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Well, of course the afterlife would consist of only good things... that is why it's called heaven!
If you think to keep on going and going without an end, you can choose to reincarnate... you would have no memory of your former live(s).
However, from what I've read, it's impossible to be "bored" in the afterlife.
As for you first comment, as I mentioned in another thread, a neurosurgeon by the name of Eben Alexander had the same opinion as you. He was the type of surgeon and scientist who believed that NDEs (and the afterlife) were impossible and that they were only fantasies produced by the brain when under extreme stress.
He believed all that until he had his own NDE! His brain was attacked by an illness and the part of the brain that controls thought and emotion were shut down completely.
He saw the afterlife and heaven and was a believer after that! And he is not the only one who did not believe in the afterlife until he/she experiences a NDE.
Nope, you don't get to make that demand. The burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim. If I tell you that invisible unicorns are orbiting the moon, it's my responsibility to prove it, not your responsibility to either disprove or take on faith.
Claims of life after death are usually rooted in anxiety about the end of one's existence. Because we have consciousness and identify with the self that looks out through our eyes, we have a hard time grasping the concept that that experience, that consciousness, that self, may one day cease to be. We can't imagine that we'll stop looking, hearing, smelling, thinking ... that we'll just switch off like a TV one day.
Do I know definitively what happens when we die? Of course not. But logic points to one answer: nothing happens. Everything else is rooted in faith. The religious can stand around all day, wagging a finger and saying how sorry and surprised we're all going to be one day. The fact is, you don't know what happens to us any more than I do or anyone else does. But I do know that it's folly to suppose that something about my being might carry on while also assuming that nothing of the same sort will happen to my dog, my flowers, or my car. What makes humans so special that we should have some magical "soul" that floats off to another place when we die, yet no other organism or object supposedly possesses one of these "souls"? The answer, of course, is that there is nothing special about us. We're just aware of our own consciousness, so we have to invent soothing stories about what happens to our consciousness when our body dies.
I'd love to believe in some happy, floaty little world where the sun shines all day, no one is ever sick or sad or poor, and I could see all my departed friends and relatives. But that's all just wishful thinking. Maybe it'll happen; maybe it won't. My money's on "it won't." And that's OK. It just encourages me to make the most of the time I have on this planet, in this body.
As an atheist, "evidential" NDEs (Near Death Experiences) as they are called are the only thing that make me even remotely consider the possibility of an afterlife.
I would be curious as to why this is. After all the N in NDE means "near". That is to say the patient did not die. How exactly is an experience before an event, evidence of what happens after the event? Of all the things that make me.... someone who you would also label "atheist"....... consider the possibility of an after life, NDE is probably down the bottom of the list _by definition_.
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Originally Posted by PaulB007
To simply toss aside the testimony of hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of those who have out of body experiences where other parties confirm that said person verified places, times, events, conversations, ect while in a deceased state, frankly, is being intellectually lazy.
Then it is VERY lucky that we do not "simply toss aside" such things and we have engaged heavily in research on the topic. The problem is that we simply have had zero positive results.
Sam Parnia for example, a scientist heavily biased towards getting positive results related to the after life, has researched out of body experiences quite heavily in a controlled methodology way. And he simply has not had _one_ positive result from this.
For example the VAST majority of OBE patients report floating above the hospital room looking down on it. So in a double blind and controlled way he had objects placed in position ONLY such people would be able to see during that experience. And the objects were made to be so inconguant to the environment that you simply would not miss them if you were floating there.
And from these experiments he did not find a _single_ case where a patient noticed and correctly identified one of these objects.
So the intellectual laziness you seem to fear simply does not exist. We have engaged heavily and intellectually with evaluating these anecdotes and we simply have come up with nothing positive _at all_. Meanwhile you talk about "1000s" of verified cases but you do so without citation to show any such thing WAS confirmed..... nor do you discuss and explore the explanations that are equally valid for such things. So one wonders if your accusation of intellectual laziness could not be turned inwards, before it gets turned outwards.
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Originally Posted by PaulB007
At the very least, it opens the door to the brain somehow having what we would classically call "psychic abilities" in the sense of being able to verify things happening outside of the body with no possible way of knowing the data.
That is the big assumption we need to over come in the discourse on this topic. We simply assume there is no possible way of knowing some kind of data or other. Yet when we engage in controlled methodologies we have not had one single positive result of a patient obtaining data that we know they could not otherwise have obtained.
What we have instead if vague anecdotes in uncontrolled scenarios and we simply can not assume or declare that they were precluded that data. All we can declare is that we do not know how they got it. And not knowing something is not evidence for unsubstantiated claims.
What we DO know however is that there are sensory pathways we are only just discovering. Take a look, for example, at the phenomenon of "blind sight". This is where people who, by our classic definition, are entirely and totally blind. Yet we have found there are some things they can "see" such as.... although they can not see a single object in the room.... they can "see" what direction these objects are moving.
We also have Autistic children who, due to the lack of some of the filters we "normal" people have on our sensory input, can perform sensory feats amazing to us, such as dictate back the contents of a conversation that was held several rooms away.
So since the trend is in discovering that our senses have more to them than we think, I am not compelled at this time to move towards paranormal or supernatural explanations for people obtaining information by channels opaque to us.
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Originally Posted by PaulB007
Perhaps there are hidden abilities within the brain that are brought to fruition in a "near death state"?
There would be no evolutionary reason I can think of for us to evolve any such capabilities. So I would take a lot of convincing to come to the conclusion that Natural Selection invested resources in abilities that only come into fruition at the entities LEAST likely time of use of them, that have absolutely no influence on evolutionary success in any way.
"Perhaps" as you say. But it is one big stretch of a "perhaps" I fear.
Like you I think there is something "to" NDE. We can not simply discount the experiences and anecdotes and ignore them. But so too can we not leap to fantastical conclusions off the back of them either. There is clearly _something_ going on in these experiences and an explanation of it will help us make massive inroads into understanding the working of the human brain.
But I see little reason at this time to lend even a modicum of credence to the KIND Of explanations for the anecdotes that we see on threads like this one.
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Originally Posted by PaulB007
There are three conclusions, really.
1. Either I made up the story and countless others did as well.
2. There is some hidden ability the brain has while it is in this state that some people experience and others do not.
3. Consciousness can exist beyond the physical death of a body.
I really don't see any way to escape these three possibilities.
4. The workings of the brain and its partnership with sensory input are merely more complex than we currently know and all your examples and anecdotes (uncited thus far) are easily explainable by this.
5. Patients are having some kind of experience but due to poor methodologies we are evaluating more into them than we should be. For example the phenomenon of the "leading question" in interviewing such people is well known in the same way as it is known in, for example, interviewing children regarding sexual abuse. And also the well known phenomenon of parsing experience through local education and culture.
So no, "there are three conclusions really" is not correct it seems. There are many, and I was very quickly able to move beyond 3 to 5. I am sure I could go to 6 and beyond but 2 was enough to show your limitation of 3 to be wrong. [
QUOTE=PaulB007;37046473]The stories I have read have come from medical professionals.[/quote]
And being a skeptic, as you claim to be, I am sure you know why this statement here is less than relevant to anything.
But as you say there is "something worth studying" indeed. No one is arguing that. I think people are just arguing that leaping to the _kinds_ of hypotheses we see on threads like this, at this time, is unwarranted and not advisable and is certainly not supported by ANY of the data we currently have.
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Originally Posted by Fleet
As for you first comment, as I mentioned in another thread, a neurosurgeon by the name of Eben Alexander had the same opinion as you. He saw the afterlife and heaven and was a believer after that!
And his writings on the subject have been nonsense and rebutted continuously and effectively. Nothing he says is any less nonsense than anyone else that has reported NDE I am afraid. People seem to think that his being a neurosurgeon somehow validates anything he has said, or made it worth more than what others have said. But it does not. He is saying the same things that have been rebutted and corrected innumerable times before.
Or are you aware of anything coming out of his text that is somehow more credible or different from that written or said by anyone else in the NDE discourse?
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Originally Posted by Fleet
And he is not the only one who did not believe in the afterlife until he/she experiences a NDE.
Which I am afraid is not relevant at all. No one is doubting that people are having an experience. And no one is doubting these experiences are transformative and lead people to believe in after lives, gods and religions.
But none of that is evidence that their beliefs are _actually true_. At all. Even a little bit.
That these experiences were had, and changed the people having them, is interesting but it is not evidence for anything and it should not cloud our discourse or evaluation of these experiences as a whole.
Nope, you don't get to make that demand. The burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim. If I tell you that invisible unicorns are orbiting the moon, it's my responsibility to prove it, not your responsibility to either disprove or take on faith.
Claims of life after death are usually rooted in anxiety about the end of one's existence. Because we have consciousness and identify with the self that looks out through our eyes, we have a hard time grasping the concept that that experience, that consciousness, that self, may one day cease to be. We can't imagine that we'll stop looking, hearing, smelling, thinking ... that we'll just switch off like a TV one day.
Do I know definitively what happens when we die? Of course not. But logic points to one answer: nothing happens. Everything else is rooted in faith. The religious can stand around all day, wagging a finger and saying how sorry and surprised we're all going to be one day. The fact is, you don't know what happens to us any more than I do or anyone else does. But I do know that it's folly to suppose that something about my being might carry on while also assuming that nothing of the same sort will happen to my dog, my flowers, or my car. What makes humans so special that we should have some magical "soul" that floats off to another place when we die, yet no other organism or object supposedly possesses one of these "souls"? The answer, of course, is that there is nothing special about us. We're just aware of our own consciousness, so we have to invent soothing stories about what happens to our consciousness when our body dies.
I'd love to believe in some happy, floaty little world where the sun shines all day, no one is ever sick or sad or poor, and I could see all my departed friends and relatives. But that's all just wishful thinking. Maybe it'll happen; maybe it won't. My money's on "it won't." And that's OK. It just encourages me to make the most of the time I have on this planet, in this body.
And you can't say for sure there is no afterlife. Unless you know all about the universe.
Claims of life after death are for many reasons, not just "rooted in anxiety." In fact, I feel much more comfortable having a belief in the afterlife. Also, one does not have to be religious to believe in an afterlife.
What makes humans special? You shall find out when your time comes. In fact, if you make it to the afterlife, you will know the "whys" of everything.
So you think you won't see your departed friends and relatives once their mortal life ends? That is a very depressing thought; I'm glad I don't share it.
I can also make the most of the time I have on this planet, but I can also believe an even better (far, far better) existence awaits me. And, in fact, I can enjoy life better than a non-believer of the afterlife. Who can truly enjoy a mortal life believing that not only they won't exist after they "die," but they will never see/talk to/enjoy family and friends for eternity?
And his writings on the subject have been nonsense and rebutted continuously and effectively. Nothing he says is any less nonsense than anyone else that has reported NDE I am afraid. People seem to think that his being a neurosurgeon somehow validates anything he has said, or made it worth more than what others have said. But it does not. He is saying the same things that have been rebutted and corrected innumerable times before.
Well, of course a non-believer such as you would call it nonsense. However, he is not the only one in the medical field to have that experience. Or to hear of a NDE from a patient. Let me guess, they are all wrong!
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Or are you aware of anything coming out of his text that is somehow more credible or different from that written or said by anyone else in the NDE discourse?
Are you aware of anything coming out of his text that is less credible?
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Which I am afraid is not relevant at all. No one is doubting that people are having an experience. And no one is doubting these experiences are transformative and lead people to believe in after lives, gods and religions.
But none of that is evidence that their beliefs are _actually true_. At all. Even a little bit.
No, none of it is evidence, but it makes for a strong case for it. And, on the other hand, no one can say with 100% certainty, that there is no afterlife.
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That these experiences were had, and changed the people having them, is interesting but it is not evidence for anything and it should not cloud our discourse or evaluation of these experiences as a whole.
Maybe you should tell that to (former) atheists who changed their mind after a NDE. I guess all of them are just spewing nonsense.
More succinctly, human consciousness depends on a functioning human brain. When the old squash rots, that's the end of the line. Death is permanent and final.
And you can't say for sure there is no afterlife. Unless you know all about the universe.
Being a philosophy forum I feel I have to correct you on your philosophy 101 error here. Though it is confusing to have to do this given it was already corrected by the user you just quoted. That is: Burden of proof.
It is the person who is claiming there is an after life that has 100% of the onus of evidence in this regard. No one has to "say for sure there is no afterlife" at all. We simply have to point out that your claim there IS one is simply unsubstantiated at this time. You have not moved to offer a modicum of argument, evidence, data or reason that gives any credence or merit to the claim such an after life exists. At all.
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Originally Posted by Fleet
Claims of life after death are for many reasons, not just "rooted in anxiety." In fact, I feel much more comfortable having a belief in the afterlife.
Exactly. I think you have made the users point for them here. You feel more comfortable thinking there is an afterlife. Therefore your anxiety is reduced or negated. Therefore, as the user said, much of the belief in the after life IS rooted in anxiety.
Your error here is like if I said "The reason you take that vaccination is so you never get Chicken Pox" and you reply with "Nonsense I have never HAD chicken pox, so it was a waste of time ever giving me that vaccination". Which sort of makes the point for me.
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Originally Posted by Fleet
What makes humans special. You shall find out when your time comes. In fact, if you make it to the afterlife, you will know the "whys" of everything.
This is the kind of rhetoric that raises the suspicions of the skeptic in relation to the discourse on after lives. You couch your evidence in the future in order to negate any requirement to offer any now. You are essentially just fear mongering with "I have no evidence now.... but _wait and see_" and the ominous overtones that suggests. But essentially despite those over tones, you end up saying nothing at all but using a lot of words to say it.
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Originally Posted by Fleet
So you think you won't see your departed friends and relatives once their mortal life ends?
It is not that we think we will not. It is that we see no reason on offer, much less on this thread, to think we _will_. Subtly different phrasing, but the implications of it are clear.
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Originally Posted by Fleet
That is a very depressing thought; I'm glad I don't share it.
I do not find it depressing at all. However even if I did, that would be less than relevant. What is true is dictated by nothing but what is true. How pleasing or depressing we find something is NOT relevant to whether it is true or not and is really just an irrelevant muddying of the waters. A red herring.
We should be rationally evaluating what we have reason to actually expect to be true.... not whether the implications of reality are personally pleasing to us or not.
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Originally Posted by Fleet
I can also make the most of the time I have on this planet, but I can also believe an even better (far, far better) existence awaits me.
Alas however the implications thinking there is an after life HAS on how people "make their time" in this life, are very real, and all too often not good.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fleet
Well, of course a non-believer such as you would call it nonsense.
That, I fear, is just an ad hominem attempt on your part. I call it nonsense because it is, not because of any world view you imagine me coming to the table with. I evaluate exactly what people like him are saying, and on what basis, and I explain exactly why it is nonsense.
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Originally Posted by Fleet
However, he is not the only one in the medical field to have that experience.
And I repeat: What field they are in is irrelevant. It does not suddenly make their claims any more credible than the exact same claims from people not in that field. You have essentially moved from ad hominem to reverse ad hominem. Or, as people like to call it "argumentum ab auctoritate" or argument from authority.
If you find yourself adding, or removing, credence to a claim based on WHO is claiming it, rather than based on WHY, then you have taken the wrong path and I advise retracing your steps and trying again.
Note, for example, how I asked you what he has been saying that you found credible, and you simply did not answer. You merely name drop his career path and leave it at that. And that is highly telling.
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Originally Posted by Fleet
Or to hear of a NDE from a patient. Let me guess, they are all wrong!
It depends what you mean by "wrong". I genuinely believe people are having experiences and that they are moving and transformative. But right now no one has justified the leap from those experiences, to claiming that an after life exists.
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Originally Posted by Fleet
Are you aware of anything coming out of his text that is less credible?
Once again this is a bad attempt at shifting the burden of proof. Since you are the one making claims about an after life, it is you that has to tell me what he has said that lends credence to those claims. By all means quote something he has said that does this.
However if you really need help with this then yes, I can adumbrate for you some of his claims that simply were not credible and in fact outright errors.
His entire account... all of it..... is based on repeated assertions that his experiences occurred while his cerebral cortex was shut down and not active. In his words “stunned to complete inactivity.†The evidence he provides for this claim is not only inadequate but suggests he actually does not understand the relevant brain biology.
He asserts that the cessation of cortical activity was “clear from the severity and duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical involvement documented by CT scans and neurological examinations.â€
His exact words. And they are simply wrong. "CT scans and neurological examinations" do not determine neuronal inactivity, either in the cortex or anywhere else. And he does not mention actual functional data that might have actually proven his case. fMRI, PET, or EEG. Nothing. He does not even seem to know that only this sort of evidence could support his case.
Even his words are hyperbole. If the damage had been "global" as he claimed then he would be dead. Unless he is claiming he grew back an entire new cortex. And as a neuroscientist I know pointed out when writing about this man, to my knowledge, almost no one thinks that consciousness is purely a matter of cortical activity anyway.
Mark Cohen did write on this too. Since you like qualifications when you write, I can tell you he is a pioneer in the field of neuroimaging holding positions in the Departments of Psychiatry & Bio behavioral Science, Neurology, Psychology, Radio-logical Science, and Bio engineering at UCLA. He writes:
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This poetic interpretation of his experience is not supported by evidence of any kind. As you correctly point out, coma does not equate to “inactivation of the cerebral cortex†or “higher-order brain functions totally offline†or “neurons of the cortex stunned into complete inactivityâ€.
These describe brain death, a one hundred percent lethal condition. There are many excellent scholarly articles that discuss the definitions of coma. (For example: here & here)
We are not privy to his EEG records, but high alpha activity is common in coma. Also common is “flat†EEG. The EEG can appear flat even in the presence of high activity, when that activity is not synchronous. For example, the EEG flattens in regions involved in direct task processing. This phenomenon is known as event-related desynchronization.
As is obvious to you, this is truth by authority. Neurosurgeons, however, are rarely well-trained in brain function. Dr. Alexander cuts brains; he does not appear to study them.
There are many reports of people remembering dream-like states while in medical coma. They lack consistency, of course, but there is nothing particularly unique in Dr. Alexander’s unfortunate episode.
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Originally Posted by Fleet
Maybe you should tell that to (former) atheists who changed their mind after a NDE. I guess all of them are just spewing nonsense.
As I said, who they were before the experience, and what they became after the experience, is simply not relevant. Either there is evidence for what they are claiming, or there is not, and if there is not then yes.... I very much would claim they are "spewing nonsense" to use your words.
And you can't say for sure there is no afterlife. Unless you know all about the universe.
Claims of life after death are for many reasons, not just "rooted in anxiety." In fact, I feel much more comfortable having a belief in the afterlife. Also, one does not have to be religious to believe in an afterlife.
What makes humans special? You shall find out when your time comes. In fact, if you make it to the afterlife, you will know the "whys" of everything.
So you think you won't see your departed friends and relatives once their mortal life ends? That is a very depressing thought; I'm glad I don't share it.
I can also make the most of the time I have on this planet, but I can also believe an even better (far, far better) existence awaits me. And, in fact, I can enjoy life better than a non-believer of the afterlife. Who can truly enjoy a mortal life believing that not only they won't exist after they "die," but they will never see/talk to/enjoy family and friends for eternity?
fleet, as much as I think noise has an anti-theist agenda what he saying is true. there is no "real" evidence. The NDE are common because I think how the brain shuts down is a fairly standard process. NDE's is just that, people that are dying and their brains are shutting down. People in the usa, people Africa, and indeed everybody's brains probably shut down in similar ways. I bet if we looked at the moment of death we would see pathways for memory being activated that use the least amount of energy to activate. Maybe the brain even activates "nice" thoughts to ease the passing.
That is all we can say for now. We only claim: "It seems the brain shuts down a certain way at certain times". "scientifically speaking".
But you have to understand even if there is a soul, it will not act like you do now. This is because when you are alive you would have a "atom/electron" base component that makes you "you". So you have a soul part and a hadron part. You actually have more interactions than just those but lets just use those. When we remove one of those components, here the atom part, then the "soul" you will be/can act completely different. In essence it won't be you. It would be like me taking out 2 important chemicals in your brain. you would no longer be you.
And you can't say for sure there is no afterlife. Unless you know all about the universe.
Nozz has already addressed many of your points in greater detail than I could. This one statement of yours inclines me to emphasize that none of the skeptics here has said that "for sure, there is no afterlife".
We have all said, in various ways, that there is and has never been any evidence to suppose that there is an afterlife. That is very different from saying "there is absolutely no afterlife".
All the debate here has centered around debunking the methodological and epistemological errors that are typically presented as evidence of a consciousness that can exist outside the human body.
Maybe you should tell that to (former) atheists who changed their mind after a NDE. I guess all of them are just spewing nonsense.
No, in all likelyhood they have changed their minds out of fear of the unknown. Fear is a great irrational motivator, just ask all the gold hucksters on TV
It also occurs to me that you may not be aware that the argument "all these other people believe it" does not sway many skeptics
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