Is the Filter Theory committing the ad hoc fallacy and is it unfalsifiable?

I was noting the standards of a New Atheist Horseman with a Neuroscience PhD. My point was even by Harris' standard, which is likely stricter than the average layperson, there is some possibility that reincarnation might be true.

It seems odd to leap directly from someone with a neuroscience PhD to a layperson. There are other researchers into past lives apart from only the average layperson.

That Survival is true, however, opens up a greater dialogue about the nature of this reality because it seems, for some reason, that the evidence of Survival is very difficult to investigate...

Perhaps expectations and ideas of the nature of an 'afterlife' and its relationship to our Earthly lives is something which causes unsuitable investigative methods to be attempted. For example simplistic ideas about the OOBE and similarly that the kinds of things which are considered important to us here may not be at all similar to the interests and priorities from the afterlife perspective.

Note: as explained previously I'm uncomfortable with the term 'afterlife' as it seems flawed in a similar manner to Geocentric models of the universe.

It seems odd to leap directly from someone with a neuroscience PhD to a layperson. There are other researchers into past lives apart from only the average layperson.

My point was that even someone who would be biased against reincarnation evidence believes that there is some merit in it.

My purpose was to get past accusations of bias, which we've seen here regarding the claims of physicists that consciousness could be a fundamental aspect of reality.

Perhaps expectations and ideas of the nature of an 'afterlife' and its relationship to our Earthly lives is something which causes unsuitable investigative methods to be attempted. For example simplistic ideas about the OOBE and similarly that the kinds of things which are considered important to us here may not be at all similar to the interests and priorities from the afterlife perspective.

Note: as explained previously I'm uncomfortable with the term 'afterlife' as it seems flawed in a similar manner to Geocentric models of the universe.

Oh there are all kinds of possibilities. But I think proponents need to be comfortable with the fact that something very against our usual expectations of reality is being proposed by Survival.

It could be like meteors, that some natural explanation about our positioning/perception toward the "Invisible" makes the accumulation of evidence a frustrating process dependent to some degree on luck - the position I favor because I dislike Cosmic Conspiracies [though Gnosticism *is* entertaining] as well as disliking pablum about how this world is a test or school or video game type setting.

Also it's okay for people to want Survival to be true but have doubts, or for people to feel certain in a particular moment but have doubts later. I think a lot of proponents have doubts sometimes, probably more than I do since I have my own experiences to fall back on.

It's even okay for people to not want [Survival] to be true so long as they aren't expecting others to go along with their wilful disbelief and aren't making poor claims on what the takeaway is regarding the evidence...

Then why don't you ask the dead how they would do the experiment? Surely if there are many dead people out there speaking to mediums, can not one suggest an experiment to a medium that could detect their presence? With so many deceased wanting to communicate with us, you would think one would make the attempt.

I have suggested one experiment. You tell interested cancer patients with limited time to live that you will have an experiment in a particular room at a particular time where a person will pick up playing cards at random. After these people die, their job will be to read those cards and report the state to mediums.

If that is not good enough, as Donald Trump might say, "Dead people, if you are listening, find a way to make your presence clear." Can't one of them suggest an experiment we could do to prove they are alive?

You steadfastly refuse to admit that the dead are very likely to be quite changed in consciousness such that former concerns in  physical life are no longer important to them. They're just not interested any  more in some frivolous game protocol to try to convince their shallow friends of survival.

My only suggestion would be to utilize one discarnate motivation that might still remain which could be exploited by the investigators. It would raise the stakes tremendously into a proposition which might really interest the recent dead.

This would be to set aside a large untouchable bequest of tens of millions of dollars, to be held until afterlife researchers come up with really strong and convincing research evidence for survival. The experimental protocols are specified to be ones such as the one you suggest, or others like the simple one of a dying person specifying a special code sequence stored in some obscure location in the world, and the job of the investigators is to communicate with the discarnate and obtain the code and its location both of which are known to no one on Earth.

If the investigators succeed in this, the foundation will gift a designated large homeless charity fund and a large pediatric cancer research fund with this very large bequest. This would hopefully take advantage of the presumably strong motivation of the recent discarnates to relieve suffering on Earth. Of course, if the code sequence test method was used, a way to rule out ESP or super psi on the part of the medium as the explanation would have to be developed.

This protocol would attempt to take advantage of the apparent change in consciousness after death occurring to most normal good people, where they become much more empathetic and unconditionally loving and and develop a great desire to help people. These factors would hopefully induce the recent dead to reach out and satisfy the research test criteria for near proof of survival.

One thing that might prevent this protocol from working would be the existence of a hard and fast rule imposed on the afterlife where
little or no assistance is allowed to be offered to souls on Earth to prove an afterlife, for karmic or other reasons.

This protocol would attempt to take advantage of the apparent change in consciousness after death occurring to most normal good people, where they become much more empathetic and unconditionally loving and and develop a great desire to help people. These factors would hopefully induce the recent dead to reach out and satisfy the research test criteria for near proof of survival.

Was thinking of something like this last night but I would say give it to their families or some other specified loved ones.

But it won't matter [when it comes to the dedicated disbelievers]. If there are too few good hits the pseudoskeptics will say it's coincidence or fraud, if there are too many good hits they'll say it's definitely fraud.

While there are elements of this dialogue with Merle that have been objectively interesting, the most notable takeaway for me is the dogmatic nature of his thinking.  Its like he's traded the dogmatism of Christianity from his youth for the dogmatism of materialism/scientism as an adult.  Why not take a more agnostic stance?  Since science can not objectively prove consciousness is solely a function of the brain nor disprove survival, why be so rigid about rejecting both/either possibility?

The irony always strikes me of not being able to see or acknowledge the leap of faith to assert either position: affirming or refuting.  Neither can be proven and both require leaps of faith.  Seems clear as day to me.

While there are elements of this dialogue with Merle that have been objectively interesting, the most notable takeaway for me is the dogmatic nature of his thinking.  Its like he's traded the dogmatism of Christianity from his year for the dogmatism of materialism/scientism as an adult.  Why not take a more agnostic stance?  Since science can not objectively prove consciousness is solely a function of the brain nor disprove survival, why be so rigid about rejecting both/either possibility?

The irony always strikes me of not being able to see or acknowledge the leap of faith to assert either position: affirming or refuting.  Neither can be proven and both require leaps of faith.  Seems clear as day to me.

Yeah I think anyone who has watched someone unfairly succumb to illness can make an argument against belief in the Omni-God. (Or one might just go through the news.)

And anyone who has watched someone succumb to dementia and related brain illnesses has a powerful incentive to think brain death means death period.

One can even demand a "hit" in a very controlled setting before they accept NDEs as producing OOBEs.

Where things go off the rails is the insistence that we can reject NDEs as afterlife evidence based on lack of hits in certain studies. Or that *if* souls exist they would *definitely* need brains to retain cognitive functioning. These to me are bizarre extreme positions.

On the flip side I think if Survival is true (which I believe) it paints a very strange picture of reality where communication is sparse, where multiple lines of evidence point to different kinds of afterlives that don't seem to be determined in a logical fashion, where culture influences some imagery encountered, and where an explanation has to be put forth for why Survival evidence is so difficult to obtain.

This doesn't mean the case for Survival is weak but it's fair to say that it is not so strong that it could currently be accepted in the way the oddities of QM are accepted. [Even in the case of QM the oddities are not accepted by everyone.]

Yeah I think anyone who has watched someone unfairly succumb to illness can make an argument against belief in the Omni-God. (Or one might just go through the news.)

A bit off topic but although I understand the feeling here, we chose to do without God, not the other way around.

A bit off topic but although I understand the feeling here, we chose to do without God, not the other way around.

Perhaps...but I find all explanations for why there is suffering if God is All Powerful [And All Good] to be unsatisfying. Though I also accept perhaps I've not read or thought deeply enough about such things...Probably a discussion for another thread though...

In a similar but perhaps more relevant vein I can see why people aren't convinced that the dead have different motivations and that's why there's a lack of communication. The sporadic and rare nature of Survival evidence is a credible reason to doubt Survival, or at the least it's definitely something that demands better explanation.

Yeah I think anyone who has watched someone unfairly succumb to illness can make an argument against belief in the Omni-God. (Or one might just go through the news.)

And anyone who has watched someone succumb to dementia and related brain illnesses has a powerful incentive to think brain death means death period.

One can even demand a "hit" in a very controlled setting before they accept NDEs as producing OOBEs.

Where things go off the rails is the insistence that we can reject NDEs as afterlife evidence based on lack of hits in certain studies. Or that *if* souls exist they would *definitely* need brains to retain cognitive functioning. These to me are bizarre extreme positions.

On the flip side I think if Survival is true (which I believe) it paints a very strange picture of reality where communication is sparse, where multiple lines of evidence point to different kinds of afterlives that don't seem to be determined in a logical fashion, where culture influences some imagery encountered, and where an explanation has to be put forth for why Survival evidence is so difficult to obtain.

This doesn't mean the case for Survival is weak but it's fair to say that it is not so strong that it could currently be accepted in the way the oddities of QM are accepted. [Even in the case of QM the oddities are not accepted by everyone.]

It seems to me that this is most likely by design, not chance - the powers that be have decided that this plane of existence is to be a place of both joy and of suffering, presumably for learning purposes. The idea is, in order to properly challenge humans in the physical world this reality was designed so that paranormal proof of survival is either impossible or nearly so. This design makes it much harder for humans to develop a realization of spiritual reality - an intentional challenge. This of course is a bad decision from the human standpoint, but our existing physical reality obviously has a design that permits rampant injustice and innocent suffering. So obviously whoever or whatever set the system up was not a human person and didn't much have human suffering in mind, or may have even considered it important enough to have a lot of.

Of course, the system design must be exceedingly complex, meaning that there will inevitably be many conflicts between design requirements, which automatically necessitates a lot of difficult tradeoffs. We can't know what these tradeoffs were, but they may explain a lot of the "evils" of Earth life.

Where things go off the rails is the insistence that we can reject NDEs as afterlife evidence based on lack of hits in certain studies. Or that *if* souls exist they would *definitely* need brains to retain cognitive functioning. These to me are bizarre extreme positions.

Exactly.  They aren't bizarre for me as much as they are intellectually dishonest.  I mean if we're having a casual conversation on what we think or believe, I don't get bent out of shape about these things.  Its fine to draw a line in the sand as your personal belief on any of these topics.  However, when someone elevates the discussion to something more serious, seemingly more rigorous and still insists on rejecting NDEs/forcing brains=minds then I take issue.

The only serious position in my view lies in between.  Again, I'm speaking from a 'what can we say with certainty to others' kind of positioning and not 'what I believe' or 'how I choose to live'.