Neil deGrasse Tyson: We are the “truth-seekers”

11 Replies to “Neil deGrasse Tyson: We are the “truth-seekers””

1. 1
   RexTugwell says:

   February 1, 2014 at 5:39 pm

   Arguments from evil and dysteleology against ID strike me as myopic and unimaginative. Materialists always say that this is a universe with no purpose, no meaning, no destiny; red in tooth and claw. Yet on the other hand they dream of a utopia where there is no pain, no suffering, no poverty.

   Newsflash for Neil deGrasse Tyson, “We’re all going to die!” Most of us in fairly unpleasant ways. That’s the human condition. For the theist, death is the result of sin and according to Chesterton, orginal sin is the only self-evident dogma.

   Strong cases for teleology could easily be made for most of the disasters Tyson lists: earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis are the result of tectonic activity which is necessary for the recycling of the essential surface elements of life. Then there is lightning, without which there would be no nitrates and therefore no protein. To borrow the language from origin of life liturature, one can image how floods, tornadoes and hurricanes could also contribute in a positive way to the biosphere. Yes, bad things accompany these events but the benefits far outweigh the evil.

   One more favorite “dysteleological” entity of Tyson is our own eye vs the perfect eye of the giant squid. I don’t know what Dr. Tyson’s idea of feminine beauty is but I’m damn glad my wife has the eyes she does.
2. 2
   Eric Anderson says:

   February 1, 2014 at 5:54 pm

   Tyson is clearly clueless in this area and it is unfortunate that he keeps spouting such nonsense.

   Stick to Astronomy, Neil, for everyone’s sake. It will also help you avoid embarrassment.
3. 3
   JGuy says:

   February 1, 2014 at 6:02 pm

   It’s disheartening that this fallacious argument against design – by pointing to the existence of evil – is even used by the people that are supposed or considered to be of high caliber.

   It seems, by such reasoning, they would be consistent to argue that the guillotine or nuclear weapons were not designed because they are instruments of death.
4. 4
   EvilSnack says:

   February 1, 2014 at 8:33 pm

   A minor correction: Lightning is responsible for fixing only a very small portion of the nitrogen in our soil. Most of the heavy lifting on that score is done by microbes.

   But in claiming that earthquakes, disease, war, etc., represent a failure of the Designer to accomplish the goal of His design, atheists always posit some goal that no God I read of in Scripture ever set forth. So their argument is a straw man right out of the starting gate.
5. 5
   lpadron says:

   February 1, 2014 at 9:11 pm

   Pity Elvis deGrasse Tyson. His entourage and fans will never let him know he’s too intellectually bloated and lazy and uninformed on the matter. Why should they? He entertains them in the way they like even if he’s packing extra pounds and his gut hangs out from under that shirt. They paid to see a show and they darn well better hear his old worn hits and not cuts from any new, better albums. Life is good if not entirely predictable in Darwin’s Vegas.
6. 6
   wallstreeter43 says:

   February 2, 2014 at 12:00 am

   It seems like Tyson is now doubling down off his usual bad design argument and now resorting to the evil argument. It seems like the more he talks the worse his side looks lol, so keep talking Tyson , keep talking 🙂
7. 7
   RexTugwell says:

   February 2, 2014 at 7:07 am

   EvilSnack, thank you for the correction. So surely lightning played an almost exclusive roll with regard to nitrates in the origin of life.
8. 8
   bornagain77 says:

   February 2, 2014 at 8:14 am

   When Neil deGrasse Tyson states,,,

   “We are the “truth-seekers””

   ,,,Tyson is running headlong into a claim that Christ made about Himself as to being ‘The Truth’:

   John 14:6
   Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

   So is Tyson saying that he is seeking Christ in his seeking of truth? Apparently not! So what does Tyson actually mean when he says that he and, I’m presuming, ‘scientists in general’ are ‘truth seekers’? And what does ‘the truth’ even look like to an atheist who holds a self-defeating naturalistic worldview where every claim for truth is subordinated to the claim that truth itself is relative?

   (Multiverse) Carroll would retire falsifiability as a science idea.
   http://www.uncommondescent.com.....ent-489142

   Which again begs the question, ‘If ‘Truth’ cannot be grounded in a naturalistic worldview, since every possibility and its countervailing antecedent can be true, what does it mean to ‘seek truth’ in the naturalistic philosophy?’. Well, contrary to what Tyson thinks, Tyson, as Dr. Hunter has pointed out, is not really seeking truth so much since he already, deep down, believes he knows ‘the Truth’ beforehand. And that ‘truth’ to Tyson, and to other Naturalists down through the ages, (such as Darwin himself in ‘Origin of Species’), is as such:

   “the world must not have been designed because of all its evil and *dysteleology”

   *Dysteleology is the philosophical view that existence has no telos or final cause from purposeful design.

   Charles Darwin, Theologian: Major New Article on Darwin’s Use of Theology in the Origin of Species – May 2011
   Excerpt: in the first edition of the Origin, Darwin drew upon at least the following positiva theological claims in his case for descent with modification,,,

   9. A ‘distant’ God is not morally culpable for natural pain and suffering.

   10. The God of special creation, who allegedly performed miracles in organic history, is not plausible given the presence of natural pain and suffering.
   http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....46391.html

   Yet evil requires good to exist in order for evil to exist in the first place. So how can the existence of evil in the world possibly negate the existence of good in the world rather than affirm its existence?

   “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”
   – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

   “The strength of materialism is that it obviates the problem of evil altogether. God need not be reconciled with evil, because neither exists. Therefore the problem of evil is no problem at all.,,, And of course since there is no evil, the materialist must, ironically, not use evil to justify atheism. The problem of evil presupposes the existence of an objective evil-the very thing the materialist seems to deny. The argument (from Theodicy) that led to materialism is exhausted just when it is needed most. In other words, the problem of evil is only generated by the prior claims that evil exists. One cannot then conclude, with Dawkins, that there is ‘no evil and no good’ in the universe.,,,
   The fact that evolution’s acceptance hinges on a theological position would, for many, be enough to expel it from science. But evolution’s reliance on metaphysics is not its worst failing. Evolution’s real problem is not its metaphysics but its denial of its metaphysics.,,,
   Cornelius Hunter – Darwin’s God – pg. 154 & 159

   Thus, Tyson’s claim that the existence of evil negates Theism from being true requires that Theism itself be true in the first place! i.e. it is another, in a long line, of self-defeating naturalistic propositions.

   But, since truth cannot be grounded in Naturalism, save by the hidden presupposition of Theistic claims in Naturalism in the first place, what does it REALLY mean to ‘seek truth’? Well, a lot of atheists would claim, such as Hawking, that ‘seeking truth’ would involve seeking the hypothetical mathematical ‘Theory of Everything’. But, as Godel proved, and as Hawking himself admitted and subsequently forgot, truth cannot be grounded within a mathematical ‘Theory Of Everything’ since any mathematics that is specific enough to have counting numbers within it cannot contain ‘the Truth’ within itself but is dependent on a outside cause in order to derive its truthfulness:

   The nature and significance of Gödel’s incompleteness theorems – Princeton – 2006
   Excerpt: ,,Stephen Hawking and Freeman Dyson, among others, have come to the conclusion that Gödel’s theorem implies that there can’t be a (mathematical) Theory of Everything.,,
   http://math.stanford.edu/~fefe.....el-IAS.pdf

   Kurt Gödel – Incompleteness Theorem – video
   http://www.metacafe.com/w/8462821

   THE GOD OF THE MATHEMATICIANS – DAVID P. GOLDMAN – August 2010
   Excerpt: we cannot construct an ontology that makes God dispensable. Secularists can dismiss this as a mere exercise within predefined rules of the game of mathematical logic, but that is sour grapes, for it was the secular side that hoped to substitute logic for God in the first place. Gödel’s critique of the continuum hypothesis has the same implication as his incompleteness theorems: Mathematics never will create the sort of closed system that sorts reality into neat boxes.
   http://www.firstthings.com/art.....ematicians

   Godel and Physics – John D. Barrow
   Excerpt (page 5-6): “Clearly then no scientific cosmology, which of necessity must be highly mathematical, can have its proof of consistency within itself as far as mathematics go. In absence of such consistency, all mathematical models, all theories of elementary particles, including the theory of quarks and gluons…fall inherently short of being that theory which shows in virtue of its a priori truth that the world can only be what it is and nothing else. This is true even if the theory happened to account for perfect accuracy for all phenomena of the physical world known at a particular time.”
   Stanley Jaki – Cosmos and Creator – 1980, pg. 49
   http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0612253.pdf

   Thus Naturalists/Atheists cannot appeal to a platonic realm of abstract mathematical ideas in their ‘seeking of truth’ since ‘truth’ cannot be grounded in any mathematics that is specific enough to account for the universe. This would seem to be rather obvious point to make:

   Godel and Physics – John D. Barrow
   Excerpt (page 5-6): “Clearly then no scientific cosmology, which of necessity must be highly mathematical, can have its proof of consistency within itself as far as mathematics go. In absence of such consistency, all mathematical models, all theories of elementary particles, including the theory of quarks and gluons…fall inherently short of being that theory which shows in virtue of its a priori truth that the world can only be what it is and nothing else. This is true even if the theory happened to account for perfect accuracy for all phenomena of the physical world known at a particular time.”
   Stanley Jaki – Cosmos and Creator – 1980, pg. 49
   http://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0612253.pdf

   Mathematics and Physics – A Happy Coincidence? – William Lane Craig – video
   http://www.metacafe.com/w/9826382

   1. If God did not exist the applicability of mathematics would be a happy coincidence.
   2. The applicability of mathematics is not a happy coincidence.
   3. Therefore, God exists.

   Indeed, assuming naturalism as the source for the truthfulness inherent within mathematics leads to the frightful proposition, because of the ‘randomness’ postulate at the base of naturalism, that at any moment our mathematical models may fail to give us an accurate account of reality. i.e. ‘Random’ Naturalism simply does not guarantee us that our mathematical models will remain consistent tomorrow with the reality they purport to describe to us today:

   “There is absolutely no reason these constants should be constant,” says astronomer Michael Murphy of the University of Cambridge. “These are famous numbers in physics, but we have no real reason for why they are what they are.”
   The observed differences are small-roughly a few parts in a million-but the implications are huge (if they hold up): The laws of physics would have to be rewritten, not to mention we might need to make room for six more spatial dimensions than the three that we are used to.”,,,
   The speed of light, for instance, might be measured one day with a ruler and a clock. If the next day the same measurement gave a different answer, no one could tell if the speed of light changed, the ruler length changed, or the clock ticking changed.
   Scientists Question Nature’s Fundamental Laws – Michael Schirber – 2006
   http://www.space.com/2613-scie.....-laws.html
9. 9
   bornagain77 says:

   February 2, 2014 at 8:17 am

   And yet Naturalists/Atheists, apparently completely oblivious to the chaos in science that would ensue if random variance were actually found to be in the fundamental constants of the universe, continue to be surprised every time they find that the constants have not ‘randomly’ varied as they presuppose they should according to their base naturalistic (i.e. random) worldview:

   Dark energy alternatives to Einstein are running out of room – January 9, 2013
   Excerpt: Last month, a group of European astronomers, using a massive radio telescope in Germany, made the most accurate measurement of the proton-to-electron mass ratio ever accomplished and found that there has been no change in the ratio to one part in 10 million at a time when the universe was about half its current age, around 7 billion years ago. When Thompson put this new measurement into his calculations, he found that it excluded almost all of the dark energy models using the commonly expected values or parameters.
   If the parameter space or range of values is equated to a football field, then almost the whole field is out of bounds except for a single 2-inch by 2-inch patch at one corner of the field. In fact, most of the allowed values are not even on the field. “In effect, the dark energy theories have been playing on the wrong field,” Thompson said. “The 2-inch square does contain the area that corresponds to no change in the fundamental constants, (a ‘true cosmological constant’), and that is exactly where Einstein stands.”
   http://phys.org/news/2013-01-d.....-room.html

   Stronger and More Comprehensive Tests Affirm the Universe’s Unchanging Physics – July 1, 2013 By Dr. Hugh Ross
   Excerpt: For thousands of years, the Bible has been on record stating that the physical laws governing the universe do not vary. For example, Jeremiah 33:25, God declares that he “established the fixed laws of heaven and earth” (NIV, 1984).,,,
   Laboratory measurements have established that variations any greater than four parts per hundred quadrillion (less than 4 x 10-17) per year cannot exist in the fine structure constant, which undergirds several of the physical laws.,,,
   ,,they confirmed with 99 percent certainty that possible variations in the fine structure must be less than two parts per 10 quadrillion per year over the past 10 billion years. This limit is about a thousand times more constraining than the one I described in More Than a Theory.
   http://www.reasons.org/article.....ng-physics

   “Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. In most modern scientists this belief has died: it will be interesting to see how long their confidence in uniformity survives it.”
   Lewis, C.S., Miracles: a preliminary study, Collins, London, p. 110, 1947.

   Indeed Einstein and Wigner both expressed wonder that mathematics should describe reality so accurately when, according to naturalism, this should not be a-priorily expected:

   “You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way.. the kind of order created by Newton’s theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different. Even if a man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori. That is the ‘miracle’ which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands.”
   Albert Einstein – Goldman – Letters to Solovine p 131.

   The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene Wigner – 1960
   Excerpt: ,,certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin’s process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.,,,
   It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here, quite comparable in its striking nature to the miracle that the human mind can string a thousand arguments together without getting itself into contradictions, or to the two miracles of the existence of laws of nature and of the human mind’s capacity to divine them.,,,
   The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.
   http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc.....igner.html

   The Absurdity of Inflation, String Theory and The Multiverse – Dr. Bruce Gordon – video
   http://vimeo.com/34468027

   Here is the last power-point slide of the preceding video:

   The End Of Materialism?
   * In the multiverse, anything can happen for no reason at all.
   * In other words, the materialist is forced to believe in random miracles as a explanatory principle.
   * In a Theistic universe, nothing happens without a reason. Miracles are therefore intelligently directed deviations from divinely maintained regularities, and are thus expressions of rational purpose.
   * Scientific materialism is (therefore) epistemically self defeating: it makes scientific rationality impossible.

   Yet, to go back to square one in Tyson running headlong into a claim that Christ made about Himself as to being ‘The Truth’,,,

   John 14:6
   Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

   ,,, Can what we have reviewed so far support such a radical claim that Christ made about Himself? Yes! I believe Christ’s claim is substantiated by the following. If we allow that ‘God can play the role of a person’, (for who could deny Him that possibility “IF” He exists), as even the author of the incompleteness theorem himself allowed that God could do,,

   The God of the Mathematicians – Goldman
   Excerpt: As Gödel told Hao Wang, “Einstein’s religion [was] more abstract, like Spinoza and Indian philosophy. Spinoza’s god is less than a person; mine is more than a person; because God can play the role of a person.”
   – Kurt Gödel – (Gödel is considered one of the greatest logicians who ever existed)
   http://www.firstthings.com/art.....ematicians

   ,, ‘if’ we allow that possibility that ‘God can play the role of a person’, (and how could a person who believes in the infinite multiverse deny at least that possibility?) ‘if’ we allow that possibility then we find a very credible reconciliation between the finite world of the 4-D space-time of General Relativity and the infinite world of ‘timelessness’ of Quantum Mechanics. A very credible reconciliation that does not wind up in the ‘anything goes’ epistemological pit of logical absurdities as string theory, m-theory and the multiverse does,,,

   The Center Of The Universe Is Life – General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Entropy and The Shroud Of Turin – video
   http://vimeo.com/34084462

   ,,,in fact, unlike all these outlandish multiverse scenarios which have no empirical support (and which undermine our ability to rationally practice science in the first place), we find a reconciliation between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics that has a surprising amount of empirical support. For instance, it is now shown that the process in which the image was formed on the Shroud of Turin had to be a ‘quantum process’, not a classical process:

   The absorbed energy in the Shroud body image formation appears as contributed by discrete values – Giovanni Fazio, Giuseppe Mandaglio – 2008
   Excerpt: This result means that the optical density distribution,, can not be attributed at the absorbed energy described in the framework of the classical physics model. It is, in fact, necessary to hypothesize a absorption by discrete values of the energy where the ‘quantum’ is equal to the one necessary to yellow one fibril.
   http://cab.unime.it/journals/i.....802004/271

   “It is not a continuum or spherical-front radiation that made the image, as visible or UV light. It is not the X-ray radiation that obeys the one over R squared law that we are so accustomed to in medicine. It is more unique. It is suggested that the image was formed when a high-energy particle struck the fiber and released radiation within the fiber at a speed greater that the local speed of light. Since the fiber acts as a light pipe, this energy moved out through the fiber until it encountered an optical discontinuity, then it slowed to the local speed of light and dispersed. The fact that the pixels don’t fluoresce suggests that the conversion to their now brittle dehydrated state occurred instantly and completely so no partial products remain to be activated by the ultraviolet light. This suggests a quantum event where a finite amount of energy transferred abruptly. The fact that there are images front and back suggests the radiating particles were released along the gravity vector. The radiation pressure may also help explain why the blood was “lifted cleanly” from the body as it transformed to a resurrected state.”
   Kevin Moran, optical engineer

   Scientists say Turin Shroud is supernatural – December 2011
   Excerpt: After years of work trying to replicate the colouring on the shroud, a similar image has been created by the scientists.
   However, they only managed the effect by scorching equivalent linen material with high-intensity ultra violet lasers, undermining the arguments of other research, they say, which claims the Turin Shroud is a medieval hoax.
   Such technology, say researchers from the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Enea), was far beyond the capability of medieval forgers, whom most experts have credited with making the famous relic.
   “The results show that a short and intense burst of UV directional radiation can colour a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin,” they said.
   And in case there was any doubt about the preternatural degree of energy needed to make such distinct marks, the Enea report spells it out: “This degree of power cannot be reproduced by any normal UV source built to date.”
   http://www.independent.co.uk/n.....79512.html

   THE EVENT HORIZON (Space-Time Singularity) OF THE SHROUD OF TURIN. – Isabel Piczek – Particle Physicist
   Excerpt: We have stated before that the images on the Shroud firmly indicate the total absence of Gravity. Yet they also firmly indicate the presence of the Event Horizon. These two seemingly contradict each other and they necessitate the past presence of something more powerful than Gravity that had the capacity to solve the above paradox.
   http://shroud3d.com/findings/i.....-formation
10. 10
    bornagain77 says:

    February 2, 2014 at 8:18 am

    Particle Radiation from the Body – July 2012 – M. Antonacci, A. C. Lind
    Excerpt: The Shroud’s frontal and dorsal body images are encoded with the same amount of intensity, independent of any pressure or weight from the body. The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image. Radiation coming from the body would not only explain this feature, but also the left/right and light/dark reversals found on the cloth’s frontal and dorsal body images.
    http://www.academicjournals.or.....onacci.pdf

    ’2nd face’ on Shroud points to supernatural origin – April 2010
    Excerpt: The researchers, in other words, found a “doubly superficial” face image on both the front and back sides such that “if a cross-section of the fabric is made, one extremely superficial image appears above and one below, but there is nothing in the middle.”
    The shroud, therefore, they concluded, was not created by paint soaking through the linen or by a photographic image printing through to the reverse side, because the front and back facial images are not identical and the center fibers show no image creation whatsoever.
    Fanti and Maggiolo concluded the shroud image was created by a “corona discharge,” understood as a radiant burst of light and energy that scorched the body image of the crucified man on the topmost fibers of the shroud’s front and back sides, without producing any image on the centermost of its linen fibers.
    “Imagine slicing a human hair lengthwise, from end to end, into 100 long thin slices; each slice one-tenth the width of a single red blood cell,” writes Daniel Porter, editor of ShroudStory.com. “The images on the Shroud of Turin, at their thickest, are this thin.”
    Fanti and Maggiolo found the faint image of the face on the reverse side of the shroud contained the same 3-D information contained in the face and body image of the crucified man seen on the shroud’s front side.
    http://www.wnd.com/2010/04/146689/

    Strange! Humans Glow in Visible Light – Charles Q. Choi – July 22, 2009
    Schematic illustration of experimental setup that found the human body, especially the face, emits visible light in small quantities that vary during the day. B is one fo the test subjects. The other images show the weak emissions of visible light during totally dark conditions. The chart corresponds to the images and shows how the emissions varied during the day. The last image (I) is an infrared image of the subject showing heat emissions.
    http://www.livescience.com/779.....light.html

    Photocount distribution of photons emitted from three sites of a human body – 2006
    Excerpt: Signals from three representative sites of low, intermediate and high intensities are selected for further analysis. Fluctuations in these signals are measured by the probabilities of detecting different numbers of photons in a bin. The probabilities have non-classical features and are well described by the signal in a quantum squeezed state of photons. Measurements with bins of three sizes yield same values of three parameters of the squeezed state.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16520060

    Genesis 2:7
    “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

    Exodus 34:29-30:
    “Moses didn’t realize as he came back down the mountain with the tablets that his face glowed from being in the presence of God. Because of this radiance upon his face, Aaron and the people of Israel were afraid to come near him.”

    Matthew 17:1-2
    After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.

    I suggest, if scientists want to find the source for the supernatural, ‘Quantum’, light which made the “3D – photographic negative” image on the Shroud, then they should look to the thousands of documented Near-Death Experiences (NDE’s) in Judeo-Christian cultures. It is in their testimonies that you will find mention of an indescribably bright ‘Light’ or ‘Being of Light’ who is always described as being of a much brighter intensity of light than the people had ever seen before.

    “Suddenly, I was enveloped in this brilliant golden light. The light was more brilliant that the light emanating from the sun, many times more powerful and radiant than the sun itself. Yet, I was not blinded by it nor burned by it. Instead, the light was a source of energy that embraced my being.”
    Ned Dougherty “To Heaven and Back” pg. 71 – Mary C. Neal MD

    Near Death Experience – The Tunnel, The Light, The Life Review – video
    http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4200200/

    “The Light was brighter than hundreds of suns, but it did not hurt my eyes. I had never seen anything as luminous or as golden as this Light, and I immediately understood it was entirely composed of love, all directed at me. This wonderful, vibrant love was very personal, as you might describe secular love, but also sacred.
    Though I had never seen God, I recognized this light as the Light of God. But even the word God seemed too small to describe the magnificence of that presence. I was with my Creator, in holy communication with that presence. The Light was directed at me and through me; it surrounded me and pierced me. It existed just for me.” –
    testimony from Kimberly Clark Sharp’s Near Death Experience
    http://www.near-death.com/sharp.html

    Of note;

    Near-Death Experiences: Putting a Darwinist’s Evidentiary Standards to the Test – Dr. Michael Egnor – October 15, 2012
    Excerpt: Indeed, about 20 percent of NDE’s are corroborated, which means that there are independent ways of checking about the veracity of the experience. The patients knew of things that they could not have known except by extraordinary perception — such as describing details of surgery that they watched while their heart was stopped, etc. Additionally, many NDE’s have a vividness and a sense of intense reality that one does not generally encounter in dreams or hallucinations.,,,
    The most “parsimonious” explanation — the simplest scientific explanation — is that the (Near Death) experience was real. Tens of millions of people have had such experiences. That is tens of millions of more times than we have observed the origin of species (or origin of life), which is never.,,,
    The materialist reaction, in short, is unscientific and close-minded. NDE’s show fellows like Coyne at their sneering unscientific irrational worst. Somebody finds a crushed fragment of a fossil and it’s earth-shaking evidence. Tens of million of people have life-changing spiritual experiences and it’s all a big yawn.
    Note: Dr. Egnor is professor and vice-chairman of neurosurgery at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
    http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....65301.html

    “A recent analysis of several hundred cases showed that 48% of near-death experiencers reported seeing their physical bodies from a different visual perspective. Many of them also reported witnessing events going on in the vicinity of their body, such as the attempts of medical personnel to resuscitate them (Kelly et al., 2007).”
    Kelly, E. W., Greyson, B., & Kelly, E. F. (2007). Unusual experiences near death and related phenomena. In E. F. Kelly, E. W. Kelly, A. Crabtree, A. Gauld, M. Grosso, & B. Greyson, Irreducible mind (pp. 367-421). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

    Even though the atheistic researchers in this following study found evidence directly contradicting what they had expected to find for Near Death Experiences, they were/are so wedded to the materialistic/naturalistic view of reality, the view of “I’ am my body”, that it seems sadly impossible for them to even conceive of the fact that they may be wrong in their naturalistic presuppositions, and to even admit to the possibility of the reality/truth of the soul, i.e. to the “I’ am a soul distinct from my body” view of reality.

    ‘Afterlife’ feels ‘even more real than real,’ researcher says – Wed April 10, 2013
    Excerpt: “If you use this questionnaire … if the memory is real, it’s richer, and if the memory is recent, it’s richer,” he said.
    The coma scientists weren’t expecting what the tests revealed.
    “To our surprise, NDEs were much richer than any imagined event or any real event of these coma survivors,” Laureys reported.
    The memories of these experiences beat all other memories, hands down, for their vivid sense of reality. “The difference was so vast,” he said with a sense of astonishment.
    Even if the patient had the experience a long time ago, its memory was as rich “as though it was yesterday,” Laureys said.
    http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/09/.....periences/

    Verse and Music;

    Colossians 1:15-20
    The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

    Metallica & San Francisco Symphony Orchestra – Nothing Else Matters – music
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziThYl6B2vw
11. 11
    bornagain77 says:

    February 2, 2014 at 9:37 am

    Corrected reference to bottom of post #8

    Thus Naturalists/Atheists cannot appeal to a platonic realm of abstract mathematical ideas in their ‘seeking of truth’ since ‘truth’ cannot be grounded in any mathematics that is specific enough to account for the universe. This would seem to be rather obvious enough point to make:

    GORDON: Hawking’s irrational arguments – Oct. 2010
    Excerpt: This transcendent reality cannot merely be a Platonic realm of mathematical descriptions, for such things are causally inert abstract entities that do not affect the material world,,,
    Rather, the transcendent reality on which our universe depends must be something that can exhibit agency – a mind that can choose among the infinite variety of mathematical descriptions and bring into existence a reality that corresponds to a consistent subset of them. This is what “breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe.” Anything else invokes random miracles as an explanatory principle and spells the end of scientific rationality.,,,
    Universes do not “spontaneously create” on the basis of abstract mathematical descriptions, nor does the fantasy of a limitless multiverse trump the explanatory power of transcendent intelligent design. What Mr. Hawking’s contrary assertions show is that mathematical savants can sometimes be metaphysical simpletons. Caveat emptor.
    http://www.washingtontimes.com.....arguments/

    Mathematics and Physics – A Happy Coincidence? – William Lane Craig – video
    http://www.metacafe.com/w/9826382

    1. If God did not exist the applicability of mathematics would be a happy coincidence.
    2. The applicability of mathematics is not a happy coincidence.
    3. Therefore, God exists.

    Indeed, assuming naturalism as the source for the truthfulness inherent within mathematics leads to the frightful proposition, because of the ‘randomness’ postulate at the base of naturalism, that at any moment our mathematical models may fail to give us an accurate account of reality.,,,