Thoughts on survival

I don't know if you're saying that people only believe in survival because they're afraid of dying....
I like to think I've done my hard mile. I had my whole bunch of years where I was the atheist materialist debunker, I went through the struggle of dealing with my mortality then like everyone does. Then I came across NDEs when I was trying to disprove them and here we are. Certainly I wouldn't mind for there to be an afterlife but I'm only around while there's evidence, if we have to fall back on just religion then I'm still an atheist so I'm off the boat.

And a spiritual world could be deeply intertwined with the natural world, but then of course it comes in with how connected are they. Is the spiritual world physical? If it's nonphysical but deeply intertwined what happens when big events occur in the universe?

Your're being honest by saying you struggled with your mortality, but then you found NDE's. Realizing one's mortality is one great motivator to look for reasons to reassure one's self  of an afterlife. 
Ancestor worship is a religion which believes there is an afterlife. So one can be religious and an atheist. I must admit I have not personally met any skeptics that I am aware of, but I suspect that skeptics such as myself do not struggle with their mortallity. I certainly have not. 
Has an incorrect assumption been created with a history of thousands of years that there are two non overlapping worlds? That seems to be the case?

He's the only honest one from a sample size of one?  C'mon man.




Source?  I'm certainly in the Kam camp, but I don't have any evidence that the other camp (i.e., those unafraid of facing their mortality) is some super small population.  Quite the contrary in my experience.




Maybe expand on what you mean by separate exactly.  Otherwise, its hard to evaluate whether your comparison (QM to classical) is apt.

Separate is a question best put to those who talk about the spiritual world vs the material world.

Likely the only argument against Survival that carries weight is experiential - basically our awareness of the discontinuity gained from attending funerals.

If people died but then the body turned into a figure of light that flew into the sky then this experience plus the existing Survival cases would end the debate for most people.

Oddly enough, one of the most convincing experiences for me when it comes to life and death is my experience as a teenager ushered in to see my dead father lying in his coffin. I was encouraged to go right up to his body and put my hand on his head. 

As I walked away, I said something like ... that isn’t him, he’s not there. My overwhelming feeling was one of absence ... whatever was my dad had left and that body may as well have been a waxwork. I felt no attachment to it. 

Perhaps we sense life. Perhaps we know that life is something beyond biology. I certainly felt that strongly at the time.

Another experience that I will always remember came a few years before the time just described in my previous post. I was at a public swimming pool but this was before I had learned to swim. I was pushed into the deep end by some idiots running past and, because it was so very busy, nobody noticed my thrashing about beneath the surface. 

I clearly remember a sudden peace replacing the panic. I remember accepting that I was about to die and that I was quite content for that to take place. This only lasted a few moments because I then felt hands grab me around the waist and pull me to the surface. Immediately the panic returned and the fear that I might have drowned but for my friend being alert. 

So, if anything is a comfort when I descend into morose contemplation of my mortality, it is that memory of those moments of peace and acceptance. I have since heard the same thing described by others who have believed themselves to be about to die and they describe it exactly as I felt it.

I’ve heard claims that this is just an automatic response which has evolved to protect the brain but does that make any sense? If survival is the objective then why evolve a reaction of resignation and acceptance ... giving up the fight and almost welcoming death? Actually, I’m not even sure that the word almost is necessary... I think that I was welcoming my transition.

Your're being honest by saying you struggled with your mortality, but then you found NDE's. Realizing one's mortality is one great motivator to look for reasons to reassure one's self  of an afterlife. 
Ancestor worship is a religion which believes there is an afterlife. So one can be religious and an atheist. I must admit I have not personally met any skeptics that I am aware of, but I suspect that skeptics such as myself do not struggle with their mortallity. I certainly have not. 
Has an incorrect assumption been created with a history of thousands of years that there are two non overlapping worlds? That seems to be the case?

More so I struggled with my mortality, got over it, then found NDEs in an effort to go "Look at these stupid fucks believing in an afterlife what a bunch of cowards". I'm certainly interested in what they're suggestive of but I'm not only interested in them because I'm afraid of dying. If you're implying that I am well yknow, get fucked.

And to say that skeptics don't struggle with their mortality is frankly dumb. All you need is the most basic of google searches to see that is not the case. I tend to doubt anyone who says they aren't bothered by it, maybe if they're of some truly impressive fortitude I'd be more likely to take them seriously, but otherwise it seems like more of an ego trip thing than anything. You silly people believe in the supernatural because you're afraid of death, not like myself the enlightened skeptic who isn't afraid of death at all.

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- Physicalism is a technically a philosophy albeit a very poor one, and as such has had no successes in science. A good many scientists such as Newton were [and are] theists, including the physicist Jeremy England - an Orthodox Jew - who is working on an explanation for how life results naturally from physics. Many also, at the least, weren't & aren't Physicalists. Historically it can and has been argued that without the idea that God had put down Laws in the Book of Nature we wouldn't have had the scientific advancements we've gotten.
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It's interesting that a good argument can be made that Christian Theism is responsible for the developmental breakthrough in Europe that led to modern science.

Modern day theoretical physicists have apparently, for the most part, completely forgotten the philosophical presuppositions that enabled the Christian founders of modern science in medieval Christian Europe to make their breakthrough into modern science the first place. The main one being, that any mathematics that might describe this universe must be the product of the Mind of God - this was the driving assumption of the founders of science.

A partial list of just some of the great scientists who founded our present edifice of science, who were Theists or Deists with deep spiritual belief systems:

Isaac Newton
Robert Boyle
James Clerk Maxwell
Michael Faraday
Werner Heisenberg
Wolfgang Pauli
Erwin Schrodinger
Ernest Rutherford
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)
Arthur Eddington
J. J. Thomson
John Eccles
Carl Friedrich Gauss
Humphry Davy
Ludwig Boltzmann

Most of my friends throughout life have not been on the same page as me when it comes to these subjects. Most have been atheists and most would laugh (in a friendly but mocking manner) at my "superstitious" talk of an afterlife. Generally the retort would be something like "I believe in science" or "science has proved that there is nothing after death".

Well, actually science has not proved any such thing and we could all name prominent scientists who believe in the afterlife, even some who don't believe in God. But Steve001 is clearly saying that those who seek evidence of the afterlife are cry-babies who are scared of the dark. That is a very juvenile attitude, IMO but I've heard it so often that the only time I will try to explain is here on this forum. If Steve001 ignores my reasoning, I guess that's his prerogative but I wouldn't give much for his chances of being taken seriously on a forum where we come together to discuss this and other related subjects.

As for the fear - it is clearly not rational. I have a fear of heights too - I am filled with the same kind of dread when I look down from a tall building even though I know there is no way that I could fall (or even throw myself off). It is just not rational. My rational mind tells me that either I will continue after physical death or I won't - and if I don't, then I will not be aware that I am no longer there to experience oblivion. The fear is therefore unfounded but it overtakes my rationality all the time. I don't know why and I wish it would stop. 

Understanding the evidence for and against survival has turned out to have no effect on that fear whatsoever. But it has had a profound effect on my understanding of how I should live my life. I ended up being convinced that life has a purpose and that being cynical, selfish and unsympathetic are all antithetical to that purpose. Moreover, I find it difficult to understand how people - with no sense of purpose, no concept of love beyond some impersonal, evolutionary side-effect produced by brain chemicals - how they explain their own  feelings of love and empathy to themselves. To me, those things belong to my greater being - my soul, if you like. They are conditioned, enhanced, challenged and sometimes almost destroyed by life but they have a purpose. They are not random or pointless.

Generally the retort would be something like "I believe in science" or "science has proved that there is nothing after death".

I think a lot of this has to do with deep conditioning about fearing damnation and/or fear of the paranormal. It might have to do with something half-remembered, like accidentally catching a glimpse of a horror movie as a toddler or at a very young age seeing those monstrosities that sometimes accompany sleep paralysis.

But there is something deeper about the pseudo-skeptic, as it isn't clear what makes someone evangelize the Physicalist faith and its dreary conclusions. Why spread misery to others, even delight in it?

Even Chomsky, himself an atheist, taken issue with them in their New Atheist incarnation ->

I haven’t been thrilled by the atheist movement.  First, who is the audience...Is the audience atheists? Again a waste of time. Is it the grieving mother who consoles herself by thinking that she will see her dying child again in heaven? If so, only the most morally depraved will deliver solemn lectures to her about the falsity of her beliefs...

It's interesting that a good argument can be made that Christian Theism is responsible for the developmental breakthrough in Europe that led to modern science.

There's an article about this on the Catholic site First Things.

There's also the historical work of David Ray Griffin, where he notes that an alliance between the Church and the Mechanists was made against the esoteric believers who were part of the Renaissance.

All to say history is quite complex but pseudo-skeptics - many who only pretend to have scientific acumen - are often enough not very good at the humanities.

In the effort of communication I thought I'd post about some doubts about survival I've had recently after reading some philosophy (mostly David Chalmers and some stuff about substance dualism). And I think you guys know me well enough to know this isn't some kind of doubt sowing, GOTCHA kinda post.

I was around anyway so I scanned the active threads and saw this one - I thought I'd add my two penny worth.     As I explained elsewhere I have no doubt about survival but don't try to persuade anyone.  I'm happy when I am able to offer a crumb of comfort to someone bereaved and searching for answers.

My doubts about survival tends to follow a kind of snowball I guess? Or a chain. Starting of course with, is physicalism false? I tend to be conservative about this, I think there's certainly enough evidence to reasonably doubt it is true but of course physicalism is very successful, and the evidence we have now tends to be a lot of "things physicalism can't explain" and we have to wait and see, rather than a smoking gun okay we have this definitive event this can't be explained physicalism is false.

Physicalism is a new one on me.  

Going on from there of course, survival itself. I don't tend to include super PSI since I don't view it as super valid. Certainly within the realm of possibility but to me unlikely. But yes, survival, how closely tied is it with the physical? What happens with reincarnation when everybody is dead? If we somehow survive in some information morphic resonance kind of way then what happens at the potential heat death of the universe, permanent constant hell or fading away? Or burning up because of entropy beforehand? Or an equally terrible fate before that in a big crunch, rip or slurp?

Interesting questions.

So survival, an afterlife, is not tied to the goings on of the physical world. In that case, then a whole other dimension would need to exist, some kind of spiritual world. But then what would that be like? What LAWS would it operare under? Or is there none? Do you remain forever, timeless, or do you fade into the godhead type situation? Is everyone there the millions from history who died? Do you move up dimensions? How, why, how does that work? What happens when the physical world ends does shit change cause humans are wiped out? 

All questions I've addressed elsewhere, elsewhen.....

Not to mention why does survival happen in the first place, especially if it's not religious related OR physical. We've found out a lot about the universe with there being no spiritual dimension. Did it exist before life? Why did it only exist after life if not? How does it exist? 

This is where it gets heavy!

No small number of questions. When a skeptic hears about an afterlife you can imagine all of these running rhrough their mind and squashing any serious thought about the possibility. At the very least we have evidence, suggestive maybe but good and improving, saying that survival is a possibility. Does that mean some of these questions might be able to be answered with research? Maybe. Are some possibly unanswerable? Probably. They're not anything that keeps me awake at night, but do wrack my brain when I read skeptics and opposition to non physical things in philosophy.

Humankind's ability to ask searching questions is way greater than its ability to accept the simplicity of "I don't know.  We don't know.  We probably won't consciously know while we're still in this world."

What do you guys think, got anything that keeps you thinking too? Might as well be open about it, shouldn't feel scared to voice our doubts.

I often wonder about the sciences of the dimensions we can't detect with our scientific equipments.  But I contentedly accept that after my passing I'll be re-acquainted with whatever understanding I had before I came here this last time and I expect I will go on to understand more - if I retain an interest in those issues.  There is much more to life beyond than just learning about sciences.