Criteria
Why? Are these yet more criteria you're adding to the list?
To my knowledge I've added nothing to that list that isn't already a part of 'sentience'.
It has to be dense in electrical circuits, it can't be man-made (that negates the magic spell, naturally), it has to be connected to God (presumably over wifi or 3G), and it has to have a local CCTV connection (y'know, to record those experiences). That about cover it?
You're being flippant, but these are things that humans experience and have reported experiencing as part of 'sentience'.
Nope. The Sun was created naturally too, but that doesn't mean we can recreate it in the lab. What makes you think we have the technological prowess to recreate billions of years of evolution?
I'm not asking you to create a billion years of evolution, I want to see you create *SIMPLE* life forms. I want to see you create some basic conditions that always and without fail lead to a spontaneous formation of life. It presumably would be a very simple life form, not a fancy one, that THEN might "evolve" for billions of years. I don't care if it's a "sophisticated" form of life, it just has to be capable of "evolving' and it has to be 'alive'. Let's see you make it happen.
Dark Matter
Irrelevant. The veracity of the dark matter theory has no bearing on the veracity of your claims, so please stop dodging the question.
You're the one dodging, not me. You have no evidence of any cause/effect relationships at all in your cosmology "theory of choice". It's all IMPLIED or ASSUMED. You're all over me about producing 'hard evidence' but you have no "hard evidence" at all to support your beliefs. You have no "hard evidence" that their accounts of NDE's are not accurate and true.
Do you, or do you not, have any hard evidence that these interactions with deities and descended loved ones actually occurred?
What evidence would you accept?
Suppose I threw my hands up and admitted that we scientists really are suppressing the little man with our dirty evil sky gods (to whom we routinely sacrifice babies - white, Godly, American, Christian babies, of course). How would that change the topic at hand? How would that, in any way, add merit to your theory?
In terms of you accepting a pure electric universe concept without the deistic elements, probably so.
NDEs
Whoever said my experiences matter? The whole point is that one's personal, subjective experiences don't matter. What matters is the evidence, and you've yet to provide any evidence that these phenomena are anything more than quirks of human psychology.
I can provide studies that rule out a number of common physical factors including drugs and a lack of oxygen to the brain. You've yet to show they are NOT exactly what they claim. I can even show instances where the person undergoing the NDE has KNOWLEDGE of where his teeth were put during the timeline in question. IN fact knowledge claims are common during such instances. That Lancet study cited just one such incident.
The Lancet: Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest
How did the guy know where his false teeth were located?
You insist that they're somehow connected, that they somehow demonstrate a connection with a single, divine being (who is, coincidentally enough, the same being you advocate elsewhere - ever thought that maybe there's two deities?). Well, where's your evidence? Where's your evidence that the mainstream theory is wrong, and that yours is right?
Wait a minute? What's the 'mainstream theory' and where is this consensus printed?
We have an abundance of evidence that the brain and the mind can be deceived - degenerative diseases, hallucinogenic drugs, delusion brought on by trauma - and that, in times of great stress, is less than reliable.
And yet the Lancet study ruled out drugs and most other potential influences. Which study supports your claims again?
Why, then, are you so convinced that this phenomenon isn't just another example of hallucination under extreme stress?
You've never provided any evidence to support the claim that it's a "hallucination" for starters. The person having the "experience" is typically changed by the process, suggesting that they do not believe it to be a "hallucination".
A sample size of one is hardly compelling evidence. The crux of your argument is that we know of no other system that has such complex electrical structure that isn't alive and concious - so, therefore, any future discovery of such a system must also be alive and concious. Just like how all known swans are white, so all future swans must be white too, eh?
If you have an example of a black swan, lets see it. So far you can only produce white (living) and off white (intelligently designed).
Until proven otherwise, the default position is the null hypothesis, one of non-causality, the one where you don't assume causal relationships between phenomena until you have a good reason to.
What's the 'causal relationship" between dark energy and acceleration?
I don't assume electricity in deep space causes NDEs, because there is no evidence of this.
But they aren't claiming that they met electricity or Bob Hope during the experience. On the other hand they overwhelming report that they met "God". They report cause/effect relationships, not me.
Electricity is space is just your run-of-the-mill electricity. It doesn't generate conciousness, it isn't a hallmark of intelligent design, it's just electricity.
That is your preferred "dogma" as an atheist. The moment you allow yourself to think otherwise, the atheism ceases to exist.
Likewise, NDEs aren't magical connections to some lightening god, they're just random synaptic firings in the visual cortex, cultural conditioning that makes you see a white light, the brain recreating what it hears (and, occasionally, what it sees) in the mind's eye, etc.
This is just more atheistic dogma that is utterly and totally devoid of empirical support. They aren't "random" events in the sense that many individuals report the same thing (meeting God). They aren't "conditioning based" experiences, at least the experiences often do not jive with their preconceived religious beliefs. In fact many of them make major life changes in terms of religion or basic beliefs as a result of the experience itself. Atheists become theists for example.
Religion surrounds our everyday lives, and we expect some sort of religious experience upon death. The brain is a powerful tool at self-deception, nothing more.
But atheist have them too, and the experiences typically don't 'fit' with the persons preconceived ideas related to either the existence of God, or the meaning of life, or both.
NDEs and deep-space circuits are unrelated phenomenon. They might not be, but until proven otherwise, I'm sticking with the logical default.
Likewise acceleration and dark energy are unrelated phenomenon. They can't be related because dark energy has no effect on anything, whereas an EM field MIGHT have an effect on material objects. I'm sticking with the logical default.
