A book for the cynics and skeptics. The AfterLife Experiments -Gary Schwartz Phd.

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Would you read a book that proved the afterlife existed based on scientific findings?

  • I believe in an afterlife and I want to read this book

    Votes: 8 40.0%
  • I don't believe in an afterlife and think the guy has been bamboozled

    Votes: 6 30.0%
  • I don't really believe but can change my mind

    Votes: 4 20.0%
  • Nope nothing will change my mind.

    Votes: 2 10.0%

  • Total voters
    20
But they don't, they are demonstrably similar to deprivation of oxygen to the brain; the question of context for "visions" may be that believers will frame it to their theological paradigm, it's just like the religious experiences attained through hallucinogens.
 
Ah well. I'm not interested in changing anyone's mind here. I understand both sides of the issue and fully understand the skepticism.
 
I get it

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:wink:
 
I have a personal distaste for absolutism, both in the religious and scientific senses.

Granted, I accept that my religious arguments fall under the realm of philosophy and that my scientific arguments fall under the notion of science. As such, I accept that, in the larger notions of society, that science should and must take precedence. Otherwise, we start creating baseless arguments around subjective notions of "good and evil" and categorizing everything based on respective likes and dislikes, justifying these classifications on some unprovable notion that Satan spends all his time rewriting history.

So from that POV, I'm not about to say that NDEs will ever be scientifically proven. From a philosophical POV, however, I will continue to find it interesting, because, even with the most optimistic views of science, it is a given that there is much of our universe that we will probably never be able to understand, be it theoretical quantum physics that hypothesize an unobservable dimension or the fact that our presence in the Milky Way means that most of our view of the galaxy will likely remain obscured, since we cannot view our own backyard from a comfortable distance.
 
I agree that we will never attain ultimate truth or facts but as a progressive system of knowledge science can continue to get closer to it. It is a philosophy but one grounded in empiricism and materialism.

I think that NDEs fall under testable, since we are bringing more people back from the brink our ammounts of data can only increase, perhaps one day we may be able to simulate that experience; this all falls under the broader developments in neuroscience that are peeling back to get a scientific theory of conciousness and mind, one that will have implications for how we view experiences.
 
A_Wanderer said:
I think that NDEs fall under testable, since we are bringing more people back from the brink our ammounts of data can only increase, perhaps one day we may be able to simulate that experience; this all falls under the broader developments in neuroscience that are peeling back to get a scientific theory of conciousness and mind, one that will have implications for how we view experiences.

Science has done a good job of explaining the "how" in this issue, but not in the "why." It doesn't seem all that logical, to me, that we have a sector of the brain dedicated to simulating an afterlife. Why not dream about nonsense or sex like a lot of people do the rest of the time? It is not as if we constantly and consistently dream about the afterlife in such vivid details while we sleep. It's this logical, philosophical question that I have, for the most part.
 
For that we need a better understanding of what conciousness is, in the absence of that we are left to speculation and can't frame the knowledge properly - conciousness itself may be an evolutionary spandrel, there need not be a specific evolutionary cause to be for this effect rather it is a concequence of some other function. I don't see NDEs as simulating an afterlife, I do see that conclusion as how the individuals percieve or later recount their experience. The processes going on as the brain is deprived of oxygen is a bit different than the sleep.
 
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