No, I was never baptised. I don't think I'd thought about it, and in any case it is supposed to be adult baptism, and 14 is hardly adult. After 14 I wouldn't have wanted it anyway.attofishpi wrote: ↑Sun Dec 15, 2024 2:07 am I just did some basic research on Baptist Church. So, did you opt for the baptism, and if so, at what age?
Your account of your experiences is interesting. The problem with all such experiences, of course, is that they tend only to be convincing to the person who has had them. Unlike the atheists, I wouldn't presume to dismiss your experiences, but because they don't gel with anything in my own life, I'm not in a position to either accept or reject your understanding of them.
I have had odd experiences of my own. In 2006, for about half an hour late one night, I had two selves at the same time instead of the usual one. (I don't recommend it, it's very unpleasant.) I now believe that this was an early sign of the problem that I developed ten years later due to excess caffeine. Caffeine dehydrates me, thickening my blood so that it won't flow easily through the ageing and hardening blood vessels in my brain. In 2016 this manifested in the way I've already mentioned: there wasn't enough blood to go round, so my brain decided to shut down one of its systems, and the one it chose was vision, which is why it kept trying to shut my eyes. This kept happening until I virtually gave up caffeine.
In 2006, I was getting half-formed memories in my head, and when I tried to focus on them, I suddenly found I had two selves. I think my brain was trying to get information from one hemisphere to the other, but the blood wasn't flowing properly in that part of my brain, and when I pushed it, it gave up and cut the link between the hemispheres. Each hemisphere then created its own self. This is just my interpretation of what happened. None of the doctors I consulted ever said anything of the sort. The thing I noticed was that when I told them what had happened to me, they always changed it into something else — something their medical training had prepared them for.
We build our picture of the world based on our experiences. My experience in 2006 has left me with the working hypothesis that the self is purely a creation of the brain, so that when our brains die, we cease to exist. But I'm a good enough philosopher to know that the fact that I personally have never had an experience that I recognise as supernatural doesn't prove that the supernatural doesn't exist.
Yes, it was a lovely midday afternoon, the Sun was shining and I walked to a small cafe where my niece worked to have lunch with her, and tell her the big news.
