Peterkin

I don't see air rising and falling as a factor inside a freezer stuffed with food - there is little or no air circulation. The temperature inside the freezer should be between -15 and -20 C; everything inside should be frozen solid. This is your best insurance against a relatively short power outage. Make sure the door seal is tight, and don't open it unnecessarily. Oh, I guess it's an upright freezer. They're convenient but far less efficient than chest freezers. Even so: the more full it is, the longer it takes anything inside to melt. If you don't have enough food to fill it, insert containers of water - you don't need ice cubes; the water can freeze in place - not just at the top, but packed tightly in among the packages of food. The more ice is in there, the more like an old-fashioned ice-box it behaves. With an upright freezer, the door seal is even more critical. If it doesn't seal tightly enough, put a bungee around the freezer. Because sometimes it's summer outside.

Those can't be the only possible alternatives. Again, not the only available alternatives. When you set up false dichotomies, you get nonsensical results.

At night, I'm reading Pilgrim, a novel by Timothy Findley. In the afternoon, I'm reading Places of the Soul by Christopher Day. It's about architecture.

Ahhh!

I've also noticed a change in the attitude of my own cohort. When I was in my teens, there was a surge of interest in the paranormal, supernatural, unexplained and spiritual phenomena. Ouija boards, automatic writing, pendulum, Tarot, I Ching, astrology - dream interpretation, which morphed in young adulthood into hypnotism, various fringe psychotherapies, Eastern mysticism, holistic medicine... and then a gradual hardening of sciences, which leads rejection of the exotic and fanciful and finally, overt scorn of whatever isn't "objective" enough. At 15-25, I as far more open to things that do not yield to a facile physical explanation; at 60, I was closed and shuttered. Now, I'm not as sure of what I know and what I can know as I was 15 years ago. Maybe, but I understand that an encounter with a haunt or poltergeist is not a bit comforting for the people who have that experience.

I've seen some odd things on highways at night - most of them explained by light, shadow and perspective, all of which change and interact as a vehicle speeds along. But there are different classes of experience, of which optical delusion is only one. I knew a very practical, sober-minded nurse who announced the deaths of three of her relatives (within the five or six years of our acquaintance) weeks before a letter from the old country informed her of those deaths. She said, quite matter-of-factly: "They visit me, just to say goodbye. So do some of my patients." I don't know whether she found that comforting or not. I thought it was spooky. When I told my mother about it, she said she'd dreamed of the deaths both her parents - 40 years apart, in distant places, without warning) and an older sister on the night of their deaths. (Everyone in her family seemed to die at night - she did, too.)

Interesting perspective. Thanks.

For some people, the supernatural becomes a way of relating to the world all the time. If they're talking to saints or the Virgin Mary, they're considered pious. That's the safe alternative. If they're talking to an invisible friend, they're considered mentally ill; if they're talking to a spirit guide, they're considered charlatans. Those are the alternatives that people worry about and why they might be reluctant to mention their peculiar experiences. We can't tell how normal and prevalent such experiences are, because people who have them don't report them, and lots of people who do report are lying.

What happened to ?

I think we just used to be students.

Maybe not everybody has them, but most of the people I've known did. At one time, sometimes or many times, we have a moment .... we hear something, see something, feel something, remember something.... otherworldly. A dead relative whispers a warning. A phantom pet hops up on the bed and curls up behind your knees. The grass calls your name. The stars threaten to suck you up into the sky. You wake up in the middle of the night and know that someone has died. You have an unaccountable urge to get in touch with with someone, because they need your help. When something weird like that happens, do you formulate a rational explanation? Do you ignore it? Do you look up research on such occurrences? Do you talk to somebody about it? Do you accept it as paranormal?

I can certainly see a number of intriguing - if narrow, winding and thorny - paths to follow! But I know for damn sure none of it is about work ethic or looking for a handout.

I see that you don't care. I see that I do care. I have no problem with your not caring; it just doesn't influence me. You can have the medal. I would not accept plaudits for torturing somebody. The right to comment on everything doesn't make you an expert on anything. So, you've downgraded the criteria from proof, to certainty to logical conclusion. Next come probability and inference, followed by educated and wild guesses.

They're consistent within a belief-system. Religion doesn't usually burden itself with intellectual rigour. The original people who told the stories were not preoccupied with mechanism or logic: they were telling stories from their collective history, aspiration, hopes, fears, dreams and those spooky personal experiences we all have that we can't explain and are often reluctant to discuss. Brains are complex electro-chemical machines, yes, but also quite unlovely organs, about which the ancients were less canny and curious than we are - they tended to prefer heart and liver. I don't know much about those children's memories; have no explanation to hand. Maybe some kinds of recycling does take place. I have met a few adults with recurring, vivid dreams of events in a life quite different from their own that are familiar and make sense in the dream world, but not in their waking life. I guess we just have to accept not knowing everything? I don't subscribe to any spiritual doctrine, and do reject all organized dogma, but I can't lock every door and window on the paranormal.

Mencken was hardly an expert on philosophy.... though he fancied himself the expert on every-damn-thing, and had harsh views on most of it.

The body is a different person, or different creature. It's the soul that's reincarnated. Whether the brain remembers past lives (in some belief systems, it does, at least subconsciously; hence a dreamscape quite different from one's waking world) is of little importance: it's the spirit that must go through different struggles and trials, shed layers of materialism, in order to become pure. The soul or spirit concept is internally consistent in the context of each mythology, though it doesn't make sense from a practical or secular POV. Thing about folklore and mythology, if you want to understand it, you have to accept its premises; look at it within its own frame of reference.

Go outside and take a walk. A brisk one; move all your muscles, breathe deeply, pay attention to your surroundings. Then come back in and sort your course material into four or more groups by priority: basic concepts, mechanical data, schematics, flow-charts --- whatever classification makes sense to you. Review one subject are, thoroughly, methodically. Put the books down, turn out the light. Go make a cup of tea. Drink it slowly, looking out the window or something, walk up and down the room, while thinking over the material you've just reviewed. Repeat as needed.

Exactly. I don't know. If I did a bad thing to prevent a worse thing, and it turned out as I hoped, I could probably forgive myself. I don't think I'd ever stop wondering whether it was the best decision I could have made, second- and third-guessing, dreaming about the alternate outcomes that were narrowly avoided. At least, that's what has happened when I've chosen the lesser evil in some real-life situation. I suspect it would be like that for most people who are not accustomed to making life-and-death decisions. Living with a guilt is not the same as being at peace with it.

Does it? Have you any documentation? Not so rare as all that, not restricted to India, and there are different versions. This is an idea entertained by people in very different parts of the world and cultures, for quite a long time. Because they loved Earth and some people on Earth. Because they wanted to see and participate in what happens next. Because they enjoyed living or liked a new challenge. Because they wanted another chance to do thing better. (Not because they're warriors... of course, i have no idea why anyone would choose to be warrior.) They don't need food and shelter and protection anymore. For a lot of people who had a crappy deal in this life, just not having to be afraid, not having to go hungry, not being cold and wet and in pain and oppressed anymore is more than reason enough to desire heaven. That's why heaven was invented in the first place: so many people were made miserable by other people. That's also why reincarnation was invented. IOW a republican flunky and adjectives are not normally capitalized

It wasn't your post I called ignorant. Correct. Of course it is - everywhere. No. But assimilation of members of small a minority population into the majority populations does tend to take place over time. However, if there is a large immigrant population of a different culture, they tend to remain longer in distinct ethnic communities. This adds colour and texture, sound and flavour to an otherwise bland culture. To some extent, the dominant culture changes; to some extent, the immigrant community changes; second and third generation offspring leave the community and assimilate into the greater heterogeneous polity, while fresh waves of immigrants refresh the exotic character of the immigrant community.

The ignorance explained in a nut shell.

One question at a time! Which god? All the ones I know about were egotists and racists and seriously flawed in several other ways. Fortunately, none of them were in charge of evolution.

Have you ever been in the USA? If there were any logic, it could be refuted. Since there is none, your whole thesis can be dismissed.

That's perfectly true. You simply claimed. If you caught them red-handed, in the very act of committing the crime, as in the examples you keep referring to, you already have the child and the bomb. If you didn't catch them in the act, you don't have proof of guilt. Yes. And? It would still be wrong if I did it. If you did it, if the CIA did it, if Stalin's or Torquemada's minions did; whatever outcome is valued by the users, it still remains wrong.

Yeah! What kind of obtusamus would bring philosophy (ptui! ptui!) into a philosophy forum? Was it this one? https://www.britannica.com/summary/torture