What do you all think about reincarnation?

[Joshpantera]

15 hours ago, LogicalFallacy said:

 

Reading the results of the intercessory prayer one. They seem to think prayer actually works. Does it work in reverse then? Can you pray that someone will get worse and they do? I'd be interested in a study on that... of course there are some serious ethical implications.

 

Also does it have to be believers saying the prayers?

 

What is the mechanism that's working, if indeed the difference in the groups is not simply noise?

That’s black magick. Whether for good or bad, it’s the act of acting trying to affect someone else against their own will or without their knowledge and consent. It could be argued that it’s unethical either way, whether praying for or against someone’s betterment from a magical perspective. 

[Joshpantera]

On 3/18/2020 at 8:19 AM, TheRedneckProfessor said:

How do we know this, given that we perceive everything through senses which are quite obviously flawed; and therefore, by extension, our perception is also flawed?   We know our consciousness exists, because we are aware of it; but can we be sure that said awareness is physically tied to a physical brain?  Can I be sure that "I" am not just a collection of random ganglia in a specimen jar somewhere being occasionally stimulated by electrodes?

This is a big problem in general. I don’t know anyone that has certainty that being a brain in a vat or plugged into a matrix is impossible. 

The whole of existence around them being a simulation. Sub atomic and atomic particles building block factors of the simulation or program. For all we know, any of these could be the case. 
 

I tend to take the agnostic position very much across the board. I don’t think reincarnation is literal because it’s from people literalizing eastern mythology. Part of wishful thinking.

 

But what if some of these cases are actually true? It’s up to people to prove it if they want to claim it. And if any are true then it presents science with trying to figure how it fits into natural existence. Because if true, it’s by default a natural part of existence. Even if existence is a brain a vat or plugged into a matrix. 
 

I’m comfortable remaining agnostic on after life claims even though I think it’s far fetched from an analytical stand point. I don’t close the door completely. But I am very skeptical because there’s so much to be skeptical of in terms of wishful thinking and agendas behind the claims....

 

 

 

[Joshpantera]

6 hours ago, LeiaBryant said:

I got similar such personal information given to me, I am convinced but it won't change anyone else's mind. I need something that can convince others besides just myself.

Why do you need to convince others? Is it necessary that you change anyone else’s mind? If so, why? 
 

When we were Christians, we had this pending notion of a great commission. We were to change minds, proselytize, win converts, etc., etc. 

 

But why does any mystic or esoteric feel the need to do the same? Maybe left over habits from Christianity? Why not let old habits die? 
 

In the end the only thing that matters is what you think. If you think trying to convince people of unprovable assertions is worth doing, then you’ll do it. All of the down falls associated with trying to do that will apply. 
 

But if you back off from it, the downfalls all vanish just like that. Because you’re no longer someone trying to prove something. 
 

This goes for reincarnation, magick, and all of it. If you’re not claiming it’s all true then you have no claims to defend. And nothing to prove to anyone. 
 

 

[midniterider]

6 minutes ago, Joshpantera said:

 

But what if some of these cases are actually true? It’s up to people to prove it if they want to claim it. And if any are true then it presents science with trying to figure how it fits into natural existence. Because if true, it’s by default a natural part of existence. 
 

 

 

People who want to believe these types of things most likely will. Others who dont want to believe these types of things most likely wont. Evidence is probably irrelevant. 

 

 

[midniterider]

22 minutes ago, Joshpantera said:

Why do you need to convince overs? Is it necessary that you change anyone else’s mind? If so, why? 
 

When we were Christians, we had this pending notion of a great commission. We were to change minds, proselytize, win converts, etc., etc. 

 

But why does any mystic or esoteric feel the need to do the same? Maybe left over habits from Christianity? Why not let old habits die? 
 

In the end the only thing that matters is what you think. If you think trying to convince people of unprovable assertions is worth doing, then you’ll do it. All of the down falls associated with trying to do that will apply. 
 

But if you back off from it, the downfalls all vanish just like that. Because you’re no longer someone trying to prove something. 
 

This goes for reincarnation, magick, and all of it. If you’re not claiming it’s all true then you have no claims to defend. And nothing to prove to anyone. 
 

 

 

Probably best to just quietly enjoy your own beliefs with those who share a common interest. 

[LogicalFallacy]

4 hours ago, midniterider said:

 

People who want to believe these types of things most likely will. Others who dont want to believe these types of things most likely wont. Evidence is probably irrelevant. 

 

 

Sure - for the two extreme cases you mention your statement is true. If you want to believe the earth is flat evidence won't help, and if you don't want to believe vaccines prevent deaths, again the evidence won't help.

 

However, most people fall somewhere in the middle where sufficient evidence will convince them of a particular claim.

 

The bit about "Others who don't want to believe these types of things" simply sounds like a Christian telling us that we just don't want to believe. Sure, I think there are people that simply do not want to believe, but for most people it's not a case of what we want, it's what we are convinced of, or in this case not convinced.

 

Sure, for me, there is a lot of convincing to do - suggesting that the living can communicate with the dead invalidates some fundamentals of my worldview and presuppositions so I'm not going to throw away a foundation which rests on a lot of scientific evidence about the way our reality works because someone claims some mojo. People been claiming that stuff for millennia.

 

But that's not the same as saying I'm close minded or "don't want to believe". I'm just saying in order to convince me you'd better have some damn good evidentiary support.

 

I agree with your last posts about enjoying your own belief's etc, however, exposing yourself to other trains of thought I think are also important. That is why I do engage in these conversations, read the articles you provide, and ask questions like how do we know what we think we know?

[LeiaBryant]

On 3/19/2020 at 2:30 PM, Joshpantera said:

Why do you need to convince others? Is it necessary that you change anyone else’s mind? If so, why? 
 

When we were Christians, we had this pending notion of a great commission. We were to change minds, proselytize, win converts, etc., etc. 

 

But why does any mystic or esoteric feel the need to do the same? Maybe left over habits from Christianity? Why not let old habits die? 
 

In the end the only thing that matters is what you think. If you think trying to convince people of unprovable assertions is worth doing, then you’ll do it. All of the down falls associated with trying to do that will apply. 
 

But if you back off from it, the downfalls all vanish just like that. Because you’re no longer someone trying to prove something. 
 

This goes for reincarnation, magick, and all of it. If you’re not claiming it’s all true then you have no claims to defend. And nothing to prove to anyone. 
 

 

I may not have a great commission from my faith but as a feminist I seek to empower women and share what the Goddess has done in my life. My feminism is the main reason why I try to share my beliefs . And yes old habits die hard. Why is this a bad habit?

[midniterider]

21 hours ago, LogicalFallacy said:

 

I agree with your last posts about enjoying your own belief's etc, however, exposing yourself to other trains of thought I think are also important. That is why I do engage in these conversations, read the articles you provide, and ask questions like how do we know what we think we know?

 

Well, I cant really ask for any more than that. Otherwise I'm overstepping boundaries. I'm usually pushing boundary limits when these topics come up and should probably just chill. 

 

Now if I adopt a non-dual attitude...there's nobody to debate with ...except my Self. Problem solved.  /s

[Joshpantera]

On 3/20/2020 at 3:20 PM, LeiaBryant said:

I may not have a great commission from my faith but as a feminist I seek to empower women and share what the Goddess has done in my life. My feminism is the main reason why I try to share my beliefs . And yes old habits die hard. Why is this a bad habit?

 

You can just put it all into perspective. Feminism doesn't depend on theism, first of all. So that's a good reason to just leave it alone as a personal belief and not bother trying prove anything or convince anyone of a theistic claim. The other way is an up hill battle that you can't win by any conventional means. So you're just unnecessarily banging your head against a wall while trying to argue with people about it or trying to prove it. 

 

You could focus on feminism as a political movement with nothing to do with theistic claims, for instance. 

 

 

[LeiaBryant]

4 hours ago, Joshpantera said:

 

You can just put it all into perspective. Feminism doesn't depend on theism, first of all. So that's a good reason to just leave it alone as a personal belief and not bother trying prove anything or convince anyone of a theistic claim. The other way is an up hill battle that you can't win by any conventional means. So you're just unnecessarily banging your head against a wall while trying to argue with people about it or trying to prove it. 

 

You could focus on feminism as a political movement with nothing to do with theistic claims, for instance. 

 

 

If I focus on the political aspects of feminism,I would ignore the reason I became a feminist in the first place which is to fight against patriarchal religions. How can I hope to destroy things like the NIFB without confronting it spiritually?

[Joshpantera]

2 hours ago, LeiaBryant said:

If I focus on the political aspects of feminism,I would ignore the reason I became a feminist in the first place which is to fight against patriarchal religions. How can I hope to destroy things like the NIFB without confronting it spiritually?

 

I'm not sure how possible destroying the NIFB is, realistically. Can you honestly hope to destroy them by any means? I'm just warning against uphill battles. I know that myself and a lot of other people around here came out of christianity with a lot of fight and piss and vinegar. I wanted to take down the SDA organization. It's false, evidently and blatantly false. It shouldn't be able to continue preying on innocent people. But it does. And so does the NIFB. 

 

How does anyone hope to destroy either of these corrupt organizations? By what methods? 

 

I just watch as the numbers for christianity continue to wane and decrease under the weight of it's own shortcomings. People have more and more opportunity to research and think for themselves these days. And more and more seem to be doing that, one person at a time. In their own time and by their own ways. The SDA's are losing members and losing next generations. It's becoming less significant. These groups are on the road to 'self destruction' over time, as I see it. 

[florduh]

1 hour ago, Joshpantera said:

I'm not sure how possible destroying the NIFB is, realistically.

Religions change from within, if they change at all. A focus that's too narrow sees very little.

[LeiaBryant]

2 hours ago, Joshpantera said:

 

I'm not sure how possible destroying the NIFB is, realistically. Can you honestly hope to destroy them by any means? I'm just warning against uphill battles. I know that myself and a lot of other people around here came out of christianity with a lot of fight and piss and vinegar. I wanted to take down the SDA organization. It's false, evidently and blatantly false. It shouldn't be able to continue preying on innocent people. But it does. And so does the NIFB. 

 

How does anyone hope to destroy either of these corrupt organizations? By what methods? 

 

I just watch as the numbers for christianity continue to wane and decrease under the weight of it's own shortcomings. People have more and more opportunity to research and think for themselves these days. And more and more seem to be doing that, one person at a time. In their own time and by their own ways. The SDA's are losing members and losing next generations. It's becoming less significant. These groups are on the road to 'self destruction' over time, as I see it. 

My goals are 1.to make the NIFB's doctrine and practice public knowledge 2. Turn other more moderate Christians against them. 3.to convince large chunks of the general public that they are every bit as awful as Jim Jones or Heaven's Gate. Which they are in my opinion. 4. To isolate individual member in a crisis of faith and draw them out of the cult 5. To proprgate doubt in the religion's women. 6. To assist women escaping patriarchal abuse 7. To assist escaped women in gaining custody of their children.( They use women as baby factories to grow their size rapidly) 8. By targeting women with my message to create a demographic imbalance in the organization which will lead to long term collapse.  

[LeiaBryant]

1 hour ago, florduh said:

Religions change from within, if they change at all. A focus that's too narrow sees very little.

Large religions need to be changed from within but smaller cults can be crushed from external pressure before they matastize out of control.

[Joshpantera]

3 hours ago, LeiaBryant said:

My goals are 1.to make the NIFB's doctrine and practice public knowledge 2. Turn other more moderate Christians against them. 3.to convince large chunks of the general public that they are every bit as awful as Jim Jones or Heaven's Gate. Which they are in my opinion. 4. To isolate individual member in a crisis of faith and draw them out of the cult 5. To proprgate doubt in the religion's women. 6. To assist women escaping patriarchal abuse 7. To assist escaped women in gaining custody of their children.( They use women as baby factories to grow their size rapidly) 8. By targeting women with my message to create a demographic imbalance in the organization which will lead to long term collapse.  

 

Now that's a lot of piss and vinegar!

 

I admire the passion behind wanting to take down religious corruption. Let me ask you another question. Are you planning on using witchcraft against the NIFB? To assist in accomplishing these goals? 

[LeiaBryant]

1 hour ago, Joshpantera said:

 

Now that's a lot of piss and vinegar!

 

I admire the passion behind wanting to take down religious corruption. Let me ask you another question. Are you planning on using witchcraft against the NIFB? To assist in accomplishing these goals? 

Yes and yes. The rede says "as ye harm none,do as ye will" no harm is done by exposing the truth,and yes I know the three fold rule will probably cause my own secrets to be exposed. That's a price I am willing to pay.

[LeiaBryant]

Remember everyone for evil to triumph good people must do nothing. I sure as FUCK am going to do something. At a certain point any cult can become so destructive to a community that it must be confronted. So to reiterate my last post I am going to us witchcraft to destroy the NIFB!

[Joshpantera]

6 hours ago, LeiaBryant said:

Remember everyone for evil to triumph good people must do nothing. I sure as FUCK am going to do something. At a certain point any cult can become so destructive to a community that it must be confronted. So to reiterate my last post I am going to us witchcraft to destroy the NIFB!

 

Then I guess it's a matter of seeing how effective it is and whether or not the strategy will work. If it does work, and whether or not that would be coincidence or not, if some cult goes down I'll count it as a win / win for the sake of humanity regardless. 

[Wertbag]

I think the one the highlights my scepticism is the "Sensing Murder" series of reality TV shows.  Filmed in a dozen different countries, with many of those countries having 10+ seasons, using numerous psychics per episode and changing them between seasons, and with every episode investigating a couple of different murders.  With a test sample of that size, over that long and given them all the best support to achieve what they claim is possible, there has still been no murders solved, no bodies or murder weapons found and nothing of use provided.

But even after years and years of complete failure, the shows are still popular with the psychics reportedly earning $5k per episode. 

[midniterider]

On 4/6/2020 at 4:04 AM, Wertbag said:

I think the one the highlights my scepticism is the "Sensing Murder" series of reality TV shows.  Filmed in a dozen different countries, with many of those countries having 10+ seasons, using numerous psychics per episode and changing them between seasons, and with every episode investigating a couple of different murders.  With a test sample of that size, over that long and given them all the best support to achieve what they claim is possible, there has still been no murders solved, no bodies or murder weapons found and nothing of use provided.

But even after years and years of complete failure, the shows are still popular with the psychics reportedly earning $5k per episode. 

 

How many episodes have you watched?

[Wertbag]

13 hours ago, midniterider said:

How many episodes have you watched?

Only a handful, why? Are you a fan? 

[LogicalFallacy]

32 minutes ago, Wertbag said:

Only a handful, why? Are you a fan? 

 

You clearly haven't watched enough to make a proper judgement. You need to watch them all before you can say the hokey pokey sensing thing doesn't work   

 

/S

[midniterider]

9 hours ago, Wertbag said:

Only a handful, why? Are you a fan? 

 

I just wanted to say "If you were a 'true' skeptic like LF, you wouldnt watch any of that show at all!!!" (haha. just messing with ya...and LF)

 

....

 

My daughter and I used to watch those ghost investigation type shows on tv. People slinking around an empty house then suddenly screaming and running for no apparent on-camera reason. It cracked me up. I think people probably have the ability to set themselves up to be scared by any random noise or feeling.  Fun to watch though. 

 

[ZenPaladin]

On 3/16/2020 at 3:50 AM, TheRedneckProfessor said:

On a serious note, though: I have no compelling reason to believe that there is anything more than this life, so I aim to live this one life I have to the best of my ability.

Honestly I live my life the same regardless speaking as someone who's more agnostic leaning. Even if we could find signs of "something" beyond this life, you never know how things would turn out, so there's not much to gain in hedging your bets even then. Plus really, what functional difference is there between cessation of existence and being reborn as something else with no memory of your past life?

[ZenPaladin]

On 3/16/2020 at 8:07 PM, LogicalFallacy said:

 

To quote from the Lion King "When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass, so we are all connected in the great circle of life"

 

All research to this points indicates that our consciousness is directly tied to our physical brains, and is affected by what happens to the brain. Thus a person can 'change' after some injury or accident depending on what areas of the brain are damaged. In one case a person ended up with effectively two separate consciousnesses in which they would answer questions differently. And upon death the brain dies and thus any consciousness associated with it is destroyed. There has been no evidence presented to show that a persons consciousness survives death.

 

I think reincarnation is just wishful thinking on the part of a species that can imagine what it's like to not be conscious and be afraid of that. Therefore I think that upon death, my consciousness, the part of me that is "I" is extinguished.

 

However my atoms will carry on and will be incorporated into other things for a time... a long time by the looks of things, so there's that.   

As someone more agnostic towards these things, I will say that personally I don't see much difference between "my consciousness ceases upon death" and "my consciousness goes to another physical form with no recollection of my past life". Obviously this varies, but if I was a caterpillar or Joseph Stalin in a past life I sure don't remember it, so either way who I was is effectively gone.