Angel Caught On Tape?

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I think one day we'll be able to connect the dots and realize the competiveness of different religions here on earth was an affront to God.

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I agree, I have always thought the espousing of various religions that they are the one and only true religion, and anyone who doesnt follow it is screwed was a silly philosophy.

However, my point wasn't about competition, I was expanding on your point that all religions contain an element of truth.
 
You like NDE reports, here is a wonderful example from an expert who actually experienced one, and who is vastly more knowledgeable than I
YouTube - How it feels to have a stroke
It only goes for about 20 minutes and is a perfect example of an NDE, she explains what happens as she had a stroke and what she knew as it was happening.

It also shows off some really cool science.

Interesting, she did attest to her spiritual body leaving her physical body and going to the Peaceful Realm of the Spirit World.



Then why do you feel the need to jump over these cheap tricks?

I dont.
I like listening to credible people living today explain their personal experiences that correlate with what God's written word says.

It's an additional witness that's all, and it's from live, living breathing human beings and isn't written in Old English.

If it helps strengthen somebody, or moves only one person into doing good, and believing in the hereafter thereby helping them become more compassionate here on earth, it's worth it to me-and I don't think it would be displeasing to God.

Here's another interesting NDE. She is an accomplished person: RN, Therapist, athlete and married to a MD:

YouTube - My Near-Death Experience

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Psychotherapist, theology major and sex therapist.

She had an aneurism while pushing weights, every single part of her description is consistent with physical causation. She saw the light, and moved through the tunnel, came to a location that she sensed was a room and experienced an emotional color (synesthesia). She then senses a being which tells her she has more to do, she believes that it is God, this being told her she should give the love she was experiencing in that state to the world; then she wakes up and signs off on surgery.

Oh, and the smash cut where she asks if she could say the word she said after waking up in the hospital, brilliant job by the unloader on that front.

She relates an experience which I have no reason to doubt, she seems like a smart and honest woman, she doesn't seem to have a reason to lie and this is obviously a significant event in her life.

This "classic" NDE profile really hints at physiochemical brain activity impacting consciousness. Our conscious minds emerge from physical activity in the brain, and what you have presented is perfectly compatible with a brain under severe stress. The important components of mind, such as agency detection (sensing the presence of a being), colour perception, spatial perception, emotion, vocalisation, body sense, became dislocated and disturbed; her thoughts had a profound sense of importance and conveyed significance; all aspects which are found with neurological conditions such as temporal lobe epilepsy and hallucinogenic drugs.

It also hints at the developing battleground of neuroscience in the war between scientific culture and biblical inerrancy, it is not inconceivable that by the end of this century we will understand enough about brain dynamics to conclusively explain the origin of consciousness and perceptions - these facts will shed light on the spiritual experience and tie them to materialistic causation. What we are arguing about now, the significance of NDE's represents some of the early salvos in this conflict; your theology is predicated on the existence of an immortal soul and disembodied consciousness, science is reaching the point where it can start undercutting those assertions and it is going to lead to conflict.
 
The bible does not teach we have an immortal soul in fact it says the soul that sinneth it itself will die Ezek. 18:4:

the punishment for sin is death not to be send of to some place of hellish torment in fact hell in the bible actually just refers to the common grave of mankind if you study the actual hebrew text for the meaning of the word

Gen. 3:19: “In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.”

death is a state of none existence where you cannot feel or think in fact death is more like a deep sleep,

Eccl. 9:5: “The living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all.”

Ps. 146:4: “His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts [“thoughts,”do perish.”

Lazarus our friend has gone to rest, but I am journeying there to awaken him from sleep.’ ... Jesus said to them outspokenly: ‘Lazarus has died

Eccl. 9:6: “Their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they have no portion anymore to time indefinite in anything that has to be done under the sun.”

Isa. 26:14: “They are dead; they will not live. Impotent in death, they will not rise up.”


Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead as proof he had the power to bring people back from that non exsistent state of being ..to show how the resurrection would reunite families and friends that is what the real hope is

if Lazarus had died and gone to heaven to a happier place or where he was destined to go there would be bo need for Jesus to bring him back to earth the fact the Jesus cried and was upset about Lazarus death is further proff of this

Death is Gods enemy one he intends to do away with

revelations 21 v 3.4
With that I heard a loud voice from the throne say: “Look! The tent of God is with mankind, and he will reside with them, and they will be his peoples. And God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.”

the immortality of the soul and that people go to heaven or punished in hell is not a bible teaching and stems from Greek and roman philosophies introduced in the later centurys of the christian church, which twisted certain scriptures to suit this philosophy

So from studying the Bible and knowing that the God I worship is a loving God who does not take children or loved ones from their parents and family through death so they can be in heaven with him nor punish them in some fiery tormemting hell place

which is why I fully understand why people baulk at the thought of an all powerful being who claims to be love doing such things, and they end up preferring not to want to worship such a God so I think its good for people to question these teaching and I find it strange that those who lack belief in God are the ones who see the hypocrisy and the unfairness of them

and although some seem to find comfort in them, I cannot reconcile those teaching with a loving God who it says that he even cares for the sparrows, and hated wickedness

but instead in truth the real hope isthat sometimes he will bring those asleep in death back to life is far more comforting and far more reasonable and logical, so I would tend to agree with A Wanderer's scientific proof that we have no immortal soul..

And I do know the Bible does have scriptures about people joining him in heaven and all the spiritual body stuff.. but it says they will rule as kings and priests so I am not saying there are not ones going to be in heaven but I can't go into all that on this forum because it would take too long..

I just want to make the point that in a general sense the Bible teaches that death is a state of none existence but not something that God cannot undo so we are not without hope of seeing those who have died again sometime in the future
 
The bible does not teach we have an immortal soul in fact it says the soul that sinneth it itself will die Ezek. 18:4:

the punishment for sin is death not to be send of to some place of hellish torment in fact hell in the bible actually just refers to the common grave of mankind if you study the actual hebrew text for the meaning of the word

Gen. 3:19: “In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.”

death is a state of none existence where you cannot feel or think in fact death is more like a deep sleep,

Eccl. 9:5: “The living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all.”

Ps. 146:4: “His spirit goes out, he goes back to his ground; in that day his thoughts [“thoughts,”do perish.”

Lazarus our friend has gone to rest, but I am journeying there to awaken him from sleep.’ ... Jesus said to them outspokenly: ‘Lazarus has died

Eccl. 9:6: “Their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they have no portion anymore to time indefinite in anything that has to be done under the sun.”

Isa. 26:14: “They are dead; they will not live. Impotent in death, they will not rise up.”


Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead as proof he had the power to bring people back from that non exsistent state of being ..to show how the resurrection would reunite families and friends that is what the real hope is

if Lazarus had died and gone to heaven to a happier place or where he was destined to go there would be bo need for Jesus to bring him back to earth the fact the Jesus cried and was upset about Lazarus death is further proff of this

Death is Gods enemy one he intends to do away with

revelations 21 v 3.4
With that I heard a loud voice from the throne say: “Look! The tent of God is with mankind, and he will reside with them, and they will be his peoples. And God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away.”

the immortality of the soul and that people go to heaven or punished in hell is not a bible teaching and stems from Greek and roman philosophies introduced in the later centurys of the christian church, which twisted certain scriptures to suit this philosophy

So from studying the Bible and knowing that the God I worship is a loving God who does not take children or loved ones from their parents and family through death so they can be in heaven with him nor punish them in some fiery tormemting hell place

which is why I fully understand why people baulk at the thought of an all powerful being who claims to be love doing such things, and they end up preferring not to want to worship such a God so I think its good for people to question these teaching and I find it strange that those who lack belief in God are the ones who see the hypocrisy and the unfairness of them

and although some seem to find comfort in them, I cannot reconcile those teaching with a loving God who it says that he even cares for the sparrows, and hated wickedness

but instead in truth the real hope isthat sometimes he will bring those asleep in death back to life is far more comforting and far more reasonable and logical, so I would tend to agree with A Wanderer's scientific proof that we have no immortal soul..

And I do know the Bible does have scriptures about people joining him in heaven and all the spiritual body stuff.. but it says they will rule as kings and priests so I am not saying there are not ones going to be in heaven but I can't go into all that on this forum because it would take too long..

I just want to make the point that in a general sense the Bible teaches that death is a state of none existence but not something that God cannot undo so we are not without hope of seeing those who have died again sometime in the future

Hmm..until Christ came along many didn't understand the the duality of our physical and spiritual bodies, but there is much more ample evidence of the nature of our souls being spiritual and eternal:

18For (AJ)Christ also died for sins (AK)once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might (AL)bring us to God, having been put to death (AM)in the flesh, but made alive (AN)in the spirit;

19in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison,

20who once were disobedient, when the (AO)patience of God (AP)kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of (AQ)the ark, in which a few, that is, (AR)eight (AS)persons, were brought safely through the water
.

Also this former atheist would disagree with you and A_W about the nature of our souls and who Christ is and what He can do for us.

Say hello to Howard Storm:

YouTube - Howard Storm (former militant atheist) (Part 1) near death experience testimony
YouTube - Howard Storm (former militant atheist) (Part 2) near death experience testimony
YouTube - Howard Storm (former militant atheist) (Part 3) near death experience testimony
YouTube - Howard Storm (former militant atheist) (Part 4) near death experience testimony)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOa7E8IV5yc&annotation_id=annotation_304868&feature=iv

Although most NDE survivors do not experience Hellish NDEs occassionally they do, Howard expierenced both.

God in His wisdom usually blocks out most negative experiences from the survivors memories unless it is in His wisdom for the survivor to remember it, to then share it with the world-from my researching of this topic.

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Your religious beliefs put up this shield, which lets in any new-age propositions about NDE's with a reinforcement bias towards Christian apologetics; you don't question the knowledge which people have before their brain starts dying (such as being raised in a Christian household), or even acknowledge the physicality of the mind; you embrace a crude Cartesian dualism which separates the conscious mind from the body but don't have any proposed way of these two substances interacting, you seem blind to the point of drugs which show physiochemical changes in the brain effect the mind and the implications which that has for NDE reports.

I could have a revelation that Allah is the one true God, that Christianity is partly true, but that Mormonism is a form of unbelief, but that wouldn't validate any of my claims. Likewise somebody having religious visions, either in their day to day lives or as an NDE doesn't validate any religious belief; souls leaving bodies or God telling them facts are empirical questions, possible answers out of many, and we can put confidences on different possibilities; which you plainly don't want to do.

Your research seems to be reinforcing your biases, you read plenty of books but are they all written from anecdotes, do your current sources either ignore or just dismiss the alternative explanations. You're obviously interested so why not pick up a popular science book on neurology (V.S. Ramachandran or Oliver Sacks); they give case reports about individuals with weird and wonderful conditions, and break down how these conditions occur.

Here is a piece which describes what happens when a humans heart stops
The flow of blood to the body stops because the heartbeat is so abnormal that no blood is pumped by the heart, or the heart stops beating, and the brain is subjected to total oxygen starvation. The small reserve of oxygen within the blood and the cells of the brain is soon exhausted, causing rapidly progressive oxygen starvation. Oxygen starvation of the brain first causes failure of prefrontal cortex function, causing the patient to feels serene and indifferent as he/she gradually "fades away". Subsequently, oxygen starvation of the brain causes failure of those parts of the brain called the supplementary motor cortex, the frontal eye fields, Broca's speech cortex, and the primary motor cortex. Failure of these parts of the brain causes the eyes to stare fixedly straight ahead, the person is paralyzed and unable to move or speak, even when they try to do these things. At this time the retina also fails due to oxygen starvation, and the patient feels their vision failing - they see grey or everything becomes dark. Yet surprisingly they are able to hear quite well at this time because hearing is one of the last senses to fail.

Within 5-20 seconds the person is unconscious, can sense nothing and experience nothing. Their body is discovered and resuscitation with heart massage commences. About 1 in 5 (20%) of all people performing cardiac massage is so efficient their efforts generate a flow of blood around the body sufficient to restore consciousness. Sometimes this flow of blood is sufficient to restore normal consciousness, but usually it is just sufficient to restore some degree of consciousness, but not normal consciousness. Normal consciousness takes longer to return than it takes to restore pumping action of the heart.

Oxygen starvation of the eyes is somewhat reversed, restoring some central vision. At the same time, oxygen starvation, stress, and adrenaline administered as part of the resuscitation medication causes the pupils to be wide open - so patients see a bright light at the end of a tunnel. Furthermore, abnormal interpretation of bodily sensations, together with abnormal muscle spindle function generates sensations of movement and floating - so the person perceives themselves to be traveling down this tunnel towards the bright light. Restoration of entire retina function restores the ability to see light, but does not restore normal brain function, nor does it restore normal pupil size (adrenaline effect). So the person perceives themselves to be passing out of the tunnel into the light - they are "enveloped by the light".

At this same time, having passed into the light, while consciousness is gradually returning, but still abnormal, a person may undergo wondrous hallucinatory experiences. Such experiences are partly delusory due to misinterpretation of bodily sensations, sometimes due to abnormal electrical activity in parts of the brain such as the hippocampus which is very sensitive to oxygen starvation. The latter can also generate sensations of life review, while abnormal electrical activity in the rest of the temporal lobe can also generate sensations of immaterial presences, or of religious figures.

The resuscitation progresses, and consciousness returns to near normal. The resuscitating doctors and nurses speak, and what they say, what they do, and all other sounds are heard by the patient, while still paralyzed due to oxygen starvation and apparently unconscious. The doctors and the nurses regularly open the eyes of the patient to shine a light into the eyes to check papillary reactions to light. And sometimes the eyes of a patient remain open during a resuscitation. So some patients can see what is happening around their bodies during their resuscitation. These sensations, combined with abnormal sensory information from muscle spindles, combined with abnormal interpretation of muscle spindle sensations can generate sensations of displacement and movement out of the body - all these things combine to generate out of body experiences during which the person sees and hears everything occurring to their body and around their body. Failure of prefrontal function means they still feel calm and serene at this time, as well as indifferent to pain.

Finally, resuscitation is successful - normal pumping action of the heart is restored, and the person eventually awakens. Some peopleremember all these wondrous experiences, and tell others what happened during the period they lay still and motionless, apparently unconscious, during the resuscitation for their cardiac arrest
cardiac arrest and near death experiences
 
A much better explanation than my musings from Stephen Novella (who is a neurologist, but his arguments do not make an appeal to authority)
Near death experiences (NDEs) have been a favorite topic for the paranormal crowd for some time. If one could prove that consciousness survives the physical death of the body that would go a long way to opening the door to a wide range of paranormal claims. NDEs often occur in the medical setting, and this is partly why a team of doctors from the UK and USA are planning a rigorous study of NDEs.

That NDEs occur is not controversial - many people report remembering experiences around the time of cardiac arrest from which they were revived. Typical experiences include a sense of floating outside of one’s body, even looking down upon oneself and the events going on. Some people report a bright light, and others report “passing over” and being greeted by deceased loved-ones. The experience is often peaceful or euphoric, which contrasts to the way people feel when they eventually wake up. Surviving a cardiac arrest takes its toll and is not a pleasant experience.

The question is not whether or not people have such experiences - the question is how to interpret them. Just as even the most rigorous skeptic does not question that people see UFOs, but rather what the UFOs likely are.

The burden of proof for anyone claiming that NDEs are evidence for the survival of the self beyond the physical function of the brain is to rule out other more prosaic explanations. This burden has not been met.

Neuroscientists are piecing together plausible explanations for each of the components of the NDE. The sensation of floating outside one’s body can be reliably induced by suppressing that part of the brain that makes us feel as if we possess our bodies. The experience is identical to that reported by those who have had an NDE. This experience can be replicated by drugs or magnetic stimulation. There are even reports (I have had one such patient) of people who have a typical NDE experience during seizures. The bright light can be explained as a function of hypoxia (relative lack of oxygen) either to the retina or the visual cortex. Any everything else is simply the culturally appropriate hallucinations of a hypoxic brain.

Critics of such explanation try to argue that during the experience the brain is not active, therefore the brain cannot be the source of the experiences. There are two problems with this argument. First, it has not been established that the brain is not sufficiently active to generate experiences. In all cases people survived the experience (by definition) to report what they remember. That means the brain did not go entirely without oxygen for very long or otherwise it would have been catastrophically damaged. During cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) the cardiac output is about 20-25% normal - enough to delay damage to tissues. So the brain is getting some oxygen. Not enough to be conscious, but enough to have some function - perhaps generate a dream-like hallucination or out-of-body experience.

Second, the argument assumes without justification that the memories reported by those who survive CPR and have an NDE were formed during the CPR or when they were unconscious. It is more likely that some or all of those memories formed when the person was waking up adn their sense of time is as distorted as all their brain function. Unlike in the movies, people do not wake up fully conscious and lucid after having their heart restarted. After minutes of CPR the brain has taken a hit due to the hypoxia. People typically wake from this event slowly - taking hours or even days, depending on the duration and quality of the CPR. They will necessarily pass through a phase where they are what is called encephalopathic (their brain is functioning but not well), which is a type of delirium. It is common to have bizarre thoughts and perceptions, hallucination, and illusions during this period.

When patients then fully wake up to report their experiences, all they have is their memories, which includes the memories of the transition period from unconscious, through a delirious period, and to fully conscious. They have no way of knowing when those memories formed.

The only way to definitively distinguish between memories formed during CPR and those formed during the period of encephalopathy is for the memories to contain specific details that could only have been obtained during the CPR. This claim is often made, but either there is a lack of compelling documentation, or the details are too vague to be definitive. People describing a typical CPR experience, for example, is not specific. Sometimes people after a NDE will claim to recognize the nurse or doctor who worked on them, but they may just be attaching those memories to people they encountered before or after the experience.

This brings us to the proposed study. What Dr. Sam Parnia, the head of the study, wants to do is to place a sign with specific information on it on top of shelving so that it can only be viewed from the ceiling. These will be placed in intensive care units and emergency departments. Patients who experience cardiac arrest and survive will be systematically interviewed at the participating hospitals and asked if they had any NDE and also be asked if they were able to identify the signs on top of the shelves. Assuming no cheating goes on, the only way such patients could have obtained the information would be if there experience of floating above their bodies was an actual experience interacting with the real physical world.

The study is likely to take 2-3 years so we won’t have results for a while.

The purpose of the study explicitly recognizes that the claim that NDEs are a non-physical experience of consciousness requires this type of evidence to distinguish it from a mere hallucination of a hypoxic or encephalopathic brain. I predict that the study will be negative, and that proponents of NDEs as a spiritual experience will be unmoved by this evidence.
NeuroLogica Blog � Studying Near Death Experiences
 
A_W,

Those last 2 posts did little to persuade me.
The last article one glosses over NDEs superficially.

When kids surviving NDEs come back and tell their mother that they met future siblings, when the parents have been told that they can't have anymore children-and then they do-NDEs like this go ignored or it's explained away by biased ppl in your camp as a lucky guesses.. etc.

Or in other instances when little kids have died and come back and tell their parents that they met their deceased Grandparents on the otherside, now know their names and can pick them out in a photo line up and it was never even mentioned that they had deceased Grandparents, ppl in your camp dimiss it.

You wrong about the Mormonism part. All the NDEs are incorporated in LDS religious doctrine, but that's a discussion for a different thread. Just know Joseph Smith told the world in his day what all of the people are now claiming in their NDEs today. He only said it about 200 years earlier and that was one of the reasons people killed him.
The world wasn't ready for the information yet.

Lastly, listen to a fellow Aussie Ian McCormick. A reformed agnostic hedonist after being pronounced dead taken to the morgue due to 5 Box Jelly Fish posioning him while diving..

This guy is the real deal. He had a bad and good NDE-Hell first than after repenting while dying He met Christ.

This guy is the real deal.

zgichwartotian.jpg


Revelation - Encounter With GOD - Part 1
 
You are overlooking the point about these visions, they are heavily influenced by a persons personality and life-experience.

The early studies into hallucinogenic drugs such as the Marsh Chapel Experiment (which has been backed up by a more recent study) demonstrated how profound religious experiences and visions could be experienced under the influence of psilocybin. The volunteers were all religious divinity majors and their experiences were dominantly spiritual. I know nonbelievers who have had spiritual experiences using similar drugs. I can't say that my anecdotal evidence is scientific, but the psilocybin studies are; and they fit what is understood about the brain being the source of mind.

Those experiments demonstrate the altered brain states will produce hallucinations that have the context of a persons pre-existing belief systems. I would be willing to bet that atheists and agnostics who experience Christian NDE's are more likely to have been raised in a Christian household and then turned away from religion than the entire population of atheists and agnostics; that is an open question, but one which can be answered.

If you could produce people who had never learned about the existence of Jesus, or a monotheistic God (such as pre-Columbian Native Americans, Australian Aborigines, Feudal Japanese people), who recorded revelation about the existence of only one God, who sent his only son to die for our sins, it might raise some important questions. If somebody who had no foreknowledge of Christian theology experienced divine revelation which was congruent with what is in the Bible then you might have something. But you would have to have very strong evidence to support that lack of foreknowledge, and ideally you would have numerous examples of this. As it stands you haven't done this, and the interesting cases that seemed interesting from anecdotal evidence haven't panned out.

I am not writing off their experiences, I will grant you that they did experience visions which dramatically altered their lives; nobody is contesting that. What I am saying is that the evidence supports physical changes in brain activity as a cause of the vision. The components of the visions are all derived from pre-existing concepts about life after death which they already knew about, and nobody has produced any strong evidence that these are supernatural experiences.

You want to believe in the persistence of consciousness of life after death, that for all the suffering in the world there is a reason for it, that there is a guiding hand of a loving God; you let your desire for an afterlife slant your acceptance of testimony, you only look at claims which reinforce your wishes and fully ignore the evidential explanations which can answer the "why" questions of the Near Death Experience.

I think I can account for my own biases and see where I am only speculating. The idea that a physical brain produces my consciousness is supported by the evidence. The consequence of this fact is that consciousness cannot persist when the brain stops functioning. All of us die, all of our brains shut down, and all of us cease to exist; we have no cause to fear death, for a a dead brain cannot experience fear. This plain answer may not be as hopeful or terrible as eternal servitude, but I don't feel an urge to stop existing, and it makes my life that much more important to me; no matter how much one might want to live on that wish wouldn't change the facts, we should try to acknowledge how things are and to try and live our lives in light of a finite existence.

The conclusion that there is no conscious afterlife follows from accepting that mind is strictly a product of physical brain states. Even if this model of mind is somehow wrong, and mind is ineffable and survives the death of the body, this doesn't directly lead to the existence of any God.

There could be an afterlife but no God; you betray your lack of imagination when you assume that proof of an afterlife is proof of God, and not just any God - but your God. It's obvious that your thinking is rusted with bias and no amount of evidence (other than personal experience) could force you to question you assumptions. I do hope that anybody that reads this considers the implications of a physical mind and asks questions about their beliefs in light of this.
 
I think the feeling is mutual. It seems pretty clear neither side is budging in this argument.

I've had fun watching this, but yes, it's pretty clear that "science suggests..." isn't going to persuade the Artist Formerly Known As <>, and first-hand accounts are just going to shrugged off by A_W. It is what it is. Science can't offer anything more than suggestions at this point (although it is suggested that, by the year 3010, God will be shown to be a farce through the power of science by A_W's absurdly pretentious disembodied head), and anecdotal evidence is impossible to be analyzed, so, like all debates involving religion or the supernatural, no one has an answer that will please both sides. It's not exactly pointless, as it may enlighten outsiders, but no one involved will ever agree. This is why I never bothered to join in.
 
I've had fun watching this, but yes, it's pretty clear that "science suggests..." isn't going to persuade the Artist Formerly Known As <>, and first-hand accounts are just going to shrugged off by A_W. It is what it is. Science can't offer anything more than suggestions at this point (although it is suggested that, by the year 3010, God will be shown as a farce through the power of science by A_W's disembodied head), and anecdotal evidence is impossible to be analyzed, so, like all debates involving religion or the supernatural, no one has an answer that will please both sides. It's not exactly pointless, as it may enlighten outsiders, but no one involved will ever agree. This is why I never bothered to join in.


Now, now let it be understood that I acknowledge and appreciate the scientific facts that A_W has posted.

It's common knowledge that we humans only use 10% of our brains, and I think God did that for a reason. He personally blocked out a memory of the eternal nature of our souls-so that we can grow here in this sphere. What we learn here we will take back w/us when we meet with Him again.

I also agree with the left side/right side linear thinking/ceberal thinking sides of the brain, and I suspect God made A_W's left side slightly larger to perhaps humble him a bit later on in life.
:D

<>
 
You just joined in by suggesting that science only makes suggestions; and saying that I am arguing science can prove a negative. I am not saying that the scientific method can ever prove anything to a 100% confidence threshold, nor am I making some stupid appeal to a God of science which makes anything I say authoritative and by definition correct.

Science cannot say that there is absolutely no chance God exists, or that we definitely don't have a soul, or that the world wasn't invented yesterday by a cosmic cat named Franklin. But it does produce working models of how the world works, powerful models which can answer important questions like the origin of humanity, consciousness, the planet earth, life and possibly even the universe (although the possibility of having a good model of universe formation is still an open question, it may be impossible to test from within the universe).

But it can take the observed facts, advance different possible explanations, and revise both these explanations and the confidence in them as more evidence comes to light or someone comes up with a better working model (in the cartoon world of science which overlooks the nitty gritty). It can never be 100% and it is always up for revision.

When I use terms like "suggest", "may", and "seems" it is deliberate,

As far as any solution pleasing both sides, on that front I think that you are exactly right, there is no solution which can fully satisfy both naturalism and supernaturalism; we can draw lines in our heads and argue that science answers how questions but theology tells us why, or that great moral truths are produced by religions even though science can answer why we feel compelled to follow them, or that where science stops working we have room for something awesome (which leaves room for God).

My world view is that I feel that human beings and human culture are ultimately a product of the natural world, and even though it is impractical most natural things are possibly knowable (if Jesus existed, if he actually walked on water, if Mohammed was visited by angels). Where we don't or can't know we can be agnostic; but that agnosticism doesn't mean that everything is equally likely, it can be made in light of how we understand other facts.

I feel that the corollary is that a religious person may always put some thing past the point of possible explanation (the truth of the resurrection, the virgin birth, the evil of homosexuality, the justness of killing Muslims, the absolute existence of good and evil, the infinite forgiveness of Christ, the beauty of koranic verse, the goodness of humanity, the virtues of suffering, the persistence of consciousness, the existence of a creative intelligence, the beauty of art, the dangers of unbelief, the fine-tuning of the universe, the love of a mother for her child, the feeling of love from God, the spiritual experience, the Delphic Oracle, the fact the universe can make sense, that science is the study of God's work ad infinitum).

I freely admit that there is a possibility of life after death, and angels; even though there are explanations which don't invoke anything supernatural; but when I say there s no need for a God, and that when we brain stops functioning our mind ceases (assuming that brain produces mind) I am not affirming anything absolute certainty. Anybody that claims absolute truth is probably lying.
 
Now, now let it be understood that I acknowledge and appreciate the scientific facts that A_W has posted.

It's common knowledge that we humans only use 10% of our brains, and I think God did that for a reason. He personally blocked out a memory of the eternal nature of our souls-so that we can grow here in this sphere. What we learn here we will take back w/us when we meet with Him again.

I also agree with the left side/right side linear thinking/ceberal thinking sides of the brain, and I suspect God made A_W's left side slightly larger to perhaps humble him a bit later on in life.
:D

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Both the 10% of brain is used and the left-right hemispheres being dominant on one side or another are classic facts which everybody knows, but few know are actually false.
The Ten-Percent Myth

Claim: We use only ten percent of our brains.

Status: False.

Origins: Someone has taken most of your brain away and you probably didn't even know it. Well, not taken your brain away, exactly, but decided that you don't use it. It's the old myth heard time and again about how people use only ten percent of their brains. While for the people who repeat that myth, it's probably true, the rest of us happily use all of our brains.

The Myth and the Media

That tired Ten-Percent claim pops up all the time. In 1998, national magazine ads for U.S. Satellite Broadcasting showed a drawing of a brain. Under it was the caption, "You only use 11 percent of its potential." Well, they're a little closer than the ten-percent figure, but still off by about 89 percent. In July 1998, ABC television ran promotional spots for The Secret Lives of Men, one of their offerings for the fall season's lineup. The spot featured a full-screen blurb that read, "Men only use ten percent of their brains."

One reason this myth has endured is that it has been adopted by psychics and other paranormal pushers to explain psychic powers. On more than one occasion I've heard psychics tell their audiences, "We only use ten percent of our minds. If scientists don't know what we do with the other

ninety percent, it must be used for psychic powers!" In Reason To Believe: A Practical Guide to Psychic Phenomena, author Michael Clark mentions a man named Craig Karges. Karges charges a lot of money for his "Intuitive Edge" program, designed to develop natural psychic abilities. Clark quotes Karges as saying: "We normally use only 10 to 20 percent of our minds. Think how different your life would be if you could utilize that other 80 to 90 percent known as the subconscious mind."

This was also the reason that Caroline Myss gave for her alleged intuitive powers on a segment of Eye to Eye with Bryant Gumbel, which aired in July of 1998. Myss, who has written books on unleashing "intuitive powers," said that everyone has intuitive gifts, and lamented that we use so little of the mind's potential. To make matters worse, just the week before, on the very same program, correct information was presented about the myth. In a bumper spot between the program and commercials, a quick quiz flashed onscreen: What percentage of the brain is used? The multiple-choice answers ranged from 10 percent to 100 percent. The correct answer appeared, which I was glad to see. But if the producers knew that what one of their interviewees said is clearly and demonstrably inaccurate, why did they let it air? Does the right brain not know what the left brain is doing? Perhaps the Myss interview was a repeat, in which case the producers presumably checked her facts after it aired and felt some responsibility to correct the error in the following week's broadcast. Or possibly the broadcasts aired in sequence and the producers simply did not care and broadcast Myss and her misinformation anyway.

Even Uri Geller, who has made a career out of trying to convince people he can bend metal with his mind, trots out this little gem. This claim appears in his book Uri Geller's Mind-Power Book in the introduction: "Our minds are capable of remarkable, incredible feats, yet we don't use them to their full capacity. In fact, most of us only use about 10 per cent of our brains, if that. The other 90 per cent is full of untapped potential and undiscovered abilities, which means our minds are only operating in a very limited way instead of at full stretch. I believe that we once had full power over our minds. We had to, in order to survive, but as our world has become more sophisticated and complex we have forgotten many of the abilities we once had" (italicized phrases emphasized in original).

Evidence Against the Ten-Percent Myth

The argument that psychic powers come from the unused majority of the brain is based on the logical fallacy of the argument from ignorance. In this fallacy, lack of proof for a position (or simply lack of information) is used to try to support a particular claim. Even if it were true that the vast majority of the human mind is unused (which it clearly is not), that fact in no way implies that any extra capacity could somehow give people paranormal powers. This fallacy pops up all the time in paranormal claims, and is especially prevalent among UFO proponents. For example: Two people see a strange light in the sky. The first, a UFO believer, says, "See there! Can you explain that?" The skeptic replies that no, he can't. The UFO believer is gleeful. "Ha! You don't know what it is, so it must be aliens!" he says, arguing from ignorance.

What follows are two of the reasons that the Ten-Percent story is suspect. (For a much more thorough and detailed analysis of the subject, see Barry Beyerstein's chapter in the 1999 book Mind Myths: Exploring Everyday Mysteries of the Mind.)

1) Brain imaging research techniques such as PET scans (positron emission tomography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) clearly show that the vast majority of the brain does not lie fallow. Indeed, although certain minor functions may use only a small part of the brain at one time, any sufficiently complex set of activities or thought patterns will indeed use many parts of the brain. Just as people don't use all of their muscle groups at one time, they also don't use all of their brain at once. For any given activity, such as eating, watching television, making love, or reading, you may use a few specific parts of your brain. Over the course of a whole day, however, just about all of the brain is used at one time or another.

2) The myth presupposes an extreme localization of functions in the brain. If the "used" or "necessary" parts of the brain were scattered all around the organ, that would imply that much of the brain is in fact necessary. But the myth implies that the "used" part of the brain is a discrete area, and the "unused" part is like an appendix or tonsil, taking up space but essentially unnecessary. But if all those parts of the brain are unused, removal or damage to the "unused" part of the brain should be minor or unnoticed. Yet people who have suffered head trauma, a stroke, or other brain injury are frequently severely impaired. Have you ever heard a doctor say, ". . . But luckily when that bullet entered his skull, it only damaged the 90 percent of his brain he didn't use"? Of course not.

Variants of the Ten-Percent Myth

The myth is not simply a static, misunderstood factoid. It has several forms, and this adaptability gives it a shelf life longer than lacquered Spam. In the basic form, the myth claims that years ago a scientist discovered that we indeed did use only ten percent of our brains. Another variant is that only ten percent of the brain had been mapped, and this in turn became misunderstood as ten percent used. A third variant was described earlier by Craig Karges. This view is that the brain is somehow divided neatly into two parts: the conscious mind which is used ten to twenty percent of the time (presumably at capacity); and the subconscious mind, where the remaining eighty to ninety percent of the brain is unused. This description betrays a profound misunderstanding of brain function research.

Part of the reason for the long life of the myth is that if one variant can be proven incorrect, the person who held the belief can simply shift the reason for his belief to another basis, while the belief itself stays intact. So, for example, if a person is shown that PET scans depict activity throughout the entire brain, he can still claim that, well, the ninety percent figure really referred to the subconscious mind, and therefore the Ten-Percent figure is still basically correct.

Regardless of the exact version heard, the myth is spread and repeated, by both the well-meaning and the deliberately deceptive. The belief that remains, then, is what Robert J. Samuelson termed a "psycho-fact, [a] belief that, though not supported by hard evidence, is taken as real because its constant repetition changes the way we experience life." People who don't know any better will repeat it over and over, until, like the admonition against swimming right after you eat, the claim is widely believed. ("Triumph of the Psycho-Fact," Newsweek, 9 May 1994.)

The origins of the myth are not at all clear. Beyerstein, of the Brain Behaviour Laboratory at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, has traced it back to at least the early part of the century. A 1998 column in New Scientist magazine also suggested various roots, including Albert Einstein and Dale Carnegie ("Brain Drain"). It likely has a number of sources, principally misunderstood or misinterpreted legitimate scientific findings as well as self-help gurus.

The most powerful lure of the myth is probably the idea that we might develop psychic abilities, or at least gain a leg up on the competition by improving our memory or concentration. All this is available for the asking, the ads say, if we just tapped into our most incredible of organs, the brain. It is past time to put this myth to rest, although if it has survived at least a century so far, it will surely live on into the new millennium. Perhaps the best way to combat this chestnut is to reply to the speaker, when the myth is mentioned, "Oh? What part don't you use?"

Acknowledgments:

I am indebted to Dr. Barry Beyerstein for providing research help and suggestions.


Benjamin Radford is Managing Editor of the Skeptical Inquirer and holds a degree in psychology.
snopes.com: Ten Percent of our Brains

Always be willing question recieved wisdom.
 
Our brains are like other ape brains, but they have been much more positively selected for, the cost of having big brains is large, and an ongoing puzzle in evolutionary biology is explaining how human beings alone have such highly developed intelligence (if our dead neanderthal cousins were alive it could make this easier).

What we have is a biological organ, which is the product of evolution, that produces consciousness. If this is the case (and we have every reason to think it is) then it is difficult to make a soul serve any purpose, it is an unneeded and non-falsifiable element. If everything that makes us human (highly developed consciousness, empathy, love, intelligence etc.) is explainable in biological terms then any non-physical soul is nonsensical. If we accept humans as a product of evolution, in which populations change and diverge into new species then it becomes very difficult to say that there was an exact point in time when a particular clade of apes became human, a point when we gained all the attributes which we consider souls. This leaves the possibility that the soul (the collection of attributes that most people call a soul) was imbued into our lineage at different points in time (which from an evolutionary perspective makes sense, but I can see it becomes difficult from a metaphysical one).

Maybe I am over-thinking the issue, because people obviously believe in souls and accept evolution; I recognise that it is tedious, but accepting that souls exist as something beyond the material has to be a faith-based position.
 
You just joined in by suggesting that science only makes suggestions; and saying that I am arguing science can prove a negative. I am not saying that the scientific method can ever prove anything to a 100% confidence threshold, nor am I making some stupid appeal to a God of science which makes anything I say authoritative and by definition correct.

Science cannot say that there is absolutely no chance God exists, or that we definitely don't have a soul, or that the world wasn't invented yesterday by a cosmic cat named Franklin. But it does produce working models of how the world works, powerful models which can answer important questions like the origin of humanity, consciousness, the planet earth, life and possibly even the universe (although the possibility of having a good model of universe formation is still an open question, it may be impossible to test from within the universe).

But it can take the observed facts, advance different possible explanations, and revise both these explanations and the confidence in them as more evidence comes to light or someone comes up with a better working model (in the cartoon world of science which overlooks the nitty gritty). It can never be 100% and it is always up for revision.

When I use terms like "suggest", "may", and "seems" it is deliberate,

As far as any solution pleasing both sides, on that front I think that you are exactly right, there is no solution which can fully satisfy both naturalism and supernaturalism; we can draw lines in our heads and argue that science answers how questions but theology tells us why, or that great moral truths are produced by religions even though science can answer why we feel compelled to follow them, or that where science stops working we have room for something awesome (which leaves room for God).

My world view is that I feel that human beings and human culture are ultimately a product of the natural world, and even though it is impractical most natural things are possibly knowable (if Jesus existed, if he actually walked on water, if Mohammed was visited by angels). Where we don't or can't know we can be agnostic; but that agnosticism doesn't mean that everything is equally likely, it can be made in light of how we understand other facts.

I feel that the corollary is that a religious person may always put some thing past the point of possible explanation (the truth of the resurrection, the virgin birth, the evil of homosexuality, the justness of killing Muslims, the absolute existence of good and evil, the infinite forgiveness of Christ, the beauty of koranic verse, the goodness of humanity, the virtues of suffering, the persistence of consciousness, the existence of a creative intelligence, the beauty of art, the dangers of unbelief, the fine-tuning of the universe, the love of a mother for her child, the feeling of love from God, the spiritual experience, the Delphic Oracle, the fact the universe can make sense, that science is the study of God's work ad infinitum).

I freely admit that there is a possibility of life after death, and angels; even though there are explanations which don't invoke anything supernatural; but when I say there s no need for a God, and that when we brain stops functioning our mind ceases (assuming that brain produces mind) I am not affirming anything absolute certainty. Anybody that claims absolute truth is probably lying.

There you for explaining the reasons for your stance. I can respect those. Otherwise, there's not much in the above post I can debate with you, as you made few declarations that necessitated a rebuttal, but I appreciate your explanation.
 
Maybe I am over-thinking the issue, because people obviously believe in souls and accept evolution; I recognise that it is tedious, but accepting that souls exist as something beyond the material has to be a faith-based position.


screams his Left brain..
 
Whether this story is true or not - I believe in the existence of angels on this earth, no matter what form. I can also imagine it's hard for people to believe in this existence, especially when they have never encountered such situations before. We can only respect each others beliefs, be it believing in other entities or not.
 
Whether this story is true or not - I believe in the existence of angels on this earth, .

Good Jan.Star you may enjoy this interesting but true story that occured in 1986 in Cokeville Wy.

Kids saw their guardian angels after praying while being taken hostage while in school by a man with a bomb attached to himself.

He held the kids and teachers at bay threatening to blow the school up.
Right before the bomb exploded at least 3 kids were able to see Angels descending from the ceiling down to their level and warn them to turn and run to a certain parts of the class room.

Only 2 people died, the bomber and his accomplice, none of the other 150 people were killed......



Anyway here's the story:

Angels in the Classroom
'Clearly, he knew there was no way his demands could be met and had intended all along on using his bomb...'
BY: Ron and Nate Hartley

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Reprinted with permission from Angels on Earth, a Guideposts publication.

Ron Hartley
In the spring of 1986, I was a sheriff’s investigator for the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office in Cokeville, a little ranching town nestled in the craggy mountains of western Wyoming. On May 16, at approximately 1:30 p.m., a man with a bomb--a warped criminal genius named David Gary Young--seized the Cokeville Elementary School and threatened mass murder if his bizarre demands were not met. Among those he held hostage were my four children, including my six-year-old son, Nathan.

Nathan Hartley
After lunch, strange things began to happen at school. All of us kids and the teachers were herded into Mrs. Mitchell’s first-grade classroom. Somebody said something about a safety demonstration and a big surprise. I thought, Cool, no more class today!
Then I saw him--a raggedy man with wild eyes and a gun. He had shaggy hair and a red beard. A plain-looking woman was with him. She acted as his helper. The man growled orders at us. There were a whole bunch of rifles and guns lined up under the blackboard at the front of the room. The man threatened to shoot anyone who gave him trouble. Pretty soon everyone was jammed shoulder to shoulder in the room. It was stuffy and there was a strong smell of gasoline in the air.

What was really frightening, though, was a shopping cart he had--the kind you use at the supermarket. It was full of wires and metal and was attached to him by a string. Notebooks were strewn across the floor. When he and the woman finished piling up the notebooks, the man waved his gun and shouted at us, "I am a revolutionary! I am the most wanted man in the country!"

Ron

David Gary Young was no stranger to Cokeville. Some years earlier he had been appointed town marshal. Soon, however, it became disturbingly clear that he fancied himself another Wyatt Earp. He swaggered around town, recklessly twirling a pair of loaded side arms. He was given to irrational outbursts. In a matter of months his erratic behavior got him summarily dismissed. When he married a local woman, a would–be café singer named Doris Luff, and roared off on his motorcycle, the townspeople thought they’d seen the last of him. Now he was back.

The shopping cart was filled with deadly explosives. Young had attached the bomb’s trigger mechanism to his wrist with a short length of twine. If anything happened to David Gary Young, the whole school would be blown sky-high with him.

Eventually, Young sent out his demands to the police officers who had surrounded the school. He wanted $300 million in ransom for the 167 hostages he held--students, teachers, school workers, and a UPS driver, nearly a quarter of Cokeville’s population. He also wanted a personal phone call from the president of the United States.

Nathan
Some of the kids started crying after the man with the red beard said he was the most wanted man in the country. Some of us started to pray quietly. I don’t know why but I wasn’t that scared. I knew it was a very dangerous situation, but I didn’t think about being hurt. But the smell of gasoline! The fumes were overpowering. Some of the kids started getting sick. The man wouldn’t let anyone leave the room so the kids threw up in wastebaskets. Then he ordered the windows opened.

The woman who was with him did everything he said. Her name was Doris. The funny thing was she seemed pretty nice. She walked around talking to us, and even got us interested in playing games. She said, “Think of this as an adventure, something you can tell your own kids and grandkids about.” The sort of calmed the tension, and some of the kids and teachers started singing “Happy Birthday” to my best friend, Jeremiah Moore, who turned seven that day. Still there was something scary about the woman.

After an hour or so, a lot of the kids were getting fidgety and some of the real young ones started to edge around the man with the shopping cart. This made him even angrier. Finally he asked a teacher to take some masking tape and mark off a square around him on the floor. “Cross this line of death,” he warned, “and I’ll start shooting the grown-ups. I’ll shoot everyone if I have to!”
Another hour passed with all of us crammed into Mrs. Mitchell’s classroom. The man was acting more and more nervous, like he might explode. Sweat dripped down from his face and his eyes got wild. Then he carefully transferred the string from his wrist to the woman’s and headed toward the bathroom. “I’ll be right back,” he muttered.

Ron
Negotiations dragged on. Clearly, Young knew there was no way his demands could be met and had intended all along on using his shopping-cart bomb. He had combined one jug of gasoline with loose ammunition, powerful blasting caps, flour and aluminum powder. The string attached to his wrist led to a spring-loaded clothespin. If Young pulled the string, the clothespin would snap shut, triggering a battery-operated detonator.

The initial explosion would launch the flour and aluminum powder into the air, igniting the gasoline and triggering a second explosion. In the middle of this deadly hell, hundreds of rounds of ammunition packed into the shopping cart would be set off, sending shrapnel flying in all directions. Admittedly, it was a fiendishly ingenious design, a bomb constructed to inflict maximum terror and bloodshed. But the bomb was as unstable as its maker.

Nathan
I was sitting in the classroom playing with a toy when something made me look up. That’s when I saw the angels. They were shiny, with flowing white robes. Some were holding hands. They glided down through the ceiling, then hung in the air for a second. I felt totally safe. Everyone seemed to have an angel. They came down next to us. My angel was a beautiful shining woman. It was almost as if she landed on my shoulder. She said, “Don’t be scared, Nathan. Get up and go to the window. The bomb is about to go off.” I did just what she said. Other children started doing the same thing. Just then something startled the lady at the front of the classroom. She whirled around.

There was a horrible explosion. Everything turned black. People screamed. Something went off, sounding like a giant string of firecrackers exploding. There were flashes of light and a whirring filled the room. Somebody pulled me down; it was my sister. A teacher helped me crawl through the window. Another teacher caught me and put me on the ground and told me to run away as fast as I could. A crowd of police and others had gathered and I raced across the playground and found my mother.

Ron
On the morning of the fateful day in Cokeville, I had been out of town on assignment. I returned in the afternoon, unaware of the terror unfolding at my children’s school. But as I entered the town I knew something was wrong. My stomach twisted. Cars were backed up and a civil defense worker was directing traffic. I asked what was wrong.
“A bomb went off at the elementary school twenty minutes ago,” she said. In panic and shock I sped to the school. Smoke thickened the air. Everywhere people were weeping. I pushed my way through the throng of cops, townspeople and media folk, looking for my wife, Claudia, and our four children. The local sheriff saw me and told me the kids were fine, but that Claudia had taken them to the hospital to be checked out.

Of the 167 hostages--150 children and 17 adults--quite a few had burns and cuts; Nathan was one of them. Miraculously, none of them had been killed. The same could not be said for David Gary Young and his wife. Both had perished. When the bomb went off, Young had charged from the bathroom, wielding a .45 caliber pistol and a .22 caliber pistol. He fired the .22 at a teacher, John Miller, wounding him in the shoulder. He then raced to the burning classroom, where he found Doris engulfed in flames. Pitifully, she staggered toward him, arms outstretched. Young raised the .45 and fired, killing her. He then went back into the bathroom, pressed the muzzle under his chin and pulled the trigger.

For months I examined the evidence and Young’s numerous diaries--the notebooks he had stacked in the classroom. They told the ghastly story of his madness. After blowing up the school, he believed Doris, the children and he would be reincarnated into a new world where he would lead his charges in paradise.

When my investigation was finally over and all the parts of the awful puzzle had been found, I couldn’t help feeling that a few pieces didn’t fit. For instance, how could so much ammunition go off in a packed room without fatally injuring anyone? Furthermore, the second explosion could have killed everyone instantly. Yet the bomb didn’t explode as intended, even though Young, a man with a high IQ, had rigged it with several blasting caps. We found that one of the lead wires had been inexplicably cut.

Two weeks before the explosion, an unexplained short in the school’s fire alarm system kept setting it off, initiating numerous unplanned fire drills. The children became highly proficient at emergency evacuations.

But for a hard-nosed investigator like me, the angels were the most difficult part to accept. I grilled Nathan about his story, but he never wavered. In fact, two other children said they too had seen angels. They told of glimmering robed figures descending from above, warning of the blast and directing them safely to the windows. Children who had not discussed it among themselves told similar stories.

As I said, I deal in facts. And one hard fact stands out above all the others: 167 people escaped with their lives when the odds against even a fraction of them surviving the cunning wrath of a desperate madman were slim. The conclusion we have all reached in Cokeville is that God sent his angels to rescue our children and keep them from harm.


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There is also a book(s) that I have on this where they interview the kids who saw the Angels and a movie was made about it in 1994 staring Richard Thomas. I'm watching the movie tomorrow via net flix-for the 2nd time.

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