What is your fundamental moral compass?

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

OCCOM BILL wrote:
If that's the measure; $5,000,000 doesn't work either. You can't tell me you'd pull that trigger for $500,000.

Don't be so sure. I pull a trigger like that every time I cross a busy street to say hi to a friend on the other side. I pull it when I drive my car in New York area traffic. I pull it with every ice cream I eat despite my diabetes. Granted, those are not 1:10 risks for $500,000 rewards. More like $50 rewards for 1:100,000 risks. But the logic of the argument is the same. And I didn't want to distract ehBeth from it by asking her to imagine a 100,000-chamber revolver.

But, unless you do go with the GIANT revolver, the example doesn't work. It is a pitiable desperate fool who would take a 1 in 10 shot at death for any size stack of dirty paper. But I do see your point with the GIANT revolver. Example: The exhilaration of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane would be a bargain at $50 (I paid almost $400 for the AFF, but I guess that’s close enough) and does offer a legitimate 1 in 100,000 chance of death.

1 Reply

@OCCOM BILL,

Occom Bill wrote:

But, unless you do go with the GIANT revolver, the example doesn't work.

That's a valid point. Probably the best way to see it is by considering the opposite extreme: a revolver with just one chamber. Practically nobody would kill themselves for $5,000,000. Of course, that doesn't mean they think their lives are worth more than that. It only shows that money is worthless to a corpse. Perhaps Russian Roulette with a 10-chamber revolver comes too close to this extreme to be a persuasive example.

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@Eorl,

Eorl wrote:

I suspect you've confused death with being extremely ill or temporarily not entirely alive by medical standards.

Like I said, couple of weeks with any dead animal should help.

That 's like saying that after a lobster has molted off
his shell and walked away, I shoud stay with the molted shell for 2 weeks
to be helped to believe that he no longer exists; that he is dead.

Eorl wrote:

The body, the shell, is all there is. You can't prove otherwise. Nobody ever has. I doubt they ever will.

Evidentiary proof has little to do with substantive TRUTH.
In common with others,
I have been out of my body a few times.
I like it. Your skepticism has no effect upon that,
as Columbus' skeptics had no effect upon the existence of the New World.

U can leave your body for a brief time or permanently.
Your concept that the shell is all that there is,
is factually incorrect; like saying that u believe in radios, but not in radio waves.

Before radio waves were proven,
thay 'd have been said to be imaginary nonsense.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

That 's like saying that after a lobster has molted off
his shell and walked away, I shoud stay with the molted shell for 2 weeks
to be helped to believe that he no longer exists; that he is dead.

No it isn't. Death is like when the lobster is dead. This is true by definition.

OmSigDAVID wrote:

I have been out of my body a few times.
I like it. Your skepticism has no effect upon that.

You believe you have. My skepticism has no effect upon that. You can be as sure as a Raelian is sure about the existence of the Elohim, and it still won't make it true.

OmSigDAVID wrote:

Your concept that the shell is all that there is,
is factually incorrect; like saying that u believe in radios, but not in radio waves.
Before radio waves were proven,
thay 'd have been said to be imaginary nonsense.
David

Stipulating that something completely lacking evidence is equal to something else that in the past also lacked evidence is a fallacial argument, as you are fully aware.

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@Eorl,

Eorl wrote:

OmSigDAVID wrote:

That 's like saying that after a lobster has molted off
his shell and walked away, I shoud stay with the molted shell for 2 weeks
to be helped to believe that he no longer exists; that he is dead.

No it isn't. Death is like when the lobster is dead. This is true by definition.

OmSigDAVID wrote:

I have been out of my body a few times.
I like it. Your skepticism has no effect upon that.

You believe you have. My skepticism has no effect upon that. You can be as sure as a Raelian is sure about the existence of the Elohim, and it still won't make it true.

OmSigDAVID wrote:

Your concept that the shell is all that there is,
is factually incorrect; like saying that u believe in radios, but not in radio waves.
Before radio waves were proven,
thay 'd have been said to be imaginary nonsense.
David

Stipulating that something completely lacking evidence is equal to something else that in the past also lacked evidence is a fallacial argument, as you are fully aware.

Your absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I have had my own observations.
Witness' testimony is evidence.
Similar observations have been had by others www.IANDS.org with whom I have conferred.

David

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

OmSigDAVID wrote:

Your absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

...and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I'm not making any claims, you are.

I think people who actually have been "near" death = those who were "near" to having not been conceived.

Still, there's no point arguing with the NDE folk. If they believe they've "been there" and come back to describe "it", who can gainsay?

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OmSigDAVID wrote:

Your absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Eorl wrote:

...and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Thay DON 'T because I need not convince u of anything.
I can tell u what I think of the weather in Arizona, if I wanna,
but I don 't need to convince u that I 've ever been there.
What u believe will affect neither the weather nor my opinions thereof.
I can tell u that I went out into my back yard last nite
and looked up at the sky; u have no way to know whether that is true.

Eorl wrote:

I'm not making any claims, you are.

I am letting u in on my observations. I don 't get a prize if I convince u.
Its not as if I were arguing to a jury.

Eorl wrote:

I think people who actually have been "near" death = those who were "near" to having not been conceived.

Still, there's no point arguing with the NDE folk.
If they believe they've "been there" and come back to describe "it", who can gainsay?

In rare instances, some people have told of objective verification of remote observations,
distant from the locale of the hospital of their demise.
I re-iterate: "demise" = no EEG, no EKG, no respiration for several minutes.

My surgeon informed me that I died 2ice during abdominal surgery a few years ago.
Whereas others who have returned from death have told of adventures,
I have no memory of anything other than awakening later in the ICU.

I have had -- and enjoyed -- 3 instances over several years,
in court on-the-job, when I had out-of-body experiences,
while I was actively taking depostions. I saw myself from across the room.

Another time, it happened at lunch in a fast food restaurant.
It feels kinda nice; its fun. I wish thay 'd lasted longer.

I was impressed by the following:
in the early 1990s, a member of my Manhattan-based fine dining group
invited me to a dinner meeting of her study group as to the works
of Arthur Conan Doyle qua Sherlock Holmes.

We were seated around circular tables for 12.
To her left, was her friend, Mary Francis.
My hostess said that she 'd absent herself early, because
an old friend of hers was in extremis, on his deathbed,
and most apprehensive of his future. Being in lower Manhattan,
I opined that we were surrounded by bookstores and that she shoud
get him a book qua near death experiences, to cheer him up and raise his confidence.

Mary Francis then mentioned that in the 1950s, she had great
difficulty in giving birth in a hospital, in the State of Florida.
She said that her attending obstetrician said something to the effect
of "we 've lost her" or "she 's gone", etc. whereupon her
consciousness rose from her body and she observed efforts below
to revive her. She said that her consciousness drifted out
and back behind the hospital. She 'd never been back there before.

She saw her 5 year old son sitting at the top of a flight of wooden
stairs, waiting out his mother, inside. She said that she saw
a female black cook come out and give him a slice of chocolate cake, then
go down the stairs into the yard, pull down a banana from a tree and give it to him.

Mary Francis told us that her thoughts then turned to her daughter
in school some miles distant, whereupon her consciousness appeared
in her class in an elevated position over her daughter.
She saw that a spelling test was in progress
and that her child had misspelled one of the words,
which woud not have happened if fonetic spelling had been used.

Mary Francis then became distraught at the impending loss of her
family, whereupon she re-appeared in the hospital and re-entered
her material body and revived. Her physician was enuf
of a scientist with an inquiring mind to ask her how she felt
and she related her experiences to him. The cook was called
to her room, who confirmed the cake and the banana.
Mary Francis' husband ventured forth to their daughter 's school
and inquired qua what the class was doing at whatever time of day
her body was dead: the spelling test was confirmed
and at the end of the day, her daughter came home with the misspelled word.

Co-incidentally enuf, in conversation with a young court reporter,
a pretty Albanian girl, she took me into her confidence, and told me
that she had a strikingly similar adventure qua troubles in birth n death
(tho she knew nothing of the other one) whose details I do not remember.

Because I have had out-of-body experiences, I have no trouble
in believing other people who relate theirs.

David

1 Reply

@Eorl,

Eorl wrote:

Stipulating that something completely lacking evidence is equal to something else that in the past also lacked evidence is a fallacial argument, as you are fully aware.

Where is your evidence? Surely you'll concede absence of proof does not equal proof of absence, yes?

1 Reply

@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Because that's what "valuing your own life at $20,000" means. What makes you think that's the reality?

I'm not so interested in what you/I value our lives at. The reality is what gets paid out in simple death cases - up here it's in the 10 - 20K range. People may think they're worth $5,000,000 but their survivors are going to get a check for $10,000/$20,000 - sometimes less.

1 Reply

@OmSigDAVID,

David, you said "rarely" and the explantion is there if you want to see it. It's like when a "psychic" solves a crime the whole world hears about it, and the thousands who don't, don't rate.
Like I said though, I see no point in arguing, although I enjoy reading your post these days.

1 Reply

@OCCOM BILL,

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Eorl wrote:
Stipulating that something completely lacking evidence is equal to something else that in the past also lacked evidence is a fallacial argument, as you are fully aware.
Where is your evidence? Surely you'll concede absence of proof does not equal proof of absence, yes?

of what? That the human ghost and radio waves are not equally existent due to the fact that both were thought non-existent in the past? I need no proof, it's simple faulty logic.
The unspoken point in all of this is that such logic should lead one to conclude that one should take an ancient authors god claims and use them to determine ones moral code.

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@Eorl,

Quote:

That the human ghost and radio waves are not equally existent due to the fact that both were thought non-existent in the past? I need no proof, it's simple faulty logic

I don't believe in ghosts and I do believe in radio waves. But because we can now detect radio waves does not mean we might not one day detect ghosts. You are drawing a conclusion from present knowledge just as mistaken as those in a previous era did not know about radio waves. That I don't think we will ever detect ghosts is beside the point. The logic is the point.

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@Eorl,

Eorl wrote:

OCCOM BILL wrote:

Eorl wrote:
Stipulating that something completely lacking evidence is equal to something else that in the past also lacked evidence is a fallacial argument, as you are fully aware.
Where is your evidence? Surely you'll concede absence of proof does not equal proof of absence, yes?

of what? That the human ghost and radio waves are not equally existent due to the fact that both were thought non-existent in the past? I need no proof, it's simple faulty logic.
The unspoken point in all of this is that such logic should lead one to conclude that one should take an ancient authors god claims and use them to determine ones moral code.

No, it isn't. The simple truth is that there are truth's Eorl doesn't know about, and Eorl's not knowing about them doesn't prove them false. To contend otherwise is absurd.

Example: Does Eorl know if any aliens ever landed on Earth? If not, does Eorl know for sure they do or don't exist?

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Quote:

The unspoken point in all of this is that such logic should lead one to conclude that one should take an ancient authors god claims and use them to determine ones moral code.

And there's more faulty logic in that as well. The moral code might derive from common sense and a posteriori, as the Bishop said to the lady in waiting, God was called in to give common sense more credibility.

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I'm going to stick with my refusal to accept the assertion: dead things are not dead. All the evidence of biology and physics as well as the laws of English language and common sense prove this false as much as any negative can be proven.

Let he who claims (or those that support the claim) that life continues after death justify his outrageous and ridiculous assertion.

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@Eorl,

Quote:

All the evidence of biology and physics as well as the laws of English language and common sense prove this false as much as any negative can be proven.

This is almost saying anything that can be known is known. Dangerous ground indeed.

Quote:

Let he who claims (or those that support the claim) that life continues after death justify his outrageous and ridiculous assertion.

I dont think anyone can justify it to someone else yet. But given the number of fans of space travel and time travel who maintain one day it will be a reality, is it that much of a stretch to believe the essence of a person lingers on, perhaps in another dimension, one of the missing dimensions from string theory.

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@Ionus,

Sure, anything is possible, (although I can't imagine a more blatant example of wishful thinking than life after death), but claiming it to be so is another matter entirely.

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@ehBeth,

ehBeth wrote:

I'm not so interested in what you/I value our lives at.

You will be, once you're stuck in those rails and I come rolling along on my train. And when that happens, when I have to decide whom to run that train into, I must consider the value of your life to everyone involved---including yourself. That's $5 million to you, plus $20,000 for each of your survivors. Likewise for the other potential victims.

ehBeth wrote:

People may think they're worth $5,000,000 but their survivors are going to get a check for $10,000/$20,000 - sometimes less.

I don't see the contradiction you seem to be implying here. Of course your life is several orders of magnitude more valuable to yourself than it is to your survivors. How couldn't it be? But just because the insurance company needn't consider the value of your life to yourself after you die, that doesn't mean I shouldn't consider it before I kill you.

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@Eorl,

Quote:

I'm going to stick with my refusal to accept the assertion: dead things are not dead. All the evidence of biology and physics as well as the laws of English language and common sense prove this false as much as any negative can be proven.

Let he who claims (or those that support the claim) that life continues after death justify his outrageous and ridiculous assertion.

Well Eorl--one might say that there is a possibility, very real according to a host of great thinkers, even the atheist J.S.Mill, that the adoption of your position will cause society to collapse in a heap of smouldering rubble. If the consideration of this extreme proposition is allowed your wilfully individual common sense would be biologically ridiculous as the point of life is survival. Your somewhat quaint belief that there is life after us all concluding at your prompting, a Kantian principle, that dead things are dead, is just as ridiculous as the belief you are bent on undermining.

And as the belief that there is life after death has not caused society to collapse in a heap of smouldering rubble your position might be said to be immoral if the tone of this thread is accepted that morality can be determined by a calculus of suffering.

Hence, you first need to demonstrate that society would not collapse, or be radically altered in some other way which we might consider negative, by the adoption of your belief by the whole population. Without you doing that you might consider that you ought to keep your view to yourself because you are flying by the seat of your own beliefs and risk involving the whole population in any negative consequences which might occur if you persuade us all and which must be your objective as none of us wish to be thought "outrageous and ridiculous".

I presume that you believe that there will be no consequences of your successful persuasion of us all that there is no life after death or that the consequences will be beneficial. I think you need to justify those positions before you embark upon your campaign to enlighten us all. We cannot simply accept your assertions without such justifications. We might be risking, were we to do so, the whole fabric of society as we know it for no other reason than to save your position and that amount of face you have created by your public investment in it.

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I'll even go further!

I'm going to recklessly suggest that wearing jade will offer you no protection from harm.

How evil is that? People are going to be harmed all over the place if I'm wrong!

The truth is the truth and i can't imagine too many moral realities in which mass delusion is the prefered option. Who was it that said "The truth shall make you free"?

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What is your fundamental moral compass?

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