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Post by iamspartacus on Feb 28, 2006 4:21:13 GMT -4
Well I won't vote for him.
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Post by iamspartacus on Feb 27, 2006 12:30:53 GMT -4
On June 6th, 2006 the future world leader, aka the antichrist, aka the son of perdition will be revealed to the world He's just trying to be entertaining. (see "Who's More Entertaining" thread)
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Post by iamspartacus on Jan 12, 2006 17:43:20 GMT -4
To a rational person Islamic extremeists can appear very stupid. Just as in the Bible, Islam has the concept of Armageddon, known in Islam as Al-Malhamah Al-Kubrah (the Great War). Extremists think they may be able to initiate it.
Talking of predictions, the ones for Al-Malhamah Al-Kubrah are quite interesting:
1. The disappearance of knowledge and the appearance of ignorance (yep, HBs) 2. The consumption of intoxicants will be widespread. (yep, always has been in the West) 3. Women will outnumber men. (yep, In the West there are slightly more women due to wars, greater male infancy death rates. In some eastern countries it’s the other way round due to the practice of female infanticide) 4. The nations of the earth will gather against the Moslems like hungry people going to sit down to a table full of food (possibly…) 5. Rain will be acidic or burning (yep, has been for years) 6. Great distances will be traversed in short spans of time (no, Concorde was scrapped) 7. Leaders of people will be oppressors (yep, wasn’t it always thus) 8. Men will begin to look like women and women will look like men. (yep, have you seen UK Celebrity Big Brother?) 9. The Jews will return to live in Bilad Canaan (Palestine) (yep) 10. People will compete with each other to build taller buildings (yep, Taipei 101, Petronas Towers, Sears Tower and loads in China) 11. Earthquakes will increase and smog will hang over cities. (yep)
I make that 9 out of 11.
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Post by iamspartacus on Jan 12, 2006 5:28:52 GMT -4
Some reasons why the West is worried about Iran obtaining nuclear weapons: 1. An Islamic fundamentalist state may be willing to use nuclear weapons. 2. Islamic fundamentalists may take their jihad to the infidels with nuclear weapons. 3. Islamic fundamentalists may give nuclear weapons to their Muslim brethren in other countries. 4. Proliferation of nuclear weapons in Islamic countries would increase the likelihood of their use by terrorists. 5. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that the state of Israel should be "wiped off the map". 6. Islamic fundamentalists see a win-win situation in using nuclear weapons as they quite like the idea of the afterlife.
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Post by iamspartacus on Feb 14, 2006 4:26:56 GMT -4
This is obviously a job for Mythbusters. They could flatline Jamie Hyneman and hide his beret somewhere in the shop so it can only be seen from way up near the ceiling. They could then revive him and ask him what he saw. Of course they would have to repeat this many times for it to be a proper experiment.
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Post by iamspartacus on Feb 3, 2006 7:45:51 GMT -4
I agree with DH on this one. Just because your respiration and heart stops doesn't mean you're dead. This is routinely done in some surgical procedures. Maybe what some people experience is the closing down of higher brain function but not a quick trip into the afterlife.
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Post by iamspartacus on Jan 25, 2006 7:05:26 GMT -4
Tuesday Lobsang Rampa says that out of body experiences, or astral travel as he calls it, can be observed by cats. Maybe if you get enough cats behind the observation window and if enough of them were to look at the same place in the operating theatre at the same time then we might just have some indirect evidence. ;D
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Post by iamspartacus on Jan 21, 2006 7:44:41 GMT -4
I have to agree with ouloncollouphid. There is evidence that consciousness is associated with the brain. Any other suggestion is pure guesswork. Some people believe in the afterlife and some in reincarnation. Those two ideas would seem to contradict each other. There's no scientific evidence for either.
I have yet to see one genuine, verifiable picture of a ghost. Think of the billions of pictures taken each year and the trillions since photography was invented. The human eye works on a similar principle to a camera (lens, iris/aperture, retina/film). If we can see them why can't we take pictures of them? My guess is that ghosts are generated in the brain and not external to it.
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Post by iamspartacus on Jan 18, 2006 12:42:18 GMT -4
I voted "End of story". I just cannot understand why we all contain the most complex structure in the Universe yet discovered (ie. the brain) if our consciousness can exist without it. Why bother with all the gray gooey stuff if we can do without it?
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Post by iamspartacus on Jan 9, 2006 5:31:10 GMT -4
I've read a few books about anthropologists and others who spent time in the jungle with Native Amazonians, nearly all of them recall how the "indians" had much higher degrees of awareness of their surrounding than they did. They (the natives) could see and hear what the explorers couldn't. I think this fit's with my theory. This "sixth sense" is a product both of nature and nurture. By sixth sense I don't mean anything supernatural but rather a heightened awareness of the 5 know n ones. The brain of the person being followed picks up on subtle clues witout being able to identify exactly what they were. I agree but would extend this further and say that all humans are very aware of their own particular environments. Do the reverse and take the Native Amazonian out of the rainforest and put them in an urban setting. They would be very unaware of the dangers of traffic, electricity, muggers etc. They would not survive very will if they did not have an expert guide say, a teenage kid or a housewife to show them how.
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Post by iamspartacus on Jan 8, 2006 13:35:29 GMT -4
I, like many others, have detected people creeping up on me but I can also remember saying things like, “you scared the **** out of me!” on the many occasions when I did not detect them. Given the hit rate I think such a sense would not make a very good survival aid.
The problem with premonition, sixth sense, telekinesis, ESP etc. etc. is that as soon as you put someone who claims to have super-powers under laboratory conditions they fail to perform. The reason is that these “powers” are so unreliable and fickle. Science is the study of repeatable phenomena which is why we tend to leave the other stuff to old ladies with head scarfs and cats.
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Post by iamspartacus on Jan 6, 2006 13:34:09 GMT -4
A nice story, my aunts tell me dozens of these but can anybody answer my previous question?:
"It must be Quantum" Mustrum Ridcully.
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Post by iamspartacus on Jan 3, 2006 10:19:37 GMT -4
As lenbrazil says, we can all tell stories like these, even an arch-sceptic like me. I once dreamt that I was eating a giant marshmallow and when I woke up my pillow was gone!
However, I still consider peoples prediction stories as largely coincidence, maybe sometimes formed by subliminal input and often containing a large amount of hindsight.
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Post by iamspartacus on Jan 3, 2006 5:41:06 GMT -4
I think you’ve described a classic problem with trying to examine supernatural events. Namely, focusing on events that did happen and not the hundreds of times you’ve had a sense of dread and nothing happens. If you take the non-events into account then these kind of supernatural phenomena don’t lift their heads above random chance. Especially dubious to me are premonitions. I just don’t see how you can get information about an event before that event actually occurs. What generated the information (it can’t be the event because the event ain’t happened)? And then there's the problem of how that supposed information was transmitted and received. Spare me!
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God
Jan 6, 2006 10:19:39 GMT -4
Post by iamspartacus on Jan 6, 2006 10:19:39 GMT -4
Some of us may not know who God is, but we all know in our hearts that there is a God. Anatomical discrepancies notwithstanding, whatever group you claim to belong to ("we") does not include me. I posses no such knowledge. Count me out also! Can DH please answer the question by Lonewolf: And DH, please don't answer this by quoting more verses from your holy book because that would produce what rational people call a " circular argument".
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