Essentia Science of Consciousness Panel

To me, that freedom to choose, means that you have similar but different faiths.

Part of the reason I left Christianity was the whole fudgy way the Bible is handled.

That sort of logic chopping put me off all formal religions.

David

You don't have to stay within an organised religion to be 'Christian', surely.  And the bible is not the same as the New Testament.

I think it was pretty much that, Sci. Life after death is impossible (philosophically that is). That's why he styled his book Life after Life. Just as an aside, the subject of near death experience is turning into a circus.

Ah can you elaborate on that last bit, I am not as clued into what's happening on the NDE front.

Ah can you elaborate on that last bit, I am not as clued into what's happening on the NDE front.

No worries. The subject has attracted the inevitable attention of those drawn to sensationalism. All kinds of claims are being made by people coming forward with stories of how they've died and come back. But there doesn't seem to be much checking on the authenticity of the circumstances that led to their experience. Basically.

No worries. The subject has attracted the inevitable attention of those drawn to sensationalism. All kinds of claims are being made by people coming forward with stories of how they've died and come back. But there doesn't seem to be much checking on the authenticity of the circumstances that led to their experience. Basically.

Yeah this is always the issue for proponents. We have bad actors giving us reports for biased reasons, whether to promote their pre-existing beliefs or just make a quick buck.

OTOH if we dismiss it all we would have to ask why we don't similarly disregard other witness testimony across history.

For me materialism seems like utter nonsense, minds seem to be the only entities that can select the actual from the possible, plus just with Mathematics you have consider a different Eternal Reality...and just going from there it seems odd if every researcher was a terrible assessor of character & every experiencer was a liar.

Though as someone who as experiences I'd think of as at least potentially paranormal maybe the spiritual just seems more plausible than it would to someone who has never had those experiences.

Yeah this is always the issue for proponents. We have bad actors giving us reports for biased reasons, whether to promote their pre-existing beliefs or just make a quick buck.

OTOH if we dismiss it all we would have to ask why we don't similarly disregard other witness testimony across history.

For me materialism seems like utter nonsense, minds seem to be the only entities that can select the actual from the possible, plus just with Mathematics you have consider a different Eternal Reality...and just going from there it seems odd if every researcher was a terrible assessor of character & every experiencer was a liar.

Though as someone who as experiences I'd think of as at least potentially paranormal maybe the spiritual just seems more plausible than it would to someone who has never had those experiences.

I suppose it's the picture that some of them are 'painting' of the afterlife, whatever that is. I like the approach of being careful and as scientific as possible (which is extremely difficult with a subjective experience) about what people claim to have seen because there is lot at stake here as you allude to. 

It seems incomprehensible to me that there really are warring angels battling away in some celestial theatre, but who knows. Doesn't make much sense, but bible thumpers seem to like it.

Honestly maybe, I never could fully grasp what Moody was talking about as much as I appreciate his experiential work.

I saw him present on nonsense, in person, with Lisa Smartt when he was working on the Final Words Project.  Sci, it isn't deep.  When experiencing a transition from life, the context isn't there.  The a person's last expression may be part OBE, part NDE and mixed with organic feelings.  They study the words - not to get there common sense, but as a newbie talking about something entirely new.

  Later on, as a medical doctor and psychiatrist, I was intrigued by the enigmatic language spoken by terminally ill and dying patients. Like many other clinicians, I was inspired and mystified by curious figures of speech and nonsensical expressions that people often utter as they are dying.  A major rethinking of the meaning of puzzling language spoken by the terminally ill is long overdue. - R. Moody 

http://www.finalwordsproject.org/

I saw him present on nonsense, in person, with Lisa Smart when he was working on the Final Words Project.  Sci, it isn't deep.  When experiencing a transition from life, the context isn't there.  The a person's last expression may be part OBE, part NDE and mixed with organic feelings.  They study the words - not to get there common sense, but as a newbie talking about something entirely new.

http://www.finalwordsproject.org/

First, I have looked at the finalwords website several times over the years, but it seems impossible to browse the totality of what they have collected. Am I missing some gismo on the website that will get me to the bulk of the collection?

About Raymond Moody, I am a bit shocked that he has written his 'nonsense' book.

I don't think the topic of life after death needs an injection of ambiguity. I mean, when my time comes I expect to encounter some vast change of perspective, but if there is anything there at all, then there is a continuity of consciousness.

I admit, I am not a great fan of poetry, but I guess it is acceptable in situations where the facts are pretty clear, but when the poetry is scrambled with the facts themselves you end up with something that means anything and nothing.

If death is real and permanent, I'd rather be told that head on.

David

About Raymond Moody, I am a bit shocked that he has written his 'nonsense' book.

David

The interest in the subject of nonsense has logical and math viewpoints.  Remember Lewis Carroll (Dodgson) was an elite scholar.  And Alice and friends are a vehicle for advanced ideas.  Coders and information scientists have taken it to heart, since his works appeared.  Willard Gibbs as an example, who got into Carroll's Twisted Tales.  As Charles Dodgson, he taught a university course for several years on nonsense. 

   Carroll's work in logic, notably the unpublished second part of his book Symbolic Logic, foreshadowed results that appeared about 100 years later. This long-lost section, which contains the method of trees, was described by philosopher W. W. Bartley (Sci. Am. 227, 38–46; 1972). Carroll's book on linear algebra (An Elementary Treatise on Determinants with Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraic Geometry, 1867) is also groundbreaking. His 'condensation' method for computing determinants sparked research that led to a formulation of the alternating sign matrix conjecture by David Robbins and Howard Rumsey in the 1980s.

FWP seemingly has lost momentum in its website postings.  Lisa Smartt is on Linkdin and she has an interview on Thinking Aloud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCHevv9pswc

Stephen,

I was impressed by Lisa Smart's interview, but to me, she expressed powerfully the fact that these people were seeing into the two worlds - the one we inhabit right now, and another realm (sorry you don't like that word, but it seems best to me). What they say isn't nonsense in the normal sense of that word, and I don't think that any of what she says implies that these people are speaking on the edge of oblivion.

David

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David001Stephen,

I was impressed by Lisa Smart's interview, but to me, she expressed powerfully the fact that these people were seeing into the two worlds - the one we inhabit right now, and another realm (sorry you don't like that word, but it seems best to me). What they say isn't nonsense in the normal sense of that word, and I don't think that any of what she says implies that these people are speaking on the edge of oblivion.

David
[/quote]
The word - realm is great - such as observing where the fairies sing with the activity of the woodland stream and glen.  The problem is trying to quantify and rationalize the inner communication of nature.  I surely appreciate nature, in the terms of the feelings of belonging and its deep transcendent poetry.  But that is not the work at hand, which is reporting about the progress of science discovering Psi.

Disambiguation is needed between "realms" with cultural feelings and integrated relationships, from the cold hard abstract models of action and substance that characterize the communication and integration of living things.

You seem to keep struggling back to the ground of doubt, about whether nature can be decoded and a simple model emerge.  Mind is not active at the physical level, there are no SI units measuring decisions and cunning.  If you want to measure the dynamics involved with mind actively changing real-world probabilities you need the tools of information science, such as the MTC, linguistics, thermodynamics, sociology, psychology and logic.

Each of these sciences explore the biological "realm" (environments) as to features not address by physics and chemistry.

Each living thing is communicating, gaining knowledge, working in the presence of others, has limited personal experience and must face the objective outcomes from behavior.