I'm not sure one should dismiss God anymore

[giblets]

More people believing something does mean it is more likely to be true than something that no one believes.

lol wut

[Elok]

What's this "extremely strong evidence" you have?

He's referring to the "god helmet" experiments, which I think are on Wiki but I'm too lazy to dig them up. Basically, there are these helmets that expose portions of the brain to magnetic fields and thereby induce a "religious experience," or something like it. Quite irrelevant, to my POV. As I've said before, these helmets prove God is an illusion in the same sense that my ability to masturbate proves my wife is an illusion. If anything, they would raise the question of why the human mind even has such a function wired in. But it could be an evolutionary glitch.

[Aeson]

I'm pretty sure the human mind has such a function wired in because she's your wife, and thus you aren't getting any...

[Elok]

Yeah, you might want to work on those English skills.

[Aeson]

(it was still in the clipboardz!)

[DaShi]

It works here too.

[N35t0r]

What, doing aerobics to that, or masturbating to that?

[DaShi]

Wait, you can do aerobics to it too?

[N35t0r]

I didn't press play.

[Aeson]

It works here too.

I was beginning to lose faith. My requests to YouTube for further confirmation as to the after-play had gone unanswered. I wasn't sure if I had chosen the right video and just wasn't receiving the message due to a fault on my end, or if there really was nothing but empty darkness there. As you are very close to the source to the video, and are willing to make yourself look bad in this thread, I can't imagine a more reassuring testimony to me. Hallelujah!

(also lulz@laterposts)

[Caligastia]

He's referring to the "god helmet" experiments, which I think are on Wiki but I'm too lazy to dig them up. Basically, there are these helmets that expose portions of the brain to magnetic fields and thereby induce a "religious experience," or something like it. Quite irrelevant, to my POV. As I've said before, these helmets prove God is an illusion in the same sense that my ability to masturbate proves my wife is an illusion. If anything, they would raise the question of why the human mind even has such a function wired in. But it could be an evolutionary glitch.

Interesting, and a good response from you. Another point is that the "god helmet" probably isn't providing an accurate substitute for a religious experience.

[Elok]

Interesting, and a good response from you. Another point is that the "god helmet" probably isn't providing an accurate substitute for a religious experience.

Hard to say; I don't know if they've tested it on people who have had actual religious experiences. And that's assuming all such experiences are alike, too. Teresa of Avila may have encountered something entirely different from the Buddha's enlightenment. But really, I'd be surprised if such a profound experience didn't have some effect on brain chemistry, and from there it's just a hop, skip and jump to artificially triggering it.

[curtis290]

The people in Scandinavia commit suicide more often because of their northern position on the globe, during the winter there's barely sunlight in Scandinavia, and lack of sunlight makes people more depressed and leads to suicide.
It has nothing to do with happiness, religion, wealth or the lack of it. It's just a biological consequence of having days without sunlight and weeks with only 1 hour per day.

OK, but since Scandinavians have such a good quality of life, lots of freedoms, and an equitable distribution of wealth, shouldn't they have lower suicide rates than people in Alaska and northern Canada?

And I think you're splitting hairs here and not paying attention to my whole argument: read it again. With all of the technological advancement, the freedoms we've earned, the extremely high quality of our lives and the material comforts in them (I mean we're all on computers right now for Pete's sake), why is the rate of depression so high in OECD countries? Why are there so many suicides in these places? Shouldn't we all be bursting with joy since we live in a society that has made so much progress? That is so comfortable? With so many freedoms? It's because the liberal lifestyle is meaningless and unfulfilling. That's why religion keeps resurging in the US, even though according to modernization thesis it shouldn't: the US, being the most liberal society in the world (again, in the classical sense) must have religion exist inside it. Life would be too meaningless to many people without it, so they continue to turn to religion, even when other factors are against it.

[Kitschum]

The suicide rate in Scandinavia isn't that different from Canada and US.

Sweden: 13.2
Canada: 11.6
Norway: 11.4
US: 11.1
Denmark: 10.6

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

When the allegedly high suicide rate in Scandinavia has been brought up I've heard it explained as an artifact of how the statistics are recorded. Suicide is considered to be shameful in some cultures, so in some countries suicides aren't/weren't recorded correctly. I can't vouch for that but it seems plausible.

Edit: And the darkness. The eternaaaaall darkkkknessssss consuuuuumessss meee

[Kitschum]

Oh sh but look at this. It seems Alaska's suicide rate is kind of high after all! Alaskans kill themselves at double the rate of Swedes.

Utah has the highest reported incidence of depression, and Alaska reported the highest suicide rate, nearly 27 deaths per 100,000 people.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_7584821