Atheists & Agnostics
Related: About this forumNarnia is Real: A Skeptic’s Experience in Another Dimension
I haven't read the 'neuroscientist in heaven' thing, but I found this amusing nonetheless.
As a skeptic and an atheist, I did not believe in a magical realm of talking animals that one can visit late at night. Ive long been interested in science and critical thinking. I understand what happens to the brain when people are asleep, and I always believed that there were good scientific explanations for the detailed journeys to another dimension described by those who went to bed every night.
The brain is an astonishingly sophisticated but extremely delicate mechanism. Reduce the amount of pizza it receives by the smallest amount and it will react. In fact, it will literally react to just about anything. So its no surprise that people who had gone to sleep would awake with strange stories. But that didnt mean they had journeyed anywhere real.
Although I consider myself a believer in magical extra dimensions where our souls can mingle in the ether, I was so more in name than in actual belief. Sure, Ive attended Spectral Travelers meetings every Sunday night since I was a child old enough to understand the concept of inter-dimensional teleportation, but as a skeptic, I always figured it maybe sort of wasnt entirely true.
But last night, after seven hours of rest during which the human part of my brain (i.e., all of it) showed significantly slowed brainwave patterns, I experienced something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in Narnia.
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AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)A good send up to the Newsweek malarky.
They'll print anything!
dmallind
(10,437 posts)Nevernose
(13,081 posts)On total accident, or at least mostly on accident. I've seen shit, been to places, experienced things this guy couldn't have imagined had he gone to a thousand "Spectral Travellers" meetings. As in, "I was naked, on the roof, hunting goblins that only I could see, when the voice of God erupted in my brain, transmitted from every electrical device in a hundred feet, and he told me to never use drugs again."
And though I took his advice and never used drugs again, I can say, without a doubt, that it was a total hallucination. Just because my brain told me it was real does not mean that now, when sober, I'm stupid enough to believe it was real.
I also think this guy is too dumb to know what "scientific reason" means.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)To me, the inclusion of "magical" is a clue that this is a put-on.
Just guessing.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Than the three spatial ones we perceive. They just aren't magical.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)They also aren't vague enough that anyone can use them to justify any notion they might come up with. (Kind of like Energy and Quantum Uncertainty)