Reddit reviews Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness

>The essay to which you've linked provides no evidence whatsoever

Yeah, that's the point I was going for. Just because religions are insane - and they are - it doesn't follow that there are only bad reasons to entertain the notions of an afterlife and/or creator entity of some kind. I wasn't trying to prove the reality of an afterlife, I was trying to open your average atheist up a little in how they approached these topics.

>So, this author thinks the body of evidence provides solid grounds. But he's hardly impartial. He speaks at length about his own experiences with trying to convince colleagues, or of his own past of researching NDEs. This is clearly a topic with emotional weight for this man.

I'm sorry, but how does his frustration with his colleagues' a priori dismissal of the data make the topic an emotional issue for this man? If you researched something, let's take something completely non-controversial like some random bacteria in the octopus gut flora, and everyone dismissed everything you had unearthed for demonstrably non-rational reasons, wouldn't that make you upset? It doesn't mean that these gut flora bacteria inside octopuses is an emotional topic for you, it only means that you are upset when people ignore the data you've found for bad reasons. I mean, at least looking at the proposed evidence before dismissing is a reasonable request in any academic field.

That's the point he's making. The evidence isn't ignored, marginalized and ridiculed because it's bad and/or non-existent, but because the vast majority of academics assume, a priori, that it can't be there, so they don't bother even looking.

>At any rate, these are the ideas of philosophers and sociologists, with no basis in verifiable fact.

I'm not sure what you're referencing here - the behavior of academics, or the NDE data itself? If it's the latter, then that's not at all the case and the entire point of his essay - it is a matter of empiricism. If it's the former, then I don't know if they've actually done studies of the negligence of academics on these research areas, but it could easily be carried out, so it's very much verifiable in principle. Additionally, it's more or less obvious to everyone how most people respond to these ideas before they do their research. You're an example yourself, although to your credit you are more level-headed than most responses tend to be.

>I think you'll find that the notion of some kind of creative force behind the universe, while certainly not the majority opinion, is nonetheless respectable in the field of philosophy.

Not denying that, but that's the whole point - mere intuition and guesses of philosophers are irrelevant in light of this data. The NDE data explicitly nullifies a lot of the debate in the entire field of philosophy of mind, for instance. This stuff really matters, and takes the debate out of speculation and into actual answers.

>Just not, as the essay notes, in the field of science.

Which is the entire point. Once scientists open up to this data, everything will have to change, by force. It will be the biggest paradigm shift of all time, basically, and that's a huge part of why it's neglected.

>So, is this really, as the author alleges, a result of bias? I'm inclined to think not. I think it's a result of consistency.

>Consider the scientist which the author mentions who says that he would still be skeptical of dualism if he himself experienced an NDE. This appalls the author, but is that comment a result of bias against dualism, or intellectual honesty?

There are two things to take in consideration. Many ignorant people do believe that if they were to have an NDE, they would still be skeptical of it; "just a dream lol". In that sense, I don't doubt the sincerity of the person saying it - he's honest. But. Everyone who has a sufficiently deep NDE (see for instance the Greyson scale for how that's defined) is convinced of it's reality. Everyone. This and this are the two most famous and steretypical examples of this - an avowed atheist, and a Harvard Neurosurgeon. In other words, it doesn't matter how much of a skeptic or atheist you were before, you will change after your NDE in how you view the world. That's a fact. It applies to you, me, Richard Dawkins, Keith Augustine and everyone - the data is extremely clear on this point.

That's a very crucial point, and let me illustrate why with an analogy. Imagine you have a looked room that only one person at a time is allowed into, and in it there's allegedly a green elephant. Now, who wouldn't be skeptical of that? And yet, person after person walk in there - some skeptical, some not, some undecided - and yet they all come back testifying to the reality of there actually being a green elephant in this room. All of them. And this goes on for years, and we have millions of people who all come back testifying to its reality.

It is not unreasonable, then, to think that if you or I were to walk into this room, we too would be convinced of the reality of there being a green elephant in that room. Indeed, there's absolutely no reason to think we wouldn't be. What possible skepticism could we apply that all those other people couldn't have? Why relevant information do we have that they don't? You don't know more about the brain and its relationship to consciousness than a Harvard neurosurgeon, and you are not more of an atheist than Howard Storm was.

This is literally the situation we're in with the NDE, except people are extremely certain about the reality of the NDE being indicative of another realm. See for instance this video from 0:00 - 5:15 to illustrate the point, or this from 05:57 - 07:12.

The second thing is, this isn't what Grossman is even alluding to. He's talking about the actual cases where people observe things that they shouldn't be able to observe, if materialism were correct. See these cases for example Note, though, that they're poorly documented and only meant to prove the point of what kind of observations that typically take place.

>If we know that the brain is capable of getting things wrong

It's already been mentioned in the links above, but again, the NDE is ultra-real, hyper-real, and the cognition experienced during an NDE - when most of if not all of the brain is shut down - is way more acute and enhanced than during any other event in your life. Much more real than daily life. Hallucinations and dreams are less real than ordinary waking life. They are completely different things.

Also, what we know about the brain actually only strengthens the point that these experiences aren't brain based, because we know that EEG is lost within 8-20 seconds after cardiac, periods during which actual verified observations have been documented.

>Here is a summary of one of those studies which your essay-writer feels is a solid basis for belief. Frankly, I think that a scientist who has used rationality and probability to carefully build a body of knowledge would be more inconsistent and less reputable if they threw all of that knowledge out the window because of a stressful experience.

Yeah, you did one Google-search and copy-pasted it here. But two things - 1. Neal Grossman wrote that paper long before AWARE even launched, and 2. That short commentary doesn't exactly refute that study, it just does a poor job of dismissing it.

>Frankly, I think that a scientist who has used rationality and probability to carefully build a body of knowledge would be more inconsistent and less reputable if they threw all of that knowledge out the window because of a stressful experience.

It's not a stressful experience, you're throwing your own beliefs unto the experience. It's the most life-changing and wonderful experience known to man.

>The author thinks that mediums, of the type regarded by William James, may be evidence for immaterial reality. Yet, in the hundred or so years since recording technologies became widely available, not a single video showcasing anything remotely paranormal in terms of 'medium-esque' abilities or anything else has ever surfaced.

Who ever said that the evidence had to be catchable on video? Can you prove that aspirin reduces the risk of heart attacks by using video evidence? No? And yet it does.

The answer is no, because it relies on statistical analysis. Although I won't comment on it further because I've literally not investigated mediums at all, save for a very shallow glance at it. But here a good place to start.

>Not only has every psychic who puts themselves under scrutiny been proved misguided at best and willfully lying at worst, but no one has yet claimed the million dollar prize available for any legitimate demonstration of medium abilities in the fifty years since it was first offered.

Please don't.

>If you really want to know why scientists do not (and should not) find spiritual thinking credible, read this article from Eliezer Yudkowsky's excellent Bayesian rationalism blog.

Interesting entry, but I fail to see his relevance except as a strawman. Grossman is making the point that these things are a matter of empirical investigation a la the methods of science. Not like those scientists in that article who are believers in their spare time for non-scientific reasons.

Here is a kajillion more.
http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/online-bibliography.html

Go in youtube and watch videos by scientists Dean Radin or Rupert Sheldrake. They will explain their dozens of peer reviewed Psi research. Its all proven man. There are literally thousands and thousands of studies and books.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0098O9F32/ref=kina_tdp?ie=UTF8

This guy goes over 125 years of independent research and rules out frauds and hoaxes. Read the description of the book.

I totally get your position man, but there comes a time when you gotta drop the skeptic attitude and do some research. Occams razor says this stuff is real.