Hey it's a new hate thread.See what you miss if you don't hang around RP much?

Hey it's a new hate thread.See what you miss if you don't hang around RP much?

1. You are a mother.  Does it make a difference to you whether you have a relationship with your children or not?  My understanding is that God has a similar desire to have a relationship with us as we do with our children.
2. I can't speak for "a lot of people" but personally, I think Psalm 23 is pretty clear. God doesn't say we won't go through the Valley of Death - just that we won't go through it alone.
3. You would have to find someone who believes that and ask them.  

Yes.  For me, it is irrelevant.

Kevin Nelson, the author cited in this piece was on Coast to Coast last Thursday night and I had the opportunity to hear him speak for three hours on this very subject.

The author of your article mostly got it right about the REM stages, but Nelson was very adamant that REM can happen during fully conscious states as well as in between and asleep.  He did not discount that there is the possibilty that NDE's can be real, but did provide highly thoughtful and plausable explanations.  He did go into length about the temporal spot where we can literally turn on and off the feeling of astral projection or out of body experience.

I'm not sure that my circumstances fall into his parameters although I just asked my wife if my blood pressure was high or low during these experiences and she did say it was low during these times and that is one of his parameters, but I learned a lot listening and while I cannot conclude one way or the other that my NDE was real, it did indeed happen and in more than several instances.

Since there is no proof one way or the other, I have nothing to lose and everything to gain if I really did have contact.  I did not see any bright lights or tunnels like most others though, it was very different from all the usual references.  The forms were not sharply defined, but there was definitely some discussions going on between me and them.

A question for the Atheists.
 
Do you ever leave open the possibility...the sliver of a chance...that maybe...just maybe...you could be wrong?

Michael Shermer wrote a book called "Why People Believe Weird Things" - Bill Maher is an atheist who believes in astrology; a lot of atheists believe in luck or reincarnation or karma.  The basic definition of an atheist is one who does not ascribe the workings of the universe to a supernatural being; most people believe in some kind of personalized higher power - they are considered theists. Some people, like Spinoza, Einstein, and Thomas Jefferson considered themselves deists - they contemplated god as a set of universal laws which hold everything in the universe together, but did not consider said deity to be a personal being.  Most theists believe in one particular flavor of a deity, rejecting all the others as invalid.  I've just gone one further, and dispensed with the lot.  I heard Chris Hitchens say once that "Agnostics are atheists who cannot commit."  I don't quite agree; I think agnostics accept the lack of evidence but are very hopeful that some will crop up at some point - I think this is rather optimistic; and there's nothing wrong with that.

In terms of organized religion - I feel it has done little, if any good in this world; and can cite a ton of evidence to back up this particular opinion.

So, I guess it's a mixed bag - I, personally believe in a kind of active karma; my attitude and behavior are attractors to like attitudes and behaviors but, I don't consider spirituality valid for me.  I value life itself; I see no evidence for anything beyond this existence and, if there is something, I'll meet it with energy and curiosity, like I do the existence I currently enjoy.

I hope this is helpful.

From an atheist's point of view, it is difficult to give credence to beliefs that are based on fairy tales without a lick of proof.

What do you think about people who believe in this?:

In the primordial past, thetans brought the material universe into being largely for their own pleasure. The universe has no independent reality, but derives its apparent reality from the fact that most thetans agree it exists. Thetans fell from grace when they began to identify with their creation, rather than their original state of spiritual purity. Eventually they lost their memory of their true nature, along with the associated spiritual and creative powers. As a result, thetans came to think of themselves as nothing but embodied beings.

Thetans are reborn time and time again in new bodies through a process called "assumption" which is analogous to reincarnation.

This is Scientology. Most people think this is crazy talk, but it's no different than any other belief. It's all just made up story. There are people who worship all kinds of things, and everyone is entitled to believe what they want, but there is no basis in reality.

And the name of god has been used to kill more people in history than anything else.

A question for the Atheists.
 
Do you ever leave open the possibility...the sliver of a chance...that maybe...just maybe...you could be wrong?

Here are my questions for believers:

Would it really make a difference to an all powerful god whether or not we were believers?

Do a lot of people believe in a god because they are afraid if they didn't something bad might happen to them?

Why do some believers think that a person must believe in a god to be a moral and decent human being?

Edieraye's post talked about respect and you blew right past it.
 
What did 911 say? 

Thank you for your feedback.  I will consider it.

And we were doing so well. 

From an atheist's point of view, it is difficult to give credence to beliefs that are based on fairy tales without a lick of proof.