we spend twenty four percent of our GDP on taxes. the average OECD country spends 33 percent. most think that means our taxes are low. not exactly. our healthcare system is 18 percent our GDP, and half of that is already from taxes, the rest from the private sector. so, given every other developed country has universal healthcare, if you added the private sector healthcare onto our taxes, we would be matching the rest of the developed world. so why can they afford to have more social services? 1. our healthcare costs twice as much as the rest of the developed world 2. our military is bigger than the next ten biggest countries combined 3. we’ve been borrowing against social security for decades, and now it’s starting to become time to pay all that back.
so if we did raise taxes on people, we might be getting more services, but we’d also be paying more than the rest of the world, all due to us having bad accounting.
so it’s accurate to say we pay less in taxes, but that misses the larger context.
dr. jeffrey long wrong a book, ‘evidence of of the afterlife’. a smart and capable doctor writing a book like that should be sufficient to establish evidence, but i know some peeps are too stubborn to leave it at that.
let’s look at some lines of evidence:
philosophically, it’s just plain stupid to argue that it’s common for people to hallucinate elaborate afterlife stories when they die. why would this even happen? drugs, dreams, and other hallucations dont cause people to hallucinate elaborate afterlife stories in any other aspect of life… why should we assume there’s something special about dying that causes this?
out of body experiences are commonly verified as accurate, to the point of almost always being accurate. doctors and professionals are often some people verifying things that occurred when someone was dead, when what the dead person knew was impossible to know. if ya’ll want a start in researching out of body experiences, ‘evidence for the afterlife’ by doctor jeffrey long does a short literature review of some highlights. there’s lots of studies that look at the accuracy of those experiences and they’re always shown to be accurate. there’s whole scientific journals out there dedicated to this stuff, the evidence is basically too overwhelming to just ignore. even the AWARE study where they tried to measure out of body phenomenon, had two examples where someone who was dead knew what happened out of their body. and there was some measurement of auditory ability when they were dead. now, yes this isn’t the level of evidence that leaves no room for doubt, and this isn’t exactly being able to be measured in a lab on demand…. but this is all evidence that is being measured and can be repeated. it’s basic science.
dead family members. when people experience beings on the other side, the beings met are almost always dead and almost always family members. if this was just a random hallucination, there should be many more examples of living people and people other than family members. this consistency is a strong point.
there are plenty of examples of blind people seeing when they die, often for the first time ever. the examples who people who are coming to grips with a new sense, it takes time to process and that’s exactly what we see.
-another good piece of evidence is that when experiencers are surveyed, they say their ‘life reviews’ are always accurate, 100% of the time. if this was just a brain going hay wire, we’d expect lots of false memories.
-i think this also goes along with the idea that if this was a brain going hay wire, people would experience lots of random images, like a hallucination or dream. instead, they see lucid clear after life experiences that they have no doubt about and that are more real to them than their earthly lives.
-also, people often see images in their life review, that they’ve long forgotten. it’s not as likely just a brain going hay wire if it’s showing the whole life even the forgotten stuff.
-it’s also good evidence that the same sorts of NDEs happen to people who have never heard of these experiences, and to children who are too young to know about it either.
-it’s also good evidence, that across all cultures, the themes in the experiences happen the same. that is, tunnels, light being, life reviews and such… all these things happen at the same rate regardless of country or culture. i realize humans are similar, so the argument that we just have similar experiences is possible. but if this just a brain going hay wire, it wouldn’t be so consistent and would be a lot more like random images or random experiences.
more on consistency.
-almost every person who has these experiences after the exerperience then believes in the afterlife. if these were just hallucaionations, you’d expect this not to so consistent.
-it’s also worth noting, that a majority of atheists even come back believing in God… it’s almost never the case that theists end up becoming atheists. the atheists who dont convert, just had no special insight on the matter, the ones who gain knowledge of something end up becoming believers. (this is also a line of evidence for the existence of God)
-it’s very rare to find a non christian religion NDEs by the way. the experiences are so rare, that i challenge anyone to find just a few of them. the only ones i’ve seen are too open to interpretation to draw too many conclusions from.
the skeptic arguments against NDEs being authentic are at best hunches, it lacks specificity in science. there’s no known afterlife gene or something in our brain that we know of that would cause this. yes, we are all similar so maybe our survial gene is facilitating all this. but like i said, it’s all just a big hunch. we have lots of science and scant evidence to support skeptics. there’s simply not enough evidence to be a skeptic about whether there is even evidence to begin with. this is all evidence, so skeptics have a repubuttable presumption against them and they are bad and providing actual evidence to support their claims.
philosophically, if it’s common for people to experience elaborate afterlife stories when they die, that’s prime facie evidence that an afterlife might exist. even if i were to admit that an afterlife isn’t most probable… it’s objectively possible based on that evidence and all the other lines i’ve provided. that’s why it’s objectively irrational to say there’s not even evidence for an afterlife.
it’s consensus science that where there’s more guns, or more people have them, that there’s more murders than places that dont have guns.
it’s consensus that where there’s more gun control, there’s less murder.
it’s basically. irrefutable that non-gun murders are in line with the rest of the world, but gun murders are wildly out of whack. if this was a bad person problem, not a gun problem, then non-gun murders would be out of whack too. dont need scientific study for this though, this is such common sense, and it’s obvious that you are just regurgitating stupid gun nut talking points, that there is something obviously wrong with your critical thinking skills.
gun control won’t stop mass shootings, as people can just regular guns, or a few of them, and go on a rampage. but it might help some. if it’s too hard to get a gun (fewer guns, more restrictions), people are more likely to give up. that helps a little.
or, like sandy hook, if they dont have assault rifles, they won’t be able to shoot hundreds of spray shots with such ease in a few minutes. obviously, the benefit greatly outweighs the cost of confiscating assault rifles, given they’re almost never needed for self defense.
gun control is mostly about lessening the amount of times someone gets mad and happens to have a gun when they do, less about mass schooting. i saw two strangers kill each other in road rage before, which obviously wouldn’t have happened if they didn’t have guns.
if you tell someone they can’t have a gun, not everyone who is denied will run out and get one. if they dont have a gun when they are mad, they are less likely to kill someone than if they had a knife or other weapon. it might be possible to 3d print guns, but not everyone who is denied a gun is willing to go to that level of desperation.
this is all common sense. u need to work on your critical thinking and drop the propaganda.
is it possible for there to be a purpose for suffering? yes. it can help us make progress to end suffering. we are co creators in that sense. it can give people the perspective to appreciate no suffering. as jesus said, the man wasn’t born with health problems because of something him or his parents did, but to give glory to God when he’s one day disease free.
also, asking why we still have suffering is like asking why darkness exists. that’s just the way it is. can we have just light? i dont think that is possible in our reality. same way, suffering may need to exist in this reality too.
of course, a person can just insist that if it’s possible for suffering not to exist but does, then it isn’t necessary. a person could rationally cling to that principle, but they have to admit that they might be wrong if everything i say is true, and they need to admit that the alternative view that i present is completely realistic. What if God and heaven exist, and the reality is how i present it? then the skeptic is just clinging to philosophy that has no basis in reality. the words and thoughts, the pointless ramblings, of mere men.
every other country covers everyone at half the cost, with better wait times. so it can be done here too. the thing is, they started from scratch and built their healthcare systems from the ground up… not trying to redo a country like ours with a third of a billion people in it. what could happen if we tried to make it universal? the most obvious problem would be that the democrats dont do anything to get costs down first, or they cave when costs are contained with a medicare like pricing system. (which sets limits on how much can be spent) and speicial interests complain about it. the republicans could repeal any taxes that are used to pay for a new system. so it’s definitely possible to bankrupt us based on health care… is what i’m getting at.
how do other countries spend half as much as we do? they mostly get it down to that level by regulating how much the government is willing to pay for each procedure, they regulate costs. they also minimize the role of insurance, which helps given insurance is a middle man that pays a third just in adminstrative costs instead of the two percent that medicare pays. (some hospitals have more staff to take care of billing than they do nurses, for instance)
if we’re not doing more of these cost containing things, we’re headed in the wrong direction.
if we dont do anything about costs, we could end up bankrupt switching to something universal. we only have ten percent of folks who are uninsured… which means it’s not earth shattering if we didn’t cover those few extra people. it would be earth shattering to borrow money to pay for it. that’s why the emphasis shouldn’t be on universal care, it should be on getting costs contained.
sometimes it is wise to be skeptical if a public option or universal plan could work… we’re trying to redo an embedded system, and politicians are good at fucking things up. it’s rational to only focus on getting costs contained…that’s the biggest problem.
i would think five to ten percent of their income would be sufficient, per year, for ten years. no loans, just payments in the future. the government can give schools a net present value of estimated future payments, and collect the payments on income taxes.
this would incentavize colleges to make their students economically viable grads, which is what the end goal is anyway. they would focus more on practical skills. they might decide that four years and excessive unneeded classes aren’t necessary, making it more efficient again. (though the government can require some very basic courses, like generic psychology and generic sociology and generic science etc etc and basic math and reading and writing) this also requires that students dont just get a free ride, but that they chip in on their own education, which would appeal to conservatives. students with not much intelligence or potential would be saw for who they are, and they would be found to be maximized to their potential by the school. majors that are worthless wont get as much money, and that would cause the system to adapt… maybe only the cream of the crop students should be doing humanities, and their would be a punishment of less money to both the student and school for allowing low skill students to go into the humanities. maybe a philosophy major will end up at mcdonalds, and neither he nor the school will benefit much. maybe the school wont accept stupid kids in the humanities.
the well off grads would pay more, who are the most economically viable ones. and the less economically viable ones would pay less. there’s a certain justice to that, if that happens to fit your political ideology.
this proposal is an example of the kind of concrete solutions that politicitians should be working on. the beurocrats in washington have lost the policy in politics.
some people say truth is relative. well, relative is a relative word. but truth is not arbitrary.
maybe there are exceptions to rules, but the rules and the exceptions are clear. killing others for no reason is bad. maybe there are situations where killing others is justifiable, but that doesn’t mean killing isn’t clearly wrong, in general. whether killing is justifiable isn’t subject to just some duede’s whims, it’s not arbitrary.
maybe i’m saying truth is objective, i dont know. i dont know what the basis for truth is, other than maybe a higher power or God. well, maybe an objective reality beyond God could exist, that is the basis for objective truth. i dont know if we mere humans can know what all the truths are, but that truth exists shouldn’t be the issue.
just some ramblings i had that i thought id see what folks thought.
politicians need to stop talking about universal housing. if the corrupt politicians took the path of least resistance they’d probably just start cutting checks to landlords with section 8, more than they do now. they should be talking about affordable shelter, not housing.
the solution, is boarding houses, that require a waiver of privacy rights when it comes to drug searches.
a person gets a room. they share kitchens and living areas and bathrooms. the government lends money to non-profit organizations to build and maintain these boarding houses. that takes out the profit motive and corruption. residents pay a third of their income for costs… if they dont have much income, or no income, they dont pay much. this means the only ones who are homeless… is drug addicts who refuse to submit, and dangerous criminals, and dangerous mentally ill people. maybe these people can be taken care of on a case by case basis, but these guys are their own category which i acknowledge my solutions dont solve.
instead of flat out paying people’s rent like the government does now, and doing nothing about affordability, boarding houses bring back economical structures. we probably already spend enough money on housing, to instead lend out money that’s going to be repaid to the government eventually anyway.
the highest ranked debater here pointed out that when you put a bunch of poor people together, it causes social ills and stuff like drug problems and destroys the whole cost savings paradigm. that killed my idea for a solution before… but now my solution to, is for residents to waive their rights to not be searched. drug searches can happen at will, and randomly, and arbitrarily.
protestants like to say they are saved, end of discussion. catholics say you have to work out your eventual salvation… but if you look closer, they are willing to say salvation is both an event and a process. i dont think it’s very standard for a protestant to say salvation can be a process?
i think the way to look at this is simply by looking at the question of ‘being forgiven’. when we pray the our father, we ask as christians to be forgiven. we dont say ‘thank you for forgiving me’. it’s a very basic idea of repentance that’s foundational… for that foundation to be off would be a wild accusation.
it’s also worth noting, that the bible often talks about falling away and such. like the parable of the seeds and how jesus said some start to grow only to later wilt due to worldly concern. only some seeds grow to maturity.
it’s also worth tying the ‘assurance of salvation’ and ‘once saved always saved’ ideas to the idea of salvation.
-the bible says you can know you are saved, but given all the other examples where it says you can fall away, i would say that knowing one is saved is a special gift for a special person. jesus did say ‘not everyone who says to me lord lord will inherit the kingdom, but only those who do the will of the father’. it’s a lot to read into this that you can’t know you are saved, but we have to at least remember that acknowleding jesus as lord is not enough. i think we can all agree that just thinking you are saved isn’t enough? it does get into murky territory but there’s always a hypothetical mass murderer who is pathologically propensed to think he is saved.
-also, i think free will is such that a person can always loose their salvation for practical purposes, but for practical purposes some people can know they are saved, and always will be saved, practically.
to tie into this near death experience philosophy, a person can be loved unconditionally, and in that sense they are always saved, but a person still must face the consequences of their actions. like a mother unconditionally loves her children, she also must let them face their own consequences and actions. it’s like near death philosophy says, we go to where our vibration permits. if we have a low vibration, out soul can be saved by becoming a genuine christian. that’s all that’s necessary. because you will grow into higher vibrations and god has your back. if your words are empty, you wont grow into higher vibrarations. there’s a question about whether hell is eternal given near death philosphy, and most of those guys like to say hell is a prison. i think we can all agree that an eternal hell is possible given our free will, but we have to wonder the open question of if hell is eternal for practical purposes. it very well could be, or maybe not. it is central that hell does exist though. only one percent of NDEs are hellish, and they usually just consider that it was a learning experience. a wake up call.
it’s interesting that ‘once saved always saved’, ties into salvation like that. just like how it’s intersesting that ‘atonement’ ties into the ‘justification’ and salvation ideas. and lately i’ve been incorporating NDE philsophy as well.
the bible only talks about rejecting the truth as the basis of condemnation.
around the infamous john 316, it says the light didn’t come to the world to condemn it, but to save it. the condemnation comes when someone perfers darkness over the light.
also in john, jesus also said ‘unless you believe i am he, you will die in your sins.’. this implies a rejection.
at the end of mark jesus said, ‘go and baptize the world. he who beleives and is baptized will be saved, he who doesn’t will be condemned’. again, this implies rejection.
i think there’s one or two other examples where rejection is implied.
there are some references to ‘unbelievers’ being unsaved in the new testament letters, but you have to consider whether John 316 defined unbelievers as those who reject the light for preferring darkness. it is possible to insist these unbeliever references should be taken literatlly and all unbelievers are unsaved, but i think that ignores the context i mentioned above.
we also have to consider that NDEs teach us implicitly that everyone can experience heaven, regardless of religion or creed. but i think it’s important to remember that we have free will, and if we prefer darkness over light… that is what we will get.
The Law of Love 