Near death experience - did he really mean that?

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(2023-11-23, 07:05 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: Yeah I generally let both my atheist and religious family members be, especially during the holidays.

Every now and then I might sneak in something how Materialism is false, but usually the conversations don't even turn in that direction since the atheists and religious don't want to offend each other anyway...

Nowadays there is another topic that I avoid like the plague because it also can turn vituperative and is involved with a lot of irrationality and prejudicial beliefs - the Israel/Hamas war. If you want to stay on good terms with family and friends you tread very carefully on these subjects.
(2023-11-23, 11:40 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: Nowadays there is another topic that I avoid like the plague because it also can turn vituperative and is involved with a lot of irrationality and prejudicial beliefs - the Israel/Hamas war. If you want to stay on good terms with family and friends you tread very carefully on these subjects.

Oh all border disputes are a no-go for me in mixed company.

Outside of very small groups (1-4) I try to avoid politics/religion/etc, unless it's something I feel is harmless enough like asking why the laws of physics don't change. That's a good one, in my experience, for getting people to question materialist/physicalist assumptions.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'

- Bertrand Russell


(2023-11-23, 11:33 PM)nbtruthman Wrote: You're right - James' words apparently were "If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn't seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white." Same meaning, different animal. Strange how memory works or doesn't quite work right sometime.

Yes, I used to have a website called "White Crows" which expressed my thoughts on these matters but I closed it years ago. There's another one listing lots of literature about the subject here:

https://whitecrowbooks.com/
I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension.
Freeman Dyson
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