Diaforetikos":1k4u9j7d said:
Yes, yes. This is what i want.
Ok, so for the comment regarding the money, substitute money for something you love. No.1 treasure. I was generalizing with money, but now I'm making it personal. Be it family, drugs, death, what ever you love the most. Where your heart really lies. Would you do it?
No I don't think my general feelings would change if you offered me anything at all, I don't love material things, I use them. I recognize the difference between the positive experience using an object elicits and the ownership of the object itself; if I can have the object at some great sacrifice that costs me the enjoyment of the object, the object itself holds no value to me. People have a hard time understanding that philosophy when posing the typical question "would you do X for a million bucks", i.e. what's the price I'd take in exchange for debasing myself in some way. Most just don't understand the concept that a million bucks, or any other material reward, holds no value to me on its own. If you want to define the reward in more esoteric senses, the sort of thing immaterial thing I desire is the exact sort of thing you can't just reward me with, because it involves my reflections on my own life, the things I've learned and how I've improved. Unless you suppose for a moment that retroactively making me forget the sacrifice itself in favor of some more personally desirable life, but I'd rather pursue that life on my own than rely on a supernatural force to make me *believe* I had had it at an arbitrary future point.
Freak the idea of material things and go where the heart is. I did change it up. The focus of the forum wasn't where I wanted it to be so I changed is as with what I am doing right now. I didn't know if it was ok to double post. Calm down. Its not that serious.
If it was *serious* I'd have issued you a warning, I'm just saying it's impolite to modify your post after people have already quoted, replied to and discussed it. Just don't be habitual about it.
Anyways, If I have seen things that no one else could show me, felt things that I've have never experienced before, I would do it. But not for the money. Money was a generalization and I apologize for it. If it were my true heart, and my family was taken away from me until I reached 40, then yes I would do it. But under those guidelines. I wasn't brainwashed into religion. I have felt things that you can't explain. I've heard stories from my best friends mom about her trips to Africa with my pastor. They were almost hit by a truck. The truck crashed. It was on the news in Africa. They said they felt something within the two seconds the truck was going to hit them, and they survived. The truck was driving in the wrong lane. Why would she lie to me about something like that. She has no reason to impress me. No reason to force me to continually believe in what I believe. Exorcisms. Witch doctors spoke against my pastor. He said he felt the presence and prayed and the witch doctor said he felt a force to powerful for him. This was in Africa. Two separate trips. Now if believing in some random invisible man, doing things against my beliefs meant I would get to see my family, I would do it.
Now don't go saying, "So if I believed, I would have to sacrifice my family?" No. I am just replacing the belief in God with a belief in achieving your greatest treasure.
I don't know if I stated my purpose in life. It states in the book of Genesis that we should be fruitful and multiply. That was a basic outline of what I am doing. I wake everyday trying to find someone to help. Mostly at work where I meet a lot of people. In the bible it says focus on helping others. That way your a blessing through God, then God can help bless you. Very simple principle. So I try to do that at least once a day. But not with intention to have God help me, but for me to help others. That is enough to make my day. I like seeing someone smile. Hopefully they see my beliefs through me and maybe they can do the same. I also believe in reaping what you sow. So by doing this, I am also benefiting myself. No I'm not perfect. I mess up all the time. I gossip, cuss, hate, lie and sometimes hold grudges. But my whole purpose in life is to help others, help others.
I'm gonna repost this video. Like I said, skim through it and watch what you find interesting and leave a comment. The video was pretty much what got me thinking about this topic.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 7154170413
I've seen a wealth of NDEs, I'm not entirely sure why I'd want to watch another. I'm not completely convinced one way or other what exactly causes the phenomenon in terms of the precise mechanics in the brain since nobody yet has adequately reproduced or dissected it, but I've done enough psychotropics in the past to have had some profoundly strange experiences (in safe environments, and I don't recommend them to ANYONE here or otherwise for the simple reason that I don't encourage others to endanger themselves).
As for the rest of your post, I don't think most people get "brainwashed" into religious belief, that implies that there was a non-religious belief preexistant which was somehow destroyed and replaced. I don't even hold people at fault for claiming supernatural experiences, I just expect them to back it up with extraordinary evidence if they want me to believe it. If you told me you saw bigfoot I wouldn't say "no you didn't", I'd just say "I doubt it" - same goes for other extraordinary claims. I don't think your mom has a reason to lie about her encounter in Africa, I just doubt the accuracy of her observations.
The human mind is very easily deceived and far from good at recording or remembering experiences objectively, especially when those experiences are traumatic. A different person in a similar situation might claim aliens used a force field to protect them, or that the spirits of the air came to their aid, or that they were supernaturally lucky, if they were so inclined to believe. It's likely that nothing at all happened, and the truck simply missed, either by random chance, the efforts of the driver, or impact of the terrain. An extremely curious rational person may spend some time examining what happened in excruciating detail to discover the facts, a religious or otherwise faithful person would be inclined to attribute the experience to supernatural intervention, and most people would probably write the whole thing off and be thankful they're safe. Unless she caught the whole thing on camera and there was obvious evidence that the truck teleported away or was shoved to the side by some outside force, I'm inclined to believe that she believes what she says, but not at all inclined to believe that her subjective interpretation had anything to do with reality.
As far as witch doctors and exorcisms, the effects of witchcraft and the efficacy of exorcism have been more thoroughly and consistently reproduced and debunked than perhaps any other supernatural claim. Here's a great little video I ran into a while ago that illustrates debunking voodoo dolls:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW2yKlNFFuU
It's easy to believe in these things when you have limited evidence, they seem very real. Unfortunately (or fortunately) they are not supernatural, they're more like hacks for the brain, that have been practiced by people knowingly or unknowingly because they do work when the subject believes it will work. Exorcism is useless for curing mental illness as far as clinical experiments are concerned. It can also be extremely traumatic and more often harms than helps, especially when it's forced. I have a friend who's deeply religious mother was convinced he was possessed at the age of 5 because he acted out constantly, and subjected him to a violent, abusive and highly traumatic exorcism that haunted him for much of his life. For the same reason that witchcraft works on the gullible, exorcism can work on the gullible; so can faith healing. I have had several family members who have stopped taking medications because they had been so thoroughly convinced that they'd been supernaturally healed that they ignored even obvious physical symptoms for quite a while.
I have known many people who became irrationally fearful of some object, room, or situation, and after an exorcism ritual experienced relief. My grandmother swears up and down that she feels spiritual presences constantly and attributes all kinds of normal everyday events to spiritual forces. If it's voluntary and provides comfort I don't really have a problem with it, but what would be more preferable is to teach them that these fears are entirely psychological in nature and that they don't require the assistance of religion to be free of them.
The edit button is for adding new information without doubleposting and fixing simple spelling mistakes, not fundamentally changing your post.
