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Life After Death shown beyond reasonable doubt?

HonestJoe

HonestJoe

Well-Known Member
George-ananda said:
Would you please explain what you mean by HARD evidence? Can you at least give me one hypothetical example of what HARD evidence would even look like in the field of Life After Death research.
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I still think the proponents are jumping the gun. You can't talk about evidence until you've got a clear hypothesis. You first need to explain exactly what you mean by "life after death", what events or processes you're claiming occur and in what circumstances. Only then can we determine what could be measured and devise suitable experiments to test the hypothesis.
 
V

vepurusg

Member
YmirGF said:
That much IS obvious, George. Look, I believe in Life, I do not believe in literal death,
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Same here :D What's your reasoning? MWI? Subjectivity of Existential being? Or something else?



It seems completely fair to say that there is no life after death, because the concept of death as a temporal event of finality to the ill defined notion of personal life is existentially and metaphysically flawed.
 
Thief

Thief

Rogue Theologian
I think this is one discussion where agreed terms is pointless.

Proof?...evidence?...experience?...experiments?
Not likely.
This will be a cognitive effort.

6billion people on this earth each with a body designed to learn.
And then we crumble into dust?

I think it greatly unreasonable to NOT believe in life after death.

Generate all of this 'intelligent' life only to let it die?
Not likely.
Good thing this thread is under religious debates/science and religion.

God did it.
 
Gjallarhorn

Gjallarhorn

N'yog-Sothep
Thief said:
It's been addressed.
Your objection and denial are noted.
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If humans are more than animals, then your distinction of being "designed to learn" is not the basis for life after death, since that extends to many other animal species.
 
mycorrhiza

mycorrhiza

Well-Known Member
Thief said:
Quick little retorts are shallow....you are more than animal.

Step up to the plate and speak...like a human.
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Humans: Kingdom - Animalia
I'd say that I'm an animal. A quite intelligent one, but yet an animal.

When does a species go beyond being an animal, according to you? Neanderthals? Gorillas? Dolphins?
 
YmirGF

YmirGF

Bodhisattva in Recovery
vepurusg said:
Same here :D What's your reasoning? MWI? Subjectivity of Existential being? Or something else?
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My reasoning is based on my out-of-body experiences. From the first moments "out" I realized that I was as "dead" as I was ever going to be, though I was completely aware that one day I would put my physical body aside, much like a well loved, but worn out, old sweater.

vepurusg said:
It seems completely fair to say that there is no life after death, because the concept of death as a temporal event of finality to the ill defined notion of personal life is existentially and metaphysically flawed.
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Indeed. Life after death is actually a bit misleading, in my opinion. There is only life regardless of what forms (and lack of form) that life takes on to reflect its current goals.
"Life after Death" is predicated on the misunderstanding that we are solely physical beings. I don't tend to limit my concept of self, basing it on the common fixation. The point is, people need to BE HERE NOW, not worry about being somewhere else. Take care of life's little wrinkles, as they occur and you will be sitting pretty, regardless of whatever actually happens when you consign your body to the dust.
 
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V

vepurusg

Member
YmirGF said:
"Life after Death" is predicated on the misunderstanding that we are solely physical beings. I don't tend to limit my concept of self, basing it on the common fixation.
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Very well said. In many of the most important ways, we are memetic beings- what we are, is an idea (a pretty complicated idea, but an idea none-the-less); and ideas are indestructible. They can be forgotten and remembered through the eons- not only by other organic minds, but perhaps some day even by computers; they can proliferate throughout many universes, and be frozen forever from an outside, timeless, perspective of the multiverse.

As individuals, made of information encoded in the multiverse, we have more in common with number- indelible and inherent to the logic of reality- than to the fleeting concept of evolutionary competition that most people hold as mortality.

How many different iterations of a person can there really be, before personalities begin to converge, and experiences repeat each-other to the point of indifferentiability? You know, If it quacks like a duck... ;)

Not sure if that made much sense, but anyway, it's great to hear your ideas.
 
PolyHedral

PolyHedral

Superabacus Mystic
vepurusg said:
Very well said. In many of the most important ways, we are memetic beings- what we are, is an idea (a pretty complicated idea, but an idea none-the-less); and ideas are indestructible. They can be forgotten and remembered through the eons- not only by other organic minds, but perhaps some day even by computers; they can proliferate throughout many universes, and be frozen forever from an outside, timeless, perspective of the multiverse.

As individuals, made of information encoded in the multiverse, we have more in common with number- indelible and inherent to the logic of reality- than to the fleeting concept of evolutionary competition that most people hold as mortality.

How many different iterations of a person can there really be, before personalities begin to converge, and experiences repeat each-other to the point of indifferentiability? You know, If it quacks like a duck... ;)

Not sure if that made much sense, but anyway, it's great to hear your ideas.
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"Souls are software objects. Software is not immortal."

How many different iterations of a person can there really be, before personalities begin to converge, and experiences repeat each-other to the point of indifferentiability?
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A finite number, though one spectacularly large. :p
 
Thief

Thief

Rogue Theologian
mycorrhiza said:
Humans: Kingdom - Animalia
I'd say that I'm an animal. A quite intelligent one, but yet an animal.

When does a species go beyond being an animal, according to you? Neanderthals? Gorillas? Dolphins?
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Okay....let's run with that....

All the chaos that comes with being animal will follow us into the next life.
...the shark....the bear....the wasp....and everything else that wants a piece of you.

Think the animals are learning about humans as they pass by you?

Peace in the next world, for haven eaten some many of them?

What if they increase in ability?

We humans like to think we become more like the angelic.
We expect to walk in heaven along side them.

What if animals follow behind and all around?...with increase.

Think maybe the next life could be more dangerous than this one?

Perhaps the discussion would be easier for you, if you were more focused on what we are....
Animal?.....sure....
Spiritual?...of course....
Dead meat in a grave?.....only if you fail to stand up.
 
V

vepurusg

Member
PolyHedral said:
A finite number, though one spectacularly large. :p
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Within an infinite universe, an infinite number of finite universes, or an infinite amount of time in a finite and infinitely reconfigurable universe, any one of those finite numbers must reoccur an infinite number of times, no? ;)
 
PolyHedral

PolyHedral

Superabacus Mystic
vepurusg said:
Within an infinite universe, an infinite number of finite universes, or an infinite amount of time in a finite and infinitely reconfigurable universe, any one of those finite numbers must reoccur an infinite number of times, no? ;)
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Yes, but the universe isn't quite infinite. ;)
 
V

vepurusg

Member
PolyHedral said:
Yes, but the universe isn't quite infinite. ;)
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Oh really? Are you certain of that, and that there is only one universe, and that it will end and never begin again and that it follows nothing else?

Any one of those being true implies a vast potential expanse of existence which is even more profoundly large than the one in which we stand now. :D
 
crystalonyx

crystalonyx

Well-Known Member
George-ananda said:
My main point is that the cumulative evidence from many areas within the parananormal field shows beyond all reasonable
doubt that Life After Death (LAD) exists.

I'm not saying LAD is proven in the strict sense of the word 'proven'. I would challenge the reader to describe a
hypothetical event or experiment that would prove LAD. I believe any one event could be given a possible (although maybe
highly unlikely) explanation that does not require LAD.

I think Science is great now but in another thousand years it will be considered to have been still in its toddler stage
in the early 21st Century. Right now science is concerned with understanding the working of our known physical realm and
just a few of the boldest are speculating anything beyond that realm. The paranormal is problematic for scientists today
because phenomena (like ghosts, mediums, reincarnation memories, etc.) can not be reasonably explained in the 'physical
realm only' paradigm. They are left to take the unreasonable position that 100% of these cases must be explainable in
physical realm only ways (hoax, hallucination, misperception, wishful biased investigators, etc.).

The key to my main point 'Life after Death exists beyond reasonable doubt' is EVIDENCE. One must pour over an incredible
amount of anecdotal and experimental evidence and then decide.

Anyone who wishes to wade into the evidence for LAD has a great starting point by googling the web site of Victor Zammit.
As an incentive for you I think he offers a million dollars to anyone that proves him wrong. I can't vouch for his
character but I can say he came to the same conclusions as me and has done a fantastic job of accumulating evidence and
pointing to further evidence to make his case.

I know there are a lot of good respectable agnostic/atheist materialists out there on this forum (where conciousness
without a physical brain is considered an absurd concept) and I would like to hear from them.

In fact I would like to hear from anyone who would like to agree or disagree with my point that 'Life after Death exists
beyond reasonable doubt'. This is a such an important question and the 'in-the-box' position is that we should maintain
a skeptical and cautious position and not speak out strongly.
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Actually the opposit is true, there is no hard evidence whatosoever that there is any kind of life after death.:eek:
 
shawn001

shawn001

Well-Known Member
While I am very much into QM and mutilverses and the possiblities, they have not yet found other universes, they are starting to look into it more seriously and with better methods. There are clues.

However, at the moment were talking about this universe and its natural laws.


because of realtive recent discoveries like the expansion of the universe speeding up, that has implications to all matter and the universe itself.


Universe today
End of Everything

"End of Life – 500 million years – 5 billion years"

End of Stars – 100 trillion years from now

The End of Regular Matter – 1030 years

End of Black Holes – 10100 Years

The End of Everything – 10100 years and beyond
When the last black hole evaporates, all that will remain in the Universe are photons of radiation, and elementary particles that escaped capture by black holes. The temperature of the entire Universe will reach a final temperature just above absolute zero.

The End of Everything

end of life on this planet at 5 to 7.5 billion years


Becase the sun will go red giant.
 
shawn001

shawn001

Well-Known Member
George-ananda

when you make a claim like "'Life after Death exists beyond reasonable doubt'.

Then its your job to support it with evidence and you have not done that.

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." Carl Sagan.

Your evidence so far has been extraordinary in its claims, but not in anyway scientific or real evidence at all.
 
shawn001

shawn001

Well-Known Member
I would say this adds some doubt!

Souls do not Exist
Evidence from Science & Philosophy Against Mind-Body Dualism

By Vexen Crabtree 2007 Dec 14


The Recently Dead
In many folk tales, Westerners tell of seeing the ghosts of the recently departed. Scientific investigation has always found that such cases are either explainable in terms of the subject actually knowing more than they knew they knew (or let on), or are mistaken. Experiments where people write down such predictions before finding out confirming evidence (such as receiving a phone call informing them a relative is dead), results in a very poor record of accuracy, with the only slight success rate attributable to the fact that people tend to predict the deaths of the elderly or unwell. The investigative psychologist Stan Gooch, who does believe that the human brain is capable of supernatural intelligence, argues that all such encounters with the dead are actually subjective methods of interpreting information, but which do not actually have a basis in physical reality:

�In all these cases we do not require the discarnate spirit hypothesis at all. It is totally irrelevant. [...] (As emphasized, the person is not always dead when the vision occurs). Is it not enough to say that in all cases of death that having received kind of telepathic impulse if events, the unconscious mind then generates some kind of symbolic fantasy - a vision, a dream, a premonition - by which means it presents the received information to consciousness? That view gains enormously also from the fact that Australian aborigines are very good at sensing the death of a distant companion. But they do not see a ghostly vision of that person, as westerners often do. Instead they see a vision of that person's totem animal running about the camp. Once again, 'we see what we expect to see' in terms of our cultural (and in this case religious) upbringing. The totem animal is the best choice, and the obvious choice, for the Aborigine unconscious mind to make in presenting its information to consciousness.� "The Origins of Psychic Phenomena: Poltergeists, Incubi, Succubi, and the Unconscious Mind"
Stan Gooch (2007) [Book Review]14
​
3.3. Out of Body Experiences

Out-of-body experiences were once poorly studied scientifically because of their purely psychological nature, but recent technological developments have allowed neurologists to study these types of states of consciousness. Scientists have been able to recreate situations in which out of body experiences occur in wide-awake individuals.

�Two sets of studies published independently in the same issue of the journal Science demonstrate how the illusion of a bodily self outside one's own body can be stimulated in the laboratory. The studies forge ways to better understand both out-of-body and near-death experiences. "The research provides a physical explanation for the phenomenon usually ascribed to otherworldly influences," Peter Bruger, a neurologist at University Hospital in Zurich who was not involved in the experiment, told science journalist Sandra Blakesee in her report on these experiments in The New York Times (August 24).� Kendrick Frazier in Skeptical Inquirer (2007)15
​

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1591024811/vexencrabtree�Olaf Blanke and his colleagues report that they are able to bring about so-called out-of-body experiences (OBE), where a person's consciousness seems to become detached from the body, by electrical stimulation of a specific region in the brain. I have discussed OBE experiments in two books and have concluded that they provide no evidence for anything happening outside of the physical processes of the brain.� "God, the Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist" by Prof. Victor J. Stenger (2007)16
​
The two books by Prof. Victor Stenger on this subject, plus relevant page numbers, are:
  1. Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World beyond the Senses (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990) p111.
  2. Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003) p290-99.
Extensive research into cases of OBEs by skeptical scientists have shown that in all cases, details of the event have not produced anything that could not have been known by the patient. Experiments have included hidden symbols placed high up in rooms so that only through an OBE or other supernatural process could someone know what the symbol was. Simple tests like this have always demonstrated that what is 'seen' during an OBE is only ever what the patient already knew was there. This, combined with our neurological understanding of OBEs is conclusive proof that OBEs are purely psychological, with, as Prof Stenger says, "no evidence for anything happening outside of the physical processes of the brain".

Souls do not Exist: Evidence from Science & Philosophy Against Mind-Body Dualism

I am not saying for a fact there isn't, just that there is zero scientific evidence at the moment.
 
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