The problem with atheism.

[dank]

I can't let doubt bring me down if I'm going to fly.  I know what's true.  And no, it won't be off a roof but on a stage with many people watching.

[Rassah]

I'm not interested in harming my body even if it makes me believe in god. Do you not realize this? You are ingesting ACID! You're killing yourself, literally, cell by cell. Acids destroy living cells!

Uh, dude, the acid in your stomach is hundreds if not thousands of times more potent than the stuff in the psychedelic. Plus we drink carbonic acid in carbonated soft drinks, lactic acid in milk, and citric acid in orange juice and a ton of other things. Acids aren't a problem. Psychedelics are.

[Rassah]

I have hallucinated on demand many times of the same object, I know it can be replicated.

That's nice. That's not what is meant by "replicated" though. Get 5 others to hallucinate the exact same thing while being in separate environments away from each other, and maybe someone somewhere will give a shit.

I can't let doubt bring me down if I'm going to fly.  I know what's true.  And no, it won't be off a roof but on a stage with many people watching.

Easy enough. Just have to fall, and get distracted by something else so much that you miss the ground.

[hawkeye]

I liked your post rassah, but I beg to differ that personal encounters of god are proof of existence.  How else can you explain something ripping a hole into this dimension and interacting with you?
 

Here's the problem with personal experiences.

People from all religions talk about personal experiences with their deities.    These are mutually exclusive.   They can't all be true.  If there is only one true God, then the people of other religions can't have had the experiences they say they have had.  There must be some other explanation.  They are lying, hallucinating, mistaking some normal experience for it, etc...  Whatever it might be.  If there are other, natural, explanations for those experiences, then it is more likely than not there are natural explanations for Christian's experiences too rather than that they had a supernatural experience.   It just makes more sense.

Hell, I meet God every time I orgasm.  

[termhn]

I'm not interested in harming my body even if it makes me believe in god. Do you not realize this? You are ingesting ACID! You're killing yourself, literally, cell by cell. Acids destroy living cells!

Uh, dude, the acid in your stomach is hundreds if not thousands of times more potent than the stuff in the psychedelic. Plus we drink carbonic acid in carbonated soft drinks, lactic acid in milk, and citric acid in orange juice and a ton of other things. Acids aren't a problem. Psychedelics are.

Yes, but your stomach is the only  place that the stomach acid won't harm your body. Anyway, I was wrong in the sense that LSD is very harmful per dose compared with some other drugs. Still, I don't want to harm my thoughts either, which is what a psychedelic does.

[dank]

I have hallucinated on demand many times of the same object, I know it can be replicated.

That's nice. That's not what is meant by "replicated" though. Get 5 others to hallucinate the exact same thing while being in separate environments away from each other, and maybe someone somewhere will give a shit.

I can't let doubt bring me down if I'm going to fly.  I know what's true.  And no, it won't be off a roof but on a stage with many people watching.

Easy enough. Just have to fall, and get distracted by something else so much that you miss the ground.

Or how about my friend who has floated while on mushrooms?  Several people witnessed the event.  Would you give a shit then?  How about if it was repeated in front of many people?

Do you really need proof or can you just have faith I may know what I'm talking about?

[hawkeye]

Why not just make a video of him floating and post to youtube?  Most people have the capability on cell phones. 

[dank]

It happened once, not by command.  It proves it is possible and a glimpse of the future to come.

[Rassah]

I have hallucinated on demand many times of the same object, I know it can be replicated.

That's nice. That's not what is meant by "replicated" though. Get 5 others to hallucinate the exact same thing while being in separate environments away from each other, and maybe someone somewhere will give a shit.

I can't let doubt bring me down if I'm going to fly.  I know what's true.  And no, it won't be off a roof but on a stage with many people watching.

Easy enough. Just have to fall, and get distracted by something else so much that you miss the ground.

Or how about my friend who has floated while on mushrooms?  Several people witnessed the event.  Would you give a shit then?  How about if it was repeated in front of many people?

Do you really need proof or can you just have faith I may know what I'm talking about?

Yes, I really need proof. Though I am willing to take the word of people who have a respectable reputation. You and your friends do not, so with you id need proof. Moreso, I would need the exact steps needed to recreate this scenario. "He just got lucky, and somehow managed to do it" won't cut it. I need something that you know will make anyone who tries the same thing float.

[the joint]

Not sure about floating...

...but on about a half-dozen occasions, I've successfully cured myself from various colds/flus/bronchial infections in approximately an hour through meditation.  It hasn't always worked, and success seems contingent upon my motivation and concentration during each attempt.

[Rassah]

Still, I don't want to harm my thoughts either, which is what a psychedelic does.

Agreed. I value my mind, and my ability to think clearly, so much that I refuse to take any such drugs, or even to get drunk on alcohol. I only have a few decades to use my brain cells (unless we hit singularity). I don't want to burn them out too quickly.

[Rassah]

Not sure about floating...

...but on about a half-dozen occasions, I've successfully cured myself from various colds/flus/bronchial infections in approximately an hour through meditation.  It hasn't always worked, and success seems contingent upon my motivation and concentration during each attempt.

Are you sure it wasn't just a temporary allergy? Something had to have happened to all those virus cells in your body. They can't just disappear because you thought about it in some special way.

[the joint]

Not sure about floating...

...but on about a half-dozen occasions, I've successfully cured myself from various colds/flus/bronchial infections in approximately an hour through meditation.  It hasn't always worked, and success seems contingent upon my motivation and concentration during each attempt.

Are you sure it wasn't just a temporary allergy? Something had to have happened to all those virus cells in your body. They can't just disappear because you thought about it in some special way.

I'm positive, I've been tested for allergies several times including some massive test where they stuck me over 100 times on my back with various common allergic substances with zero allergic reactions.  The most radical change was the reduction of a 101-something fever to under 99, though I forget exactly.  However, the effect was permanent and the fever didn't return.  I've had about a half-dozen experiences similar to this over the span of about 3 or 4 years, including almost every instance of sickness I've experienced within that time-frame.

I also think it's worth mentioning that when I meditate on a regular basis, I require about 1-2 fewer hours of sleep per night to feel as energized throughout the day as I would if I weren't meditating consistently.  When meditating regularly, I can do fine on 5-6 hours per night, otherwise I need at least 7-8 to feel rested.

By the way, it takes two to tango.  Virus cells don't just cause sickness, but rather  sickness is also dependent upon the person's immune system.  If two people are exposed to the same cold virus but only one person gets sick, you can't say that the virus caused the sickness.  In meditation, you (naturally) alter your breathing such that you are actually taking in more oxygen and producing more ATP.  A lot of people breath from their chest, so-to-speak, and aren't even aware of it, and this is usually a sign of subliminal tension.  When you chest-breathe, the air sacs at the bottom of your lungs aren't receiving oxygen like the air sacs at the top.  During meditation, stomach-breathing (just what you observe when you see someone sleeping) happens, and oxygen penetrates deeper into the lungs.

[hawkeye]

It happened once, not by command.  It proves it is possible and a glimpse of the future to come.

Convenient.   

[bythesea]

2 Thessalonians 1:8-9  He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.

Hmm. This just reaffirms my belief that the Christian god is a vain and prideful asshole. Who the hell tortures people for eternity just because they don't give them attention or worship him?

That's easy, the Ori do

[SlyWax]

Not sure about floating...

...but on about a half-dozen occasions, I've successfully cured myself from various colds/flus/bronchial infections in approximately an hour through meditation.  It hasn't always worked, and success seems contingent upon my motivation and concentration during each attempt.

Yeah, I can do the same, it's kind of improving your immune system, or controlling the placebo effect with your mind.
But there is no magic in that.

And it's far from modifying you DNA, or even more modifying your spermatozoid DNA, which is the only way of propagating those modification down the hereditary tree.

[SlyWax]

Consciousness is an emerging property.
That's why it's difficult to grasp with simple reasoning.

Just look at ant. Each ant is a dumb soldier that act simply in response to external stimuli.
Whereas ant nest are more complex and able to achieve complex behaviour, such as finding the shortest way to food, building the nest, defending from aggressor etc...

The same is true about cells which constitute a plant for example, those cell are basic, but together they build complex trees with flower fruit and so on...

When you consider the brain, the neurons have basic properties, but when you put billion of them and interconnect them thousands of times, you get conscience as an emerging behaviour.
So yes you can't say which one give you the conscience since it comes from the union !

[Rassah]

Where does the operating system and software come from, if not from the CPU? Is computer software just an illusion being experienced by a computer?

[AU]

There are several Gods, The sun (Ra) is one of them.

AU

[hawkeye]

You guys really need to put your money where your mouth is.

Maybe your belief that consciousness is physical, e.g.: a particle or group of particles, or an electromagnetic field or something similar, is itself a fantasy? Seriously, where's the evidence?

To save some lengthy and frustrating discussion that only goes in circles, I'll use a fake discussion between an atheist scientist and a questioning hippie, to show how unsatisfactory and downright nonsensical the physical explanations sound:
...

...And so on, ad infinitum. And that was just a simplistic discussion without invoking things like dreams, imagination, the location of consciousness during sleep, and so on. I find it disconcerting that the hippie was doing all the inquiring, whereas the scientist was being a boring bureaucrat pretending to have all the answers.

I really have no idea what you are talking about.  Brain and consciousness are, afaik, one of the most active research areas in science where many discoveries have been made and many discoveries are yet to be made.  The mystery of consciousness is yet to be fully unravelled.

That doesn't mean there is some supernatural element to it.  In fact, what reason is there to think there might be a supernatural element to either that or anything else for that matter?  We are yet to see anything that might indicate this in any way.   

Personally, I consider the neuroscientist who actually studies, thinks and experiments on the brain to have more credibility than the stoner telling me all about god is the universe and truth and love.