Can science agree with the concept of life after death?

This is funny to me, because you strongly state that science can be in error, that it cant be trusted completely. However for fairness you must also use this hypothesis of life after death as being just as error prone, yet you have completely and utterly ignored making this statement.

So if neither side of the issue can be absolute, then what basis do you wish to start from? Not to mention my objection to your statement about science being faulty. There are aspects of science that are not faulty but you have not given it any credit.

Perhaps the question can not be answered, not because we don't have the tools or the imagination required to make the measurements or collect evidence. Instead we can't answer it because there is nothing to answer. It is no different than determining if a flying pink elephant exists.

But if a scientist has faith that a unified theory of physics will be developed, do we say he's waiting for scientific advancement to show him a pink elephant?

I'm not sure how the two relate. Why would the physicist need to wait for evidence of a flying pink elephant to make a unified theory work? They are unrelated.

You don't need to know anything undetermined for a unified theory of physics. The math points to what is missing. To make the claim that the missing IS the flying pink elephant is where the mistake is.

For example we have a theory for a particle in which we have never observed. It's called the Higgs Boson. How is it we have a name for something we have never observed? Because of the math. But we aren't stopping because we gave it a name, we are investigating if the math is correct. This is what SHOULD always be done instead of just writing it off with "the flying pink elephant dun it."

Everything is error-prone. That's why you must utilize logic and scientific evidence to create a gradually less subjective answer. Neither side can be absolute, because even logic contains subjective and/or flawed terms. Science has so many factors that the odds of drawing a perfect conclusion would be next to none. Take measuring temperature of a hot liquid, for example. Multiple factors could skew the results such as touching the thermometer, the surface the beaker is on, the material of the beaker, and other outside conditions. I don't discredit any science. The sides don't have to be absolute because they can't be absolute. We can approximate, for instance, the distance to the sun with a .05-.1% margin of error maybe, but we can assume that it is that distance because it is close enough. This works for things that have a certain degree of certainty, and the topic in the OP could have barely any chance of existing, a 50% chance, or that only parts of it are correct, etc.

You may assume that it doesn't exist without evidence, though. We can not assume that it does exist because there is no math to follow, and in turn no evidence.

---------- Post added 09-11-2009 at 08:42 PM ----------

In science, a 95-99.9% certainty should be achieved to claim that it is real, but as this is subjective anyone could disagree.

---------- Post added 09-11-2009 at 08:49 PM ----------

And I didn't assume there was life after death, and never said that it could be assumed. To make progress you must assume something doesn't exist. Maybe someday when people can be revived from death then you could make progress, if it is impossible to revive them, you can't rule out that they have left their body.
And the math would point to an answer, assuming that the math is not flawed or contains subjective content, in other words you can't approximate in real math.

To answer the topic's question, would it not be necessary to be more precise about what is meant by "life after death?" A clearer definition would then lead to a second question, namely: what "evidence" would be acceptable to warrant a conclusion that there is life after death. Lastly, a third question would then arise: is science capable of providing such evidence or warrant.

To my knowledge, there hasn't been any real evidence that consciousness continues after death. Sure, it's completely possible that such a thing - if true - might be discovered one day.

That'd be cool on a magnificent scale! I just don't think it very likely.

Science tries but its a bit difficult trying to prove that death is anything other than a morbid, full stop. Those who believe by experience, like I, should not be suprised that it is an impossible task, to convince others that life could be just a transition from one state to another.

There does not seem to be amy method of falsifying the notion "of life after death".
Nor does there seem to be any empirical evidence or sound reason for accepting the notion. It is not a scientific question. We are all equall in death.

The term "science" is often used today for what's scientifically confirmed, and increasingly, theories and opinions scientific types favor. But science is actually an epistemology, a method of investigation that, basically, is efforts to observe what is hypothesized. So if there is no way to set up a situation where a being can be observed existing after his body fails, then science epistemology cannot agree or disagree, it can only say it has been unable to confirm life after death through science epistemology. Does that mean there is no life after death? No, because science epistemology isn't necessarily able to discover all truths, nor is it necessarily the only way to come to knowledge.

Of course, some science types have the opinion that science epistemology is the only method that produces knowledge, and since science doesn't seem to produce any knowledge except physical/mechanical knowledge, they conclude all existence is physical/mechanical. Such thinkers are therefore likely to say the idea of life after death is nonsense because existence is only physical . . . i.e., if the physical body dies, then so does consciousness. But that is a science believer opinion, not a true scientific conclusion.

I'd have to disagree with you that science "can't truly ever say anything" . . . it can say what it has observed, but it can't properly say that what it has been unable to observe is not true or existent.

Science has probably gathered enough evidence to at least theorize with confidence that consciousness stops once the brain shuts down. But if consciousness is still active, would memory be active as well? If we are recycled souls, should we be able to remember a past life we have lived or if we made a stop in Heaven? Consciousness probably has to regenerate once a new incarnation has been initiated. I suppose you don't necessarily have to remember anything if you are conscious, but you do have to be conscious to remember.

You should be aware of the research of Dr Ian Stevenson, late of the University of Virginia (died 2007). He spent many years tracking down accounts of children who remembered their previous existences. He went to a lot of trouble to screen out frauds and wishful thinking and the like. He ended up with quite a few well documented cases. Ian Stevenson was a sober, methodical and clear-minded investigator in my view. As far as evidence of the idea of re-birth - and really, if you think about it, it is the only post-death theory of which you could get evidence - this is as good as it gets. Wikipedia article is here.

What bearing, I feel pressed to ask, might this have on the following question?



Without going into spills of how we come to know of anything, and while making it clear that we would surely come to see that we don't always need perfection of information on the practical level, the answer to the above question is affirmative--a fair degree of what happens to a body after death is known, and can be explained. (hee, hee, hee...)



The humor above is simply to second the motion inherent in jgweed's #6, on page one. . . a more precise OP is always helpful. Otherwise, if I were to beg for the allowance of rephrasing the thread's title to read something along the lines of ' Can scientific-method-thinking agree with the concept of the survival of the brain/consciousness/mind axis after death?,' then the answer is, up to the moment, not at all. (and I very seriously doubt that that will U-turn and colapse back in on itself)

One cannot really approach this while thinking about something like 'heaven' (and not even religious belief-system docrine, really) because of the automatic presupposition included in that tenet. It should be approached firstly, in as neutral a position as possible, and then thought and observation applied to it. (see posts numbers 6, 10, and 11)



One possible starting point of investigation can be found here, namely, why and/or how we could consider the circumstances where a person leaves their body, and what detail would that entail.

A fair amount of hair development material has left me; is that waiting somewhere for the rest of me to catch up with it? Some feeling in an area of my forehead has left me (lesson learned: don't go trying to put your head through car windshields...tis not very productive a thing) and a fair amount of memory has left me [or I just can't access it, whichever], so what would that mean, as far as 'me' leaving my body, or 'my body' leaving me?

OBEs have been shown clearly enough to not be cases of any body function leaving the body, just as NDEs have; and there are no cases of revival after the point of somatic death. The process of body and brain function is very much secured as being just that, body and brain functioning process, so we have a clear enough foundation upon which to follow through on, namely, that body is body (emergent properties pending that). It does not appear to hold at all, therefore, that bodily process can thus materially (1) leave body, and still be bodily process.

1. Here, 'materially' refers to a material degree, as in a major degree, and leave implicates such as not returning--to avoid something like sleep states (which usually we revive out of), stupors, or coma states, which often enough, one revives out of.

Kase you constantly ignore the possible and make it impossible. No amount of science can convince those who believe that the essence of man survives death. Can you remember your very early informative years ? i doubt it, but you learned 75 % of your knowledge in that period, does that prove it did not happen or you are not who you say you are?

You are mistaken, xris. It is because I am focusing on the possible, that I make my presentations. I have a fairly good memory, xris, and can recall much of my formulative years; also your later data is most surely incorrect.

Im not sure your right, I do believe we learn more in the first two years of our lives than all the rest. How far can you recall your childhood? most of it is forgotten. Does that indicate it was not you, you did not exist, just because your memory can not recall those years?

Lets pretend that we live more than once and life is an experience. Would it be a novel experience, if you could remember previous existences? Would it make those experiences invalid or change your views on life?

One journey does not make another journey pointless.

The only way we could ever prove of life after death or the traveling soul is to examine those childhood occasions when children's stories are more than can be explained by imagination.

I have the feeling that what really needs to be disambiguated here is science the body of practiontioners and their accumulated hypotheses on reality and science the method and corpus of data. Granted we cannot have one without the other data really doesn't exist without interpretation. Yet this question relies on the very interpretation it invariably rejects.

Science as a method and corpus of data is not equipeed to make any judgment on life after death, yet science as a body of practitioners with their accumulated ideologies and dogmas tend to say that lack of proof is proof that it does not.

to answer the original question science cannot agree about life after death in the traditional sense of spirits etc... it just isn't equipped to do so.

science also can and does reign in on the question of life after death because of the set of internalized cultural dogmas and presuppositions inherent in the body of practitioners.

Many try to prove there is life after death but it is usually flawed because of personal beliefs. Contentiously, the reports of other lives, is in my opinion the only evidential way of examining this concept. Would, should science be prepared to examine this without fear of ridicule by other scientists ? it usually has them treated as lepers.

Scientists generally are very clear about what they will consider plausible, possible, worth investigating, and so on. You can bet your boots that most of them will flee with the speed of a thousand frightened gazelles from anything as loopy as re-incarnation. Kill your reputation and your funding in no time flat. Dr Ian Stevenson's unit at the University of Virginia which did all the investigation of children who remembered their past lives was privately funded by a grant from the man that invented Xerography, Chester Carlson. In fact, I don't think old Chester himself was the instigator, from memory it was his wife which was the enthusiast.