OF THE
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The prospect of the creation of new classes of protected minorities, governed only by the mathematical principles of permutation and combination, clearly raises the prospect of opening the hackneyed Pandora's box.
"I didn't feel any pain but I heard voices around me. I could then hear my sister screaming, "She's dead, my sister is dead." So I believed that I must have died. I remember my sister, Allan, and John saying, "If you can hear us, move, or touch something," but I couldn't move at all.Nicholson survived to tell the story, of course, and — looking back — she reflects:
"After I started to regain consciousness, I remember seeing the faces of the people that I loved flashing before my eyes. Every single face that appeared in my memory had something in common: they were the people that I loved and deeply cared about. I thought: I love all of these people, and I never got to tell them."
- JULIA A. NICHOLSON, "'A NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE LED ME ON A PATH I NEVER EXPECTED'" AT NEWSWEEK - JANUARY 7, 2023
"Having a near-death experience caused me to have a sense of urgency to get things done, not knowing if my next minute alive would be my last. It also allowed me to live my life to the fullest, not worrying about other people's opinions or the fear of 'failure.'"Near-death experiences are commonly life-changing events that provide evidence that the human mind is not simply a function of the body and appears, at times, to operate independently of it.
For myself I remain fully and firmly agnostic on the question. If ever there was a place where firm convictions seem misplaced this is it. There simply is no controlled, experimental verifiable information to support either the "you rot" vs. "you go on" positions.Carroll was having none of that!
In the absence of said information we are all free to believe as we like but, I would argue, it behooves us to remember that truly "public" knowledge on the subject — the kind science exemplifies — remains in short supply.
ADAM FRANK, "THE FINAL WORD ON LIFE AFTER DEATH" AT NPR (MAY 17, 2011)
I have an enormous respect for Adam; he's a smart guy and a careful thinker. When we disagree it's with the kind of respectful dialogue that should be a model for disagreeing with non-crazy people. But here he couldn't be more wrong.
Adam claims that there "simply is no controlled, experimental[ly] verifiable information" regarding life after death. By these standards, there is no controlled, experimentally verifiable information regarding whether the Moon is made of green cheese. --SEAN M. CARROLL, "PHYSICS AND THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL" AT SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (MAY 23, 2011)
"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God."But Benedict spoke clearly on the subject on other occasions as well. Almost lost by the mainstream media were two statements about intelligent design, in contrast to Darwinian evolution. First was a 2006 homily in Regensburg that was eclipsed in the news by his other, more famous address there that mentioned Islam. The second statement was made later that year in Verona, as covered by the Vatican Information Service (VIS).
Comment: Are we thinking or reacting? What's your filter?