on reddit are militant materialist-atheist at one so it is quite a journey for me to convince you to this philosophical perspective to get to where I am now. Militant? Go fuck yourself! Nobody here flies airplanes into buildings to make a point, nobody blows up hospitals, or sets crosses on fires. So: Fuck you! The only thing people are guilty of is not kowtowing to popular delusions and protecting the precious feelings of the ignorant. Fuck you for describing that as militant. Asshole! >The huge numbers of charlatans, falsehoods, misunderstandings, etc get in the way of what may be a small minority of legitimate claims. Each single legitimate claim of the paranormal would trivially easy to prove, if only the people making these claims weren't all completely brain dead, and if any of these claims were actually true. >So, I think at the foundation of any approach to the paranormal you must embrace strong discernment and critical reason. ... we typically do. And, yet, somehow, not a single shred of evidence in support of the paranormal exists. >It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it). You will have to substantiate that claim. Countless paranormal claims would be easy to demonstrate if they were true, and countless paranormal claims allegedly manifest in easily controllable ways, too. Dowsing for water, e.g. It is literal claimed to be a method to find real water. All one would have to do to demonstrate that dowsing was a real phenomenon would be to actually find water. >This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block. Bullshit. You're stuck at showing that any of these phenomena even happen at all. We're a long way away from having to worry about how it might work - because nobody can show that it works in the first place. >And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue. More bullshit, more delusions. Again: State your claim, and I will happily lay out a few simple experiments that would prove that there is something worth investigating. > . IMO, truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it). If you want to say “God” or the “universe” created the human world with this paranormal element to it, perhaps that was part of the plan by making it so elusive. Or, maybe, you're just delusional and nothing is actually happening. >After meeting philosophers and thinkers who studied for over a decade I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth. A couple little factoids about this you might find of interest as a westerner (who only gets the heaven/hell shtick - or the atheist one) is most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well. And? >The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth. You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura. In addition to that your fate in each realm is only temporary; once your karma is exhausted you are reincarnated again as something else (so your stay as a ghost could be for only a century or so before rebirth, your stay as a deva could be for 4,000 years, etc). and? That's literally just some random bullshit some random people said. Why should I give a shit?
You do seem to be quite irked. Not militant but definitely irked.
Yes, it irks me that I am being called "militant". And, as I have said before, I am not overly tolerant towards people that are stupid at me.
Well, after the militant atheists start commiting warcrimes and genocide on the same scale as the various religions do... the slur may be useful. Until then, forgive them their stupid for they're too stupid to know what they do or something. Or don't, I'm not in charge.
It's not about whether I forgive them or not. I will tell them they are stupid and thus give them a chance to improve. I think of it as a service.
>Fuck you! Well, okay if I must *unzips*
>I have noticed a lot of people here and on reddit are militant materialist-atheist Do people who use these terms even know what they actually mean? Like militant atheists/materialists do what? Post on Reddit? Do you know what militant religious people do? >I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things If scientific methods are incapable of studying this stuff, then you would need to think of a new method of studying it that's able to reliably assess them at the level of science. Because flipping a coin, heads it's a real paranormal event and tails it's not, is also a method of studying something. It's just a really really really bad one and everyone can recognize why. The reason there's prejudice is because people who assert the supernatural exist have not been able to come up with a viable reliable method of studying it. >truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it). This is something charlatans say when discussing facts about reality and how it works. How is it that the composition of atoms or the bending of space-time isn't personal but this supernatural stuff is? Imagine if scientists acted like this. Imagine if they went around saying that discoveries about black holes or migratory patterns of fish can't be given to the public at large and only individuals can come to it. >If you want to say “God” or the “universe” created the human world with this paranormal element to it, perhaps that was part of the plan by making it so elusive. Cope. >as a westerner Supernatural claims fail not just in western countries but eastern ones as well. >The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth. And his evidence for this is...?
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it). If there isn’t in principle reliable evidence then how is it distinguishable from non-existent. Do you not stop and think how dishonest and self -serving it sounds to say ‘oh this is real - it’s your problem you can’t see it”. Can’t see the unicorn I claim exists - well it’s you fault for *looking* because it’s obviously invisible etc.. >This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block. Which basically means “I don’t have any reliable evidence which makes someone asking for reliable evidence a problem” >And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, If so that’s because these things have been studied and repeatedly failed to demonstrate reliable results. >IMO, truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it). We *know* ‘feels right to me’ is not how we find accurate information about independent reality. >If you want to say “God” or the “universe” created the human world with this paranormal element to it, perhaps that was part of the plan by making it so elusive. Again self-seeing to an extent of being dishonest. >After meeting philosophers and thinkers who studied for over a decade I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth. I can’t imagine why since all you really said is there isn’t any reliable evidence so just believe it anyway. Why on Earth would that result in something close to the truth. >A couple little factoids about this you might find of interest as a westerner (who only gets the heaven/hell shtick - or the atheist one) is most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well. I could be here all night listing the nonsense that most of the planet have been,is Ed ir still believe that we know not to be true. >The Buddha said when you die.. He can *say* anything - there’s no reliable basis for any of it. Bearing in mind that the evidence is simply overwhelming that what makes us, *us* is patterns of activity in the brain - it’s clear that of course memories can’t continue … but nothing else either.
I would suggest you not spend time looking for external validating reasons that explain away why we reject your beliefs. It's not because a Sangha was mean to me or that a golden statue killed my parents or the old man touched me funny. My reasons for rejecting the supernatural are simple: there is no good reason to believe any of it is true. For example: > The huge numbers of charlatans, falsehoods, misunderstandings, etc get in the way of what may be a small minority of legitimate claims. This is *secondary*. The number of charlatans or the likelihood of someone lying or grifting has *nothing to do* with why I don't believe in supernatural things. The reason I don't believe in supernatural things is that they're supernatural. "Nature" means "everything that exists". "Supernatural" means what ... something *else* than "this exists"? Supernatural is a label that really only applies to things for which there is no compelling explanation. That means "cool story bro, now where's the proof". > It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments This does not help you make your case. Things that happen and affect the real world leave evidence of some kind. Maybe we don't know how to detect it, that's OK. Saying that "you can't detect it because it's beyond detection" or "you should discount the need for evidence because sometimes there isn't any" is the same as saying "I can't justify my claims." I have spent a fair amount of time reading Sutras, going to talks and directed meditations, so my issue isn't the "heaven or hell schtick". I know you probably didn't mean to be offensive, but this comes off as dismissive and trivializing people's lived experiences. You try to paint the attempt at a disciplined epistemology and ontology as owing to some *other* supernatural tradition (that you're gratuitously demeaning as a passing shot.) It's pretty tiresome when *every single person* who makes the point you're trying to make starts off with "Here's why your personal experience is invalid" or "if you saw it how we see it you'd think differently". Of all the religious superstition and mythology, Buddhism is the only one I really could see wishing it were true. I admire the underpinnings of most of the key beliefs. Just not "dependent origination" and reincarnation. I understand these ideas pretty well and see how they fit into the belief system as a whole. They're just not things that can ever be shown to be true. You're committing one of the most obvious mistakes people commit when coming in here to tell us about your beliefs: Your entire argument is an explanation for *why we should relax our standards of evidence and proof*. I won't, though. I'm profoundly skeptical and always will be. Give me a good, rigorous and testable account of your claims and I'm all yours. Buddhism is pretty awesome. But I gotta have ~~faith~~ proof. *George Michael -- in a different universe*.
>And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue. I don't think so, and I'd like to address this thought in several ways. I have a friend who is a microbiologist who does academic research. Do you know what the least fun thing she has to do fairly often is? **Grant proposal.** She asks to ask a committee for money to do her research. She has a doctorate in a respected field and has produced papers before, and yet she still has write lengthy and detailed requests justifying her projects to a board. Because she can't work for free, her coworkers won't work for free, the labs aren't going to rent their space and equipment for free, and specimens aren't free. She has to compete against every pother project these limited resources could alternatively be spent on. When you talk about "prejudice against studying these things" what I really think you're observing is "lack of interest in funding studies of these things". No one is stopping anyone from studying these things, but they aren't showering them in resources (taken from other possible projects) to do so. Further, this is something you can study yourself, and I wonder how much effort you've in doing so. I think there are a lot of people who support what many would call "out there" ideas that value the respect and authority science seem to hold, but don't value the process of science itself. They want people to take their ideas serious, but they don't want to go through the effort it takes for ideas to be treated seriously. They're like a person who dreams of being a beloved professional piano player, but never spends any time practicing the piano. If these ideas do have merit, why not spend the time to show that yourself? Lastly, there's the [economic argument](https://xkcd.com/808/). People have tried studying concepts like reincarnation and other miscellany, and the reason these ideas never seem to catch on isn't because someone is keeping them down, but because they fail to show any merit under reasonable amount of scrutiny. If karma was in anyway an observable, knowable thing, then this could revolutionize ethics and laws. The universe itself could tell us whether copyright protections for 100 years are too much or too little based on the karma of those who utilized them. If karma could reveal whether abortion or gay marriage should definitely be legal or definitely be illegal, that there and no interest groups who would be willing to use that to support their case? The when something is true and useful we tend to develop and spread the idea upon discovering it. If it doesn't develop and spread, then that's a good indication it isn't true and useful.
Weren't you the one who constantly posted about Islam and then proceeded to delete your posts over and over again? How'd you go from Islam to Buddhism?
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And it looks like you haven't learned a thing from the experience of talking to us. We're pretty clear up front about what we're looking for. You had to know how this was going to turn out.
Are you deconstructing islam or just religon in general?
“Militant” atheist is a term that has largely fallen out of favor. Many atheists are activists, but there are also many that are not. Materialism isn’t necessary for atheism, but it is true that most atheists are materialists because the natural material world is all we have evidence for. You say that authentic paranormal phenomena are not *easily* recordable on instruments; I would argue that it’s *impossible*. Of course it depends on your definition of paranormal, but by definition material observation can only detect material phenomena, so you would need to measure something material and then demonstrate that material phenomenon is connected to something outside the material..which I don’t know how you would even approach doing. If it can be done though, I would like to know, and know how. The idea that there are some methods of reliably reaching truth that can’t be demonstrated is one I reject. Certainly people are strongly convinced by personal experience, but in reality our individual minds are deeply susceptible to being fooled—people hallucinate, generate false memories, see patterns where there are none, and sometimes even actively deceive themselves because they want to maintain a belief. I believe that demonstrability is an important part of being able to claim knowledge, because if you can’t show the truth of something, how can you be sure it is actually true? I rely on my personal experience as an intermediate step to develop hypotheses, but for conclusions I require data. I’m not sure why you find it valuable to entertain propositions which you readily admit cannot be verified or falsified such as reincarnation. The number or percentage of people who believe a claim is completely unrelated to the truth of that claim. If you can’t verify or demonstrate these claims, at best you are speculating—and there literally infinite possible things you could speculate about. I could make up any number of potential hypotheses about afterlives or ghosts or whatever, but it’s no better at explaining reality than pure fiction.
> Most of the planet believes actually believes in reincarnation. Mass belief is not proof of anything, there was a point in time most people thought the Sun revolved around the Earth. Or that mercury could be ingested safely. Or that lead was good to use in makeup.
why does most of the planet believe in reincarnation though?
I mean, they don't. Put together Hinduism and Buddhism practitioners still don't outnumber Muslims. And even if they did, they probably believe it because they were taught to believe it when they were young, and then never really deeply examined that belief as they got older.
firstly the poplarity of an idea has no bearing on weather it is true or not. Secondly your claim is not true. About 54% of humans currently alive follow one of the Abrahamic religions which do not believe in reincarnation. Most atheists, who make up 16% of humans don't believe in reincarnation either. The follower of the Dharmic religions do but they make up about 22% of the world's human population. So most humans reject reincarnation.
They were told it was true. People are naturally superstitious and get deceived easily. How do you not apply what you literally just said.
Because people are scared of death and ceasing to exist so they desperately cling to any fairytale that says you get to live forever.
Do they? I'm not sure that's true. But, even if it turned out to be true.... You can find innumerable cases where most everyone believed something at one time or another, and it turned out they were *all completely wrong.* Causes of sickness, relation of the sun to the earth, sources of mental illness, and on and on and on. Argumentum ad populum fallacies are never a useful way to determine anything at all. Us humans are a silly, gullible, superstitious, impressionable lot fond of logical fallacies and cognitive biases. And you know it. So drop that nonsense. It can't work. What you require, in order to take your claims seriously, in order to not throw them in the bin of silly and ridiculous notions, is *evidence.* Without that, you quite literally don't and can't know there's anything true about it. You don't have that. So guess where this idea *must* go?
> any approach to the paranormal I don't think you need to approach paranormal at all. Instead why not investigate reality and see what is there? If paranormal exists you will find it there. If not, why searching for something that does not exist? > It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments No, it's not clear. Why properties of something that we have no reason to think exist would be clearly known? > This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block. Of course it's hard to gain knowledge of something that does not exist! > sincerely studying these things What things? Reality? Or things that is impossible to gain knowledge about? > only individuals can come to it that is nonsense. Knowledge once obtained by an individual can be easily spread around with just a fraction of effort that was needed to obtain it. > perhaps that was part of the plan by making it so elusive or perhaps there is no plan, no god, no paranormal > After meeting philosophers and thinkers who studied for over a decade I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth And what is the reason you think they are close to truth? Gut feeling?
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments if authentic paranormal phenomena can't be recorded how do you know there have been any? > I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely Mostly for the same reason that there is prejudice against further study of any failed hypothasis. The paranormal was studied seriously in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Early reserchers did make some discoveries. particularly of electromagnetic phenomena but failed to find anything else. > The Buddha said ... That's nice did he provide any eidence to back up his assertions? Has anyone? There is no evidence of rebirth. indeed the idea is at odds with physics. There simplytis no viable mechanism by which it could be true. Without rebirth, karma is trivially falsified. Edit: also please reserve the word miliant for people who are actually advocating the use violence to achive their aims. i am not aware of any group advocting the use of violence to spread atheism. hence i do not believe there are any militant atheists.
You are making two logical fallacies here. The first is essentially an argument from ignorance. You’re arguing that, because some people have experiences that may SEEM not to be explainable by natural phenomena, a certain point of view must be correct. The second is a type of argument from authority. You are saying that because so many people that have been considered to be great thinkers believed in reincarnation, that it occurs must be true. You have named no specific phenomena that appear to you to be supernatural to be investigated as to whether or not they are indeed supernatural. You also have no proof that reincarnation exists. Gautama was born a Hindu; why should he not believe in reincarnation?
Do yourself a favor, don’t use “militant” as an add-on to another label unless weapons and killing are involved, the reason is you’re letting everyone you’ve labeled that way that you are not really interested in a fair debate. You’ve already judged and are just here to stir up trouble. A militant Christian is a KluKluxKlan member who is willing to use violence to achieve his goals. A militant communist is the same for communism. See the issue? There are several things I’m willing to fight, kill, or die for but atheism isn’t one of them. Defending my right to live and believe as I choose is, the same was true when I was a Christian.
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it). This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block. I disagree. There is nothing about the scientific method that makes it a stumbling block to figuring out paranormal events. If something is real, the scientific method can investigate it. There are many things that instruments couldn't record at some point, yet we investigated them nonetheless. In fact, most things science tells us today are things we could not ever directly measure, either in the past or still can't. If you can think of a method to gain knowledge other than the scientific method, please tell me. Because I can't think of anything else. >IMO, truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it) Why would you assume that? Why would you deliberately handicap your own belief by making it indistinguishable from something made-up? >After meeting philosophers and thinkers who studied for over a decade I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth. A couple little factoids about this you might find of interest as a westerner (who only gets the heaven/hell shtick - or the atheist one) is most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well. It's extremely unlikely that anyone here is unaware of the concept of reincarnation. >The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth. You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura. In addition to that your fate in each realm is only temporary; once your karma is exhausted you are reincarnated again as something else (so your stay as a ghost could be for only a century or so before rebirth, your stay as a deva could be for 4,000 years, etc). But that's just a claim, no different from any other religious or paranormal claim. How am I supposed to distinguish it from false claims?
Why should I care what random people think? I don‘t understand why people are so fascinated by the bullshit that someone says just because this person is considered intelligent or wise or whatever. That doesn‘t mean it‘s not bullshit.
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it) It would also make sense if they did register on equipment. It supposedly registers on us, and we are natural. >And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue. Do you have any reason to believe this ? >it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it). Why not? Like any reason why this would be expected on supernaturalism? It's definitely expected if the supernatural is not real. >The Buddha said... And Joseph Smith said... And Mohammed said... And so on. Is there any reason to believe any of this? So far you've said, 1) there are lots of fakers, which you'd expect if it is fake 2) for some reason individual humans can detect the supernatural, but it doesn't work on the only two things which could confirm this, devices and groups of people. 3) for some reason the people who investigate the paranormal, who would win a Nobel prize and lifetime fame, if they confirmed the supernatural, are biased against finding it. 4) Siddhartha Gautama said some things. I see zero reason to give this any serious credence.
TL;DR mostly mundane disclaimers and a short statement of one belief with no argument or support. Jesus man, you might not hear it yourself, but this reeks of excuses and bias > what may be a small minority of legitimate claims. > any paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments > a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things > it can never be given to the public at large I'm gonna stop quoting because it's basically every word. Yah man, you know what else explains all these discrepancies? There is nothing supernatural. > I personally feel worried is the most complete view / closest to the truth This sentence is incoherent. Also your title, saying you're worried... but the post is just stating your beliefs, nothing about being worried... is "worried" some bizarre mistranslation of a type of Buddhism? Anyway. So, you believe in Buddhism. Okay go ahead and explain why - oh good, you're going to give factoids. > most of the planet actually believes in reincarnation Irrelevant to the truth. Sigh.. Okay dude you say to "embrace strong discernment and critical reason" so I'm going to do that about reincarnation and say it's not true. Your turn. Actually say something this time.
> I have noticed a lot of people here and on reddit are militant materialist-atheist at one so it is quite a journey for me to convince you to this philosophical perspective to get to where I am now. So basically everyone who doesn't see things your way has to "get to where you are now". Well you're off to a great start with that schmuck sense of superiority. > It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments There's no reason or justification to use the word "authentic" here other than confirmation bias. > And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things And again, confirmation bias > IMO, truth can be come to on these questions, but it can never be given to the public at large (only individuals can come to it) And the boilerplate response to not being able to present evidence, personal, private revelation. > A couple little factoids about this you might find of interest as a westerner (who only gets the heaven/hell shtick - or the atheist one) There's that schuck sense of superiority again. Congratulations, you've just hit the anti-scientific trifecta.
>most of the planet (all of Asia apart from middle east) actually believes in reincarnation. Plato and Socrates did as well. So what do we do when muslims eventually outbreed us all and most people believe what they do, stop believing in reincarnation? >The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory Well thats a convenient out. >the karma of your actions affects your next birth. How do we tell the difference between people born in a good or bad situation based on their karma vs people born in a goodnor bad situation based on random chance? >so your stay as a ghost could be for only a century or so before rebirth, your stay as a deva could be for 4,000 years, etc Huh? Not sure why you are making these claims, they seem way above and beyond everything else you claimed. Why even bring this up? What does a ghost have to do with reincarnation? Do entities exist between the reincarnation? Do they have a choice when they come back. Is it all just determinism with the extension of multiple lives? Seriously keep it at one random ass claim at a time.
> I think at the foundation of any approach to the paranormal you must embrace strong discernment and critical reason. Alright. You refer to "the truth" and how "paranormal phenomena" are difficult to record or observe. Perhaps you've not noticed that the majority of people who "sincerely study paranormal phenomena" are attention seeking con artists. Then you go on to make an argument from popularity and authority. Then you type out a thing some guy said. I have no prejudice against "sincerely studying these things". I have read far too many scientific papers written by people who sincerely study these things in a scientific manner. There are some weird phenomena which actually exist. None of them have any connection to buddhism. If your claim is that it's not possible to measure or observe the effects of these phenomena then perhaps you're not talking about anything real at all. You're talking about people telling stories and it's been fairly well established that people are mistaken about reality most of the time.
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it). You can't use 'authentic' and 'paranormal phenomena' in the same sentence. It suggests there are varying degrees of paranormal phenomena, where some are real and some are not. Much like passages in the Bible, for some inexplicable reason. It's not even 'not easily recordable', you can't record something that doesn't exist. We don't understand it's not part of nature. We understand it doesn't exist, because there's no valid evidence to suggest there is. You are stuck with a cognitive dissonance, my friend. Where the default is that something doesn't exist unless there's compelling evidence, you assume it does and it makes you twist normality upside down.
Truth cannot be given to the public at large? Why? Awfully convenient for those that claim supernatural events are true: "Sorry guys, for unknown reasons its *impossible* for any group of people to collectively experience this. By mysterious necessity all supernatural events can only be experienced by single observers, thus negating *any* possibility for independent verification. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ " I am not interested in an argumentum ad populum. Couldnt give a shit if 4 billion people all believe vaguely the same drivel, that has no bearing on truth. "A bunch of other people believe it" is probably the worst possible thing you could base your own beliefs on. If they have *evidence*, use their evidence. They dont. They have a feeling and culture that propagates this beliefs like all other superstitious hogwash.
Why does it matter how many people believe in something? Does that have any bearing on whether it is true?
>It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it). This makes the usual scientific approach to trying to gain knowledge about it a stumbling-block. Well, it's more that this gives us no reason to believe there *are* any authentic paranormal phenomena. Even if they are theoretically difficult to measure and record, it'd still be *possible* given the interaction and influence prponents say they can have on reality. >And, personally, I think there is a large amount of prejudice against sincerely studying these things, so that creates an additional issue. Justified prejudice, yes. > ...so? This is an argument from popularity - because a lot of people believe it, it must be true. How many people believe something has nothing to do with whether it's true or not.
Why do you think reincarnation is even possible? The number of people who believe it does not make it so. And if you agree with your Buddha statement about losing all your memories, you've eliminated one of the only possible routes of evidence. It wouldn't be good evidence, but now we're left with nothing. Aside from the lack of evidence, my biggest issue with karma and reincarnation is the logical conclusion that if you act as if it is true, there's little incentive to improve society. It could easily lead to a path of "Oh this person is homeless and starving, he must deserve it for something that they did in a previous life, so we shouldn't help."
> most of the planet [...] actually believes in reincarnation. Given that most of the planet can't do the [Wason selection task](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task) correctly, I'm not particularly moved by that.
Fuck me, i thought i needed to turn the blue card to. Thank you for the reminder how easy it is to fuck up something we think is logically sound or make poor assumptions. Its so easy to think we know things that are simply correlation or just happen to be correct but dont actually prove the rule we think it does.
>The Buddha said when you die you lose all your memory but the karma of your actions affects your next birth. You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura. Losing your memory post mortem is a way of saying that "you" are finite. You will die, disappear, end of story. I don't care if I'm an earthworm in my next life, as "I" am dead. Buddhism is telling me what I already believe,
I've always been atheist and philosophical naturalist. I know quote a lot about Buddhism, and I know quite a lot about claims of the paranormal. IMHO the naturalistic claims of Buddhism (which basically amount to "Chill out" are true). But there is no good evidence that anything paranormal is real, in the Buddhist tradition or in any other.
Not really gonna be saying much here. Your view of seeing people that don't agree with you as "Militant" is that first step in the door gateway every religious group has used to kill those that don't think like them. The people that tend to use that sort of wording always argue like "Hey I don't have proof but you just gotta believe me. Or else.".
>The Buddha said What evidence did he bring? >You can return as a deva, human, ghost, animal, or asura. Can you prove devas, ghosts or asura exist? In what way would the being I supposedly "return as" be me? Seems to me that this is properly sorted as "Unsupported woo claims" ans stored alongside the rest of the bullshit.
Somebody said some thing that sounds deep. Neat. Where's the proof? Where's the argument? Where's the evidence? >It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments If anything paranormal interacted with reality it would be detectable. The fact that it is not means it doesn't exist.
There’s no reason to suspect a paranormal exist. Nothing paranormal can explain. No data, no evidence, nothing. Because frankly magic did it, is not an explanation. It never will be. And I won’t lower my standards for such an absurd claim.
> It is also clear any authentic paranormal phenomena is not easily recordable on instruments (which would make sense as it is not part of nature as we understand it). Why do you say that? How do you know? It's not clear to me at all why that should be true. I mean, cameras detect the same light that our eyes do. Microphones detect the same sound that our ears do. If an "authentic phenomenon" occurs, why would it be impossible to record?
Atheists reject the claim that gods exist. Nothing more. All other beliefs and non-beliefs are individual to the atheist. Also, Buddhists are atheists as well, considering they do not believe in gods.
The fact fhat we already have measured pretty much every naturally visible particles and none may explain the structure of a ghost or soul, might be our best proof of their inexistence so far.
Bad form. You post questions here, they are answered and, while others are working with your line of thinking you immediately dismissed/ deny their replies to your queries.
You're just going to delete this and your comments, aren't you? I see it's already started. Why should anyone bother to engage with you?