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I don't understand, where do the scientists come into this post? All I've seen if you mention more sales in books, fifty shades of grey hasn't had as many sales over the last year as it had the previous, does that mean less women are masturbating?
The vast majority of people have always believed in an afterlife. As the atheist's post on this thread illustrates, "belief in an afterlife" encompasses a very broad spectrum and is by no means equivalent to "belief in God." (I always refer to the "survival of personal consciousness after bodily death.") A very substantial percentage of scientists has likewise always believed in an afterlife or at least been agnostic about it; the percentage varies by scientific discipline and how the particular survey is worded, but the percentage is typically 40% or more (sometimes much more). The following Wikipedia article has a section on "Studies on Scientists' Beliefs" that is actually quite good: Relationship between religion and science - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
That being said, very serious afterlife research was done in the period from about 1880 to about 1930 by organizations such as the (British) Society for Psychical Research and the American Society for Psychical Research. I have read virtually all of it, and it is extremely impressive. The membership of the SPR included some of the leading scientists of the time, and they and their work cannot be lightly dismissed just because "they lived 100 years ago," as though we were now all so much more sophisticated. It is unfortunate that the public is not more aware of this work.
Despite all the study that I have done, which has convinced me that a near-overwhelming case can at least be made for the survival of personal consciousness after bodily death (albeit not necessarily for any particular religion's vision of the afterlife), I like the OP have found personal experience to be the most compelling. When I was 21, my late father delivered the simple message, "I'm dead but I'm not dead." That was enough for me, although I have since had several After Death Communications (as they are called) from others, including some to whom I was not particularly close and would not have "expected" to hear from.
Despite the promise of NDE research, I doubt that the afterlife will ever be proved to the level of certainty demanded by those with a strong will to disbelieve. One of the interesting things about EVERY area of paranormal research is that certainty always seems to be on the horizon but inevitably remains just out of reach. This is what some have called the Trickster aspect of the paranormal. There are always just enough problems with even the best cases for a diehard debunker to seize upon. I am confident that this will remain true with the afterlife, even though the evidence as a whole from all areas of afterlife research seems near-overwhelming to me. (PLEASE, don't anyone bore me by launching into a rebuttal as to how much of what I am terming "evidence," and which IS evidence, is not "falsifiable.")
The vast majority of people have always believed in an afterlife. . In any event, I would say that the attention given to NDEs since the publication of Moody's book is THE single biggest reason for an increased interest in the afterlife by segments of the general public and the scientific community
I will agree that there may well be increased sales due to those already holding a belief in the afterlife in the hopes that these NDEs provide them some verification that they did not have previously...something they think they can waggle in front of the scientific community as proof.
They are, of course, only waggling it in front of themselves and ignoring the science behind it but that is not unusual.
I will agree that there may well be increased sales due to those already holding a belief in the afterlife in the hopes that these NDEs provide them some verification that they did not have previously...something they think they can waggle in front of the scientific community as proof.
They are, of course, only waggling it in front of themselves and ignoring the science behind it but that is not unusual.
All one can say to that is that you are staggeringly uninformed. That's the problem with Internet forums. Folks who have literally no idea what they are talking about can pontificate on anything they want. "97.8% of mainstream scientists regard the belief in an afterlife as a complete fantasy and persons who hold such a belief as dangerously delusional, according to an intensive 2013 study by Yale University." There, the esteemed Venerable Bede said it on the Internet, so it must be true, right? I will probably find it quoted on 12 other forums inside of a month. The fact is, NDEs have generated intense interest and debate within the scientific community as well as the general public. There could be few people on the planet who are more familiar than I am with "the science behind" the NDE phenomenon, and there is no way that anyone familiar with it could suggest that NDEs have been decisively "explained away" any more than the UFO phenomenon has been "explained away" to the satisfaction of anyone who didn't start with the axiomatic belief that "There can be no such thing." Few people who take the subject of the afterlife seriously would suggest that NDEs are proof of an afterlife; they are a body of evidence strongly suggestive of an afterlife. If NDEs have a completely prosaic explanation, it is "just a bit odd" that the vast majority of them involve contact with people who are, in fact, dead; that the dead folks are often not the folks whom we would have "expected" to appear to the experiencer, but are often distant relatives and casual acquaintances who share only the common trait that they are dead; that in a fair number of cases the experiencer either didn't know the dead folks were dead but learned of it after the experience, or didn't recognize the dead folks at all but identified them in photographs after the experience; that even the blissful NDEs involve a discomforting "judgment" in which one experiences the pain that one has caused to others; and that in the large majority of NDEs the experiencer encounters some form of boundary that represents the point of no return. Hardly what we would have expected evolution, a chemical in the brain or wishful thinking to have produced.
If NDEs have a completely prosaic explanation, it is "just a bit odd" that the vast majority of them involve contact with people who are, in fact, dead; that the dead folks are often not the folks whom we would have "expected" to appear to the experiencer, but are often distant relatives and casual acquaintances who share only the common trait that they are dead; that in a fair number of cases the experiencer either didn't know the dead folks were dead but learned of it after the experience, or didn't recognize the dead folks at all but identified them in photographs after the experience; that even the blissful NDEs involve a discomforting "judgment" in which one experiences the pain that one has caused to others; and that in the large majority of NDEs the experiencer encounters some form of boundary that represents the point of no return. Hardly what we would have expected evolution, a chemical in the brain or wishful thinking to have produced.
To being with, NDEs have NOT been conclusively disproven, even though they are at least provisionally falsifiable, at least more so than most supernatural claims. Nor have they been conclusively proven. I'd be more impressed with the evidence to date if it were conclusive and unambiguous.
That said ... no, it is not odd that one encounters people who you don't expect to in NDEs, anymore than that dreams surprise us with the unexpected or unwanted sometimes. If you want to be completely consistent, then you should regard that as evidence that dreams are something more than the random firings of a sleeping brain and/or the somnambulant working out of current issues in one's life.
Anything that one might encounter in a dream or an NDE could just as well be the subconscious brought to a form of conscious awareness. Someone who has wronged others generally knows it at some level (unless perhaps they are a sociopath, and even then, they have an awareness that others will disapprove even if they don't understand why). So it's no surprise that in an altered state of consciousness, one's conscience might reprove the person. (By the way, I wonder if anyone has studied whether sociopaths have NDEs, or how they are different!)
There are some interesting stories coming out of NDEs that we can't explain. Some of them are even verified, at least insofar as the person describing the experience believes them to be accurate. I'll reserve judgment on those ... either way.
In the interest of full disclosure I'm willing to admit that I'm not really interested in any sort of afterlife for myself, so I don't really WANT to discover that I'll be obliged to partake of one. However, I don't think my leaning away from NDEs is animated by that, only made easier. The reader's mileage may vary.
Few people who take the subject of the afterlife seriously would suggest that NDEs are proof of an afterlife; they are a body of evidence strongly suggestive of an afterlife. If NDEs have a completely prosaic explanation, it is "just a bit odd" that the vast majority of them involve contact with people who are, in fact, dead; that the dead folks are often not the folks whom we would have "expected" to appear to the experiencer, but are often distant relatives and casual acquaintances who share only the common trait that they are dead; that in a fair number of cases the experiencer either didn't know the dead folks were dead but learned of it after the experience, or didn't recognize the dead folks at all but identified them in photographs after the experience; that even the blissful NDEs involve a discomforting "judgment" in which one experiences the pain that one has caused to others; and that in the large majority of NDEs the experiencer encounters some form of boundary that represents the point of no return. Hardly what we would have expected evolution, a chemical in the brain or wishful thinking to have produced.
First off, I didn't specify that the ones holding NDEs as proof would be ones that take the subject really seriously. The point was who might be accounting for an upsurge in sales and that might well include many that prefer to not look too deeply into a subject.(Not an unknown or small segment of theists, by the way)
What is a 'fair number of cases'? 20.. 20,000?
I find nothing about it "just a bit odd". The brain and what it's capable of is a fascinating thing.
Since I must be so "staggeringly uninformed." why don't you tell me what cerebral hypoxia or other known brain functions couldn't explain, when it comes to NDEs?
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so that's where all my Tithes to the church of atheism mission-agenda slush - fund is going.
