Researchers say there's evidence that consciousness continues after clinical death

When people fall asleep, others can walk in on them, talk to them, turn on lights and more yet the sleeping person is not aware of that.

I do accept that GOD will greet us upon death.

 

I'm not sure of what kind of point you are attempting here, but there is plenty of evidence that sleeping individuals are NOT unaware of events surrounding them.

That awareness may come in the form of dreams, as vague notions, as surrealistic imagined events, or even as clear memories.

Of course, there is also the fact that events that occur in the vicinity of someone sleeping can cause that person to awaken. And, THAT is another demonstration that sleeping brains still can detect what is going on. They can decide whether or not to ignore an alarm clock. They can cause someone to jump to full alert due to a creaking door. They can cause awakening at fairly precise times of day - or have you never awakened just before your alarm was scheduled to ring.

So, those asleep aren't just capable of taking in data. Their brains are actually working away, making decisions, monitoring passage of time, creating memories, presenting dreams, causing restlessness, etc.

It's also well documented that even those in a coma can be aware of what people in their presence are saying and doing to some degree.

 

I'm saying memory is not stored in the brain, but accessed by the brain. As for the rest, not sure.

 

How does this comport with the fact that we know where the memory is in the brain?

There are large numbers of human test cases where specific parts get damaged and the specific results can be determined, giving strong evidence concerning where in the brain various kinds of things are stored.

There are FMRI tests that show where activity exists during testing that requires memory.

There are tests with animals that have very similar brains, where memory can be stimulated.

In the detailed study of the human brain there is NO indication of any kind of machinery for the instantaneous availability of memory as it is used in every kind of thought process.

What you are proposing is seriously magical and includes absolutely NO evidence.

 

Identifying delusion.

This was not my focus &, even when your repeated, non sequitor
replies drove me to explain to you that scientists are still people, most sane readers would not take that as an attack on Western science. You have a problem.

 

I pointed out solid reasons for the lack of interest by science - a lack of interest that you rightly claimed to be broad and deep.

You can't really have it both ways. Either there are reasons, or western science is broadly and deeply populated by flawed humans.

 

Again, your post is non sequitor. My only thesis, about near-death experience & the afterlife, vis a vis scientific verification, was that it could not be done. A thesis with which you agree. Nevertheless, you proceed as if on some mission to expose anyone with any doubts about scientific information. Well here's one person's view, & he's a scientist:

<SNIP>
Good science takes time. I want to be comfortable that my findings are true before publishing them, so that they will stand the test of time. Yet this approach is remarkably uncommon. Given our current science environment, all incentives are aligned to rush to publication and to prioritize quantity over quality of papers. If this is the case, it should not be surprising that scandals—putting entire bodies of work into question and possibly invalidating decades of work—surface with some regularity.
Indeed, most of science is currently mired in a “replication crisis,” with only about 1 in 4 reported findings standing the test of time in social psychology. The situation is likely even worse in fields like cancer biology or genomics.

All of this suggests that we need to change the way we do science. Civilization needs reliable, high-quality science to advance further. Unlikely as it might seem from the outside, research on “the dress” could lead the way.

<End SNIP>

Note some of the ironies, considering our previously-stated opinions of how science works-- you: not fast, but efficient; me: overly-slow to accept new thinking-- in this scientific author citing stats that indicate that the current scientific culture has been too quick in giving credence to new ideas (though, I'm guessing, less revolutionary, vis a vis the status quo). Maybe the takeaway should be that, just because people, who accept science, writ large, have differing perceptions about its shortcomings, is no reason to go on anything resembling a fervent believer's holy quest, to destroy the infidels.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate....eres-why-people-saw-the-dress-differently.amp

Btw, the top line of my previous post was erroneously retained, after I scrapped the idea of going through all our conversation, pointing out every time you read things that were not in my posts (deciding that it was neither worth my time, nor anything that thread-readers should be put through; once was more than enough).

 

I'm more than willing to discuss that topic in a threat somewhere.

 

Some children are giving accurate, detailed memories of past lives

https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual...ildren-who-report-memories-of-previous-lives/


IF this is true, then it must be true that memory is stored in an astral spiritual body that transfers with the soul as it reincarnates.

That is the only explanation I can think of. Now, I only speculate 'astral spiritual body' because of my own direct experiences with OOBEs
Without some kind of body, ethereal body in this case, ( one that cannot be detected by human machinery, to date, though perhaps at some point in the future they might be able to ) I can't imagine where a memory might be stored.
If it were stored only in the brain, one might think it wouldn't transfer in the reincarnation. Or perhaps it is in the brain, and transfers during the reincarnation to the ethereal body ( the astral body, which is not a good term, owing to the new age verbiage attached to it ) which allows the child to access it, or some children to access it more than others. For most, nature, in her wisdom, denies children access to memories of past lives.

 

I have no idea how reincarnation might work or how to test people for past lives memories.

There is a major amount of work being done on understanding how our brains work in serious detail. I'm far more interested in that, as how the brain works is incredibly interesting and can be known through science.

So far, there isn't anything that our brains do where someone can show that the brain would need supernatural intervention.

It is true that science is far from answering every brain related question. But, I would suggest that the advocates of reincarnation and other supernatural phenomena have been unable to show anything concerning how their ideas might work.

 

In my view, anything that is real, any phenomena that does, indeed, exist, is natural. In point of fact, there is no such thing as supernatural, and supernatural phenomena is actually an oxymoron. But, of course, 'popular use' I get that.

As for 'unable to show' , how long has science been unable to show a lot of things, that it eventually was able to?

My point is that, well, it's probably just a matter of time. You know the old quote from a Shakespeare play, directed at Horatio, eh?

 

Just because it's the only explanation you can think of (or choose to think of) doesn't mean it's true. There are lots of possible explanations for the phenomena of people who appear to recall things from the lives of dead people (even calling it "previous lives" is presumptive bias). One key thing to remember is that it doesn't need to be (and indeed is unlikely to be) the same single explanation for all of the examples presented.

There are obvious mundane possibilities; fraud, leading by parents and investigators (intentional or not), a combination of naturally active imaginations and sub-consciously picking up overheard information, exaggerated or simply false reporting or indeed some combination of these.

And if you're proposing any kind of totally speculative options (like "astral spiritual body", whatever you actually mean by that phrase) then literally anything anyone cares to imagine can be presented as an equally valid hypothesis. Aliens, magic, gods - anything goes at this point.

Just as a general principle, even if you're assuming information has been transferred from a dead person to a living one, it would be perfectly viable for memories to be entirely stored within the physical brain and the information to have been transferred out of the source brain before they died, stored in some unknow third medium and later transferred in to the destination brain. Even you specific hypothesis doesn't automatically support the idea that memories are normally held outside the brain.

It should also be pointed out that "memories" and "consciousness" are two entirely different concepts yet the discussion seems to shift from one to the other as is convenient.

 

Supernatural includes those things for which there is no evidence of existence in the natural world. That's not an oxymoron. Unicorns are supernatural (even though I've seen photographs!). Telepathy is supernatural. Your memory cloud idea is supernatural. Star Trek transporters are supernatural. Etc.

Your "it's just a matter of time" is not justification for giving supernatural ideas for which there is zero evidence any credibility at all. They get credibility when there is evidence.

Otherwise, it's purely religion - a belief in a supernatural world taken on faith alone.

 

And what if it was not a past life, but rather instilled into the child's mind by an existent alien life - such as demons? The same alien life that has people thinking they are talking to relatives in seances and other such manifestations?

 

I wouldn't say that supernatural is that which there is no evidence of existence in the natural world - since there is an abundant amount of evidence on much of what people consider supernatural. But rather I would say, that supernatural is something that doesn't have a physical explanation - or cannot be explained as of yet.

 

Yes. The study of psychiatry has found that it's actually hard NOT to instill or reinforce false memories concerning past experiences during counseling.

It's been found that counseling can create or greatly reinforce the belief that a patient was abused as a child, even while carefully probing to determine if such every happened. Those "memories" can come as fully formed scenarios that were subsequently found to be totally false.

Helping with that is the finding that the act of remembering physically rewrites the memory. So, there is significant opportunity for memories to change.

It doesn't require demons or charlatans.

 

I'm sure you are referring to your religion. I'm ok with you having your religion.


I'm not ok with the "as of yet" part, because it can not be allowed to change whether the phenomenon in question is to be accepted.

If you accept stuff on the contingency that at some time in the future it might turn out to be true, there are no longer ANY rules of any kind. Absolutely NOTHING can be excluded, even temporarily. Every single nutty idea that anyone creates has to be accepted, because maybe in a million years it could turn out to have some level of truth.

It's an escape clause designed to fend off all possible examination, declaring that examination to be meaningless - a waste of time.

It's like saying, "You can't object to my belief in unicorns, because at some time in the future someone might find a unicorn."

The Bible says God is to be taken on faith. God has never indicated that God should be accepted based on evidence of some definition - a definition that could not possibly have anything at all to do with science, obviously.

What's wrong with that? Why is it not OK for God to be considered supernatural?

In science, there is no choice on that. After all, I'm sure you would agree that humans can not test God. The very notion of evidence for or against God makes no sense.