Thoughts on the afterlife (or lack thereof)

[Tages]

During the repeated round-we-gos the board goes through every week or so on the topic of religions, one little subtopic is always brought up: peoples' fear and anxiety over the uncertainty of death, and how this effects their religious and spiritual outlook.

So, since we already had a poll on what everyone's religious beliefs were, here's one on the specific question of "what happens" when a human being dies, expires, punches out, kicks the bucket, et cetera, et cetera.


What are your beliefs on the topic?

[i_mmmchocolate]

Well, since I'm agnostic, I chose the last one.

I don't know what will happen after death-- which kind of scares me. The unknown.

[Frodo-X]

I believe in the good place/bad place myself.

However, I don't necessarily agree with what most people believe determines where you go. I have difficulty believing that God would punish you for being the wrong religion, when religion is only determined by your parents. Let's say (just for the sake of argument, I'm not claiming any religion is right or wrong) that you are raised Jewish. Your parents are Jewish, so you are Jewish. Then, when you die, it turns out that the religion that was correct is in fact Catholic. I don't think you'll be turned away because you were misled by your elders. That wouldn't be fair.

[Jeff Brady]

Aw crap, I meant #4. My screen jumped when I clicked.

[Fenris]

I believe that after death, we're brought into an emotional unity with God- something we can't really conceive of now, though the closest analogy may be marriage.

Those who choose it attain a transhuman, transcendental level of joy. Those who don't, remain their individual selves for eternity.

õ
In a nutshell!

[Chris Nowlin]

Haven't voted yet. I'm between 1,2, and 6.

I tend to believe that the soul has some meaning and that there is an immortal part of us all. What precisely that means or what happens to the sould when our body dies are something I'm still trying to figure out.

I still haven't decided what heaven/hell and the distinctions thereof actually mean to me yet.

Hmmmm...

EDIT: I picked 1. My hesitation might have meant 6 would be better. Oh well.

[Gingold]

We die with our bodies. It sucks, but there's no good evidence to suggest anything else.

[Mike Smash!]

I believe that we simply die when our lives end and that we do live on by the legacy of our work and deeds and in the hearts and memories of those we leave behind.

[i_mmmchocolate]

It sucks, but there's no good evidence to suggest anything else.
How do you know? What evidence? Do you speak to the dead?

[Jeff Brady]

How do you know? What evidence? Do you speak to the dead?

There is no evidence; that's his point.

[Mike Smash!]

How do you know? What evidence? Do you speak to the dead?

He doesn't. And no one else has either.

The burden of proof isn't on the skeptic or the non-believer. It's on the one making the claim.

There is no evidence supporting the existence of an afterlife, otherwise someone would have certainly won a Nobel Prize for discovering it by now.

[Chris Nowlin]

I believe that we simply die when our lives end and that we do live on by the legacy of our work and deeds and in the hearts and memories of those we leave behind.

I knew you believed in immortality in some sense.

Sometimes I wonder if a lot of people aren't saying the same things in different ways, just couched in their own perspective.

[Gingold]

How do you know? What evidence? Do you speak to the dead?

Sometimes, but they never reply.

[Chris Nowlin]

He doesn't. And no one else has either.

The burden of proof isn't on the skeptic or the non-believer. It's on the one making the claim.

There is no evidence supporting the existence of an afterlife, otherwise someone would have certainly won a Nobel Prize for discovering it by now.

Or the one claiming they have the universal answer with certainty as opposed to the one who thinks the answer may be somewhat subjective and personal.

Nobel prize in what I wonder? Not science, I presume.

[Chris Nowlin]

Sometimes, but they never reply.

Some would take that they don't seem to listen as evidence they're not out there. But, given that logic, my family, roommate, classmates, teachers, students, all women and most everyone else who realizes I'm better off ignored may as well not actually be there for all I know.

[Gingold]

Some would take that they don't seem to listen as evidence they're not out there. But, given that logic, my family, roommate, classmates, teachers, students, all women and most everyone else who realizes I'm better off ignored may as well not actually be there for all I know.

Did somebody say something?

[Mike Smash!]

Or the one claiming they have the universal answer with certainty as opposed to the one who thinks the answer may be somewhat subjective and personal.

I don't know any Atheists claiming to have the universal answer, only Theists in certain religions do.

But the burden of proof is always on the one making the claim. When Pat Robertson claimed he could legpress 2,000 lbs. (1 ton), it was his job to prove it, not those of doubters to debunk him.

Based on what I know of people Robertson's age and the fact that he'd have topped the world record holder by several hundred pounds, I think it's safe to say with some confidence that he's likely lying rather to be agnostic about Pat Roberson being as strong as say...Luke Cage.

Nobel prize in what I wonder? Not science, I presume.

In science absolutely. It's a scientific question. "Is there any consciousness after death?"

If someone found real proof of it, it'd be a huge scientific discovery.

[Frodo-X]

The burden of proof isn't on the skeptic or the non-believer. It's on the one making the claim.


What burden of proof? This isn't a courtroom where things have to be proven to you. A question was asked and answered. The thread isn't 'Prove to me there's an afterlife.'

As for me, I've seen enough things to convince me that death isn't the end. Such as my uncle, who claimed to see an angel who told him he'd die that night, and his perfectly healthy dog would follow a week later. That night, his heart failed.

A week later, the dog died.

Good enough for me.

[i_mmmchocolate]

Ack, I misread your post, Gingold. Sorry about that. I think it's time to sleep.

[Kevin Vetter]

There is no difference between claiming there is an afterlife and there isn't. If you want someone to give you proof of their being an afterlife then you should have proof showing there isn't one.

[Chris Nowlin]

If someone found real proof of it, it'd be a huge scientific discovery.

I guess you're right there. I was just assuming scientists never would discover such a thing. That assumption led to my statement.

I think of it more as a... spiritual question than a scientific one.

[i_mmmchocolate]

Aw crap, I meant #4. My screen jumped when I clicked.

Yeah I made an error in the poll too. I meant to choose: There's not enough evidence to support any conclusion, I'm undecided/agnostic on the question

I really need to sleep now.

[Tages]

We die with our bodies. It sucks, but there's no good evidence to suggest anything else.

Then the interesting question is...

What evidence do you have that consciousness is entirely physical in nature?

[Serik]

I think we just die.

It's hard trying to imagine what not existing is like...because, well, you wouldn't exist :)

[Expletive Deleted]

If I get rewarded or punished in an afterlife, fine. Whatever the criteria are (and for all I know, it's Manichaeism), I'll just have to hope I can get by on my merits. If there's nothing there, also fine. I'll have hopefully led a fulfilled life, on the whole.

Basically, I'm apathetic.

[TheTen-EyedMan]

In New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle video, there is a B&W clip in the middle of
the song with an Asian woman saying "I don't believe in reincarnation because I refuse to come back
as a bug or as a rabbit!" to which a man replies "You know, you're a real up
person." Then the camera focuses in tight on another woman standing in the
doorway behind them.

I believe that's God.

I don't believe in the concept of heaven because, as Belinda Carlisle said "Heaven is a place on Earth". Although it could be Earth-2 because all the Pre-Crisis stories were set there.

But I could be wrong.

Anyway, Belinda Carlisle shagged Tim Finn so maybe she's not the best judge.

[Jeff Brady]

Then the interesting question is...

What evidence do you have that consciousness is entirely physical in nature?

So far, that's all we know. What evidence do you have that it's anything else?

[Mike Smash!]

What burden of proof? This isn't a courtroom where things have to be proven to you. A question was asked and answered. The thread isn't 'Prove to me there's an afterlife.'

As for me, I've seen enough things to convince me that death isn't the end. Such as my uncle, who claimed to see an angel who told him he'd die that night, and his perfectly healthy dog would follow a week later. That night, his heart failed.

A week later, the dog died.

Good enough for me.

I'm sorry, Frodo. An anecdote isn't proof. That's likely a coincedence like a lot of people have when they have a terrible feeling a plane will crash and then it does or they have a feeling that a loved one will die and they do.

We have those feelings all the time, and most of the time nothing happens. We as humans will always remember the times that something did and will naturally forget the times that they didn't.

[Mike Smash!]

There is no difference between claiming there is an afterlife and there isn't. If you want someone to give you proof of their being an afterlife then you should have proof showing there isn't one.

No, there is a huge difference. For one thing, it's impossible to prove a negative claim.

And second, you don't believe something simply because it hasn't been disproven or you'd have to literally believe in everything that can't be 100% conclusively disproven, including Thor, Xenu, elves, leprechauns, the alien autopsy, astrology, psychic powers and the Greek Gods.

It's not the job of anyone who disbelieves in such things to prove they do not exist, it's the job of the person making the claim. For one, you're trying to say that any claim made with 100% conclusive proof is somehow equal in probability.

As Kramer is fond of saying, not all claims are equal.

Prove I can't fly, for instance.

You can't. And if you tossed me to my death, it's not hard to rationalize my way out of it. I simply didn't want to fly and chose death over revealing my powers to you.

It's ridiculous to say that the odds of me having the gift of flight and not having it are 50/50 or even remotely close.

[Mike Smash!]

I guess you're right there. I was just assuming scientists never would discover such a thing. That assumption led to my statement.

I think of it more as a... spiritual question than a scientific one.

They're all scientific questions. People used to believe that mental and physical illnesses has supernatural origins and were since proven wrong. I think that no answer is potentially unknowable, given the right advance in science and technology.

The purpose of science is to challenge the barriers of our knowledge.

[Jeff Brady]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand we're off!

Off topic.

[TheTen-EyedMan]

I believe that immortality comes from people remembering you after you die. I still talk and think about my uncle and he's been dead longer than I knew him (he died when I was 11, I'm now 36).

[Frodo-X]

I'm sorry, Frodo. An anecdote isn't proof. That's likely a coincedence like a lot of people have when they have a terrible feeling a plane will crash and then it does or they have a feeling that a loved one will die and they do.

We have those feelings all the time, and most of the time nothing happens. We as humans will always remember the times that something did and will naturally forget the times that they didn't.

Oh, I wasn't trying to prove anything. Just tellin' a story. After all, it is entirely unprovable, one way or the other. The only way to know is to die.

After all, even the people who've died and come back claiming to have seen things are dismissed as last minute hallucinations of a dying brain.

It will never be proven, one way or the other. There's no way to gather hard evidence. It's not as if you can plant a camera that'll show you what happens to a dead person.

There are some questions that science, no matter how all-powerful it's made out to be, will never answer.

[Mike Smash!]

There are some questions that science, no matter how all-powerful it's made out to be, will never answer.

Here's where we disagree. I think they're answerable, but just held back by the limitations of our knowledge and technology right now.

I'm an optimist. We won't likely see those answers in our lifetime, but that doens't make them impossible.

[Mike Smith]

Here's where we disagree. I think they're answerable, but just held back by the limitations of our knowledge and technology right now.

We can't prove that though.

I'd like to think there is an afterlife, as it fits into my irrational belief in religion, though the possibility of being "worm-food" and no more in posthumous times is always looming.

[Mike Smash!]

We can't prove that though.

We can't prove it with 100% accuracy, but we've managed to do all sorts of things that would have seemed impossible to ancestors before.

I'm sure if you went back in time 150 years ago and told people that we'd be able to travel to any place in the world in a matter of hours, they'd tell you you were crazy.

I think that there's enough evidence of us learning the previously unknowable behind us to be optimistic. It's just a question of learning it before we blow ourselves up.

[Chris Nowlin]

No, there is a huge difference. For one thing, it's impossible to prove a negative claim.

All I'm suggesting ever. People claim otherwise.



And second, you don't believe something simply because it hasn't been disproven or you'd have to literally believe in everything that can't be 100% conclusively disproven, including Thor, Xenu, elves, leprechauns, the alien autopsy, astrology, psychic powers and the Greek Gods.

Don't have to believe in anything I don't want to (it would be best if I believed in things there are evidence for: gravity, other human beings, etc.) I don't have to believe in leprechauns. The difference between the beliefs you mention and others that also can't be proven or disproven is a personal one. Some things I believe in. Some I don't. Some I'm still trying to figure out what my head's trying to tell me.

Just because you accept one thing you have no proof of (like you probably accept a lot of things on the basis that others claim to have proven them), doesn't mean you have to accept more.



It's not the job of anyone who disbelieves in such things to prove they do not exist, it's the job of the person making the claim. For one, you're trying to say that any claim made with 100% conclusive proof is somehow equal in probability.

It's the job of the person making a claim they think is objectively proven by science or logic to at least provide support for their claim. Especially when they later point out: it's impossible to prove a negative claim.


As Kramer is fond of saying, not all claims are equal.


Prove I can't fly, for instance.

I don't believe you can fly. I'm pretty sure I can't. But I've never met you. Hard to prove either way. I find it reasonable to assume you don't.


You can't. And if you tossed me to my death, it's not hard to rationalize my way out of it. I simply didn't want to fly and chose death over revealing my powers to you.

Let's try this sometime. Then can I see if Jeffrey is a witch or not by testing if he floats.

It's ridiculous to say that the odds of me having the gift of flight and not having it are 50/50 or even remotely close.

Empirical evidence. I have no proof that anyone in the world cannot fly. But noone in the world to my knowledge has claimed that they can. None of my parents, friends, etc. have suggested such a thing. Either they are all lying to me, and there's a world-wide conspiracy to keep me from thinking people can fly, or most people in the world cannot fly. Let me take that as a reasonable premise. Then empirical reasoning tells me noone can fly, as most people cannot and I've never known of anyone who can. It is thus reasonable to assume you cannot fly.

Beyond that, I'm sure some scientist somewhere could do a fine enough job talking about our bone structure or whatever and show why the ability of flight would contradict certain aspects of our anatomy (obviously, not me)

Evidence suggests you cannot fly.

Also, you're making a claim that is physical in nature, rather than spiritual or metaphysical.

Two problems with your analogy.

[Chris Nowlin]

They're all scientific questions. People used to believe that mental and physical illnesses has supernatural origins and were since proven wrong. I think that no answer is potentially unknowable, given the right advance in science and technology.

The purpose of science is to challenge the barriers of our knowledge.

Science can tell us all there is to know about our bodies and the physical universe we live in. It can unlock all the mysteries of space and time and understand the workings of everything, from the universe in its entirety to the inner workings of an atom. Powerful tool, science.

I think there are other types of truth, some more subjective, some more abstract.

The example I'll keep pointing to is math. The only tools it has for proof are logic and rigour. Empirical evidence is not accepted for mathematical proofs. That a statement holds in a thousand cases and fails in one does not make a proof. Even if we can prove it's impossible for us to ever find a counterexample, that's not a proof.

And many statements made are too abstract. There is not a direct enough connection to the physical world for empirical forms of proof to make any sense.

Yet mathematical truths have power and have contributed greatly to our understanding of reality. If science studies the way the universe is, math studies the way the universe has to be.

Mathematical statements are boolean in nature. Everything is either true or false. No inbetweens.

And I think there can be room in our thinking for subjective notions of truth. Statements not black or white, but deeply personal. And if a person holds to personal beliefs that a) are not contradicted by rational thinking, and b) do not lead to immoral actions, I think, that if those beliefs are to be challenged, the evidence must be provided by the challenger of said beliefs.

For another example, stories. Some stories are fiction, and not very interesting at that. Others are completely factual. Somewhere in between is stories that are metaphorical in some way. Not factual, but containing of truths. And some stories are more than true. There's a wide spectrum from a factual story to a bullshit one, with many shades and types of truth across the spectrum in between.

[Chris Nowlin]

Here's where we disagree. I think they're answerable, but just held back by the limitations of our knowledge and technology right now.

I'm an optimist. We won't likely see those answers in our lifetime, but that doens't make them impossible.

We can't prove it with 100% accuracy, but we've managed to do all sorts of things that would have seemed impossible to ancestors before.

I'm sure if you went back in time 150 years ago and told people that we'd be able to travel to any place in the world in a matter of hours, they'd tell you you were crazy.

I think that there's enough evidence of us learning the previously unknowable behind us to be optimistic. It's just a question of learning it before we blow ourselves up.



Maybe in the future, scientists will discover previously untraceable sources of energy leaving a person as they die. Maybe they can follow this energy and find an indication of brain-waves on some other planet where the person's consciousness now resides (I'm thinking like Cylons brain patterns being jumped toward the resurrection ship). Maybe science will discover far more about what happens after we die. Maybe what it discovers will be weird shit like all our minds transferring to robot bodies on a distant planet.

That's not heaven.

Whatever energy patters science may come to associate with human life, that's not scientists discovering the soul.

Call it an artificially contrived definition if you want to. What science does come across is by definition natural. Nothing spiritual, nothing supernatural. Just nature. If scientists ever come across it and explain it, the explanation is a naturalistic one.

Spiritual truth must then be about discovering personal connections to the universe in concord with known science, but beyond what science can logically discover. And therefore strictly outside the domain of empiricism. And purely within an individual's heart.

To reiterate basic point. In the future, we may know far more about life and death and what lies beyond than we do now. And some discoveries may contradict some people's beliefs. Those people should then adapt. But, more likely, anything science discovers about these matters, absolutely anything, will only further our own personal understanding of these matters and strengthen our own spiritual beliefs even more firmly.

EDIT: And focusing on,


I'm sure if you went back in time 150 years ago and told people that we'd be able to travel to any place in the world in a matter of hours, they'd tell you you were crazy.

200 years ago, people would have told you there are no monsters and there never were. No dragons either. They'd tell you the same today. In the interim we discovered that giant lizard creatures with really big teeth once roamed the earth that could probably have been considered monsters or dragons (well, without the fire, but that one in Jurassic Park spit venom). But our stance on monsters has not changed. Because "monster" refers to creatures that aren't real. And those other things. They're just dinosaurs. Science has classified them. Essentially just a group of animals that has been extinct a very long time. Anything science discovers will probably not be referred to as a monster. All about perspective.

[Tages]

So far, that's all we know. What evidence do you have that it's anything else?

I don't.

That's the weird thing about consciousness and what death means to it. We have zero evidence one way or the other. This is one area where Sam Harris and I completely agree where he states in "The End of Faith" that atheists' common claim that death means the immediate and irreversible obliteration of consciousness is an article of faith just as belief in an afterlife is, and it's almost as if both sides are afraid of what might happen if we seriously began investigating it.

Or, to put it more succintly, the only answer I've really come across from scientific materialists when I ask how they know consciousness is 100% physical is "Well, what else would it be?"

[Shellhead]

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. So much for faith.

[Mike Smith]

We can't prove it with 100% accuracy, but we've managed to do all sorts of things that would have seemed impossible to ancestors before.

I'm sure if you went back in time 150 years ago and told people that we'd be able to travel to any place in the world in a matter of hours, they'd tell you you were crazy.

I think that there's enough evidence of us learning the previously unknowable behind us to be optimistic. It's just a question of learning it before we blow ourselves up.

I'm definitely optimistic and as a student of science hope that our current reasoning, perception and ability to use our senses to understand the universe is nowhere near complete. We just can't prove that's the case though.

[JeffreyWKramer]

What evidence do you have that consciousness is entirely physical in nature?

The fact that everything we actually understand about the world all comes down to physical/naturalistic phenomena.

The fact that physical events and influences - things like drugs, medication, brain injury, illness, etc. - impact consciousness and mental functioning.

The fact that we can, via technological means, view mental activities via their physiological correlates, and that all mental activities have such correlates.

[JeffreyWKramer]

As to the question...

When we're dead, we cease to be. Our consciousness is a biological function, and when the body dies and has been dead long enough that the underlying systems deteriorate beyond a certain point, our consciousness is completely over, kaput, done with. No soul or spirit, no afterlife, no reincarnation. To the extent we live on at all, we do so through our deeds, through any records or creations we leave behind, through our genes (assuming we had kids), through the influence we've had on others and through others' memories of us.

[^UP^]

If there is an afterlife, its probably just as good or bad as the life we have now. So I'm gonna have to go with reincarnation.

[Rob on the Job]

I have a hunch that we are as ignorant about the reality and totality of this existence as ants are of Pluto's new status of a non-planet.

[Paul McEnery]

I don't.

That's the weird thing about consciousness and what death means to it. We have zero evidence one way or the other. This is one area where Sam Harris and I completely agree where he states in "The End of Faith" that atheists' common claim that death means the immediate and irreversible obliteration of consciousness is an article of faith just as belief in an afterlife is, and it's almost as if both sides are afraid of what might happen if we seriously began investigating it.

Or, to put it more succintly, the only answer I've really come across from scientific materialists when I ask how they know consciousness is 100% physical is "Well, what else would it be?"

Well, exactly. I maintain that "spirit" and "soul" are two more indexical words that speak of the qualities of a system rather than towards an object itself. Any attempts to define them as nominative nouns falls apart.

It's pretty obvious that consciousness is a higher function of the brain, and so is personality. You can change the nature of either with a blunt instrument. What else could we mean by spirit but animation? That's what we're going on about when we say "he gave up the ghost". There's no actual ghost involved, any more than a ghostly car ascends to heaven when the big end goes.

So spirit, consciousness, and personality are all emergent functions of the body. That leaves us with "soul", which clearly relates to our relationship with what we call "God"; what I would call the atman = Atman equation (using Hindu words for soul and God).

I'm still liking Dread's idea that "God" = quantum foam, which implies "soul" = awareness of our own quantum foaminess, and the attendant Big Bliss. But what also comes with this is the knowledge that everything about us apart from this is transient; and that it's not that the atman returns to the Atman, but that they've never been distinct in the first place.

Everything that we think of as what makes us individual is in fact what separates us from The One. Which is fine. I like to keep my kippers separate from my custard. All beer is one in the keg, but I can't drink it till it's in my own pint glass. And other zen bollocks. So what we lose when we die is that separation -- and meditation is one of the little deaths that prefigures the big death.

Which I think puts me on the same page as Fenris.

Does it?

[Dreadstar]

The quantum foam idea ALSO allows the veracity of ALL religions at once (with the possible exception of Xenu). It allows for the post-mortal Heaven, Nirvana, Hell and even reincarnation.

[Chris Nowlin]

Does it?

...

...

The quantum foam idea ALSO allows the veracity of ALL religions at once (with the possible exception of Xenu). It allows for the post-mortal Heaven, Nirvana, Hell and even reincarnation.

I like anything that allows for all those things but excludes Xenu. The rest seem like fine beliefs.

[Cei-U!]

I'm an agnostic on the question. I know what I believe (or, perhaps more accurately, what I need to believe) but I can't rule out the possibility that Jeffrey's materialistic view is accurate. I hope he's wrong. I fear he's not.

Cei-U!
I'll think about that tomorrow!

[colossus34]

As to the question...

When we're dead, we cease to be. Our consciousness is a biological function, and when the body dies and has been dead long enough that the underlying systems deteriorate beyond a certain point, our consciousness is completely over, kaput, done with. No soul or spirit, no afterlife, no reincarnation. To the extent we live on at all, we do so through our deeds, through any records or creations we leave behind, through our genes (assuming we had kids), through the influence we've had on others and through others' memories of us.

Blunt. But Brilliantly put my friend. I wish more people would face reality.

[Puma]

our bodies die, decompose and thus rejoin life;
our energy (spirit/soul/whatever) dies but lives on in a memory in the lives we touched.

[Chris Nowlin]

our bodies die, decompose and thus rejoin life;
our energy (spirit/soul/whatever) dies but lives on in a memory in the lives we touched.

Sounds beautiful to me.



And reminds me somehow of Lion King as being exactly how a cat would think.

"When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eats the grass. And so we are all connected in the circle of life."

[Paul McEnery]

As to the question...

When we're dead, we cease to be. Our consciousness is a biological function, and when the body dies and has been dead long enough that the underlying systems deteriorate beyond a certain point, our consciousness is completely over, kaput, done with. No soul or spirit, no afterlife, no reincarnation. To the extent we live on at all, we do so through our deeds, through any records or creations we leave behind, through our genes (assuming we had kids), through the influence we've had on others and through others' memories of us.

Mind, that still leaves us with the subjective mysteries of the death process, or the NDE. I can't tell how much of this is recent research and how much me putting it together, but some new results suggest that some people have more populated or narrated NDEs (or, presumably, actual DEs) depending on how they dream.

This gives some credence to the Egyptian and Tibetan Books of the Dead, insofar as they describe the narrative of the approaching death. Unless you want to go through Jacob's Ladder, get your act together. Prepping yourself with meditative self(atman)-realization is the way to go, it seems to me.

[Puma]

Sounds beautiful to me.



And reminds me somehow of Lion King as being exactly how a cat would think.

"When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eats the grass. And so we are all connected in the circle of life."

there's a reason a cat is my totem

[Frodo-X]

200 years ago, people would have told you there are no monsters and there never were. No dragons either. They'd tell you the same today. In the interim we discovered that giant lizard creatures with really big teeth once roamed the earth that could probably have been considered monsters or dragons (well, without the fire, but that one in Jurassic Park spit venom). But our stance on monsters has not changed. Because "monster" refers to creatures that aren't real. And those other things. They're just dinosaurs. Science has classified them. Essentially just a group of animals that has been extinct a very long time. Anything science discovers will probably not be referred to as a monster. All about perspective.

I've always found it ridiculous that science can say there were no such things as dragons, but then show us these giant lizards and say "No, these are dinosaurs, not lizards".

So if I say there's no such thing as cheese, and you show me a wheel of cheese, I can say "No, that's not cheese, that's grindlethorp. Cheese is a myth, silly!"

I think you'd have me committed at that point.

[Paul McEnery]

I've always found it ridiculous that science can say there were no such things as dragons, but then show us these giant lizards and say "No, these are dinosaurs, not lizards".

So if I say there's no such thing as cheese, and you show me a wheel of cheese, I can say "No, that's not cheese, that's grindlethorp. Cheese is a myth, silly!"

I think you'd have me committed at that point.

Oh, why wait. :p

[Shellhead]

I've always found it ridiculous that science can say there were no such things as dragons, but then show us these giant lizards and say "No, these are dinosaurs, not lizards".

So if I say there's no such thing as cheese, and you show me a wheel of cheese, I can say "No, that's not cheese, that's grindlethorp. Cheese is a myth, silly!"

I think you'd have me committed at that point.

You don't seem to have a clue as to how scientists operate. Scientists don't issue dogmatic proclamations about how things are, they leave that to the organized religions.

The scientific method is to formulate a hypothesis in such a way that it can be tested in an objective manner, and then tested again by others using methods that can be replicated. Once a hypothesis has been repeatedly tested, by numerous researchers who publish their results, there may be sufficient data to validate that hypothesis, based on statistical patterns emerging from the cumulative data collected. Theories are developed that organize related hypotheses into a coherent framework that can serve as the basis for new hypotheses.

Scienstists don't declare that things are NOT something or another. They may tell you that they are unable to test a given idea, or that the testing was unable to prove something based on the resulting data. And if they dispute your careless use of nomenclature, it's not because they are trying to censor your speech (that, again, would be something you might expect from organized religion), it's because they use language in a very specific manner to avoid confusion about similar things.

[JeffreyWKramer]

Mind, that still leaves us with the subjective mysteries of the death process, or the NDE. I can't tell how much of this is recent research and how much me putting it together, but some new results suggest that some people have more populated or narrated NDEs (or, presumably, actual DEs) depending on how they dream.
Every NDE I've seen described sounds pretty much identical to described experiences of anoxia-related perceptual distortions and hallucinations, other than the meaning the experiencers ascribe to the experiences. Which makes sense, since most NDE experiences are the result of anoxia.

Seems to me - and to a lot of researchers in this field - that what's going is an unusual but completely naturalistic psychophysiological event, to which individuals acribe meaning based on their ideological biases, in attempt to make sense with what has happened.

[TheTen-EyedMan]

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. So much for faith.

Don't you know Heaven's in the back seat of my Cadillac

[Hippy-san]

Alright, the only thing i have a problem in regards to science's prowess and proposed ability to detail the afterlife is the presence of noumena. The nature of noumena is where i'm having trouble. I half want to believe that neomena cannot be viewed/touched/heard/understood by humans by design because it's just an angle of perception that we're not privy to, but the other half of me wants to go ahead and be of the idea that humans can peek into nuomena and theoretically understand at least a speck of what we may be missing in regards to the afterlife. But i find myself leaning towards phenomena as the only realm of experience for human perception and noumena as something left for....i don't know God or what have you. So, that being said i am no closer to knowing or even believing in any specific afterlife; all i can say is that there might be one and we might not ever figure it out in this life or any of the possibly infinate generations of humans to follow.

So, in short, i got nowhere, huh? :D

[Rob on the Job]

Don't you know Heaven's in the back seat of my Cadillac

Heaven has stains and a Batman bobblehead?

[Mike Pothier]

The soul that sins will die. It does not survive death. Death is akin to sleeping, only in a much, much more permanent way, and no cool dreams.

[Mike Smash!]

The soul that sins will die. It does not survive death. Death is akin to sleeping, only in a much, much more permanent way, and no cool dreams.

But who doesn't sin? If you're going to buy the traditional definition of sin, that's all of us.

[Mike Pothier]

But who doesn't sin? If you're going to buy the traditional definition of sin, that's all of us.

Precisely. Everyone is a sinner. The soul isn't a separate part of the person that is released at death. People ARE souls, they don't possess them.

[Paul McEnery]

Precisely. Everyone is a sinner. The soul isn't a separate part of the person that is released at death. People ARE souls, they don't possess them.

Oh I don't know.

I've got quite the collection.:evilsmile

[Tages]

Precisely. Everyone is a sinner. The soul isn't a separate part of the person that is released at death. People ARE souls, they don't possess them.

I'm interested in how this fits into the Jehovah's Witness viewpoint, and the idea of the righteous inheriting a Paradise Earth.

Admittedly I'm a little rusty with my JW theology, it's been years since I've read up on it.

[Tages]

The fact that everything we actually understand about the world all comes down to physical/naturalistic phenomena.

Not sure where that comes in. Whether we understand something or not seems irrelevant to the thing's existence itself.

The fact that physical events and influences - things like drugs, medication, brain injury, illness, etc. - impact consciousness and mental functioning.

Perception is different from consciousness.

The fact that we can, via technological means, view mental activities via their physiological correlates, and that all mental activities have such correlates.

"Mind" is also separate from consciousness.