JackDaydream wrote:I do think that your emphasis on the importance of evidence is important because otherwise we may as well believe in fairytales. The only thing is that I think that evidence for life after death would have to be a bit different from evidence as we know it in experimental research or the empirical methods. If anything, it would be more tentative and giving some kind of hint, and nothing more solid, because it is unknown. It makes me think about how we think about the future, with some possible guidelines for predictions, but what really happens may be so very different from what we imagine.
I presume it would require us to be open to the idea that some kind of personal experience/consciousness could survive the physical death of the body which was previously associated with that consciousness. As you've suggested, using an evidence based approach does not conflict with this. The approach which involves gathering evidence via our senses and trying to spot patterns in that evidence (sometimes called the scientific method) isn't identical to materialism/physicalism and doesn't necessarily require it. It only requires that there are patterns in the evidence gathered by those senses that we can use to create proposed general truths, such as "human consciousness survives the death of human bodies/brains."
I would say that possible sources of evidence for life after death includes people who give accounts of former lives which, when information is sought, appear to correspond with real people who existed. Also, we have the near death experiences, but both of these aspects of evidence are open to many kinds of questions.
Yes, those accounts would certainly constitute evidence. But if we were serious about investigating this we'd have to investigate those accounts thoroughly. I'm not personally aware of any accounts that aren't more reasonably explained by various aspects of human physiology and psychology that don't require the theory that consciousness can exist before or after the physical body exists.
I think the nature of human consciousness and awareness is such that we often find it very difficult to accept the fact that out of all the billions of years that the universe seems to have existed and will apparently continue to exist, we as individuals will only personally experience a few decades of it: The whole "brief candle" thing that we humans have been talking about in various forms probably since we first started to talk and gain appreciation of the world as a thing that exists independently of our perception of it. That, I think, can often make us so unwilling to accept this fact that we're open to anything, no matter how tenuous, that might suggest it isn't true and that we, individually, can have more life and experience.
But, I do believe that for people who are Christians the biggest source of evidence is the belief that Jesus was risen up by God through the resurrection, and, thereby, that this is likely to suggest that this is a likelihood for human beings generally...
Yes, presumably. I guess if they wanted take an evidence based approach to that, they'd have to do some kind of research into how probable it is that any of the events you've described happened.
You are saying that you do not believe in the life after death.
Yes, and as I said, believing something is not the same as being certain of it. It means thinking, based on the evidence seen so far, that it is the case.
I am not saying that I definitely do at all, but I keep an open mind.
In your usage of the word "believe", does somebody who believes something close their mind to other possibilities that might seem more likely if new evidence came to light? If so, we use the word "believe" to mean different things.
I simply wish to think about it as deeply and carefully as can be done. My own thread question is about whether it is possible to answer the question and I don't think it is ultimately but I believe that it is a matter which is worth considering fully with a view to the various aspects of what is entailed by the idea.
Yes, it's a naturally interesting subject. I think it is possible to answer the question, but I suspect my view of what it means to answer a question about what is or is not the case in the world is different from yours. As I've said, in my usage, answering a question of that sort does not constitute becoming certain as to the answer to the question. So, in my usage, I can answer the question "is there life after death?" with "no" without excluding the non-zero possibility that it might later change to "Actually, yes!"
The only questions whose answers are certain, and not subject to potential change in the light of new evidence, are questions that are not about the world at all but are about our determination to use various symbols in various ways, like "Does 1 plus 1 equal 2?".
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