Hippyhead

If Saddam moved in next door to you and you started to hear screams coming from the house, would you call the police or not? It's a yes or no question...

That's a common definition of truth. But that definition does reduce truth to being a pile of little symbols in the minds of a species on a single pla...

And why does the question matter? Because the overwhelming vast majority of reality is a real phenomena, which doesn't meet our definition of existenc...

I've been attempting to draw the distinction between "real" and "exists" in multiple threads. Seems a useful line of inquiry here.

People such as yourself were that reason. Twenty years later, Saddam gone, his psychopathic sons dead, Iraq free, torture chambers gone, no WMD arms r...

Not worth the bother. Like I said, imho, words and reason are insufficient for this task.

If Saddam took over the house next to yours and you started hearing screaming coming from inside... You'd call the police, knowing in advance that men...

Well, could be. I dunno, seems kinda obvious though. Space. No weight, no mass, no shape, no form. Not meeting the most common definition of existence...

REAL. Just not existent. Like space.

The threat seems too distant to many folks for them to take it seriously. If Saddam had taken over Saudi Arabia and then cut off the oil, that probabl...

Based on what I can observe, and about a thousand conversations on this subject.... 1) Wait 2) Watch the civilization collapse 3) Wait a long time 4) ...

What the Iraq war taught us is that lots of folks are simply never going to get this. Until the goons knock on their door.

Dear mods, could you please close the forum and erase all the backups so that praxis will have to infect some other site? Thank you!

You typed this sentence instead of addressing any of my arguments. You are dismissed. Good luck Wayfarer.

Yes, that's it. Some people will stand back and ceaselessly complain about well intended efforts to liberate enslaved people in other countries. But t...

Aha! I have found my guru! :-) Well, almost. You are not claiming to be an authority, a leader, a teacher etc. Should you ever do so I will visit your...

Agreed. It would seem to be the polar opposite of the severity you seem to be proposing (if I understand it) that we should focus on those examining t...

For endless centuries the statement "the sun is rising" was considered to be factually accurate. The accuracy of that statement was taken to be an obv...

Not sure how familiar you are with Internet forums. Very few forum users will read academic articles linked to on other platforms, especially when tho...

Please provide us with the proof that the rules of reason created by a half insane semi-suicidal species only recently living in caves on one little p...

Agreed, science in itself is just a knowledge generating machine, a tool, a neutral phenomena, neither good nor bad in itself. And, "more is better" s...

If only it were so. A philosophy aligned with the vast majority of reality would be rational.

Yes, this is VERY COMMON internet atheist dogma. Everyone should acknowledge their position is faith based, except for the atheist. There is a factory...

Thank you. Now break the news to him that it's a faith based belief.

Yes, real, but non existent (no mass or weight etc).

So I'm suggesting an evolution from a "more is better" relationship with knowledge which was appropriate in a long era when knowledge was scarce, to a...

Right. My point too. No one predicted it. Someone in charge should have. We Americans are technically brilliant, and culturally clueless. So, invasion...

The missing information, imho, was that we didn't fully grasp how traumatized the Iraqi people were. Once Saddam's knife was off their neck, a great d...

Good luck with that. :-)

A key problem in such discussions is that Americans (and many other Westerners) have had freedom for so long we typically no longer appreciate it. Und...

Invasion, near perfect. Occupation, a mess.

Yes, goal was moral, execution of plan incompetent. That said, nobody in Iraq is pining for the days of Saddam. The Iraqi government appears to be inc...

I like this, thumbs up. Yes, not a simple right/wrong equation. Unless we are for psychopathic dictatorships, it's really a tactical question, not a m...

Agreed, never proven, just made more credible. Have you ever worked a hard low paying job for years? If the guy next to you is always happy, at peace ...

Dodging the incoming fire now, are we? :-)

Very unlikely to be possible, except maybe for a rare few. This is what thousands of years of evidence reveals. If that is true (debatable of course) ...

What most of us are suffering from is that we think about ourselves too much. Seeing that we have a problem we go looking for a solution. Sometimes we...

I guess I'm being Mr. GrouchyPants again, but isn't there a degree of absurdity in the assumption that any of us know anything about issues of such en...

He doesn't understand that his position is as faith based as anyone else's, on issues of this scale. He believes in the qualifications of his chosen m...

You've read all my posts on that topic, and still don't understand anything I've said. No worries.

It's the revenge of the Catholics. While everyone is falling all over themselves to leave the Church, meanwhile we are also becoming more sanctimoniou...

When will science end? When will the scientists hold a news conference to announce they've finished their work? Thousands of years? Never? Even in the...

Are ‘Near-Death Experiences’ Real? By John Martin Fischer - a professor of philosophy.

I think these folks are the site owners:

Here we get in to definitions and word games, but my understanding is that these experiences are classified as death by the medical community. Emergen...

I'm questioning the degree to which judgment has been suspended. Are you stunned yet? :-)

Yes, those who have, generally speaking, no experience with the phenomena in question. Which is not to say they are therefore wrong in their views. I'...

In theory at least, profoundly simple things might be best explained in profoundly simple language.

Right, that's where I got the impression I did. Well, ok, but isn't that your bias? Research=good, experience=meritless? If that is your bias, I'm not...

This could reasonably be declared off topic, but personally I'm more interested in reports from DMT experiences, as these would seem to be reproducibl...