Thread: What if science/mathematics is necessarily the same thing as spirituality/religion?

Originally Posted by nietstein

Photolysis: how do you prove that infinity does not equal 0?

A) by the very definition of zero and infinity.
B) reductio ad absurdum. If they are equal you have to throw out huge swathes of mathematics and areas of science because you get absolutely nonsensical values and the terms become meaningless.

Running statements through such basic sanity checks is a very good way to avoid coming out with complete bullshit.

Originally Posted by MasterMind

Photolysis I don't mean that one should believe in everything, although if people never believed in stuff that wasn't proven yet, well then it would never be any breakthroughs.

Nonsense. You don't have to believe in something before it is 'proven'. For rational people it's the very act of gathering sufficient evidence to prove it that leads to acceptance of it as fact. Follow where the evidence takes you, and if it's strong enough the belief comes naturally.

but then my friend had an OBE himself and obtained information that was unknown to him before, and after that he was far from skeptical it's obvious of course since he had experienced it himself.
Is it then so stupid of me to believe my friend? For now I choose to believe but when I experience it myself I will know.

And how can anyone possibly confirm or disprove such anecdotes? How can anyone possibly determine if your friend had or did not have any exposure to the information, even if he wasn't consciously aware of the fact. How can I determine it's not confirmation bias.

And is it stupid to believe something like this simply based on an anecdotal account? Yes it is. You're considering something a fact based entirely on the word of someone else with no reliable data or control.

So if you Photolysis would experience an OBE

The first thing I'd do is test if it was a dream or not. I'm confident that would be a spectacular success.

got information that you knew you hadn't heard before like a family secret nobody ever talked about and you heard it from a dead relative in a "dream"

And how could I determine truly that I'd never heard it? That I hadn't gathered fragments of evidence to piece something together? That it wasn't a lucky guess?

So no, I wouldn't give it any weight. The most I could do is say "I cannot fully explain this".

The only way to prove anything is a controlled experiment. If these claims have any truth to them, they should easily pass these tests. Remote viewing, OBEs, astral project etc. have failed every single controlled test I can find. If they have passed one and I am unaware of it, please link the paper so I can read it for myself.