How can you possibly believe in a benevolent God

[partialderivative]

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.

who said anything about scientific claim I said neither were a scientific claim. Read it again!

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

Sam Harris and others have done just that. Are you saying they are not rational. The suggestions that either Eben Alexander had the experience during recovery or that some neuron, somewhere must still be firing so the brain wasn't really dead. Interesting, but not scientific claims.

JassyRadlett Firstly you say that EVERYTHING that people today believe to be supernatural will never be explained, have no grounding in nature at all. Then you go on to say it's likely that there is a cause and we don't know what it is. . Which one is it....

I said neither of those things, nor did I say anything close to them. Try again?

And from what I've read, the people you quote in the Alexander case (how we do keep coming back to that) aren't saying current understanding is the peak of all possible knowledge. They're saying that there are flaws with Alexander's proposal that his explanation is the only one.

This is the defination of supernatural

• A manifestation or event attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature.

But you said - 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. I think that was because you do not understand what supernatural means. So therefore you are denying that what is supernatural today may be understood and explained tomorrow.

You then said '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 which totally contradicts what you said first. But then I now see that it's because you didn't understand what I meant by supernatural.

who said anything about scientific claim I said neither were a scientific claim. Read it again!

ok.

Sam Harris and others have done just that. Are you saying they are not rational. The suggestions that either Eben Alexander had the experience during recovery or that some neuron, somewhere must still be firing so the brain wasn't really dead. Interesting, but not scientific claims.

it's Alexander that needs to justify his experience as meaningful, not Harris having to justify it's not meaningful.

you can't have it both ways. Either his account is purely a personal experience with personal claims, in which case no refutation of any kind is necessary, or it's somehow some meaningful claim about the world, in which case all the burden of proof lies on him, and no one else.

which is it?

From what I've read the only explanation Alexander gave is that his experience was not possible without brain function. All his other information was opinion or speculation of what else it could be. The other I quoted was Sam Harris who was trying to say that in actual fact his experience somehow must be due to unknown brain function or brain function at a different time.

For what it's worth Alexander is not the only person to claim this about NDE's. Pam Reynolds surgeon Robert F. Spetzler said something very similar about her NDE. That's not to say that it isn't the case, maybe there is some brain function. It's just that we cannot, with our current scientific knowledge of the brain, make any other claim scientifically. Of course the claim can be made without evidence but that makes it as likely as Alexander's claim that he went to heaven. Opinion on which one is more probable will be subjective.

No, you've missed a vital 'or' in the definition you quoted. It's not 'scientific understanding and the laws of nature'.

The laws of nature are the laws of nature. We understand them imperfectly. We understand some better than others; our understanding is improving; it is possible we will never understand them fully.

That doesn't mean that things we don't understand are automatically outside the laws of nature, and thus supernatural. It just means we may not have got that far in our understanding yet.

I understood what you meant by supernatural - but it's not correct, as I and others have pointed out.

it's Alexander that needs to justify his experience as meaningful, not Harris having to justify it's not meaningful. but Harris did just that anyway, didn't he? I wonder why he felt it was so important for him to do that? Why does Alexander need to justify his experience as meaningful? He had the experience and he knows that in his scientific understanding he shouldn't have been able to. What he chooses to do about that is irrelevant. It just is.

keepitsimple0 why are you quoting from a completely different bit from what you were initially refering to

I said To suggest the experience happened during his recovery cannot be tested, so it is as unscientific as his experience, but unlike his experience it looks very much like Sam Harris was grasping at straws to keep the experience within a materialistic framework. I then said
Personally I always think experience trumps opinion and this explanation is very weak.

to which you said personal experience as the basis of a scientific claim is pretty much as weak as opinion ? read again, I SAID it is as unscientific as his experience

Then quoting from somewhere I talked about scientific claim....

From the minutes amounts I've read, Alexander has been somewhat inconsistent about the level of brain function he had in different interviews, and it seems his clinicians have a different view as well. And of course there is no way to know whether his recollection is a true memory or something reconstructed as he was regaining function.

That's why I think it's important to look beyond personal experiences to more objective approaches to gain greater understanding of NDEs. Very little evidence can be gained from a single individual's experience - and particularly one where the circumstances are disputed.

There is such a great deal we don't understand about the brain - but such a lot that we're starting to - that it seems very difficult to say categorically that a certain experience of an individual while in an altered state of consciousness cannot have been caused by the brain itself, rather than something outside of the brain's natural function.

We've discussed the 'more likely' question earlier; when applied to an individual case the broader evudence around lower brain function, false memory, cross-cultural NDE research, hallucinations and other related subjects come into play in determining the overall likelihood in a particular case.

Otherwise, as others have said, if you are applying a test of 'equal likelihood in the absence of absolute proof', then the hypothesis that invisible fairies caused Alexander's NDE should have equal weight.

The laws of nature, that we know ARE our current scientific understanding!!

but Harris did just that anyway, didn't he? I wonder why he felt it was so important for him to do that? Why does Alexander need to justify his experience as meaningful? He had the experience and he knows that in his scientific understanding he shouldn't have been able to. What he chooses to do about that is irrelevant. It just is.

Any explanation Harris gives is sufficient (Alexander's shoes were untied suffices). Harris decided to give a slightly more informative one, but he didn't need to. But the point is that he doesn't need to justify ANYTHING. He is not making any claims. He is taking a guess as to the best explanation. That's it.

Here's what's going on. I think both you and Alexander want it both ways. He is saying this is a personal experience, but he actually wants this to mean something more than that through his credentials, his act of writing this book etc. If all he is saying is what he thinks he saw, and that's it, that's fine. But why should anyone care then?

He had the experience and he knows that in his scientific understanding he shouldn't have been able to.

this is what I am talking about. In his scientific understanding he shouldn't have had that experience, but then tries to explain it without using any science.

One of the things that seem to make sense to me is the idea that quantum physics or mechanics may explain how the universe came about. There is a theory that 2 subatomic particles could be in 2 places at once no matter how much distance is between the 2 particles. They are connected by a thing called quantum entanglement. Now, let's not forget that at the quantum level, the laws of physics are different to the laws at the larger molecular levels that we are used to.

I understand that this probably doesn't make any/much sense at all, but for some reason, I understand it, but find it very difficult to put it into layman's terms IYSWIM. It's like "Oh yeah, I get it now, but how the f** am I going to explain it?"

But then we're probably looking at this whole thing the wrong way around. The real scientific issue isn't really 'what happened to Eben Alexander' but rather 'what does the combination of facts and personal account in this case add to what is known about other cases, and this helps build a better evidence base around near death experiences'.

It's a bit of a rabbit hole the other way around. It's possible to speculate with varying degrees of likelihood what caused his experience based on current evidence, but the fact is the current evidence base isn't good enough to answer is with any degree of certainty.

The answer is to keep building the evidence base.

The laws of nature, that we know ARE our current scientific understanding!!

Again, you're missing a really vital point (or in this case adding a phrase). Natural laws aren't just limited to those we know. Natural laws are constant. They do not change. There are some we do not understand. Hopefully we will understand more and more.

That was the point of my gravity example earlier. Gravitational forces weren't outside of nature before Galileo and Newton. We just hadn't figured it out yet.

That's why a definition of 'supernatural' to cover anything we don't currently understand doesn't work.

Like I said it's subjective.

That's why I think it's important to look beyond personal experiences to more objective approaches to gain greater understanding of NDEs. Very little evidence can be gained from a single individual's experience - and particularly one where the circumstances are disputed.

Others have done this and will no doubt continue. It is unfortunatly linked to the brain-conciousness debate, both of which need a lot more research.

What's subjective, sorry?

Natural laws aren't just limited to those we know. Natural laws are constant. They do not change. There are some we do not understand. Hopefully we will understand more and more.

I have never said anything to the contary. Because we do not know them we cannot say what they are or are not.

We cannot say that those phenomena that are currently attributed to supernatural (by some) and denied by others such as NDE's are not something natural that is currently outside our understanding. That's what I've been saying over and over. I'm not saying ALL supernatural explanations cover anything we don't currently understand. I have never said that. I have continously refered to NDE's.

What's subjective, sorry?

It's the opposite of objective. So your understanding of something is based on or influenced by personal feelings and opinions rather than scientific observation and fact.

Thank you. I know what subjective means, I was asking to which part of a fast-moving conversation you were referring.

You originally said '"The supernatural is just a word for things we don`t yet understand. What is supernatural today may not be tomorrow." You didn't qualify that to a certain field - and in any case it's a fundamentally incorrect statement, as has been repeatedly shown to you.

You then said "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."

It's then been shown that the laws of nature are constant regardless of our current understanding - with which you now seem to agree.

You'll understand where the confusion has arisen.

You've twisted the words of the definition of supernatural. I didn't actually say that specific sentence (it is the dictionary definition of supernatural) Regardless you've twisted it. "Things we don't understand are attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature and are thefefore termed Supernatural." is not the same as "Supernatural is something attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature"

I cut and pasted each of your quotes directly.

The second quote was from 11.50 if that helps. I assume that's the one you're disputing.

However - I'm glad we can all now agree that 'supernatural' does not describe all things that are outside current scientific understanding and knowledge.