Does anyone disbelieve in God but believe in the Spiritual Realm?

[2-0-Sixx]

I myself am an atheist and do not believe in any form of spiritual or supernatural phenomena.

If any of you can prove it, you can make your selves rich.

BTW, my $1,000 is nothing compared to the One Million dollar prize awaiting any man or woman that can provide evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event.

And yes it's real, located here http://www.randi.org/research/index.html

After collecting the million dollars from Randi, successors should go to India and contact B. Premanand who will pay 100,000 "to any person or persons who will demonstrate any psychic, supernatural of paranormal ability of any kind under satisfactory observing conditions." Also, "Prabir Ghosh will pay 200,000 to anyone who claims to possess supernatural power of any kind and proves the same without resorting to any trick in the location specified by Prabir Ghosh."

The Australian Skeptics offer $100,000 (Australian), $80,000 for the psychic and $20,000 for anyone "who nominates a person who successfully completes the Australian Skeptics Challenge." If you nominate yourself, and are successful, you get the whole hundred grand.

The Association for Skeptical Inquiry (ASKE), a U.K. skeptic organization, offers £12,000 for proof of psychic powers.

The Tampa Bay Skeptics offer $1,000 to anyone able to demonstrate any paranormal phenomenon under mutually agreed-upon observing conditions.

And finally the North Texas Skeptics offer $12,000 to any person who can demonstrate any psychic or paranormal power or ability under scientifically valid observing conditions.

 

[ThaG]

Read this again.

Our research has led us to conclude that hallucination is probably not too strong a term for the experiences associated with sleep paralysis. We take our definition of hallucination from Slade & Bentall (1988). A hallucination is an experience of perception in the absence of an appropriate stimulus, but which has the impact of a conventional perception and is not under the control of the experient. A hallucination has the quality of being a sensation related to external event rather than merely a product of the imagination. It does not seem to be merely an idea. It has the quality of objectivity, that is, something beyond the willing and wishing of the experient. The "object" of the hallucination" is taken to exist independently of the will of the experient. The experience is, in principle, a publicly available phenomenon. The hallucinator should also believe that any appropriately situated person should be able to confirm these experiences. These qualities of sensation, objectivity, existence, and independence, are among the defining qualities of hallucinations (Aggernaes, 1972).

There are probably several degrees of a hallucinatory experience, as distinct from illusions and normal or conventional sensations. A "full-blown" hallucination seems like a real experience and is believed to be a real experience. One might say the individual is both hallucinating and is deluded by the hallucination in to accepting it as a real experience. A hallucination proper may be said to have occurred if the sensation seems quite authentic even if the experient judges the experience to be, for some reason, suspect. It seems re�����������������������������������������������������������������������������al but there is also something counterfeit about the experience. A pseudo-hallucination also has this counterfeit quality but it also lacks the fullness of a conventional sensation. It has an ethereal, "as-if" quality, lacking the richness of a true sensation. An illusion is simply a misinterpretation of a conventional stimulus.
Sleep paralysis related experiences appear to range from what might be best termed fleeting illusions to true hallucinations. The distinction between illusions and hallucinations is one of long standing harking back at least to Esquirol (1832). Most of the experiences associated with sleep paralysis appear to be hallucinations and quasi-hallucinations (e.g., Slade & Bentall, 1988). People experiencing HHEs are sometimes convinced of their reality but are often able to take a more critical sense, at the same time. This appears to be more common after people have read something about SP and HHEs and come to believe that the experiences are of a hallucinatory nature. Often however, there is no loss of intensity or vividness of the experience. The knowledge or belief that the experience is illusory reduces, for some, the terror of the experiences but appears to have relatively little impact on the apparent reality of the experiences. The quasi-hallucinatory HHEs, though frequently vivid, often have an ethereal and insubstantial quality. These quasi-hallucinations probably best describe the large majority of sleep paralysis and range from vaguely disturbing to extremely terrifying. They usually also motivate a least some search for meaning. The HHEs of sleep paralysis would include misinterpretations of shadows and indistinct objects in a dark room. Finally there may be some people who experience full-blown hallucinations during sleep paralysis in which they not only have vivid and complex imaginative experiences but are also convinced that these experiences have objective external sources. Such people are unlikely to describe their experience as one of sleep paralysis but perhaps as one of demon possession or alien abduction.

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There are at least two major traditional hypotheses concerning the connection between neurophysiological events and visual imagery in dreams. The visual imagery of dreaming may arise either from the direct stimulation of visual areas of the cortex during the PGO spike, in which case the rapid eye movements may reflect attempts to scan the images (Ladd, 1892; Roffwarg, Dement, & Muzio, 1962), or conversely, the mages may be produced by the oculomotor impulses in response to direct stimulation from the gigantocellular pontine reticular field (Hobson & McCarley, 1977; McCarley & Hobson, 1979).


Sorry, ThaG, what was a hypothesis again? I forgot.

This is only ONE of many different types of supernatural experiences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience

Again, I don't see what's unscientific in this article??

You give me some old ass article, where they have references from 1892 (!!!) (but they still don't bring anything non-material into the explanation), and say this is proof not everything in our brain is material...

While the article mentions specific regions in the brain all the time...


Just so you know: we live in 2007, we have a HapMap and SNP-chips so we can do genetic screens we were never able to do before. Moreover, the NIH is making very detailed maps of gene expression in the brain so we can find a gene that is involved in some process by genetic screens and immediately see where it's expressed and how it influences brain function. Which is the reason why Eric Lander and the Broad Institute got 100 millions to find out which genes are responsible for the major psychiatric conditions

10 years from now we'll know these genes and we'll be beginning to really understand human behaviour on the molecular level

There will be a time when I'll be able to tell you "This and this dreams and hallucinations (or whatever else conditions you have) are caused by polymorphisms in this and this gene that cause inappropriate activation of certain neurons"

What are you going to tell me then?

You're going to come with the same old "You don't know everything" argument

Yeah, but I will know everything or at least enough to be able to fully explain the phenomena observed....

What are you going to do? Your beautiful supernatural world will just fall apart. My advice is to start preparing for that moment...

 

[taetae]

NOOOOOO!!!!!!!

 

[taetae]

What is your definition of "real" or "believe"?

I'm not sure,

Trying to find out, that's why I made this thread; to query the other minds on here.

I do believe that although dreams, drugs, sensory deprivation, meditation, schizophrenia, effects of art and music, love, and psychosomatic experiences cannot be objectively studied, they are indeed real experiences, not necessarily based on some "disorder" or physiological function.

 

[ThaG]

for the 100th time:

if you claim some brain function is not based on signaling molecules and electrochemical gradients, you have to explain what it is based on

which you just can't do

because otherwise you are not explaining anything

you just say "There is something non-physiological" because you want it to be so but you have to prove it first

 

[n9newunsixx5150]

And for those of you who do believe in God, do you believe in God because of experiences in the Spiritual Realm, or was your belief in God reinforced based on your experiences? Have you ever entered the Spiritual Realm? How?

Define "spiritual".

 

[taetae]

interacting with other entities or energies that are not perceptible in ordinary consciousness.

 

[n9newunsixx5150]

interacting with other entities or energies that are not perceptible in ordinary consciousness.

So if you were writing the dictionary entry, you would put:

Spiritual: interacting with other entities or energies that are not perceptible in ordinary consciousness.


That obviously makes no sense. I would like you to define the word "spiritual" itself, not what you think constitutes a spiritual experience.

I can also ask what is "ordinary" consciousness.

 

[taetae]

spir·it·u·al /ˈspɪrɪtʃuəl/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[spir-i-choo-uhl] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective
1. of, pertaining to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal.
2. of or pertaining to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature: a spiritual approach to life.
3. closely akin in interests, attitude, outlook, etc.: the professor's spiritual heir in linguistics.
4. of or pertaining to spirits or to spiritualists; supernatural or spiritualistic.
5. characterized by or suggesting predominance of the spirit; ethereal or delicately refined: She is more of a spiritual type than her rowdy brother.
6. of or pertaining to the spirit as the seat of the moral or religious nature.
7. of or pertaining to sacred things or matters; religious; devotional; sacred.
8. of or belonging to the church; ecclesiastical: lords spiritual and temporal.
9. of or relating to the mind or intellect.
–noun
10. a spiritual or religious song: authentic folk spirituals.
11. spirituals, affairs of the church.
12. a spiritual thing or matter.


in·cor·po·re·al /ˌɪnkɔrˈpɔriəl, -ˈpoʊr-/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[in-kawr-pawr-ee-uhl, -pohr-] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective
1. not corporeal or material; insubstantial.
2. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of nonmaterial beings.
3. Law. without material existence but existing in contemplation of law, as a franchise.



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Ordinary consciousness is awareness of the stimulus that we ordinarily receive; I think the experience I've had and what others have had is infrequent, rare, or "out of the ordinary".

I got some sand in your clams.

 

[taetae]

because otherwise you are not explaining anything

My role is not to explain anything. My role is to explore ideas. I don't presume to know anything. That is a big mistake and limits your learning ability.

 

[n9newunsixx5150]

Okay. Now choose a definition from that list.

 

[taetae]

1. of, pertaining to, or consisting of spirit; incorporeal.
2. of or pertaining to the spirit or soul, as distinguished from the physical nature: a spiritual
4. of or pertaining to spirits or to spiritualists; supernatural or spiritualistic.approach to life.
12. a spiritual thing or matter.
1. not corporeal or material; insubstantial.
2. of, pertaining to, or characteristic of nonmaterial beings.
enjoy,

 

[n9newunsixx5150]

1) If you are going to rely on a definition of "spiritual" with the word "spirit" in it, then please define "spirit".

2) Try to find a positive definition rather than one that defines what something isn't. Spirit is not material. Okay, great. And chopsticks aren't am/fm radios.

 

[TROLL]

please define "spirit".

the consciousness of a former living being that no longer inhabits the physical body.

 

[taetae]

if you claim some brain function is not based on signaling molecules and electrochemical gradients, you have to explain what it is based on

Young toy,

Who said it was a "brain function"? No I do not have to explain what it is based on because I do not know what it is based on. I have the wisdom to accept the fact that I do not know, but I am attempting to make sense of these mysteries, unlike your dry nihilistic ass that can only believe something if it's in a textbook or in the majority accepted popular c=ulture.

 

[ThaG]

Young toy,

Who said it was a "brain function"? No I do not have to explain what it is based on because I do not know what it is based on. I have the wisdom to accept the fact that I do not know, but I am attempting to make sense of these mysteries, unlike your dry nihilistic ass that can only believe something if it's in a textbook or in the majority accepted popular c=ulture.

lol

I have passed the textbook stage long ago

primary literature contains much more information

anyway, the difference between me and you is that I believe things that have been experimentally verifed and I don't believe things that are supported by zero amount of evidence while you believe fairy tales

 

[taetae]

Brother,

I have BEEN THERE. I don't need someone else's findings to substantiate my beliefs. The difference between you and I is that I HAVE experimentally verified evidence, you don't.

I want you to drink ayahuasca and go talk to God about this one.

 

[ThaG]

Brother,

I have BEEN THERE. I don't need someone else's findings to substantiate my beliefs. The difference between you and I is that I HAVE experimentally verified evidence, you don't.

I want you to drink ayahuasca and go talk to God about this one.

What is the evidence you have?

I'm curious

 

[taetae]

I have several photographs to prove it

I also have some magic rocks I obtained when I was there.

Sorry about the image quality, it was really hard to keep my camera steady when I was flying about, like a fucking butterfly!

 

[ThaG]

I have several photographs to prove it

I also have some magic rocks I obtained when I was there.

Sorry about the image quality, it was really hard to keep my camera steady when I was flying about, like a fucking butterfly!

I would check with a psychiatrist if I were you