A colleague recently told me about when a close family member died, he had a feeling that something was wrong but only learnt several hours later about the death
This is not the first time I've heard a similar story. This got me thinking, maybe there is something in this. But being the ultimate skpetic I looked for a rational explanation.
The idea that I came up with involved psychology rather than any sort of paranormal phenomenon.
Say person A is sitting reading the newspaper when a loved one passes away unexpectedly, he/she has no idea of the death and carries on reading the newspaper completely unaware. A few hours later he/she gets a phone call delivering the sad news that person B passed away at 3pm that day.
Person A, either consciously or unconsciously, thinks back to what he/she was doing at 3pm (reading the newspaper in this case) and the memory of sitting there reading the newspaper becomes permanently linked in their mind with the feeling of loss and sadness that they experienced when they learnt the news. When they think back on the events of the day, in their state of emotional turmoil and vulnerability, the memory of feeling loss and sadness at the time when they were actually happily sitting reading the paper, seems absolutely real.
Please don't think i'm belittling anyones emotions or feelings on the death of a loved one, that is certainly not my intention.
I've come up with this theory independently but it's certainly possible that others have suggested this before, I'd be interested to hear if anyone has heard similar theories about this phemonenon.
So, do you think this theory is a plausible explantation?
Author Archive for Gareth
This video is quite long at 15mins but it's well worth watching. I'd never heard about retroviral DNA before, but this is yet more convincing proof of evolution.
A priest in a small rural town was very fond of his 10 chickens and 1
handsome cock he kept in a hen house behind the rectory.
One Saturday night the priest discovered that the rooster was missing.
At the same time the priest heard rumors of cockfights being held in town.
Shocked and dismayed, he decided to say something during Mass.
During Mass he asked the congregation, "Who among you will confess to sporting a handsome cock?"
All the men stood up.
"No, no," he said. "That's not what I mean. Who among you will confess to having seen a handsome cock?"
All the women stood up.
"Oh, no," he said. "That's not what I mean either. Who among you will confess to having seen a cock that doesn't belong to you?
" Half the women stood up.
"Oh Lord," he said. "Perhaps I should rephrase the question: Has anybody seen my cock?"
All the choirboys stood up.
handsome cock he kept in a hen house behind the rectory.
One Saturday night the priest discovered that the rooster was missing.
At the same time the priest heard rumors of cockfights being held in town.
Shocked and dismayed, he decided to say something during Mass.
During Mass he asked the congregation, "Who among you will confess to sporting a handsome cock?"
All the men stood up.
"No, no," he said. "That's not what I mean. Who among you will confess to having seen a handsome cock?"
All the women stood up.
"Oh, no," he said. "That's not what I mean either. Who among you will confess to having seen a cock that doesn't belong to you?
" Half the women stood up.
"Oh Lord," he said. "Perhaps I should rephrase the question: Has anybody seen my cock?"
All the choirboys stood up.
There's been severe flooding here in Britain, Gloucestershire has been worst affected.
Don't worry though, the Bishop of Gloucester has written a special prayer for the flood victims.
There's 250,000 without clean drinking water, many thousands have had their homes and all their possessions ruined, but thanks to the quick thinking of the Bishop there are now some new words to say to your imaginary friend in the sky.
Ah what would we do without Bishops? (rhetorical question)
Don't worry though, the Bishop of Gloucester has written a special prayer for the flood victims.
There's 250,000 without clean drinking water, many thousands have had their homes and all their possessions ruined, but thanks to the quick thinking of the Bishop there are now some new words to say to your imaginary friend in the sky.
Ah what would we do without Bishops? (rhetorical question)
Landover Baptist's Pastor Deacon Fred addresses thousands of hellbound freethinkers in front of Congress at the Godless March on Washington.
Read the full story here
A man making a trip from Puerto Rico to South Florida to raise money for his religious education remains hospitalized Monday after he was struck down by a bolt of lightning which flew from clear blue sky on Sunday. He was selling religious materials when he was hit.
Hailu Kidane Marian was working with members of his religious group, selling religious materials door-to-door in a Northwest Miami-Dade neighborhood, when the bolt from the blue struck him down.
"I heard a boom, and I looked and the guy jumped back, and he just laid there, stiff," said witness Maria Martinez.
Paramedics say Marian was not breathing and his heart was not beating when they arrived, but they were able to revive him and rushed him to Jackson Memorial hospital, where he was in critical condition Sunday night.
Members of his religious group waited outside the hospital throughout the night for word of his condition.
"He's unconscious, he's in a coma," said Francisco Perez, leader of the Puerto Rico-based group. "It's difficult what happened, you know, but what can we do? Things happen in life, but we still believe in God."
Creationism explained.
An open letter to Richard Branson asking him to stop giving airtime to evil conmen who explit vulnerable people in the name of entertainment, ie so-called "Psychics" and "Mediums".
For those in the UK who also want to write to Richard Branson, his address is
Sir Richard Branson
Virgin Group Ltd,
120 Campden Hill Road,
London,
W8 7AR
I will post any reply I get from Richard Branson, please let me know if you get any replies to your letters.
If you are outside the UK you may instead wish to write to the owners of channels in your country which show so-called "psychics" and "mediums".
Dear Sir Branson,
I am writing to you regarding the programming on your TV channel "Living" and "Living2". I am most dismayed to find that you are continuing to show programmes such as "6ixth sense with Colin Fry".
I know that you are an intelligent person and you are well known for your philanthropic activities, so it is clear that you care for your fellow humans. It puzzles me therefore that you give air time to these dangerous charlatans.
All so-called psychics and mediums, use psychological tricks such as cold reading to make high probability guesses about their victims quickly picking up on signals from their subjects as to whether their guesses are in the right direction or not, and then emphasizing and reinforcing any chance connections the subjects acknowledge while quickly moving on from missed guesses.
If you are in any doubt that their so-called abilities are nothing more than trickery, then please take the time to review the work of famous sceptics James Randi and Derren Brown who are able to replicate the results of the "psychics" and "mediums" using the same trickery that the charlatans themselves use. James Randi has had $1,000,000 on offer for many years to anyone who can prove any sort of paranormal ability, to date nobody has succesfully won the challenge and I am confident that this will continue to be the case.
I would also suggest that you speak to any mainstream grief counsellor who will tell you that the only way for a greiving person to recover from their grief is to learn to accept the loss and come to terms with the fact that their loved one is no longer around. So you can see that the cynical manipulation of the bereaved by these evil charlatans such as Colin Fry will only lengthen the greiving process.
Please stop this awful exploitation of vulnerable people and stop showing these awful shows on your TV network as soon as possible.
Yours Sincerely
G Edwards.
Fantastic stand up routine from George Carlin.
I'm sure a lot of you have seen the video by Kirk Cameron entitled "an atheists worst nightmare, the banana".
For those who haven't seen it here's a link. Basically he argues that the banana is so well designed, being tasty, nutritious and easy to hold and eat that the only possible explanation is that they were designed by God.
My first reaction was to imagine the evolutionary process that produced bananas. Of course a fruit that tastes like crap and is difficult to eat is only going to be eaten as a last resort, whereas a nice, tasty nutritious fruit that is easy to eat will be the first choice for any animal. When a fruit gets eaten it's seeds get distributed far and wide in a handy little package of manure. So by a gradual process of natural selection, the tastiest fruit thrive and spread. Hey presto we have a yummy banana.
I was wrong.
Fortunately, the truth does not support Kirk Camerons argument, but instead blows it completely out of the water.
Here is a natural wild banana
Wild bananas have fairly dry fruits with large seeds and no pulp. In Southeast Asia, the primitive seeded bananas are termed tae manu, meaning animal feces, implying that they are only eaten during times of famine.
The banana we see today is a result of years of selective breeding. So they were inteligently designed.
Here are the inteligent designers, the early native pioneers of agriculture in Papua New Guinea. I'm sure they would appreciate Kirk Cameron's compliment but they'll be the first to admit that they are not Gods.
I'd suggest to Kirk Cameron that next time he does a little research before making silly claims that he can prove the existance of God with a banana.
For those who haven't seen it here's a link. Basically he argues that the banana is so well designed, being tasty, nutritious and easy to hold and eat that the only possible explanation is that they were designed by God.
My first reaction was to imagine the evolutionary process that produced bananas. Of course a fruit that tastes like crap and is difficult to eat is only going to be eaten as a last resort, whereas a nice, tasty nutritious fruit that is easy to eat will be the first choice for any animal. When a fruit gets eaten it's seeds get distributed far and wide in a handy little package of manure. So by a gradual process of natural selection, the tastiest fruit thrive and spread. Hey presto we have a yummy banana.
I was wrong.
Fortunately, the truth does not support Kirk Camerons argument, but instead blows it completely out of the water.
Here is a natural wild banana
Wild bananas have fairly dry fruits with large seeds and no pulp. In Southeast Asia, the primitive seeded bananas are termed tae manu, meaning animal feces, implying that they are only eaten during times of famine.
The banana we see today is a result of years of selective breeding. So they were inteligently designed.
Here are the inteligent designers, the early native pioneers of agriculture in Papua New Guinea. I'm sure they would appreciate Kirk Cameron's compliment but they'll be the first to admit that they are not Gods.
I'd suggest to Kirk Cameron that next time he does a little research before making silly claims that he can prove the existance of God with a banana.
One claim often made by creationists and supporters of "intelligent design" is that there are very few transitional fossils.
In a way they are right, there are fewer transitional fossils than we might expect, but the reason for this is not that transitional forms do not exist. It has more to do with the methods used by scientists to name newly discovered fossils. The methods of naming were formed before the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species.
This is explained excellently by Richard Dawkins in his book Climbing Mount Improbable
.
So one specimen of a homo habilis, may have features which make it more similar to homo erectus than another homo habilis specimen, but both will still be called homo habilis. If we look at the actual features of the specimens we can see a gradual slope of changes but creationists either through lack of understanding, or deliberate misrepresentation, look simply at the naming of the specimens and claim there are gaps, where none exist.
Of course there are some gaps in the fossil record, it would be surprising if there were not. Less than 0.01% of living creatures will ever become fossils and less than 0.01% of fossilised remains have been uncovered and studied. What we do have is a good selection of fossils showing how life on earth has gradually changed over millions of years.
New fossils are regularly being discovered which fit perfectly in a gap between two previously known species and invariably the creationists claim that there are then two gaps instead of one.
In a way they are right, there are fewer transitional fossils than we might expect, but the reason for this is not that transitional forms do not exist. It has more to do with the methods used by scientists to name newly discovered fossils. The methods of naming were formed before the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species.
This is explained excellently by Richard Dawkins in his book Climbing Mount Improbable
."There are 55 million people in Britain but not a single one of them is intermediate between non-voter and voter. Just as, for legal purposes, a juvenile changes into a voter as midnight strikes on the eighteenth birthday, so zoologists always insist on classifying a specimen as in one species or another. If a specimen is intermediate in actual form (as many are) zoologists' legalistic conventions still force them to jump one way or another when naming it."
So one specimen of a homo habilis, may have features which make it more similar to homo erectus than another homo habilis specimen, but both will still be called homo habilis. If we look at the actual features of the specimens we can see a gradual slope of changes but creationists either through lack of understanding, or deliberate misrepresentation, look simply at the naming of the specimens and claim there are gaps, where none exist.
Of course there are some gaps in the fossil record, it would be surprising if there were not. Less than 0.01% of living creatures will ever become fossils and less than 0.01% of fossilised remains have been uncovered and studied. What we do have is a good selection of fossils showing how life on earth has gradually changed over millions of years.
New fossils are regularly being discovered which fit perfectly in a gap between two previously known species and invariably the creationists claim that there are then two gaps instead of one.
This has got to be the worst website in the history of the internet, truly dreadful on an epic scale.
You think that looks bad?
On the actual site, the rainbow background is a looped graphic cycling through all the colours, that white blob is a dove which flies around the page, and I'm not even going to mention the awful continuous looped "music".
If you really want to subject your eyes to this abomination, click on the link below.
Works best (or rather worst) using IE.
Let me see it.
Those with photosensitive epilepsy will probably want to avoid this one.
You think that looks bad?
On the actual site, the rainbow background is a looped graphic cycling through all the colours, that white blob is a dove which flies around the page, and I'm not even going to mention the awful continuous looped "music".
If you really want to subject your eyes to this abomination, click on the link below.
Works best (or rather worst) using IE.
Let me see it.
Those with photosensitive epilepsy will probably want to avoid this one.
From mwillett.org
Let us take responsibility for our own actions, inactions, strengths and frailties and not project them onto ghosts, spirits, stars, portents and gods unseen.
Let us have the courage to accept that one person's faith is another person's bloody-minded pig-headed refusal to accept the obvious.
Let us have the courage to accept that the person at the front of all crowds, including this one, doesn't know all the answers.
Let us have the wisdom to accept that if our ancestors had fared differently in wars our communities would be holding different absurdities up as sacred truths, and the willingness to accept those absurdities would be seen as the badge of social trustworthiness or even the right to be allowed to draw breath.
Let us accept that the difference between a prophet and a madman is not what they say but whether the crowd accepts the story and tells their children to believe it.
Let us have the courage to accept that wanting to believe in something with every fibre of our being does not and cannot make it true.
Truth needs no help, no believers, no bowed heads and no amens.
Some people might find Pat Condell's subject matter and opinions offensive - viewer discretion recommended.
Personally, I love this guy, he tells it like it is without pulling any punches. His delivery is thought provoking and witty. Check out his other vids at the link below:
Pat Condell on Youtube
Personally, I love this guy, he tells it like it is without pulling any punches. His delivery is thought provoking and witty. Check out his other vids at the link below:
Pat Condell on Youtube
I am proud to have become one of the newest blogs on the Atheist Blogroll.
The Atheist Blogroll is a list of several hundred blogs written by Atheists. A list of the most recently updated blogs can be seen on the right hand side of this page (scroll down a bit).
If you want to know more about the blogroll, or if you have a blog that would be suitable, click on the link below.
Atheist Blogroll
Well this seems pretty flawless logic to me. If anyone has spotted any logical fallacies, please leave a comment.
The Argument from Evolution, by Kyle J. Gerkin in his article ‘A Counterclockwise Paley’,
- Organized complexity is the product of conscious design or natural selection.
- Intelligence is an example of organized complexity.
- Thus, intelligence is the product of conscious design or natural selection.
- Intelligent beings are capable of designing intelligence (i.e. computer artificial intelligence programmed by humans).
- However, only one mechanism has been discovered that can produce intelligence without requiring the existence of a prior intelligence. That mechanism is evolution through natural selection.
- Thus, the first intelligence evolved.
- Evolution requires:
- Self replication (heredity) with slightly imperfect copying fidelity (mutation).
- An environment that can favor one replicator over another (competition).
- Time for (a) and (b) to manifest themselves.
- None of the conditions in (7) were present before the existence of the universe.
- Thus, intelligence did not exist prior to the universe.
- Therefore, the universe did not have an intelligent creator.
Alice Shannon you are a Moron!
Your crazy delusions have clearly rotted your brain, perhaps you should look at the facts.
You say that atheists are the reason that crime is rampant, then how do you explain that atheists make up 10% of the US population, however only 0.2% of the US prison population.
Your crazy delusions have clearly rotted your brain, perhaps you should look at the facts.
You say that atheists are the reason that crime is rampant, then how do you explain that atheists make up 10% of the US population, however only 0.2% of the US prison population.
I'm going to try to make Sunday Inspiration a regular feature.
I'll post an inspirational video, picture or article from an atheistic viewpoint every Sunday.
Guaranteed to be more inspiring than any church sermon or your money back.
This week - Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan 1934-1996.
I'll post an inspirational video, picture or article from an atheistic viewpoint every Sunday.
Guaranteed to be more inspiring than any church sermon or your money back.
This week - Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan 1934-1996.
A great vid from godisimaginary.com, lets hope the chrisitans watching this get the point and don't all start worshipping milk instead of becoming atheists.
There are plenty of other great vids at their site and on youtube (link) I'll undoubtedly post a few more of them here in the coming weeks.
There are plenty of other great vids at their site and on youtube (link) I'll undoubtedly post a few more of them here in the coming weeks.
The atheist revolution is gathering momentum, that is not in doubt.
We have the big names of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens we have groups such as RDF, FFRF, The Rational Response Squad, The Brights and many others employing a variety of strategies to put the atheist agenda forward.
There have been a number of best selling books in the last 12 months and the mass media has taken notice and started giving coverage to atheists.
The atheists are coming out of the closet and we are making progress. There is opposition but we are winning the arguments, we have logic, science and rational thought on our side whereas the opposition only have circular reasoning, ancient mythology and idle threats of eternal damnation to offer.
We have only one thing to fear, only one thing which would reverse the tide and put us back to a worse position than before the atheist movement first took off.
As the supporters of our cause grow in number, it is increasingly likely that an individual or a small group of extremists will emerge. It would just take one nutcase to decide that words and peaceful methods are not enough, one idiot to decide that a bomb or bullet would be quicker.
If just one lunatic decides to shoot an evangelist leader or blow up a church in the name of atheism, all the good work that has been done so far will be wasted. Every religious group and evangelist would sieze this opportunity to condemn the entire atheist movement. They would say that they were right all along and atheists are evil. They would take every chance to tar all atheists with the same brush and condemn all the atheist groups as terrorists.
This is my greatest fear and I really hope that it will never happen but I feel that we must all be ready to condemn any such action in the name of atheism as loudly and to as many people as possible if it ever does.
Anyway, Sorry to start my new blog with such a depressing and downbeat post, it's just something that's been on my mind for a while and I feel that I need to get off my chest.
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