UPSB v3
Serious Discussion / One of the most epic posts ever?
What are your opinions on it?
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Date: Sun, Jan 24 2010 09:59:38QUOTE (***)you poor thing! let me help you reconcile the idea of heaven!
I was once a catholic UNTIL I read hundreds of NDE's and became convinced through these experiences that the catholic idea of heaven is actually fundamentally 'wrong'. My ideas concerning heaven are based on these experiences, rather than my own fantastical imagining
One of the hardest things to accept about 'heaven', is there is no such thing as a designated magical place called 'heaven'. NONE. The 'place' called 'heaven' - doesn't exist. Your own intuition let you know this, and for rightful reasons.
How can there possibly be a place, where we all magically love each other and get along? Like you seem to intuitively feel - such a place would deny us free will, to prevent us from causing suffering onto another. Such a place of so called perfect bliss, would have to deny the diversity we see in life, out of some strange idea that from such diversity stems suffering.. Thus....bliss is boring.
Well there is good news for you. 'Heaven' is real!!!! But it's not a place.
(according to NDE's) If you were to ask an angel to show you ALL of heaven, you're in for a trip. The angel would show you every, every, every planet. Every star system. And every galaxy...All what? How many do you we think are out there? BILLIONS OF GALAXIES? If you were to ask an angel 'show me ALL the inhabitants of heaven' - you would see every living species in the Universe. Including every living species of the earth.
And of course the angel would also show you the other realities such as the astral
Where is heaven then? Ask an angel and they would answer, where isn't heaven?
WHAT is heaven then? It's a state of consciousness where you know and experience that all of reality is intimately connected. That you are a part of everything that is. You are a part of humanity. You are a part of nature, of the earth. Of the sun. Of our entire galaxy. Now were talking bliss. Now were talking about an unconditional love.
And understanding just how FUCKING HUGE our Universe is, diversity is the norm. Not conformity or sameness or boringness.
It might be hard to imagine how our dear earth, with all her suffering could be a part of 'heaven'. But look at all the suffering of the earth. How much of it is caused by earth herself? Isn't it the other way around? Isn't most suffering on the earth caused by the lack of compassion from human to another human? What if all humans KNOW that all humans are actually fundamentally connected and ONE, fundamentally the same ONE universal stuff? . . . . Would we tolerate the suffering of even one human? No. Because their suffering would be our suffering. That is what heaven is.
Of course you might argue, well what about diseases like cancer? Humans didn't cause cancer.....did we?
What if I told you we give ourselves diseases? That's hard to swallow, but it's actually being proven true. I recommend Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton. Our beliefs, our mental well being, can and do manifest as diseases. Now I'm not saying this to be cruel to those who are terminally ill by placing the blame on their mental health. No. Understand that all of humanity is intimately connected. Our diseases are manifestations of the WHOLE. Not just the fault of a single individual. We are giving each other diseases!
To show just how strong our beliefs are (NO SERIOUSLY!!!) an experiment was done
The experiment was done on a group of people suffering from bad knees, to point where they couldn't walk. The cure to this knee suffering is a simple and standard knee surgery. The control group was given the surgery as usual...................the experiment group was given a fake surgery.
The doctors made the test subjects BELIEVE they were under surgery. But all the doctors did was cut the skin open. THEY DID NOT EVEN TOUCH THE KNEE. Then the doctors sewed the skin back up. And told the test subjects that the operation was a success!! As evidence that they were under surgery...there's the ugly scar!
The test subjects had no idea they were a part of any experiment. They NAIVELY believed in their doctors 100%. They believed 100% that they were operated on. They believed 100% that their knee problem was HEALED! And like the control group - they were healed. And like the control group - they were able to walk again.
Accept no surgery was done on them. It was all in their head. The doctors who did perform a surgery were left with the puzzling and unanswered question. Does the surgery actually heal the knee? Or does it only heal the knee because patients BELIEVE it heals them?
The answer according to new research in cell biology would suggest the latter. No seriously, this experiment really happened! Bruce Lipton however explains that belief is not a gradient scale. You can't believe 70%, or even 99%..........YOU EITHER BELIEVE OR YOU DON'T!
Look at chemotherapy. What are we doing? It's DESPERATE. We are poisoning the entire system of the cancer patient in hopes that it poisons the cancer. Of course, we also poison the healthy parts of the patient! Chemotherapy slowly kills the patient! Its deadly, its dangerous. All logic would point that it is actually counterproductive, and sometimes unfortunately it is.
Why doesn't chemotherapy always work? Or even...WHY DOES IT WORK WHEN IT DOES!........What if it only works if the patient has absolute faith that it will work? What a horrible battle to believe chemotherapy will cure you when it only adds to your suffering.
But the point I'm making is...there is no suffering right now on the earth that mankind is not capable of over coming. As difficult and hard it is to accept, it all boils down to our beliefs. All we have to do to see paradise on earth is to completely change our state of consciousness.
Quantum physics absolutely 100% on the side of spirituality!! Thanks to cell biologists like Bruce Lipton and others, so is biology. Materialism is actually dying. Even genetic determinism, which gave birth to materialism has been proven false.
If not traumatized by religion, science would have already written in text books that we have souls. Except it wouldn't call it a soul. Instead it would say that our consciousness is a field of energy, intimately connected to all other conscious fields of energy. Creating what is simply called the Field.
We are fast approaching a new era of Holism.
Something else fun and interesting that adds weight to our spiritual heritage.........For many years science has been barking that love is nothing more but a chemical reaction. For anyone with half a brain, we knew that this was a lie.
Science has had to take a step back..............Love isn't just some meaningless chemical reaction in the brain....Actually love turns out to be energy! (energy = spirit)
The heart produces 5,000...that is FIVE THOUSAND TIMES more electromagnetic energy than our brain. It produces so much energy, it has it's own donut shaped field around our entire body. Our technology can read this heart field from ten feet away!!!! However we believe the field of the heart is actually much larger and that our equipment just isn't good enough yet.
The heart has it's own tiny little brain. We've known this for years. It was however believed that this tiny little heart brain simply takes orders from our head brain, and is therefore not actually important. That's actually no longer true. Biologists now know that this heart brain COMMUNICATES with our head brain. Why do we intuitively believe LOVE stems from the heart and not our brain?............................. Because it's biologically true.
When we are in a state of love - the communication between the heart and the brain becomes what the scientists call 'coherent'. And you can see and measure this coherence in the heart field. In a state of love, our heart coherence effects our entire biology - producing an overall state of well being. That's nice and all, but so what?
The so what part is that our heart is not limited to our physical body. It's field of energy radiates several feet away from the body, and interacts with other heart fields. We are broadcasting and effecting the emotions of everyone else. Fortunately for us, the coherence of love is contagious. It only takes one great and loving person in heart coherence, to stabilize less than coherent heart fields into coherence. Which then in turns creates a domino affect.
An example would be the loved based marches led by King. Had we had the technology we have today then, you would actually be able to verify and measure the coherent field of energy produced by the hearts of the marchers!
A group of scientists asked a daring question......If one person in heart coherence can affect a large group of people......How many will it take to put the entire world in heart coherence?
The experiment is on, and willing and many volunteers are needed
This was posted on Dreamviews. What are your opinions? -
Date: Sun, Jan 24 2010 10:19:30
wall-o-text
someone summarize it for me -
Date: Sun, Jan 24 2010 15:23:39
let's all flame this noob now
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Date: Sun, Jan 24 2010 19:42:13
Intellectually pathetic pile of rubbish.
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Date: Sun, Jan 24 2010 19:57:08
First paragraph was alright. Second was where he started going into the looney. Not because of the way it sounds or the claims he makes. Rather, he just doesn't back up anything! Especially the part where he says materialism is dying. I find that hard to believe in this day and age of consumerism. Also he doesn't back up his claim that genetic determinism has been proven false. So... yeah. Not epic, but you know, it is somewhat inspiring. Kind of like how the Bible is to Christians. Ironic, isn't it?
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Date: Sun, Jan 24 2010 20:23:31
Better post
In response to~"Why do atheists have an emotional reaction to proselytizing and insinuations against their collective characters?"
Missionary, let me try to shine some light into this for at least one atheist - me. I want you to close your eyes and pretend that you are just an average guy. Now, I want you to imagine that you live in a society in which the overwhelming majority of your peers believe that eating grapes is evil, and that a gigantic monster will tear you limb from limb if you even think about eating grapes. But all is not lost! If you manage to go through life without giving in to their tastiness and juiciness, you'll get to see a beautiful green unicorn right before you die.
How does everybody know that this is true, Missionary? Well, that's easy. Some desert nomads from the bronze age wrote it down - well, that's not accurate. The desert nomads met the monster and saw the green unicorn, and then after generations of playing the 'telephone' game, somebody wrote it down. Then after being passed through the hands of thousands of people with their own agendas, biases, and transcription errors, it got translated into your native language. Isn't it easy to see why it's true?
And people really do believe that it is true. There have been wars fought between anti-grape groups that think that the monster eats you if you eat any grapes and anti-grape groups that think the monster only eats you if you eat the purple variety of grape. There are sub-sects which think that seedless grapes are especially abominable. There have been murders, tortures, and brutal religious-violence over whether it is even appropriate to touch grapes - including long-standing squabbles in which children too young to even know what a grape looks like have been used as living grenades to carry explosives to the 'heretics' on the other side of some anti-grape related issue.
It's not a problem for you when you don't see any problem with eating grapes, and you didn't mind so much when people laughed at your disbelief in the monster that'll get you for eating grapes. The fact that you eat grapes all the time and there haven't been any monster sightings doesn't seem to dissuade people. In fact, the troubling absence of monster sightings in any time since the dawn of recording devices doesn't seem to dissuade people either. Curious. You note the bizarre fact that the 'reward' for avoiding grapes isn't really all that awesome (so you get to see a green unicorn? That's not so great.). You also find curious the fact that the 'reward' comes at a time when it it completely unverifiable, so even if somebody did see the green unicorn, they'd never be able to tell you about it. None of these observations makes any lick of difference to anybody else, but who cares, right? If they want to believe in a weird story, that's their issue, not yours, right?
Well, not quite. See, you sent your kid to school with some grapes in his lunch and he got beat up by other kids who were afraid of the monster. You complained about it to the school, but the school administrators who were scared of the monster just as much as the kids refused to punish the kids who beat up your child. Every week, people concerned about your grape-eating habits drop by your home to leave you ridiculous pamphlets with crude drawings of what they think the monster might look like, and to point out how awesome seeing the green unicorn would be. You're polite to them and tell them that you're not really interested.
When your family found out that you were a grape-eater, they kicked you out of the house, even though you were young and your older sister got to live at home for another two years. You mother and father refused to have anything to do with you, and your father even contacted his attorney to have his will redrawn so as not to include a son who doesn't believe in the green unicorn. Your mother refused to attend your wedding - either because you were going to omit mention of the evilness of eating grapes or because you would mention them and sacreligiously just pretend that you thought they were evil to try to keep the peace. Despite your best efforts, when your children were born, every family member, neighbor, and 'well-wisher' tried to overrule your moral education of your child by telling them stories about what harms the monster would do to them if they followed in your footsteps, and how sad it would be that 'Daddy' doesn't get to see the unicorn.
Still with me? Now, you spend a lot of your time doing good things. You give blood regularly - saving dozens (maybe hundreds) of lives over your adult life. You regularly volunteer for charitable causes. You give up your Saturday mornings to pick up trash in a park, mow your elderly neighbor's lawn, or stuff lunches in bags for area homeless people. You give away for free professional advice that your work colleagues charge $200/hr for, simply because the people that you help need to be helped and they can't pay. You've never stolen anything (not even a pack of gum from a supermarket), and you do your best to avoid lying and cheating. Heck, you even avoid drinking and smoking just because you're not sure whether they're wrong or not.
Despite all this, the non-grape-eaters automatically assume, a priori, that you are on the verge of murdering them, molesting their children, or that every word that comes out of your mouth is a lie.
To make matters worse, there were a couple of mass-murderers about a century ago who ate grapes. They killed a lot of people. Despite the fact that these mass murderers only killed prostitutes, and wrote about their hatred for prostitutes, non-grape-eaters smugly point to the mass-murderers and insinuate or even openly defend the idea that the mass-murderers killed prostitutes because they ate grapes.
You tried to coach a little-league team, but when word got around that you eat grapes, parents refused to let their children play on your team, and for the children's sake, you resigned and let another, less-competent person coach the team.
You've dated women with whom you were madly in love, only to have every last one dump you over the fact that you eat grapes and don't believe in the green unicorn or monster - and do so completely self-righteously, since once they find out you're not a non-grape-eater, you're not really worth of any sort of consideration as a human being.
You are well trained in your chosen profession - you graduated with your degrees with honors and fielded offers from prestigious companies. Nonetheless, you are forced to hide your grape-eating (even performing sweeps of your online data to clear them of any grape-eating references), else your clients might go elsewhere. And it's not like you've not heard the whispers at previous jobs about your grape-eating, and had questions about the curious timing of your being necessarily downsized during a growth year right after rumors of your grape-eating swirled around the office.
Despite the fact that your society's foundational laws make it clear that the issue of grape evilness/non-evilness isn't something the government should get involved in, there's an annual governmental celebration of the truth of grapes' evilness and the reality of the green unicorn. Your currency is stamped with the slogan "Don't eat grapes!" And as if that weren't weird enough, people are ready to accuse you of being unpatriotic if you don't publicly pledge your fear of the monster.
Now, let's add to this idea. Suppose that for almost every 'electable' position you could imagine, whether that position is a political one, or just 'class treasurer,' you'll almost never get voted in. Your qualifications are almost irrelevant - you eat grapes and that's enough. It doesn't matter how bumbling your opposition is - all they have to do is swear up and down that they've never had grapes and never will, and they'll beat you, hands down.
Are you getting the picture here? Now, let's suppose that heretical scientists from other countries where the belief in the monster and green unicorn isn't so prevalent are making fascinating discoveries. It turns out that eating grapes can actually cure some diseases long-thought to be incurable. They're not quite to the point of giving those discoveries a lot of certainty, but early data looks amazing. With a little research, millions of people's lives could be improved. Unfortunately your politicians, whose overriding criteria for office is belief that eating grapes is evil, ban funding of research aimed at grape-eating benefits.
Now, suppose that after enduring constant stares, belittling comments disguised as 'concern,' and outright hostility for something as innocuous as eating a grape now and then, you find a place online where you can just be yourself and talk about things with other grape-eaters. You don't even have to talk about grape-eating. Politics, science, music, or even just posting pictures of yourselves is a fun way to pass the time without having to deal with the hassle of people going on all the time about how awful grape-eaters are.
Now, suppose that after having found this place, somebody comes along, accuses grape-eaters of being immoral, non-caring people. Suppose that he repeats the tired phrases about the gigantic monster that’s going to eat every last one of us grape-eaters, and how awful it is that we simply aren't open to the possibility of the green unicorn. Suppose that he insinuates that people who don't believe in the green unicorn do it because they are angry at the unicorn, or that they eat grapes just because they want to be evil. Suppose that this individual, as can invariably be expected, brings up the mass murderers from a century prior that killed prostitutes and holds them up as examples of grape-eaters. Suppose that after being rebuffed about these things, the anti-grape-eating advocate chastises the grape-eaters for being closed-minded and unwilling to listen to things that most every last grape-eater has heard, thought about in substantially more detail than the anti-grape-eating advocate, and dismissed. Suppose that for evidence of the truth of his claims, the anti-grape-eating advocate cites the words of the desert nomads, written down generations after they were actually uttered, and then complains when the grape-eaters don't treat the words of bronze-aged desert nomads as being all that powerful as evidence.
Suppose that to rebut these claims, the anti-grape-eating advocate points out that these same documents tell about how early believers in the monster were killed by others, and that they wouldn't have died for this belief if it were false - then suppose that the anti-grape-eating advocate ignores suggestions that people die for all kinds of ideas that aren't true, for all types of realistic and plausible reasons.
Do you see why many atheists have an emotional reaction to proselytizing and insinuations against their collective characters?
Now, I'm not suggesting that people are right to treat you with hostility. There are theists here who are welcomed additions, who contribute in a robust and vigorous way to the discussions.
It's not that atheists usually have emotional reactions to the topic of theism. Many atheists I know don't even think about theism. I know I sure as heck don't in any ordinary day. What I and some other atheists have emotional reactions to is getting dragged into discussions about theism with people who clearly don't care about the discussion and who only want to walk away from the discussion after having told another person to fear the monster, tell us not to eat grapes, and to wait for the day when we'll see the green unicorn. -
Date: Mon, Jan 25 2010 04:32:40
epic.
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Date: Mon, Jan 25 2010 05:02:04
Very epic.
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Date: Mon, Jan 25 2010 14:28:52
Very Very epic.