From church apologist to neuroscientist and physicist

[Dr Exiled]

Back in my high school days, I took acid a bunch. For your first time, I would recommend getting your dose from someone who knows the potency of the batch where your hit comes from. Back in the day, and I don't know how it is now, some hits were a lot stronger than others, especially when the Grateful Dead was in town. Mushrooms don't last as long and probably starting with those would be best. An acid trip lasts about 12 hours or so. However, you are peaking from about an hour in and then for about four more hours. After that you start to gradually come down. From what I remember, mushrooms lasted about half as long.

I would recommend being in the outdoors and good music is key. Frying while at a concert was awesome although some people can get claustrophobic. I know I did one time when we were at an MTV comedy tour. We timed it to where we were peaking right in the middle of the show. I had to leave as it seemed that the comics started speaking a different language and the audience's faces were contorting in all sorts of weird ways as they laughed. Once out of the comedy show, I calmed down and enjoyed the rest of the trip.

As far as it being a life changing experience, it really wasn't for me. It was definitely fun though.

[Rivendale]

I suspect that part of the reason why the term "out of body experience" is used by psychologists who study them is that it's kind of neutral-sounding about whether anything besides the subjective experience is out of the body. I doubt that many of the psychologists think that anything does, but some of the people they're studying may feel strongly about what their experiences meant. So the psychologists probably try not to offend the subjects.

The Wikipedia article has more information, including an estimate which surprises me, that as many as one person in ten may have an OOBE at least once in their life. So I still have a chance, yay! I think it would be really cool, even though I will still be quite sure, even if I have one, that nothing actually leaves my body. If it ever does happen I hope I will have enough presence of mind to try to look closely at things that my eyes couldn't see.

If I do seem to see something like that, from "out of my body", I will still be pretty sure that it will only be a memory from having seen it before, at some time when my eyes could see it—even if I can't remember seeing it before. But I'm curious exactly what my brain would produce for such a sight. Will it be like what we all "see" in the optic nerve blind spot?

(That's the spot in everyone's visual field where there are no light-sensitive cells in the retina, so we can't actually see anything that's at that angle from our eyes. And indeed we don't see anything there; but we also don't notice any dark shadow there, either. Our brains just kind of say about that spot, "Nothing to see here, move along," and we mentally do. You can put an object on the desk, a bit to one side, and move back and forth while looking straight ahead with one eye closed, and if you can manage to pay attention to that spot without letting your eye move to look straight at it, you can notice it appear and disappear as you move. When it disappears, because your movement has brought it into your blind spot, you don't notice any black hole in the desk at that spot. Your impression is just that the desk is clear, with no object placed on it. Move a bit further and the object reappears. Somehow neither the disappearance nor the reappearance is startling. You have to make a point of trying to notice it. It's truly weird.)

(Another bizarre experiment is just to look at yourself in the mirror, and in particular look at your left eye. Then look at your right eye. Then your left, then your right, back and forth, back and forth. You'll never see your eyes move. Each time when you look, you'll see your eye staring steadily back at you, motionless. And yet if you get someone else to do this exactly the same way, and watch their eyes while they do it, you'll see that their eyes are moving most of the time, back and forth, back and forth. Our brains block out the motion of our own eyes, so that we see a series of still shots and not the constantly swinging pan that our retinas would record if they were video cameras. However it works, it's impressive. And once you know about this kind of stuff, it's a lot less surprising that our brains might occasionally show us the world from an exterior view. Our vision is highly post-processed.)

One group of people who seem to be really keen on OOBEs are Scientologists. Having an OOBE is a major goal; they call it "going exterior". A lot of Scientology processes are at least a bit like hypnotism, so it might be that dedicated practise of Scientology actually does somehow increase your chances of having an OOBE. It still doesn't seem to be common among Scientologists, and since Scientologists are a very small group, Scientology OOBEs are a tiny fraction of the recorded total.

I always gave my students this puzzle. Record with your cell phone your image while looking in the mirror. Then replay it as you look in the mirror and try to find what is missing. Without fail the students almost never figured out what was different. Even if I give them a clue to watch their eyes. Another interesting thing involves the inverting of the the image as it enters your eye. To prove this I would have put a bright flashlight on their forehead and slowly slide it towards their eyes. They then describe where they see the light coming from. Or you can do the same with the light shining in their mouth and have them explain where the light is coming from.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Paying for his wife to accompany him while he works IS “a sum in addition to” his expenses related to his work.

This is the company through which he’s employed as a tour guide:

https://bountifultravel.com/

It probably costs the company, what, $5-7k to send a woman and her husband all expenses paid to Israel or Egypt? DCP probably does 7’ish trips a year? $35-42k+ for free jet setting is a nice chunk of change, in whatever form it takes!

- Doc

[Gadianton]

What blows my mind is how someone with his academic aptitude can be enthralled with the same insipid nonsense over so many years and decades. Is it really that satisfying? Is it the contention the ideas generate, and not so much the ideas themselves? Is it the offset to a terrible fear of death -- a little nudge every day in the direction of hope for immortality?

Sounds like what he's saying now is that Gemli was right all along and his beliefs are unfalsifiable, and patting himself on the back for it. Like Sagan's account of the Dali Lama wisely informing him that it would be unlikely that science can disprove reincarnation.

[Doctor Scratch]

What blows my mind is how someone with his academic aptitude can be enthralled with the same insipid nonsense over so many years and decades. Is it really that satisfying? Is it the contention the ideas generate, and not so much the ideas themselves? Is it the offset to a terrible fear of death -- a little nudge every day in the direction of hope for immortality?

Sounds like what he's saying now is that Gemli was right all along and his beliefs are unfalsifiable, and patting himself on the back for it. Like Sagan's account of the Dali Lama wisely informing him that it would be unlikely that science can disprove reincarnation.

That is partly my reaction as well. What I don’t understand is his continued lying about getting paid for “defending the Church.” I mean, the only real way that he’s been clever in his entire life was to find a way to get paid to do what he loved, and what he loved was Mopologetics. He got paid more than $20,000 to serve as Chair of FARMS—it’s a matter of public IRS records, and yet he lies about it to this day. And why? The boneheads that follow him most closely would never care.

[IHAQ]

Paying for his wife to accompany him while he works IS “a sum in addition to” his expenses related to his work.

Absolutely.

[Philo Sofee]

What blows my mind is how someone with his academic aptitude can be enthralled with the same insipid nonsense over so many years and decades. Is it really that satisfying? Is it the contention the ideas generate, and not so much the ideas themselves? Is it the offset to a terrible fear of death -- a little nudge every day in the direction of hope for immortality?

Sounds like what he's saying now is that Gemli was right all along and his beliefs are unfalsifiable, and patting himself on the back for it. Like Sagan's account of the Dali Lama wisely informing him that it would be unlikely that science can disprove reincarnation.

That is partly my reaction as well. What I don’t understand is his continued lying about getting paid for “defending the Church.” I mean, the only real way that he’s been clever in his entire life was to find a way to get paid to do what he loved, and what he loved was Mopologetics. He got paid more than $20,000 to serve as Chair of FARMS—it’s a matter of public IRS records, and yet he lies about it to this day. And why? The boneheads that follow him most closely would never care.

I've not understood the reason for him being vehement against getting paid at all. Why not get paid to do apologetics, a boatload of work goes into it and not getting paid to do it has nothing to do with the quality of work one outputs does it? Perhaps he loathes television preachers and doesn't want to be seen as one of them doing it ONLY for the money. But then, there has to be money or it won't be done, no matter what one is doing. It's not the negative he thinks it is. But in his mind it is. Oh well. It is the quality that matters, something he did grasp at one point, but then let go of in order to try to impress with bigger numbers of articles, books, etc., being kicked out instead of one very serious piece of scholarship quarterly. A shooting gun is vastly worth more to a hunter than 63 guns given to him weekly that don't fire at all.

[Physics Guy]

I wonder exactly how fear of death may drive people to Mormonism. There are other belief systems which offer just as much hope for afterlife without all the Mormon baggage of ugly history, fake Scriptures, and high activity demand. I mean, one can just decide to believe that after death we all get eternal beach vacations, with no strings attached. If you can really believe that, you've got the fear of death licked.

I suppose that's the rub. If you just decide to believe something, it's too obvious that that's all your doing. When evidence is unavailable, one way you can still raise your confidence is to up your investment. A $100 bottle of wine is bound to taste better than a $10 bottle. If you don't actually know wine, but you really want to be sure you're getting a good bottle, you might just try to buy the most expensive bottle you can find.

Maybe committing to Mormonism is kind of analogous to that strategy.

[Dr Exiled]

That is partly my reaction as well. What I don’t understand is his continued lying about getting paid for “defending the Church.” I mean, the only real way that he’s been clever in his entire life was to find a way to get paid to do what he loved, and what he loved was Mopologetics. He got paid more than $20,000 to serve as Chair of FARMS—it’s a matter of public IRS records, and yet he lies about it to this day. And why? The boneheads that follow him most closely would never care.

I've not understood the reason for him being vehement against getting paid at all. Why not get paid to do apologetics, a boatload of work goes into it and not getting paid to do it has nothing to do with the quality of work one outputs does it? Perhaps he loathes television preachers and doesn't want to be seen as one of them doing it ONLY for the money. But then, there has to be money or it won't be done, no matter what one is doing. It's not the negative he thinks it is. But in his mind it is. Oh well. It is the quality that matters, something he did grasp at one point, but then let go of in order to try to impress with bigger numbers of articles, books, etc., being kicked out instead of one very serious piece of scholarship quarterly. A shooting gun is vastly worth more to a hunter than 63 guns given to him weekly that don't fire at all.

It's more of his idiotic hypocrisy. Thou shalt not admit to taking money for preaching or defending, yet, using the religious pulpit to push cruise lady, or the Witnesses snow job, well, that's different, somehow.

[dastardly stem]

I suspect that part of the reason why the term "out of body experience" is used by psychologists who study them is that it's kind of neutral-sounding about whether anything besides the subjective experience is out of the body. I doubt that many of the psychologists think that anything does, but some of the people they're studying may feel strongly about what their experiences meant. So the psychologists probably try not to offend the subjects.

The Wikipedia article has more information, including an estimate which surprises me, that as many as one person in ten may have an OOBE at least once in their life. So I still have a chance, yay! I think it would be really cool, even though I will still be quite sure, even if I have one, that nothing actually leaves my body. If it ever does happen I hope I will have enough presence of mind to try to look closely at things that my eyes couldn't see.

If I do seem to see something like that, from "out of my body", I will still be pretty sure that it will only be a memory from having seen it before, at some time when my eyes could see it—even if I can't remember seeing it before. But I'm curious exactly what my brain would produce for such a sight. Will it be like what we all "see" in the optic nerve blind spot?

(That's the spot in everyone's visual field where there are no light-sensitive cells in the retina, so we can't actually see anything that's at that angle from our eyes. And indeed we don't see anything there; but we also don't notice any dark shadow there, either. Our brains just kind of say about that spot, "Nothing to see here, move along," and we mentally do. You can put an object on the desk, a bit to one side, and move back and forth while looking straight ahead with one eye closed, and if you can manage to pay attention to that spot without letting your eye move to look straight at it, you can notice it appear and disappear as you move. When it disappears, because your movement has brought it into your blind spot, you don't notice any black hole in the desk at that spot. Your impression is just that the desk is clear, with no object placed on it. Move a bit further and the object reappears. Somehow neither the disappearance nor the reappearance is startling. You have to make a point of trying to notice it. It's truly weird.)

(Another bizarre experiment is just to look at yourself in the mirror, and in particular look at your left eye. Then look at your right eye. Then your left, then your right, back and forth, back and forth. You'll never see your eyes move. Each time when you look, you'll see your eye staring steadily back at you, motionless. And yet if you get someone else to do this exactly the same way, and watch their eyes while they do it, you'll see that their eyes are moving most of the time, back and forth, back and forth. Our brains block out the motion of our own eyes, so that we see a series of still shots and not the constantly swinging pan that our retinas would record if they were video cameras. However it works, it's impressive. And once you know about this kind of stuff, it's a lot less surprising that our brains might occasionally show us the world from an exterior view. Our vision is highly post-processed.)

One group of people who seem to be really keen on OOBEs are Scientologists. Having an OOBE is a major goal; they call it "going exterior". A lot of Scientology processes are at least a bit like hypnotism, so it might be that dedicated practice of Scientology actually does somehow increase your chances of having an OOBE. It still doesn't seem to be common among Scientologists, and since Scientologists are a very small group, Scientology OOBEs are a tiny fraction of the recorded total.

I've had a hundred or so in my life. Although I'd question what that means because I don't know if what I've experienced is the exact same as others--I can just very much relate each time I read someone's account. When I read their accounts I see my own accounts. And they only seem interesting or important if I really want them to. This is likely why I find myself very skeptical. Each time I hear them they seem to be nothing more than dream-like events. Also, I realize there are plenty of studies showing many to be manifestations coming while under brain altering conditions.

I think I've shared this before here, but it was probably near two years ago now when I had one such experience. I mention it because I think it kind of silly to think about. There's a definite realness to it--meaning when Joseph Smith says "I saw it and I know that God saw it" and all of that I can relate. Anyway this one I'm referencing and which I may have described here before has me going from inside my body to outside and watching the devil himself, or whatever I imagined he to be, menacingly standing over me desperately needing me to admit I knew he existed. I had concluded there was no devil many years before, but my former beliefs still seem to haunt me. And by that I mean those experiences feel as real and tangible as going to the store or eating a cupcake, in the moment. They've happened frequently enough for me where I deep down, whatever that means, know its not real and can somewhat manage my emotions....but even with that it feels so heavy and so real. I get why it feels to many that someone out there is trying to send a clear message on something about reality. But I also can't help but recognize it is just so reasonable to conclude there's no real exiting the body and is easily all explainable as a phenomena in the brain, for some of us.

When the devil was threatening me I was resistant until he broke me...I cried "you're real" and he turned nice. I said it as if I had my fingers crossed behind my back, lying, only to get him to leave me alone. It worked...and recovered, came out of my vision a bit sweaty and worked up, but after a couple of deep breaths moved on again.

It's really not fun. It sucks for me. I wouldn't really wish anyone experienced them, even the positive sounding ones.

There seems to be a big problem with any evaluation of this stuff though. Experts evaluate the experiences as coming from true believers because true believers are the ones who assume their experience is important or means something, which means they happen to be the ones making noise about it. I've told a few experiences with people close to me every so often, but I'm not seeing it as anything worth analyzing. I mean it happens and I carry on with my day, most often forgetting it as if nothing happened. What'd be funny is if it was God trying to give me special attention (which at one time I kinda thought) and, for the most part, I'm sticking my middle finger in his face as a response.

At the last day: "Stem, I gave you mountains of reasons to believe in me and to tell everyone else you believe, but you hid your light under a bushel and tried to reason your way out of accepting my messaging. It turns out I never knew you, depart from me". Lol. Come on, Jebus...you can do better than that.