I don't think there's anything wrong with experiencing hallucinations, and I don't mind if someone wants to partake of the magic mushrooms ... as long as we're honest with ourselves about our brain's ability to make the unreal seem completely real. Instead of saying, "Well I saw it," or, "I experienced it," so, "Therefore, it must have happened." Before I draw that conclusion, I think I should carefully consider the likelihood of what I thought I saw or experienced. If it defies science and reason, then I'll bet that it was a hallucination.
I rely on science to determine what's real and what isn't, but I still enjoy lots of stuff that has little if anything to do with science. Art and music. It doesn't have to be real to convey powerful thoughts and feelings, don't you agree?
I have seen people believe they are cured, or believed in a doctor who did nothing be cured. Science? Which scientist? I will bet without google you cannot name 10 physicists, nor ten chemists, nor ten of any discipline.
The doctor who decided fat makes you fat (totally wrong) could supply you with hundreds of peer reviewed studies backing his idea and justification as to why hundreds of studies that did not agree with him were wrong.
One doctor in Chicago decided wart are psychosomatic. Went to 3M had cellophane tape made in electric blue color only 1 m to a roll told his patients it cost $200 and was not covered by insurance, but had produced a 99.4% cure rate within a week. He was totally confident, completely believable and one of the top scientist/doctors in his field.
400 patients had warts fall off within one week. Published is results in NE journal and was nearly drummed out if medical profession. The tape did nothing. He healed by what scientists call The Placebo Effect, which was called magic a dozen years ago.
How does this work. Humans brain creating states of belief and from this creating a "reality." Science is nice to imagine it holds all the answers, but the scientific method to be valid has to prove a single variable and that is nearly impossible to isolate in humans.
For more than 90 years medical community had no idea why aspirin worked. Allergists said petroleum could not cause an allergic reaction. Ten top allergist sat and watched petroleum cause a reaction on my skin. Clear allergic reaction. They had nearly 100 years of data to back their point of view and the ten men had a collect 350 years of clinic experience and they admitted they were wrong.
Now was it a real allergic reaction? Was it my brain wanting to force me away from an easy way to make money? I can make an argument for both with now enough "scientific data" (double blind testing) to back both positions.
Kevin before you think I am picking on you, please understand, I WANT to be a RATIONALIST. For many years I believed in pure science. The problem is the universe is quite complex and the human mind is enormously powerful.
There ae things I have experienced (my wife's jump into me being one) which I can find a potential reasoning in the laws of physics, but totally unsupported by current models, but not unsupported by theoretical models. Do I think it happened? Honestly, fuck if it happened, or I made it up to assuage my guilt over not saving my wife's life. I had two daughters to raise, seemed practical and prudent to just accept it and keep going.
The woman whose past life experience I wrote about. I cannot come up with a nice current rational model of when we die it all ends and fit it to this woman having detailed information of another woman's life which was confirmed in government papers and hidden. I am sure in your safe universe model, I am just making this up. I am faced with that woman and my wife placing me in the uncomfortable position if knowing our consciousness does not seem to end at death.
Theoretical physics tell us that radio broadcasts I heard in the 1950s are still traveling through space. They are over and done with here, but they are not over and done with everywhere.
Did the thought my father had directed at me at his time of death somehow reach me? Just like a radio receiver might pick up a broadcast on that frequency. We know the brain does it, but we have such a tiny understanding of how the brain works, we can barely envision a way to test this.
My wife's jump and that woman's recalling another woman's past life, there are theoretical models that fit this. I am quite sure they are wrong or incomplete, but more accurate than the we have no evidence models. There are too many near death experiences documents to say 100% bullshit or just hallucination.
I still come down on the God is not rolling dice nor picking Dallas over Green Bay. But I live in a universe where the human brain is so complex and our technology so limited, we could never begin to understand how it works for a good foreseeable future.
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