The International Association of Near Death Experiences is essentially a collection of quacks offering their snake oil to credulous victims. They have a YouTube channel which is great if you need a laugh. Hopefully Dan’s talk today ends up there soon.
Here’s a fun one on “channeling”
https://youtu.be/Fk3RxlNLGQU
Here’s another gem about “after death contact”
https://youtu.be/q1-JTfMzobI
And of course it wouldn’t be complete without a UFO tie in:
https://youtu.be/AeQXf-ZQ9AI
Mormonism fits perfectly into all of this, being just another form of quackery.
Dan Peterson at Quackery Conference
Re: Dan Peterson at Quackery Conference
Pumping energy into my third eye. Jesus.
And my husband appeared as a Pomeranian .....
And my husband appeared as a Pomeranian .....
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huckelberry
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Re: Dan Peterson at Quackery Conference
Are we supposed to know the meaning of the phrase, Dan's talk today?
Re: Dan Peterson at Quackery Conference
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... iands.htmlDP wrote:Finally, I myself spoke to the topic “Has Modern Physics Proven Out-of-Body Experiences Impossible?” This was only a brief treatment of the matter. With time, I could have said considerably more. But I had fun thinking about the topic. And, with Tom Pittman’s expert assistance, I had a really nice Keynote presentation to accompany my otherwise boring drone.
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Re: Dan Peterson at Quackery Conference
To mis-quote Mark Twain: “I couldn't feel more satisfied and at rest if the entire BSc family had testified.”
Re: Dan Peterson at Quackery Conference
If we have no soul then it is impossible to have such an NDE experience. We are brain dead?
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Re: Dan Peterson at Quackery Conference
Near death experiences and out-of-body experiences certainly happen, in the sense that people have these subjective experiences. NDEs are, however, still-alive experiences. And nothing actually leaves the body in an OBE. I'm a bit curious what Peterson can have said in his presentation, because I think that physics has in fact proven that nobody's mind or soul or spirit or whatever can really leave their body in any objective way. I wonder whether Peterson has any real grasp of the issues involved, or whether he just blithely rambles about how science doesn't know everything.
We can certainly have souls, just in the way that books have stories, not in the way they have binding glue. The notion that consciousness is something like a story written in the brain is the default scientific hypothesis now, I think. It's sometimes called the "strong A.I." theory, because if mind is a matter of form, rather than of substance, then it should be perfectly possible for algorithms to be conscious. The neuroscience of consciousness is probably in an even more primitive state of infancy than artificial intelligence, currently. Both are likely to be active scientific fields for a long time, even if progress in them is slow. So it's not true that science has no interest in souls or can have nothing to say on them, if by "soul" one means ... everything anyone has ever wanted "soul" to mean, except for the otherwise irrelevant property of being substantial.
A soul that is a story-like pattern rather than a substance could have life after death in the way suggested in Ben Franklin's unused epitaph. The story could be reprinted in a revised edition, or perhaps translated into another medium. We could be as graphic novels now, to be made into movies. Science is not likely to have anything to say about possibilities like that—for or against—since they would be happening in a whole other universe.
It seems to me that most traditional religious belief systems can easily abandon traditional conceptions of souls as substantial objects, and embrace strong-A.I.-like pattern theories of how souls relate to matter, without thereby losing anything significant from their traditional doctrines. It should be about as painless as accepting that the water in the ancient River Jordan was composed of H2O molecules. Believers may have thought of souls as substantial things for centuries, but insofar as substance dualism was ever really a part of most religions, it was always a loose part that could be pulled out without disrupting the rest of the structure.
The only exceptions I see would be religions that are for some reason committed to explicit doctrines about the material nature of spirit. I think these religions may be in about as much trouble as religions that explicitly denied the existence of atoms would be.
We can certainly have souls, just in the way that books have stories, not in the way they have binding glue. The notion that consciousness is something like a story written in the brain is the default scientific hypothesis now, I think. It's sometimes called the "strong A.I." theory, because if mind is a matter of form, rather than of substance, then it should be perfectly possible for algorithms to be conscious. The neuroscience of consciousness is probably in an even more primitive state of infancy than artificial intelligence, currently. Both are likely to be active scientific fields for a long time, even if progress in them is slow. So it's not true that science has no interest in souls or can have nothing to say on them, if by "soul" one means ... everything anyone has ever wanted "soul" to mean, except for the otherwise irrelevant property of being substantial.
A soul that is a story-like pattern rather than a substance could have life after death in the way suggested in Ben Franklin's unused epitaph. The story could be reprinted in a revised edition, or perhaps translated into another medium. We could be as graphic novels now, to be made into movies. Science is not likely to have anything to say about possibilities like that—for or against—since they would be happening in a whole other universe.
It seems to me that most traditional religious belief systems can easily abandon traditional conceptions of souls as substantial objects, and embrace strong-A.I.-like pattern theories of how souls relate to matter, without thereby losing anything significant from their traditional doctrines. It should be about as painless as accepting that the water in the ancient River Jordan was composed of H2O molecules. Believers may have thought of souls as substantial things for centuries, but insofar as substance dualism was ever really a part of most religions, it was always a loose part that could be pulled out without disrupting the rest of the structure.
The only exceptions I see would be religions that are for some reason committed to explicit doctrines about the material nature of spirit. I think these religions may be in about as much trouble as religions that explicitly denied the existence of atoms would be.
I was a teenager before it was cool.
Re: Dan Peterson at Quackery Conference
Peterson is certainly starting to look the part…
https://conference.iands.org/presentati ... mpossible/
https://conference.iands.org/presentati ... mpossible/
Re: Dan Peterson at Quackery Conference
he seriously needs some grooming help. Don't they have places for that in Utah? My boys both have beards but they are assiduous in keeping them well groomed and they look stunning. they would NEVER let their facial hair look so sloppy and unkempt. and even if you're mostly bald, you still need to groom what's left. Is he not well? is personal hygiene not a thing for retired byu profs?IHAQ wrote: ↑Mon Sep 05, 2022 11:06 amPeterson is certainly starting to look the part…
https://conference.iands.org/presentati ... mpossible/
Re: Dan Peterson at Quackery Conference
He has to look the part amidst all the crystal healers, homeopaths, and necromancers.