Recognizing Pseudoscience

So it can kill you a little bit!
At one point in my life I was taking sleeping pills (which I no longer do), and a warning label on the bottle read “Caution: may cause drowsiness”

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Of course, the mortality may be someone else’s. That defense has been used in court. “the drugs made me do it”

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I wonder if anyone ever suffers from intermittent mortality. That sure would make it tough to get a good diagnosis.

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The Bible does speak of a few persons of history who, it would seem, had “intermittent mortality”.

yes, --resurrection occurred more often than just with Jesus, didn’t it? the women who lost their sons and Elijah and Elisha brought them back; the dead soldier whose body touched Elisha’s remains; Lazarus; the Jairus’ daughter; Tabitha; Eutychus; and other saints who rose for a while when Jesus was resurrected.

So Jews don’t usually baulk, I would imagine, at believing in Jesus’ resurrection because of the miracle problem unless they don’t know their scriptures well and forget that there were 3 in the Tanakh too. It sort of implies that the significance of Jesus’ resurrection is a) because he was unique by his claims and b) he predicted it (according to the NT; of course, I’m not arguing that the internal witness is infallible, because anyone can write that he predicted it in retrospect).

I would have thought that in ancient times the process of certifying that death had occurred would have been much less reliable. Some false negatives could then become reported as having returned from death.

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Yes, though I’m not as confident as I once was about pronouncing people dead, even now! I would consult a specialist if I wasn’t sure. Though I don’t do it as a habit any more as I don’t work in the hospital any more.

Just by the way, I don’t personally think that the resurrection is necessary for salvation or even being called a Christian; and as I think that God is just and judges people based on their hearts of repentance, not on knowledge, there’s a difference between being a “Christian” and being right with God. I think @mitchellmckain would feel the same, but would be interested to hear what he says.

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I would describe it as an actual change in the definition of death from before we had the method of CPR to resuscitate people. After all, if you don’t resuscitate them then they are dead soon enough even by our definition. For longer periods of time there are coma and paralysis states that would have been considered dead and without the proper care they would soon be dead by our definition also.

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