Concepts of God (The nature of a \'Creator\')

by dhw, Monday, April 11, 2016, 13:37 (2929 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: I think many so-called psychic experiences are as real as our everyday experiences, but whether the i-dentity actually lives on after the death of the body (not just the brain) is a question I simply don't feel able to answer.-DAVID: Brain dead is dead! The body just takes a little longer, because as breathing stops and anoxia sets in the other tissues take their slow time to die. This is why we can do transplants.-You will have to enlighten me on this. If the other tissues take their slow time to die, why does brain dead = dead? Didn't Eben Alexander have his NDE while in a coma? Doesn't that = brain dead, body alive?
 
DAVID: What is considered 'brain dead' is loss of activity in the cortex. The other layers show very little activity at that point, but some deep spikes are occasionally seen. Whether that minimal activity can support the complexity of NDE's is very doubtful. BBella is right to feel this is scientific evidence which must be factored into any thinking about afterlife.-BBella wrote that diversity was a “scientific fact about the afterlife”. I don't see how one can talk of scientific facts in such a context, as I have explained in my post to her. I don't know why you feel the need to use the word “scientific” anyway, other than to conform to the general prejudice that if something is not “scientific” it is not to be taken seriously. I think as you do that NDEs should be taken very seriously, and I wish there were some means of devising “scientific” tests to prove that there is or is not such a thing as an afterlife. As it is, we have people's experiences, and in some cases we have information they could not have obtained by normal means. That is evidence enough for me to acknowledge the possibility of an afterlife. However, I also acknowledge the possibility of a “scientific”, i.e. materialistic explanation, and even of a psychic explanation that does not necessitate the existence of the single mind you call God. And the older I get, the closer I come to the truth. So I'll just wait and see - or not see!