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Oh Drone, I’m disappointed in you – especially after Yeats and Mount Wahtsit and all. And your propping up the pub doorway. Where is the poetry in that bleak, bleak heart of yours.
We won’t be judged by the Almighty on what we know by means of our worldly analytical intelligence, but on what we would like to be true, what we find beautiful, sometimes to the exclusion of all else, sometimes to the point of preferring death to abandoning it for the cold, hard nonsense a lot of atheists take to be reason ! The heart has its reasons that reasons knows not of.
We won’t be “judged by the Almighty”, because in all probability he/it does not exist. Only invented by people wanting to explain what they did not understand.
We can all go through life doing what we believe is the right thing, without the need of following a book whose morals are that of thousands of years ago.
If someone really does follow the “word of God”, then by todays standards he/she is (amongst other things) a sexist homophobe who thinks ill of every other religion/religeous or non-religeous person.
You are no better than me, and I no better than you. Who said that? I don’t care, it’s just right.
Value Is EverythingWell, now I’ve had two posts wiped, I can’t spend much more time answering your questions, Ginge and Drone. One last try though at posting you two links, for your information, concerning science and the risible claims of methodological naturalism. Read William J Murray’s thread and posts, in particular :
Experience, Rational Debate & Science Depend On The Supernatural
Daesh = bad = mercenaries = proxies for certain countries and a certain Alliance. Also some naive European youths disaffected and bitter, in the early days at least.
Islam must have some fine, religious qualities, despite some of its formal teachings and some primitive and degenerate, national cultures. Seem to be a lot of quite spiritual and devout Moslems. Sufi spirituality impressive. Wouldn’t want to be a Moslem at any price, if I were woman.
‘You are no better than me, and I no better than you. Who said that? I don’t care, it’s just right.’ – Ginge.
Perfectly true, but what’s that got to do with the price of fish and chips ? Christianity is not basically about rules ; it’s about a living relationship with God, through prayer and self-denying love – though this latter is not, of course, unique to formal Christians or formally religious folk generally. See description of Last Judgment in Matthew 25.
My posts were a bit too forthright Grimes, so for the record can I make it clear that I adore your missives, even though I find the majority to be bizarre rationalizations
If you didn’t know already, and I have a feeling we discussed this several blue moons ago, I’m a Pantheist but in a strictly non-zealous wishy-washy way: it’s what provides me with a contentment I’ve not been able to find elsewhere, so is of inestimable value
In the mountains we forget to count the days
The greatest wonder is that we can see these trees and not wonder more
The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhoodI went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived
The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World
This curious world we inhabit…is more wonderful than convenient; more beautiful than useful; it is more to be admired and enjoyed than usedI may be a bit naive but I’m taking the name of this thread at face value and will relay my NDE to you all (3 or 4 of you).
When I was 6, erm 40+ years ago I used to take the bus a mile and half or so to school (a different era then) with my twin and the other kids who lived on our council estate.
Anyway this day my brother and I, although not identical twins, were not wearing identical clothing for the first time in our lives, due to Mom not being able to get us matching shoes. I was wearing brown and my brother wearing black, this worried my superstitious Mom and as it turned out with good reason!!
Getting off the bus, my brother and friends proceeded to cross the road behind the stationary bus, me a few seconds behind ran to catch them, then it hit me, not only that you shouldn’t cross a road behind a bus but also a white car, not sure what the model was as I couldn’t tell whilst catapulting off the bonnet and landing head first on the kerb.
I was carried in to a house whilst an ambulance was called, being so close to home someone had ran to tell my Mom and to this day I can vividly see her crying whilst putting on her brown mac (it was the 70s remember) then running down the street to the house where I lay.
She confirms this is what she did (and Mom didn’t run anywhere), so unless I had an out of body experience and watch the situation unfold how would I know??
All I know for sure is that I was in hospital for 10 days with a fractured skull in 2 places, and my Mom forced my brother and I to wear the same clothes up until we were 14 when we couldn’t take the piss taking from our friends any longer.
Your experience /memory was real but a brain can carry on registering events when once one would have been considered medically incapable of consciousness. Similarly experiments prove people can be “tricked” into believing they haven’t been tricked into memorising something they have only really anecdotal knowledge of.
The recent TV documentary into research specifically into NDEs managed to recreate all the usual reported NDE events (feeling of being dragged into a “loving” light-tunnel; heightened feelings of love and feeling of being in presence of loving family who’d died; a sense of reliving at high speed the sins and saintly moments of one’s life; out-of-body cogniscance etc). What’s more, the brain-scanning technology used in these tests could even identify which parts of the brain were responsible for creating these sensations.
It doesn’t comfort those who want to believe in life-after-death to realise that the right electrical stimulus to the right region of the brain can produce NDE experiences in people in medical research labs. (This might be why Grimes hasn’t commented on the programme!
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To your credit Andrew, you don’t put your experience down to some religious “miracle” or as proof that a god exists (and is lovingly watching over you and letting you in on his presence) as some would. (Of course if such a god was so great, why the f@@k did he let you get injured in the first place?)I’d propose that your interesting tale is a good example of your brain producing a ‘required’ supposedly-precognitive autosuggestive response to severe physical and emotional distress in order to calm itself and therefore yourself: mind over matter
A severely injured and by extension severely shocked six year-old child will naturally crave the company and help of the most important thing in its life: its mother
Your brain produced and implanted a vivid and lingering image of what it hoped above hope would be happening: that your mother would be crying and dashing to your side as fast as possible. Is it any surprise that she was actually doing this knowing her son’s life was in danger?
You mention that you had an image of her pulling on her brown mac and running as never seen before. I’d contend that you i.e your brain had grown accustomed to seeing her don her mac when leaving the house, surely on occasions hurriedly if short of time with perhaps an associated agitation if forced to rush
Just let your brain ramp these familiar (and reassuring) impressions up a notch or two into crying and running, dressed in her equally familiar ‘I’m going out’ mac, in response to news her son’s life is in danger and I for one find little of surprise in your tale. Mother at your side brings relief to a seriously stressed young and developing brain; that is what it wanted and it painted the likely scenario that would result in that end that it had learnt from experience
As for the brown and black shoes. Coincidence…I think
Interesting account, Andrew. Hilarious to see the chronically nervous naysayers, insomniac and Drone, so quick off the starting blocks, as ever, whistling in the dark. I got rid of my TV some time ago, Drone, as I spend so much time on the ‘pooter’ and – other thangs. God intentionally leaves wriggle-room for naysayers, either to ‘give them enough rope’, or probably more commonly, to be able to ‘rib’ them mercilessly, when they make it to he celestial regions.
I saw at least one NDE on YouTube, in which the NDEer-narrator, in which a young woman said that she actually witnessed her shooting up out of her body BEFORE the actual impact, and was able to look down on the scene, some way up and away, so evidently a major shock is enough to precipitate an OBE. Perhaps, the fact that we speak of ‘jumping out of our skin’ indicates an awareness of at least an incipient OBE.
Incidentally, in an event of that kind, it would have been more normal, I believe, for your mother not to have burst into tears immediately, as it is more customary for the severe injury or death of a loved one to take a while to be assimilated by a person. Shakespeare knew that well, as is evidenced in his plays ; which makes your mother’s slightly different reaction, no less plausible, imo, but more interesting. Perhaps she was very tired or your being still very much her charge at that tender age.
As I mentioned near the beginning of this thread, I believe, the only shock I had was the suddenness with which my spirit shot out of my body, when I was trying to experience an OBE. God has a very schadenfreudy sense of humour, imo. As if to say : ‘That’ll larn yer for trying to get heaven into your head, instead of your head into heaven !’
How do you explain, insomniac and Drone, how a woman NDEer was able to say that a pair of gym shoes was up on the roof of the hospital – as checked out by a male nurse ? ‘Pass….’
Re. the gym shoes. Whatever the expalanation (fraud, confusion, chance, a well-meaning but misplaced desire to “bend” events to confirm the “witnesses” own ideas re.religion or the existence of god, or maybe scientific – maybe of a kind not yet understood), the LEAST likely is that it proves there is life-after-death and a god. To jump to this conclusion after any “supernatural” or inexplicable event is understandable but flawed. If one is so gullible as to jump to a conclusion that a NDE proves there’s a God, why not jump to the conclusion that God is also behind disasters, crashes, tsunamis etc? Oh no! Won’t do that ‘cos that undermines the primitive minds’ aching desire to believe there’s something after death. How on earth could you stand-up for a god that allowed. say. the Aberfan disaster? Better make some inadequate mealy-mouthed excuse to deny the hand of god. But see a pair of plimsolls on a roof in an OBE and hey! God’s in the ring! Oy vey!
Oh ! Foolishness, thy name is ‘insomniac’… not forgetting the folly, on this most primordial subjects, of Drone and Ginge, who seems to have gone AWOL.
Read these two posts by actual scientists and philosophers … and weep and weep and weep and weep for your folly :
Experience, Rational Debate & Science Depend On The Supernatural
Developments in science have been cornering you with every new discovery ! But in the words of the good Baroness Cardboard : ‘Rejoice !’ Your spirituql anguish and mortal malcontentment need last no longer.
Ginge, who seems to have gone AWOL
He’s been keeping very busy with one of God’s greatest creations, the female
Gaelic Warrior Gold Cup Winner 2026
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