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Originally Posted by Gus1234U
i remember now why agnostics are so universally reviled; it is not because they do NOT BELIEVE, it is because so many of them like to rebuff Believers. i have observed thru this thread that those who DO believe, seem to be more careful in what they say, how they phrase their opinions, than are those who are certain of their non-belief.
as with all things in life, little is CERTAIN, and certainly not a belief. claiming to have scientific evidence for things that cannot even be measured scientifically is not proof~! there is an old saying: those who are certain, are certainly foolish. let us keep an open mind, be careful how we postulate our opinions, and allow for the possibility that even tho we don't KNOW all that much about other dimensions, the rumors are very old and wide-spread.
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I think that we atheists are more reviled than the poor agnostics! And it’s true that we don’t believe in spirit worlds and there are those — Richard Dawkins comes to mind — who not only rebuff ‘believers’ but engage in debate with spiritualists in an attempt to elucidate our views: And there’s nothing bad or wicked in that.
I’m not certain why you’ve concluded that spiritualists are any more careful or eloquent in what and how they write than atheists? Spiritualism can certainly lend itself to much more flowery prose because there are no restraints upon the imaginations of spiritualists. If you allow yourself to believe that spirits exist you have to allow that others could be right about the existence of those pesky garden fairies and spirit dimensions, alternate planes of spiritual existence, afterlife’s where men are administered to by angels or virgins, etc. Every notion and fancy becomes ‘possible’ because nothing can be proven or disproven—feelings (vague, strong, esoteric) have to be accepted as facts because there’s absolutely no way to prove the existence of spirits.
You’re absolutely right: belief is not a certainty. I think that I can say with a high degree of certainty that spirits and afterlives and extra spirit-filled dimensions, etc., do not exist. I’ve no need to keep an open mind about spirit-dimensions because I don’t believe in spirits, and the only extra theoretical dimensions I know of are found in higher mathematics (9, 10, 11 dimensions? I gotta say, I don’t know!).
Neuroscience is poised to explode in the next 100 years, I believe, but it’s adequate now in offering proofs — factual data — about the functions of the brain. You’re right about science some respects, we can’t with any finality disprove invisible spirits, but we know so much more today about brain functioning that current data means that ‘brain death’ is the death of consciousness — even though our dinosaur-brain-bits might, at some level, continue to function, the ego/us/essence is dead. Brain functioning — or lack of it — can be measured with a simple EEG test or even more complex brain imaging devices.
Finally, I think that debate over spiritualism can be healthy only if it remains civil and that both sides bring their “I cannot prove” cups. I can’t disprove the non-existence of the invisible any more that you can prove existence. I think that there are more important matters to discuss, really.
P.S. I interact with dead people frequently. Sometimes I know that I’m delusional, sometimes not. The dimensional plane of these interactions are in my brain. If they began to leave cookies for me I could say that they’re real. No cookies yet.