Invoking The Voyagers Against Id |
Invoking The Voyagers Against Id |
Oct 24 2005, 03:04 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2454 Joined: 8-July 05 From: NGC 5907 Member No.: 430 |
Cornell President Rawlings Condemns Intelligent Design
Drawing from sources ranging from Cornell's founders to Voyager space missions, Interim President Hunter R. Rawlings III condemned the push to teach intelligent design in public schools Friday. The attack came during the president's State of... http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/...4/435c7762cf891 "The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress." - Bertrand Russell -------------------- "After having some business dealings with men, I am occasionally chagrined,
and feel as if I had done some wrong, and it is hard to forget the ugly circumstance. I see that such intercourse long continued would make one thoroughly prosaic, hard, and coarse. But the longest intercourse with Nature, though in her rudest moods, does not thus harden and make coarse. A hard, sensible man whom we liken to a rock is indeed much harder than a rock. From hard, coarse, insensible men with whom I have no sympathy, I go to commune with the rocks, whose hearts are comparatively soft." - Henry David Thoreau, November 15, 1853 |
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Nov 4 2005, 10:59 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 350 Joined: 20-June 04 From: Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. Member No.: 86 |
There actually have been some studies on near-death experiences. NDE experiences share remarkably similar basic traits (meeting dead loved ones [some NDE experiencers meet loved ones they didn't realize were dead until after they come back], meeting some sort of guide spirit, being presented with some sort of 'rift' over which they must cross [an actual chasm, a stream, you get the idea], and being pulled back to the 'original' world, invariably to their dismay), and while I suppose you could argue that this is all some sort of 'brain defense mechanism', I fail to see how the tiny bit of oxygen left in your brain right before you're clinically dead could inspire so many things to happen.
Then, too, I think that a lot of people want to believe that there is nothing, so that they don't have to feel guilty about being inconsiderate to other people. But they'll figure it out one way or another. I think that as medical technology advances and more and more people have these experiences it will be impossible to dismiss them as 'meaningless'. There is no drug that can reproduce the entire near death experience, unless of course it causes you to die, and oxygen deprivation certainly doesn't cause people to experience all these things (unless it makes them die). Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter if anyone believes in life after death or not, and in fact it seems rather obvious to me that some things can only be experienced if you don't believe in life after death. See ya on the other side. The day anybody demonstrates telekinesis in ANY form whatsoever (even making something twitch one billionth of one billionth of a micron), it will be quite a breakthrough indeed. I don't think that day has happened just yet. |
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