Hypothesizing an afterlife based on NDEs requires the idea that consciousness can exist separately from the brain. This doesn't seem warranted based on NDEs alone
This is exactly the argument I'm looking for. But I'm not sure if postulating other methods NDEs/ODEs could have happened is convincing that that's how they happened in all cases. So I'm not sure if the conversation has reached the point at which we can say "ergo, NDEs don't even suggest that consciousness can exist separately from the brain."
My hope is that research into the brain and AI will give sufficient evidence that we can come to this conclusion without this discussion. Perhaps it already has and I'm unaware of it, but the research I've seen takes this as an assumption, not a conclusion.
Hmm, what I said was poorly worded. I may edit it. What I meant was that I considered the evidence to be sufficient for me to believe in God. Here's what I said:
I understand that my personal experiences with what I believe to have been God could be explained by neural anomalies, but until I have convincing reasons to believe that, or convincing reasons to believe there isn't a God outside my personal experiences, or convincing reasons to believe that my experiences are evidence of something else entirely, I'm going to assume that there is a God.
Here's what I meant:
... (read 357 more words →)until I have convincing reasons to
[I'm going to leave this comment like it is, but I'm adding this edit for clarification. After a second read-through, I do agree that the quote I posted proves that NDE's aren't compelling evidence in the sense that they aren't definite proof of God/the afterlife/whatever. But I don't think they proved that NDE's aren't valid evidence, which it seemed to me at first they tried to do, and I then realized that they hadn't. So take this comment with a grain of salt, and see what you can make of it]
DreadedAnomaly gave two good articles to read in his post below*, which could possibly explain OBE/NDEs as completely natural.... (read more)
And how exactly do you propose to test the existence of an afterlife with reproducibility? Are you volunteering?
JoshuaZ gave good answers in his post below
http://lesswrong.com/lw/3ok/is_there_anything_after_death/3bhr
Personally, I find Occam's Razor convincing. Doesn't it strike you as unlikely that there would be a God, but the only evidence for God would be subjective experiences?
without evidence, the probability of God, the afterlife, etc. is going to come up very low from a Bayesian evaluation.
That's the whole point I'm getting at here. Should I consider these things evidence? How do I objectively decide? I'm obviously biased to believe in an afterlife and in God and in the supernatural so how do I overcome this bias and look at the evidence objectively? Your former arguments (I'm reading the first article now and... (read more)
was the idea/half-belief already present and NDEs/OBEs only make it slightly more likely or difficult to rule out entirely?
That is almost certainly true. But it doesn't make the first part of your statement false.
Do things like NDEs and OBEs alone lead you to think that there is a possible afterlife[?]
I'm trying to objectively decide the answer to this question. It's difficult because of your other point.
you might be discussing this topic as if a certain set of evidence matters, when it really has nothing to do with why you deal delicately with the afterlife idea while harshly with the other unsupported hypotheses I listed above
If this is true, how do I know? If I'm biased to believe in an afterlife and evidence that would otherwise not applicable becomes convincing to me because of my bias, how would I be able to tell this is true rather than the alternative? (which is that I'm unbiased and that the evidence really is convincing)
Out-of-body experiences are very interesting to me as well. The first response seems to be to ignore them or to assume that they are lying. My response is to cautiously accept that they might be telling the truth, but to wait until we can find out more about what is going on. This could possibly be by using evidence gathered from careful experiments, possibly by using arguments from thought experiments.
Richard Feynman gave himself one on purpose and described it in Surely You're Joking. It's also quite interesting.
I need to read this! I'm intrigued!
A fine argument. I appreciate that you accept that there could be evidence that the brain does not completely implement consciousness (not that I believe that it doesn't, I just accept that it might not. I will live as if it does until I have reason to believe that it doesn't)
I was on Reddit today, and I came across (this link)[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/eyiat/for_those_of_you_who_have_died_and_been/]. One of the things I've seen on this site that's bothered me is the exclusion of personal experiences in deciding what a person should or should not believe. I know that less wrong is mostly atheist, and I wanted to hear less wrong's reaction to descriptions of experiences like these.
For example, my dad was in the hospital 5 or 6 years ago when a truck came across an icy road and hit him head-on. His most vivid memory from this is a dream he had when he was in the hospital. He was in a pool of water with my mom,... (read more)
I'll check that out. I have yet to watch all of those talks.