Tom and Elizabeth: spirituality, scientific inquiry, consciousness, secular humanism, ethics, & love
My sister and I have a chat on September 4, 2024 about matchmaking, Christmas caroling, diversity of subjective experience, reasons (including Near Death Experience Studies) to doubt the finality of death , and the ethical implications of abandoning a secular humanist materialist paradigm.
0:00 Tom's online matchmaking. Knowing self.
2:49 Christmas caroling quartets starting up. Harmonics. Listening. Pleasure.
6:58 Elizabeth's memories of our family before she was born
8:06 Difficulty of sharing unusual perceptions
8:35 Invalidating harm of shutting people down when they share their perceptions
9:30 Difficulty of believing what we don't perceive.
10:05 Remembering and rejoicing our individual perceptual uniqueness
10:57 Humility required to accept each other's perceptions
11:21 Necessity of faith in each other
12:38 Faith,humility, and trust are connected
13:25 Accepting and validating perceptual differences in romantic relationships
14:11 "I'm doing to you the things that you think I'm doing to you"
15:22 "What you're seeing is valid"
16:13 The meaning of Faith to Tom: Faith in each other
16:41 Tom is not a secular humanist any more.
17:24 Faith in a higher power
18:03 Blessing Putin etc. is part of faith
18:42 Faith in our future vs alarmism
19:33 The objective facts about humanity are mostly encouraging
21:04 The need for serenity and acceptance of the temporary nature of experience and of life
22:28 The terms duality and monism: we don't know
24:44 Materialism and the alternative
27:18 Spirituality encompasses religions
27:28 Making sense of religion and spirituality
28:48 Paying attention to non-religious voices
29:30 Commonalities among religions for metaphysics vs. for ethics
32:22 Enlightened self-interest and the Golden Rule.
33:02 Whether metaphysical belief is justified. Sam Harris, and Carl Sagan on the question.
34:02 Tom's personal persuasion about the Near Death Experience.
34:45 What about differences between NDE accounts and other ineffable experiences?
36:35 Veridical out-of-body experiences in NDEs are remarkable evidence
37:11 The mental block that caused me to believe in the finality of death
39:23 Evaluating remarkable personal experiences
40:06 Elizabeth's experiences of unmistakeable and inexplicable revelations/inspiration
42:16 Tom's experience asking for a sign of a coyote in 1999
46:20 Elizabeth's experience of inability to depress the accelerator
48:01 Occam's Razor and the God of the Gaps
48:51 The problem of evil (Theodicy) doesn't invalidate the reality.
49:57 Turning Occam's Razor on it's head.
50:44 If the world is an educational MMORPG and we are avatars, are we all? Are there NPCs who are not children of God?
52:18 Is consciousness obligated to inhabit (play the character of) every human?
52:55 Elizabeth's answer from her Occam's Razor perspective: God is life.
53:30 Does personality survive this life? Is there personality outside of humanity? Childhood other-life memories, NDEs, & Carl Sagan
57:32 Is there a contradiction between "God is all/oneness" (all are waves in an ocean) and the survival of personality (reincarnation etc)?
1:02:22 Our method of inquiry
1:03:38 NDE: What is the Near Death Experience? Veridical out-of-body experiences.
1:05:17 NDE: Dead or not dead
1:06:45 NDE: Division of Perceptual Studies of University of Virginia
1:08:05 NDE: Pervasive nature of NDEs
1:05:30 NDE: Measurable after NDE effects and rigorous NDE studies
1:09:15 NDE: Reported lessons: love
1:09:50 NDE: Varied trappings of experience
1:10:20 NDE: Veridical out-of-body experiences
1:11:20 NDE: Cultural dependencies of variations
1:11:37 NDE: Tom's justification for taking NDE as evidence of consciousness independent of biology
1:12:48 NDE: Humility is in order. Tom doesn't feel justified insisting on the finality of death.
1:13:22 Ethics: Does letting go of secular humanist materialism compromise our ethics?
1:13:25 Ethics: The transcendent reverence and beauty of secular humanism.
1:14:18 Ethics: Ricky Gervais short on atheist ethics and reverence
1:15:28 Ethics: Preciousness of fleeting life
1:16:19 Ethics: Mischaracterization of atheist ethics within our religious experience
1:17:15 Ethics: Human nature isn't evil! But we are insecure, fearful, xenophobic, and doubtful when we are wounded
1:18:08 Ethics: We need to have faith in each other and ourselves
1:18:40 Human nature and Mormonism: (Tom) two plans of salvation in dialogue
1:20:00 "Before You Were Born" children's book: our Mormonism
1:20:42 Ethics: (Tom) secular (strong man) vs. spiritual (straw man)
1:22:15 Ethics: Is it really a weakness of spirituality? Elizabeth's experience.
1:23:29 Ethics: (Elizabeth) The power of now. I shall never pass this way again.
1:24:51 Ethics: Strong ethics can be informed by spirituality even though "It takes religion to get good people to do bad things."
1:26:15 Ethics summary: All high quality information we have about spirituality points to empowering the highest ethical behavior.
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