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Do you believe in God? (3 Viewers)

Do you believe in God?


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halapenyo

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I long the day when people will realise the futility and inherent worthlessness of themselves, their stupid beliefs, and this world. The day you realise that you are merely a collection of electrical signals jumping from one synapse to another, that all the mystery and wonder of the human frame can be degraded to basic chemistry and physics and that the universe will go on when we eventually lead ourselves to our own destruction, is the day that we become free from religious torment, political torment, scientific inquest and just sit around smoking pot all day.
wow
 

Garygaz

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is anyone familiar with the so called 'death molecule' aka dmt? i've heard vlogs on youtube of describing it as a before/afterlife experience.
 

AbsoluteValue

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I don't like discussing this, I don't know why but I like it this way, everyone believes what ever they want.
 

mirakon

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is anyone familiar with the so called 'death molecule' aka dmt? i've heard vlogs on youtube of describing it as a before/afterlife experience.
Just read up on it, sounds interesting
 

Garygaz

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I've only read a bit of basic stuff on it. There's apparently a documentary on it; see end of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Strassman

Which would be interesting to check out, but I haven't seen it yet.
well, i've actually read a fair bit. it's very interesting and it SORT of makes a bit of sense. for example, one guy was talking about the significance of all life being traceable to a single-celled organism and how we were all god, and we broke ourself down to simple forms (billions of forms of life) so we could experience the new feelings and discovery again - because knowing EVERYTHING is boring and removes any purpose you can have. was interesting to think about when he described it. he also said how the universe was in infinite regress (maybe explains that research coming out recently about the super-massive black holes in the middle of every galaxy)

another guy described it as being a 2GB USB stick and you are being plugged into an infinite hard-drive of information, you can see it all but you can only take 2gb back of information with you. hmmm. many people come out of it claiming to 'understand', i guess a form of enlightenment.
 

Absolutezero

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Wouldn't an infinite regress run counter to the proposed expansion of the universe?
 

Graney

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is anyone familiar with the so called 'death molecule' aka dmt? i've heard vlogs on youtube of describing it as a before/afterlife experience.
I am intimately familiar with it, having read Dr Rick Strassmans book 'the spirit molecule'. I've never heard it referred to as the death molecule.

The thing you have to know about DMT, is that 99% of what you'll read is bullshit based on Strassman's theories. Strassman is a credible scientist, but in his book he didn't make it clear where he was talking about solid science, and where he was speculating about his own theories and hypotheses - his hypotheses aren't unreasonable, but they're certainly not proven.

Strassman is famous for performing the first human experiments with psychedelics in over 30 years, he performed these experiments in the mid-1990's. He began with DMT and later did some psilocybin experiments. He administered DMT to over 60 human subjects multiple times, and comprehensively documented their experiences.

DMT is found endogenously within the human body, it's found in the blood of every human, I believe more recently it's been demonstrated to be produced by the lungs(!). Strassmans theory was that it's produced in the pineal gland (along with melatonin -sleep hormone), and he hypothesised that it might be released in massive quantities during experiences like death, psychosis, hallucinations, dreams, alien abduction experiences etc...

A reasonable hypothesis because: 1. it's utterly weird that the human body produces one of the most powerful known psychedelics
2. No one has any idea what DMT does in the human body.

He didn't go as far as proving it was responsible for dreams, near-death experiences etc... It's not uncommon for people to report they feel like they physically died. A lot of common DMT experiences are bizzare interesting - entity contact is common - seeing insect/machine/clown like beings that attempt to communicate with the patient - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_elf
 

Graney

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I've only read a bit of basic stuff on it. There's apparently a documentary on it; see end of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Strassman

Which would be interesting to check out, but I haven't seen it yet.
I've heard that documentary is pretty trashy and reinforces Strassmans folly of not adequetly distinguishing between what is scientifically certain about DMT, and his mad hypotheses regarding the pineal gland, near-death experiences etc...
 

Absolutezero

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I've heard that documentary is pretty trashy and reinforces Strassmans folly of not adequetly distinguishing between what is scientifically certain about DMT, and his mad hypotheses regarding the pineal gland, near-death experiences etc...
If his book is like that, I imagine the documentary definitely could be quite similar.
 

Graney

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If his book is like that, I imagine the documentary definitely could be quite similar.
The book is actually excellent, it's just deceptive to readers without scientific literacy, lay readers will misunderstand his research, if you understand the scientific method it's a great book.

My only exposure to the documentary were some people arguing with me that 'DMT changes lives', based on the documentary. By contrast, Strassman in the book reports that he was disappointed to find DMT actually had underwhelming therapeutic benefits, at least with the kind of use he studied (in healthy patients, in a controlled setting) he found it basically caused no real improvement in any of his patients lives, he's quite upfront about his disappointment in this regard.
 

Dedication_

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I haven't read a post in this thread but I'm fairly skeptic when it comes to reiligion, especially Christianity.

Here goes my rant, and sorry if I offend anyone (I'm actually not sorry). "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth... And God said, Let there be light: 2 Cor. 4.6 and there was light"

So what I gather from this is that god made the heavens and the earth in the dark? Okay, good one god.

Also, I can't be bothered recounting the dialogue for this, but it is to my understanding (and I've read the bible front to cover) that there is a talking snake which convinces Eve to take the apple. First of all, when did "god" create talking snakes?

The bible is way too contradictory, foolhardy and unrealistic, not to mention it was made thousands of years ago - it's basically like a game of chinese whispers, everyone is going to hear different stories - chances are Moses and Jesus never existed.

I'm a academic, I'll believe it when I say it, til then I refuse to remain a "faithful" idiot.

Peace.
 

AAEldar

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I haven't read a post in this thread but I'm fairly skeptic when it comes to reiligion, especially Christianity.

Here goes my rant, and sorry if I offend anyone (I'm actually not sorry). "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth... And God said, Let there be light: 2 Cor. 4.6 and there was light"

So what I gather from this is that god made the heavens and the earth in the dark? Okay, good one god.

Also, I can't be bothered recounting the dialogue for this, but it is to my understanding (and I've read the bible front to cover) that there is a talking snake which convinces Eve to take the apple. First of all, when did "god" create talking snakes?

The bible is way too contradictory, foolhardy and unrealistic, not to mention it was made thousands of years ago - it's basically like a game of chinese whispers, everyone is going to hear different stories - chances are Moses and Jesus never existed.

I'm a academic, I'll believe it when I say it, til then I refuse to remain a "faithful" idiot.

Peace.
Those are extremely weak points to refute Christianity. You're making the assumption that everything has to spelled out in detail, otherwise it's false. I think the Bible is all about interpretation.
 

krnofdrg

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Those are extremely weak points to refute Christianity. You're making the assumption that everything has to spelled out in detail, otherwise it's false. I think the Bible is all about interpretation.

But also one has to be careful when reading the bible also (Yes it's all about interpretation), although you shouldn't take things too 'literally' when reading the Bible because there is a lot of metaphors and implicit messages.
 

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