it is irrational to argue that there's no evidence for the afterlife

MattB

doesn't anyone have any arguments? 

MattB

when those who have the experience communicate on the other side, it's almost always telepahtic. if this was just a hallucination, it would be a lot more variable, including speech too. this consistency is a strong point. 

""In a little over 40 percent of my surveys, NDE"rs observed things that were geographically far from their physical body, that were way outside of any possible physical central awareness. Typically, someone who has an NDE with an out-of-body experience comes back and reports what they saw and heard while floating around, it"s about 98 percent accurate in every way. For example, in one account someone who coded in the operating room had an out-of-body experience where their consciousness traveled to the hospital cafeteria where they saw and heard their family and others talking, completely unaware that they had coded. They were absolutely correct in what they saw.""

Bogan

When the Australian billionaire Kerry packer collapsed and died of a heart attack at a polo match in Sidney, he was lucky enough to have had one of the few NSW ambulance with a heart starter on board.    The paramedics jolted him and got his heart more or less working again, enough to get him to hospital where the renowned Australian heart doctor, Dr Victor Chang stabilized him and got him back to life.    After being told he had been dead for 10 minutes and asked what it was like on the other side, Kerry replied "there is nothing there."

Barnardot

@MattB ;a smart and capable doctor writing a book like that should be sufficient to establish evidence

I reckon that your hole argument is totally floored in the first place before you get to first base because it is totally irrational to make out that just because some one is smart and capable that that makes it evidence. What about the uni bomber he was smart and capable but would you think that any thing that that dufis ever writes is evidence for any thing except that he would prove that he is a total Exstream tard who couldn't care about any thing any way. So there fore if your trying to argue that theres no after life then you have lost all ready.

MayCaesar

First, there has not been a single case of a so-called "out-of-body experience" verified scientifically. There have been a few cases in which people said something that they could not reasonably know to be true, but that happened to be true - but nobody has done the comparison of the number of such cases with the number of cases in which people said something that was false. If you guess at random, there is a non-zero probability that you will happen to be right despite having no information to base your guess on - and if the population of millions of people brought to the brink of death and surviving guesses randomly, then a few of them will definitely guess correctly. 
There is a reason the only article written by scientists you could cite involving the concept of "transcendental consciousness" (having nothing to do with the idea of the afterlife, by the way) is a publication in "Journal of Near-Death Studies", published by "International Association for Near-Death Studies" which is not a scientific organization and which does not hold the journal to the common peer review standards. This is pseudo-science.

Second, the fact that many people having gone through near-death experiences report seeing the same thing speaks strongly in favor of the hypothesis that the brain processes occurring near the end of one's life are quite universal - which is what you would expect giving how similar all of our brains are. If there was such a thing as "afterlife", you would expect a lot more diversity in the testimonies, as the "afterlife" would certainly be more than just a tunnel with light at the end of it. Furthermore, it does not even make sense logically: how can one have seen the afterlife without their life ending? It makes no sense that you could get close to dying and "see" the "entrance" to the afterlife, then come back to reality. What is it, the closer you get to dying, the more of the afterlife you see? How about people who get hit in the stomach by a thug: they get quite a bit closer to death than those to whom it does not happen, so where are their testimonies?

Lastly, people who come back after these experiences and start believing in god... what is more natural to a human being than this? It is in our nature to make ourselves the center of the world and to attribute everything that happens to us as having some special meaning. "The god smiled at me" - sounds much cooler than "Oh, I almost died and my brain did weird things to me that I need to get an LSD to experience again", does it not?
Funny that you say that Christians are most prone to this, by the way. I do not know if that is true, but the only "documentary" on this I have seen was one about a hospital in Malaysia where multiple patients reported exactly that. In Malaysia only 9.1% of the population are Christian, and while it could be that all those patients were Christian, there was no reason to assume that that was the case.

What I think you should take away from this is that what you consider to be "evidence" is not what evidence is. Some people saying some weird things accompanied by saying mundane things that happen to be true is only evidence of the "afterlife" if you are so deeply sold on the idea of the "afterlife" that almost anything can serve as its evidence in your eyes. It is much like a deep Christian believer can see a rock in a desert and say, "Look at how beautiful and slick this rock is. The god did a fine work with it, clearly!"
I recommend the following practice: when you hear a claim and see the evidence, ask yourself, "If this claim was false, how would the evidence have to change?" If the answer is that it would not have to change for the claim to be false, that is the claim could be false even in the presence of this evidence, then the argument is bogus. Look at your argumentation here and try to come up with an explanation of all these phenomena that does not involve the concept of the "afterlife". It is not so hard to do, is it? That is not a sign of a good theory, my friend.

Barnardot

@MayCaesar ;First, there has not been a single case of a so-called "out-of-body experience" verified scientifically. 

Your quite right there but when it comes to out of life experiences you cant use science to verify them because it is beyond science. For example we know that Jesus rose from the deed but how can you expect science to prove that especially when it was 2000 years ago. Science can only prove natural things and it cant prove super natural things and out of body is definitely super natural. It takes spirituality to tap into super natural things like out of body experiences so you need to get expert spiritualists to verify out of body experiences.

MayCaesar

Barnardot said:

Your quite right there but when it comes to out of life experiences you cant use science to verify them because it is beyond science. For example we know that Jesus rose from the deed but how can you expect science to prove that especially when it was 2000 years ago. Science can only prove natural things and it cant prove super natural things and out of body is definitely super natural. It takes spirituality to tap into super natural things like out of body experiences so you need to get expert spiritualists to verify out of body experiences.

As far as I am concerned, anything that is beyond science is hogwash. Scientific method is designed to be universally applicable, so that any question the answer to which has an observable effect in this Universe can, in principle, be answered. Questions that cannot be answered within this framework do not have observable effects, therefore constituting fantasy - which has its role, but that role has nothing to do with discovery of truth.

You "know" that Jesus rose from the dead because the fantasy book of your choosing says so. Can science prove claims from a fantasy book? Of course not. Can science prove claims Tolkien made about life of Frodo Baggins? No. Nor do such claims need to be proven because they have no relation to reality.

Barnardot

@MayCaesar ;As far as I am concerned, anything that is beyond science is hogwash. 

So in the end you are just denying what is beyond science and hope that it goes away. But the realty is it wont go away. If some one in your family gets all emotional about some thing and you cant explain it with science are you going to say hay sis its all hogwash. And if science can explain the big bang but cant explain how the little ball of dark matter got there is that little ball of dark matter hogwash is it. There a lot of things that lots of people called hogwas a long time ago. Like a 200 years ago many people said that air planes are hogwash and 50 years ago people were saying that you couldn't put a phone and a tv and a radio and a clock and atorch in one thing in your pocket. If the world lived on what people call hogwash we would all be living in caves still.

MayCaesar

@Barnardot

No, I am not denying its existence: I am merely stating that it is hogwash. Whether it goes away or not is irrelevant. People are free to voice any fantasies they want; what is real and what is not will not change as a consequence.

If I cannot explain something with science, then I cannot explain something with science. I will not be tempted to come up with a fantasy in place of science. Instead, I will simply say, "I cannot explain it". A fantasy explanation is no explanation at all. If you do not know how life on Earth came to be and decide to explain it with two sloths the size of Earth copulating, then our explanation is hogwash and is far worse than admittance of your ignorance. A wrong/bad/made up explanation is worse than lack of explanation.

There is a difference between incomplete knowledge and false knowledge. It was perfectly reasonable for someone from 1823 to say, "I do not think that humans will ever make it into air", given the limitations in knowledge in engineering and physics at that time. What was not was to talk about Icarus flying towards the Sun on giant wings and getting burned based on "testimonies" of some ancient authors. Not knowing how something can be done, and pretending to know it, are two different things.

It is not impossible that "afterlife" exists. However, given zero evidence of its existence, there is no reason to include it in anyone's model of reality. If you live in a cave and wonder about what is outside the cave, you have to go out and explore, not make up stories about it while sitting on your butt. If you want to explore the possibility of "afterlife"'s existence, you have to conduct proper experiments, not read random newspaper articles.

Barnardot

@MayCaesar ; No, I am not denying its existence: I am merely stating that it is hogwash.

Your contradictating your self there because if your saying that your denying some thing then your saying that some thing is hogwash. And theres heaps of evidence any way if you care to look for it. Just Saying that you dont know of any evidence it doesn't meen there isn't. For example you dont read the road code right. And just because you didn't read it it doesnt mean that you can go through traffic lights. Any way I won the argument any way because I said that some people believed that iphones were hogwash 50 years ago. And they would have said oh well theres zero evidence for them so there hogwash. Mean while Steve Jobs goes out and says theres no evidence so I will find some and sure enough we have iphones. But if we didnt have people like Steve Jobs we would all be living in caves if we thought every thing is hogwash because thats the same as denying that a wheel doesnt exist. So the same goes for the after life . We will get all the evidence faster than you think and all the dufises lying around on there big behinds calling every thing hogwash and denying things are going to get a reel rude shock. 

MayCaesar

@Barnardot

No. I can perfectly acknowledge existence of something, while at the same time classifying that something as "hogwash". Contrary to your argument, something that does not exist cannot be a "hogwash" because it, well, does not exist, and something that does not exist cannot have any attributes.

I have given my take on the "heaps of evidence" you are referring to in my very first comment here. You are free to contest my take, but just repeating, "there are heaps of evidence", is not going to cut it.

You have not "won" anything, and I addressed your point on the incompleteness of scientific knowledge. Whether someone calls something a hogwash or not is irrelevant to whether that something actually is a hogwash or not.

If you think that you can design tools for exploring afterlife same way as Steve Jobs designed iPhone, then you are welcome to try your best. Will be hard to find investors though: investors typically are very pragmatic and are not going to fund something based on scattered untestable accounts. iPhone was designed as a consequence of rigorous application of chemistry, physics and engineering, not as a consequence of listening to some random patient's ramblings.

MattB

MayCaesar said:

the legal standard of 'evidence' is whether it is probative, whether it increases the likelihood for something being true. an anecdote is just an anecdote... but lots of anecdotes are a trend, and they are evidence. 'anecdotal evidence' and 'circumstantial evidence' are actual concepts, and everything i'm arguing is at the very least anecdotal and circumstantial. you just choose to ignore it. i provide lots of evidence, and all you have in response is philopshical quibbles, you have no science to support your claims other than speculation. you dont even have good philsophy on your side... if you it's common for people to experience elaborate afterlife stories when they die, maybe an afterlife exists? it's not rocket science. we should at least entertain that idea since you are so weak when it comes to the science aspect. 
 'brain chemicals' 'people are seeing something that soothes them', these are the realm of philsophical arguments, not science. what if the afterlife is exactly like these experiences purport them to be? what if you saw that was true when you died? would you claim you had no indication that there was an after life over your whole life? you at least had an indication that there's an afterlife. objectively even if you didn't want to call it evdeince, it indicated something to you, but you chose to disregard it. to quibble and say you had an indicator of an afterlife but no evidence is objectively an irrational statement... you have an indication of the afterlife, thus you have evidence of an afterlife. 

out of body experiences. you just choose to ignore it. when out of body experiences are investigated, they are almost always accurate. someone who just guesses what happened outside of their body are almost always wrong. these incidents involve credible witnesses like doctors. pam reynolds was being monitored the whole time of her surgery and saw medical equipment during her surgery that she could describe that lay people do not know about. it's a well established story. there can be something little like someone seeing shoes on the window sill of another hospital room that they had no access to. the accuracy of these stories are based on science... it's not science to the degree of certitude that you prefer, but it's basic science. these investigations and be repeated and verified as circumstantially accurate, which basic science. 

you also just choose to ignore that blind people struggle to come to grips with having sight during their expereince. for your argument to be true, you, again, just have to ignore this evidence. at best, for this point and all the others, you should be arguing that if the truth is as presented then evidence for the afterlife exists. you should at least be be open minded to that possibility, not just ignoring it all out of hand. 

you dont give good reasons why someone who hallucainte dead family members almost exclusively when they  see earth beings. you have speculation that people are close to family, but it's a weak point, cause not everyone is close to family, some people are close to friends, some people are obsessed with taylor swift or elvis presley... they dont see celebrites or living people, it's almost always dead relatives. your only possible explanations for this are weak. 

you dont even have a plausible explanation for why communication is always telepahtic with these experiences. why aren't they talking during these hallucinations? you have no plausible explantion. 

if it's common for people to no longer fear death and be absolutely sure of an afterlife after these exerpeinces, and they say their expericences were more real than this life... it's just to not think maybe they are being accurate in their reports. 

all you have to argue is philsophy, not science. you dont even have to believe that an afterlife is probable or that it exists, just that evidence for those propositions do exist. all you are proving is that you have a deep seated need to be a skeptic, all you have is empty rhetoric. 

John_C_87

I have an idea lets just call afterlife the law of the conservation of energy. No one will ever know we are talking about after life.

just_sayin

Argument Topic: There's evidence - but there remains a question

There is "evidence" of life after death.  There are numerous people who "died" on the operating table, and when brought back to life tell stories of things they have seen.  So there is evidence, but it can't be verified externally.  

John_C_87

@just_sayin

Are life after death and after life the same when talking about existence?
Does reincarnation exist only after death, or does it start earlier while a person is alive as the conservation of energy takes place?

Witnesses who tell of experience while being part of a larger conservation process are not in fact evidence of the transition itself just_sayin. What can be interpreted as possible data are medical things such a blood types that matches between people, DNA code that describe groups of people as alike, though not completely identical in nature, even eye and hair color and other personal features might visibly see can be interpreted as evidence of conservation acting as reincarnation.

MayCaesar

MattB said:

the legal standard of 'evidence' is whether it is probative, whether it increases the likelihood for something being true. an anecdote is just an anecdote... but lots of anecdotes are a trend, and they are evidence. 'anecdotal evidence' and 'circumstantial evidence' are actual concepts, and everything i'm arguing is at the very least anecdotal and circumstantial. you just choose to ignore it. i provide lots of evidence, and all you have in response is philopshical quibbles, you have no science to support your claims other than speculation. you dont even have good philsophy on your side... if you it's common for people to experience elaborate afterlife stories when they die, maybe an afterlife exists? it's not rocket science. we should at least entertain that idea since you are so weak when it comes to the science aspect. 

 'brain chemicals' 'people are seeing something that soothes them', these are the realm of philsophical arguments, not science. what if the afterlife is exactly like these experiences purport them to be? what if you saw that was true when you died? would you claim you had no indication that there was an after life over your whole life? you at least had an indication that there's an afterlife. objectively even if you didn't want to call it evdeince, it indicated something to you, but you chose to disregard it. to quibble and say you had an indicator of an afterlife but no evidence is objectively an irrational statement... you have an indication of the afterlife, thus you have evidence of an afterlife. 

out of body experiences. you just choose to ignore it. when out of body experiences are investigated, they are almost always accurate. someone who just guesses what happened outside of their body are almost always wrong. these incidents involve credible witnesses like doctors. pam reynolds was being monitored the whole time of her surgery and saw medical equipment during her surgery that she could describe that lay people do not know about. it's a well established story. there can be something little like someone seeing shoes on the window sill of another hospital room that they had no access to. the accuracy of these stories are based on science... it's not science to the degree of certitude that you prefer, but it's basic science. these investigations and be repeated and verified as circumstantially accurate, which basic science. 

you also just choose to ignore that blind people struggle to come to grips with having sight during their expereince. for your argument to be true, you, again, just have to ignore this evidence. at best, for this point and all the others, you should be arguing that if the truth is as presented then evidence for the afterlife exists. you should at least be be open minded to that possibility, not just ignoring it all out of hand. 

you dont give good reasons why someone who hallucainte dead family members almost exclusively when they  see earth beings. you have speculation that people are close to family, but it's a weak point, cause not everyone is close to family, some people are close to friends, some people are obsessed with taylor swift or elvis presley... they dont see celebrites or living people, it's almost always dead relatives. your only possible explanations for this are weak. 

you dont even have a plausible explanation for why communication is always telepahtic with these experiences. why aren't they talking during these hallucinations? you have no plausible explantion. 

if it's common for people to no longer fear death and be absolutely sure of an afterlife after these exerpeinces, and they say their expericences were more real than this life... it's just to not think maybe they are being accurate in their reports. 

all you have to argue is philsophy, not science. you dont even have to believe that an afterlife is probable or that it exists, just that evidence for those propositions do exist. all you are proving is that you have a deep seated need to be a skeptic, all you have is empty rhetoric. 

This legal standard applies to court proceedings, when a verdict has to be made based on a very limited amount of evidence of highly questionable quality. It has little in common with the scientific standard of rigorous hypothesis testing, and for a good reason, for had that standard been used in legal practice instead, every robbery trial would take years and cost millions of dollars. In science, the legal standard is not used because the object of science is not finding the most "efficient" explanation of something in conditions of extremely limited time and resources, but finding the most logically sound explanation of something: it is a continuous process, and one "scientific trial", in principle, lasts an infinity, with no final verdict ever established.

I believe that I have addressed all essential claims in your opening statement, and you calling them "philosophical quibbles" is no criticism. Please point out exactly in what way various arguments in my comment are wrong, otherwise you are just poisoning the well while adding no substance to the conversation.

Regarding me having "no science to support my claims", you are forgetting something, my friend: the burden of proof is on the person making an original claim, not on the person disputing it. I have never said that afterlife does not exist which would be an original claim. I have responded instead to your original claim without making my own. My claim is that the evidence you have provided for afterlife's existence is insufficient/flawed and explained exactly why. Going further and providing evidence for afterlife not existing is outside the scope of this discussion, nor is it in agreement with my views.

You keep saying that I "ignore" something, while I addressed everything you claim I ignore in my opening comment. You are slandering me, my friend, and that is no bueno.

I will address something original that you said this time around, which is:

MattB said:

all you are proving is that you have a deep seated need to be a skeptic, all you have is empty rhetoric. 

The statement in the bold is one of the few interesting things you said in your comment, and I do not disagree with it. Furthermore, I think that skepticism is the absolute baseline for talking about any real world phenomena, not the least because there is infinity of ways to be wrong and only one way to be right - meaning that, in general, an arbitrary statement is much more likely to be false than it is to be true. Anything that constitutes supposedly an accurate description of the world must be subjected to the lenses of the most extreme skepticism imaginable, and anything that constitutes incredible claims that despite thousands of years of work of millions of scientists and other truth seekers have never been consistently described so as to be reproducible in the lab and that contradict modern science as we know it must be viewed more skeptically still.

You are doing exactly the opposite, applying the most relaxed standards to the evidence of existence of the afterlife because you want to believe that afterlife exists. This desire to believe that something is true is highly incompatible with the process of truth-seeking, in which you are supposed to start with no preference and work your way up to the conclusion by impartially examining the evidence. Were you to apply same standards as you are applying here to other things, you could come to the conclusions that:
- The lizardfolk run the human civilization from the shadows.
- The Moon is a large head of cheese floating in the atmosphere.
- Epstein did not kill himself.
- Hot dog is not a sandwich.
Of course, you know well that every single one of these statements is complete hogwash. Yet had you dove deep into the particular communities promoting these ideas and, for some bizarre reason, desired them to be true, you could as much be arguing that they are true here, while believing that claims about the existence of the afterlife are complete hogwash.

Dreamer

Argument Topic: Fearmongering is my main problem with religion.

I have compassion for others and understand why somebody might want to spread religion. For example religion can be a source of comfort for someone who has suffered the loss of a loved one. The problem is this acts like a backdoor security breach for all sorts of fearmongering.

Most of this is the fear of Hell, but there are demons and other malevolent spirits too in religious mythology. The problem with fear, is they don't need to convince you, only instill fear that Hell might exist and be terrible.

 If you can convince somebody there is a 1% chance that a fate worse than death Hell exists this could cause them to convert or otherwise be manipulated out of fear.  Not necessary to have them believe 51% or more strength in the belief that Hell exists.

This is how anti-vaxx and other conspiracies work. If they can change the strength of the belief in the myth from 0% to 30% vaccines cause autism this will cause enough fear for vaccine hesitancy.

Interestingly, there is many different ways to interpretation Hell within the Christian Bible. Some see it as just an eternal place of shame and separation from God. This is also why I throw my hands up and say "I give up" there is too many contradictory versions of the same concept.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell

Final note, this can act like a motte and bailey fallacy. Officially and apologetic can argue the moderate point of view. Meanwhile, behind closed doors the more extreme points of view about Hell being over the top terrible and easy to get into unless you do exactly what you are told is spread. This way the preacher can have it both ways benefiting from both, quacks do this too.

Barnardot

@MayCaesar ;are not going to fund something based on scattered untestable accounts.

Well look at the iphone then. There weren't any scattered accounts. There was nothing but a dream. The problem is that people who dont believe stick there heads in the sand and dont want to know and in the end it doesn't really matter 1 way or the other because when your on earth thats the way it is. But when the crunch time comes and you haven't committed your self to God then gueass what. hes not going to want unbelieving trouble makers in Heaven, just the righteous ones who were with him all along. Thats the big difference 

MayCaesar

Barnardot said:

Well look at the iphone then. There weren't any scattered accounts. There was nothing but a dream. The problem is that people who dont believe stick there heads in the sand and dont want to know and in the end it doesn't really matter 1 way or the other because when your on earth thats the way it is. But when the crunch time comes and you haven't committed your self to God then gueass what. hes not going to want unbelieving trouble makers in Heaven, just the righteous ones who were with him all along. Thats the big difference 

You are welcome to explain what exactly in the iPhone's design contradicts modern science or the science of the time it was originally conceived in. My layman's view is that every single idea that came into designing iPhone perfectly aligns with the mainstream understanding of physics circa 1950, and were you to describe it in detail to a physicist at the time, he would say, "Well, I imagine building it would require a lot of engineering advances, but yeah, in principle it is a possibility".

What was not a part of the iPhone's design is a theological belief. The iPhone's schematics were not sent to Steve Jobs and his engineers by some supernatural power, but came as a result of centuries of hard work by hundreds thousands of scientists, engineers and investors. I am waiting with baited breath for someone to design something comparable to iPhone as a consequence of reading the Bible and praying.

Your fantasies of "God" and "Heaven" are, frankly, childish. You read a fantasy book and took it seriously, that is about as illogical as it gets. If that is how you approach scientific questions, then I am not surprised that you believe that there is afterlife, that the "out of body experience" accounts are trustworthy, and that hot dog is not a sandwich. The latter is especially unacceptable.

John_C_87

@MayCaesar

The computer Phone / smart iPhone is textbook applications of Calculus to technology that already had taken place. It is not an advancement of science itself as much as a consolidation of parts and limiting size and storage methods. I was reading an interesting article about the 32 years spent in finding the 9 Dedekind number by use of supercomputer. The article share a basic understanding of what advancements over improvements really mean to the public overall?

Bogan

So, in a thousand million, billion, trillion, squillion, quadrilion, septillion years after you die, your conscious mind will still exist and function?

Sure it will.

Barnardot

@MayCaesar ;Your fantasies of "God" and "Heaven" are, frankly, childish. 

So more than 70 per % of Americans are fantasizing and childish are they and more than that in the rest of the world. In realty the lay mans view and main stream under standing is that there is a God and if I was to go by your measure I can more rightly say that your fantasies of sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the super natural are frankly childish.

Guess what you lost the argument. There is a God and it is a matter of not if but when science proves it just like science proved many other things like when heaps of people kept on saying that it was a fantasy and being frankly childish to send a rocket in space. 

MayCaesar

@Barnardot

I think that 100% of the population sometimes acts childish and takes wild fantasies seriously, although some are more prone to doing so than others. That is why we have a rigorous method for establishing the truth (in all matters) called "scientific method" - which completely eliminates fantastic and childish considerations and subjects its practitioners to cold and hard logic. You can believe whatever you want, but, as far as science is concerned, only what you can demonstrate is what counts.

I may have lost the argument if the rules you are playing by are accepted, as according to them throwing random accusations and reiterating the same senile point over and over again counts towards victory - but I have never played by those rules. I only play by the rules of logic when it comes to debates, and you have not written a single sentence so far that would suggest that you have even joined the game.

Dreamer

Argument Topic: If you want a Christian to lose faith have them read the Bible.

https://medium.com/excommunications/ten-fatal-flaws-of-the-bible-24ef7a305f3f

MattB

@MayCaesar

it appears that you do not understand even the basic science. something doesn't have to be able to be reproduced in a lab for it to have substance to it. afterlife research is based on repeated anecdotes and repeatable measures like out of body experiences and sight to the blind. your best response to that is to say you simply dont believe the evidence is credible... your response is basically to put your fingers in your ears and pretend you dont hear it. you give no coherent basis to think the good doctor or the researching are all guilty of a conspiracy to present fake methodology. you give no coherent response to why earth being hallucations would always be living relatives, or why communication is almost always telepahthic in NDEs. you dont have a decent response to why all the lines of evidence are so consistent, other than apparently there must be an afterlife gene in our body that would cause us to hallucinate eleaborate afterlife stories? i dont know if that's what you think, cause you still haven't given a coherent or plausible explation for why there would be such elaborate hallucations when people die.

you are literally comparing NDEs, which are supported by loads of evidence, with conspiracy theories like epstein. a conspiracy theory is reading too much into sparse anecdotes and limited info... not the consistent and repeated observations we have with afterlife science. 

yes, you have a duty to respond with science, not just philosophic posturing that you're doing, cause i've demonstrated that there is objectively scientific evidence for the afterlife. so you have a repubutable presumption against you, and you can't even muster a basic scientific rebuttle in return. again, i provide science, you provide pretense, empty rhetoric, and crack pot comparisons to conspiracy theories.  

Barnardot

@MayCaesar ; I only play by the rules of logic when it comes to debates, and you have not written a single sentence so far that would suggest that you have even joined the game.

Well thats your game but the fact is that I already defeeted you because your trying to glass over what I pointed out about because you tried to smooth over your big mistake about saying that God believers are childish and fantasizing. Now thats what I call poor debating because your just trying to brush your crap argument under the carpet.

MayCaesar

MattB said:

@MayCaesar

it appears that you do not understand even the basic science. something doesn't have to be able to be reproduced in a lab for it to have substance to it. afterlife research is based on repeated anecdotes and repeatable measures like out of body experiences and sight to the blind. your best response to that is to say you simply dont believe the evidence is credible... your response is basically to put your fingers in your ears and pretend you dont hear it. you give no coherent basis to think the good doctor or the researching are all guilty of a conspiracy to present fake methodology. you give no coherent response to why earth being hallucations would always be living relatives, or why communication is almost always telepahthic in NDEs. you dont have a decent response to why all the lines of evidence are so consistent, other than apparently there must be an afterlife gene in our body that would cause us to hallucinate eleaborate afterlife stories? i dont know if that's what you think, cause you still haven't given a coherent or plausible explation for why there would be such elaborate hallucations when people die.

you are literally comparing NDEs, which are supported by loads of evidence, with conspiracy theories like epstein. a conspiracy theory is reading too much into sparse anecdotes and limited info... not the consistent and repeated observations we have with afterlife science. 

yes, you have a duty to respond with science, not just philosophic posturing that you're doing, cause i've demonstrated that there is objectively scientific evidence for the afterlife. so you have a repubutable presumption against you, and you can't even muster a basic scientific rebuttle in return. again, i provide science, you provide pretense, empty rhetoric, and crack pot comparisons to conspiracy theories.  

Considering that you failed to accurately read the simple text I posted, your opinion on my understanding of basic science is worth less than a head of rotten cheese.

I have not said anything about reproducing anything in the lab. Hypothesis testing consists of performing rigorous work the outcome of which unambiguously establishes which of the two alternatives is true and which is false. It can be done in a lab, in the field, on a laptop, or even on paper, depending on the specifics of the hypothesis and the proposed testing method. One of the essential features of it, however it is done, is that it has to be reproducible. If I managed to prove a math theorem on paper, then you should be able to as well. If I managed to witness a neutrino detection in my water reservoir, then so can you on yours. 
Anecdotes do not constitute evidence that can be used in support of any hypothesis. Anecdotes can be used to propose a venue of hypothesis testing including the rigorous methods by which reproducible data can be collected, but anecdotes themselves do not constitute such data. Anecdotes are not reproducible by their very nature: they are personal experiences, and what I experience you cannot reproduce exactly due to being a different conscious being. 
As such, I do not need to have an explanation for the anecdotes you mentioned, any more than you need to have an explanation of countless testimonies of Thai people claiming to have seen floating women's heads (actual phenomenon; if you do not believe me, read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krasue#:~:text=The%20Krasue%20(Thai%3A%20%E0%B8%81%E0%B8%A3%E0%B8%B0%E0%B8%AA%E0%B8%B7%E0%B8%AD%2C,trailing%20down%20from%20the%20neck.).

"Afterlife science" is not a thing, sorry.

Barnardot said:

@MayCaesar ; I only play by the rules of logic when it comes to debates, and you have not written a single sentence so far that would suggest that you have even joined the game.

Well thats your game but the fact is that I already defeeted you because your trying to glass over what I pointed out about because you tried to smooth over your big mistake about saying that God believers are childish and fantasizing. Now thats what I call poor debating because your just trying to brush your crap argument under the carpet.

"Defeeted" me, right.

MattB

@MayCaesar

you ignored my one line of questioning. what if you died and the afterlife was exactly like these NDEs portray? would you irrationally claim you had no indication that there might be the afterlife like you were experiencing? or, would you irrationally admit you had an indication but didn't have any evidence? that would be an irrational thought, after all. either way, i dont see a rational way that you could respond, given your current distorted thinking. 

Barnardot

@MayCaesar
"Afterlife science" is not a thing, sorry.
"Defeeted" me, right.
Considering that you failed to accurately read the simple text I posted
If I managed to witness a neutrino detection in my water reservoir, then so can you on yours. 
Anecdotes do not constitute evidence that can be used in support of any hypothesis.
"Afterlife science" is not a thing, sorry.
I think that 100% of the population sometimes acts childish and takes wild fantasies seriously

And all this baloney comes from some one who tries to tell others that they cant debate. I bet your so lost in your rules that you wouldn't even know what the point is that I am pointing out.

Barnardot

@Bogan ;So, in a thousand million, billion, trillion, squillion, quadrilion, septillion years after you die, your conscious mind will still exist and function? Sure it will.

So how can you make an argument that you didnt and probery cant prove. Like for example people like to say that there are 2 things that you can be sure of that you will die and that you will pay taxes. Well we know now that scientists are telling us that it wont be long before humans wont die and they have got most of the science in place any way. And if we use that bit of logic that we do know then we can extapolate that it is feezable that our mind is going to last for eternity.

MayCaesar

MattB said:

@MayCaesar

you ignored my one line of questioning. what if you died and the afterlife was exactly like these NDEs portray? would you irrationally claim you had no indication that there might be the afterlife like you were experiencing? or, would you irrationally admit you had an indication but didn't have any evidence? that would be an irrational thought, after all. either way, i dont see a rational way that you could respond, given your current distorted thinking. 

If I died, woke up in the afterlife and it was exactly like these claims portray, then I would say that the afterlife exists and is exactly like these claims portray.

You are welcome to point out in what way my thinking is distorted and how accepting direct evidence is in conflict with it. Lack of any evidence in support of existence of the afterlife was exactly the core of my argument; were such evidence to appear, I would have zero hesitation to accept it.

Barnardot

@MayCaesar ;Lack of any evidence in support of existence of the afterlife was exactly the core of my argument; were such evidence to appear, I would have zero hesitation to accept it.

Well the point that I have all ways pointed out is that your trying to put a condition on some thing that cant be proven and just because it cant be proven it doesn't mean that it isn't so. For example you cant prove what happens in the future but there will all ways be a future so trying to say that you wont take a dump tomorrow because it cant be proven is fruit less because you proberly will. Just the same with the after life. Just because you cant prove that your soul will go to heaven it doesn't mean that it wont will it.