How can you possibly believe in a benevolent God

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Once more, acts of 'god' have left communities blown apart.

Does any one really feel these vilages deserved it?

God's a bit of a cunt at times.

I disagree with you conflating 'only possibility' with 'most likely possibility'. It's perfectly possible to determine the latter, looking and different forms of evidence, in a situation where determining the former is not possible.

That's rather the point of testing competing hypotheses.

if God exists or not, so e people believe in God, some don't, we can't say for sure if supernatural experiences are real or not, so why be so ready to pass judgement?

because some kooky nuts want to make others believe on the threat of death. or, more benign, make their church the church of the land.

and have a very strong faith.

some have enough to kill. I am assume you don't, but some do so the answers to these questions matter. You are right that we can never know for sure, but the question of whether a bible believer or a quran believer is right has caused so much pain. I therefore think it's a good idea to understand why we hold these beliefs and if belief as strong as some people's can be justified.

if we lived in some live-and-let-live kind of place or time, I don't think people would feel so strongly about such things.

It is for this reason that I personally think quantum theory is a possibility. I would never claim it's the only likely possibility or that it's the most likely possibility. That would be stupid.

quantum theory "is a possibility" is a bit of a weird sentence. quantum theory makes concrete predictions which can easily be tested.

Neither one is or can be considered most likely as neither can be proved.

sure they can. As others have said, you can do a lot of things to test hypotheses, see if the experiment can be repeated etc etc etc. the answer could be fairies that we can see, smell or touch, but that doesn't really make a good answer.

"It is for this reason that I personally think quantum theory is a possibility."

Could you say a bit more about this?

"Neither one is or can be considered most likely as neither can be proved."

That's a daft thing to say. Alexander's "hypothesis" is predicated on his Christian faith, not based on any evidence at all except his perception of his experience.

"So why is Eben Alexander still a Harvard Medical School Professor"

He isn't.

"So why is Eben Alexander still a Harvard Medical School Professor"

He isn't.* - so what is he doing, he had his experience in 2008 and was still working at Harvard in 2012. So he certainly wasn't struck off as a crack-pot.

That's a daft thing to say. Alexander's "hypothesis" is predicated on his Christian faith, not based on any evidence at all except his perception of his experience.
and

That's rather the point of testing competing hypotheses

Neither are actually a hypothesis as neither was presented as research and Eben Alexander never presented his experience as a hypothesis. It is his opinion based on his experience. The other is Sam Harris' ideas based on no experience and comes across as a desperate attempt to discredit him. He invited Sam Harris to discuss it with him and as far as I know the offer was declined.

To suggest the experience happened during his recovery cannot be tested, so it is as unscientific as his experience, but unlike his experience (which as a doctor he KNEW would discredit him, which begs the question as to why he would choose to do that to his career?) it looks very much like Sam Harris was grasping at straws to keep the experience within a materialistic framework. He only needed to do this because Eben Alexander knows a lot about the brain. Although there was this little gem "Neurosurgeons, however, are rarely well-trained in brain function. Dr. Alexander cuts brains; he does not appear to study them." from Sam Harris, which weakened his case significantly, especially as you cannot cut into a brain if you don't know how it functions. Priceless!

Personally I always think experience trumps opinion and this explanation is very weak.

Why have you all focused on Eben Alexander? I notice the other studies have not been mentioned. Although, if you like I can link lots of materialistic websites that discredit them too. It helps to continue supporting the notion that we already know all there is to know about the world and there is no need for a paradigm shift because materialism explains everything and things that don't fit into it are made-up

Perhaps I'm so open minded my brain has fallen out, but then I also find in these debates, when the insults start flowing, it's generally because the person has lost the ability to continue arguing intelligently.

and about this

The supernatural is a word for things that have no natural explanation. Things we don't yet understand are called "things we don't yet understand"

All things we understand fall within the current scientific laws of nature. Things we don't are attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature and are thefefore termed Supernatural. Supernatural things are the same as "things we don't yet understand". Unless of course you would prefer that science didn't attempt to advance and explain them within the current scientific laws of nature, which, based on what you've written, I think would be very unlikely.

I however think that perhaps the current scientific laws of nature need to expand. There needs to be a paradigm shift. Unfortunatly that will never happen if the likes of Harris and Dawkins keep providing weak, unfalsifiable explanations for things just so they can slot them into the current scientific laws of nature. That is not progress.

All things we understand fall within the current scientific laws of nature. Things we don't are attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature and are thefefore termed Supernatural."

I'm sorry- that's just wrong. Supernatural means that which cannot be explained, not that which hasn't been explained yet.

I always thought that we needed living neurological matter to interpret our surroundings and make sense of them. If the brain is starved of oxygen and a person is declared brain dead, then it doesn't make sense that a 'dead' person can continue neurological processes needed to make sense of their dreams. Unless these processes are done on a subatomic level, in which case it would possibly make sense that the person isn't actually dead and the electrical activity in the brain is so low that the EEG can't detect it IYSWIM.

I'm not saying that's the case, just pondering about the idea that the laws of nature may not work the same way on a quantum level. Definitely worth thinking about.

All things we understand fall within the current scientific laws of nature. Things we don't are attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature and are thefefore termed Supernatural.

No, your second sentence is a stretch into opinion. Things we don't understand are attributed to forces beyond our current scientific understanding, and our current understanding of the laws of nature. Our understanding improves, we develop better ways to understand and describe things, the laws themselves do not change.

The effect of gravitational force did not suddenly emerge when Galileo, Newton and subsequent scientists started to understand, test and explain it. Gravitational force had been doing the same job before then, and continues to do the same job as our understanding improves. It wasn't a 'supernatural force' before we were able to describe it - its nature has not changed.

Why have you all focused on Eben Alexander?

Well, you did raise him quite a few times in separate posts, more than anyone else. Why were you so focused on him?

And you didn't seem very interested in the cross-cultural studies and others with a more objective basis.

A couple of men that may be of interest to some of you are Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose.

Chiggers seems to be the only one who understood.

I'm not saying the laws change, I'm saying our understanding of those laws change. We put what was currently unknown, into the known bracket. BUT what we don't know, could also be beyond our current scope. We cannot dismiss NDE's and come up with ridiculous notions like "oh it happened while he was recovering" or "Oh it was the medication affecting my dead brain" or some other gem of idiocy. It may be that there are forces we don't know, it may be that our current understanding of the laws of nature are not correct. Unless we break the box of our current explanations we will not be able to advance. Holding on to our current understanding as being the peak of scientific advancement will not allow us to advance. It is for this reason that religius people, like it or not, are far more open minded than those that dismiss the unknown. Not necesserily because they are correct in their opinions but because they have the ability to queston what is known and embrace that which is not.

*Why have you all focused on Eben Alexander?

Well, you did raise him quite a few times in separate posts, more than anyone else. Why were you so focused on him?*

Because I mentioned his name along with others. Others jumped on his name and threw in as much as they could to attempt to discredit him. Like this makes his experience and opinions irrelevant and we can continue to dismiss NDE's.

And you didn't seem very interested in the cross-cultural studies and others with a more objective basis How have you come to that conclusion?

Chiggers and Hakluyt enjoy!

I focused on Eben Alexander because he is the most well known of the names you mentioned and the one for whom there is most information easily available. And, considering his background, the one most likely to be credible.

Actually Dr. Pim Van Lommel is the most well known researcher on NDE's. But there are other doctors who have personally had NDE's (Van Lommel hasn't). They all make interesting reading. I don't know much about Eben Alexander tbh.

"Not necesserily because they are correct in their opinions but because they have the ability to queston what is known and embrace that which is not."

A neat summing up of the scientific process, there! Not at all applicable to religious people- who, in my experience not only do not question what they know, but close their eyes and years to any evidence that calls into question that "knowledge"

I don't believe in any gods.

In some cases certainly but not in all. I find those you describe are often fundamentalists. Fundamentalists are not mainstream. Educated theologians (not just christians-some are atheists themselves) are generally much more open minded.

I'm not saying that the athiest arguments are not valid. On the contary they are. But a lot of the famous atheists like Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens focus on attacking the beliefs of fundamentalists. But that weakens their debates because most mainstream religion also attacks the beliefs of fundamentalists!

I'm not saying the laws change, I'm saying our understanding of those laws change.

Grand - then we agree. But that's not supernatural. It's still within nature, just not our understanding of nature. So saying 'What is supernatural today may not be tomorrow' is just all wrong.

We put what was currently unknown, into the known bracket.

I think people are tempted to do so - but actually, I don't think it's an absolute.

Part of the point of all of this is being able to say: 'we don't know why this is. But the fact that we don't know why it is doesn't mean it's automatically supernatural or caused by something natural in a way we currently understand. Let's try to understand it better.

Holding on to our current understanding as being the peak of scientific advancement will not allow us to advance.

I've never met anyone remotely rational who does this, but I can see how it's a useful straw man to set up to advance a particular idea. Part of the beauty of this amazingly complex universe is embracing the unknown and hoping we understand it better one day. That's how science works, and why most scientists I've known love so much what they do - trying to figure out why things do what they do, questioning what we think we currently know, and trying to advance our understanding.

Try replacing 'scientific advancement' with 'theological understanding' in your sentence above. How many religious people would accept that their idea of God is all wrong, and they've been reading the wrong book all this time?

It is for this reason that religius people, like it or not, are far more open minded than those that dismiss the unknown.

Unfortunately our experiences of religious people - even liberal, progressive liberal people, differ quite drastically - because part of the point of their faith is that they dismiss other ideas that conflict with that faith (including other gods).

Do you have any evidence for the assertion that atheists are unable to or uninterested in embracing the unknown? Honesty interested.

Back to NDEs for a sec - lots to catch up on:

And you didn't seem very interested in the cross-cultural studies and others with a more objective basis... How have you come to that conclusion?

Only that when they were mentioned, you didn't really engage and came back with Alexander instead. Apologies if you were privately interested - I was just going on what you posted.

Personally I always think experience trumps opinion and this explanation is very weak.

personal experience as the basis of a scientific claim is pretty much as weak as opinion. I regard personal experience, especially in these cases where judgement is severely compromised, as having 0 scientific weight. I couldn't care less if he was a doctor. it's just personal experience. that's it. nothing more.

Well said keepitsimple0