Four pages so far. You’ve let him drag you along for four page. Anyone learned anything yet?
You’ve flatly dismissed other posters’ cites by simply claiming that they are theories, and not supported by evidence. Then, when pressed for evidence, you provide a cite to a theory. Why the discrepancy?
LilShieste
Well, for me, the question was answered on the day I had a near death experience. We are spirit. The word soul is generally thought of as a religious term. But I know that what I experienced can not be proven except to me and the millions of others who have had a similar or same experience. Just because it can not be shared doesn’t make it any less real. So people just have to read the material and make up their own minds. As for me it has been proved. I read that there are over 700 near death experiences every day in the U.S. That is a lot.
I do know that the debate is heating up. It will take a while for the truth to surface, but surface it shall. I am so grateful for what I have learned, I do wish there was an easier way for others to know.
I have learned a lot. Thanks for asking.
You must have missed something, I provided scientific research.
Exactly - research. You provided a researcher’s hypothesis that tries to explain the visions/experiences that people claim to have had while clinically dead. Their accounts are not the hard evidence that you seem to think they are.
As a child I had an incredibly vivid dream that I was being chased by a witch, in my own front yard. This experience cannot not be presented as evidence that: 1) There are such things as witches (in the sense of my dream); 2) They can control tree roots to smother their victims; 3) They want to chase me around my front yard.
However, this doesn’t mean that these people’s experiences are worthless, as far as this kind of research goes. It’s certainly not cold hard evidence of NDE/OBEs, though.
This is the crux of the problem. You’re trying to argue that this has been scientifically proven, or that some kind of evidence shows that these experiences actually occurred (and not just constructed by one’s imagination). They have not. In the above quote, you acknowledge that these things cannot be proven except to people who have experienced it. If that’s the case, then try to make your point without dragging science into it.
LilShieste
It was real research, I don’t want to argue with you. There are many more studies and research that show the same thing. Some will never be convinced, no matter what evidence is shown.
Ninety percent of the world believe we are spirit, many of them believe because of their personal experiences as I do. If it doesn’t fit into science, who cares. Science is not God, nor does science know all there is to know. You read the material and make up your own mind.
Ordinarily I’d agree with you. But in the special case of consciousness, feelings are evidence. Without the ability to feel - to experience - we would not say we were conscious.
I do reject “spirit” - for the reason you stated - that it has no explanatory power. The problem for me is that “electrical activity” has no more explanatory power than “spirit.”
A fan of Epcot’s (now defunct) Cranium Command, are ya? 
Forget the brain for a second. What is “hotness” and “smoothness”? They’re the properties of objects, but they don’t exist independently. A hamster knows when something is hot, but does it have the concept of hotness? A computer also knows this, assuming it has sensors. But it takes abstraction to get to hotness, which is something neither computers not hamsters have at the moment.
Perhaps because we’re more sophisticated? The first computers I used just ran programs, one at a time. Now the OS both runs and also monitors the other programs that are running, and can tell how many resources they are using, and how they should be scheduled. We appear to be able to do even better. Not only do we feel hot, but we can abstract hotness from coldness. That’s intelligence. We taught our dog (half border collie) to sit at street corners before crossing. He abstracted that to sit in the middle of the block to ask to cross, when he wanted to. He’s less intelligent than us (I think 
) and more intelligent than a hamster and a computer. But the abstractions are thoughts monitoring thoughts and experiences.
I agree that at our present level of knowledge, electrical activity is a side effect of thought (and programs running) but is neither thought nor enough to let us fully understand thought. If we could fully monitor all our brain processes, at all levels, would we then be able to observe consciousness? I think so, what about you?
Someone actually gave a little cred here to “What the Bleep Do We Know”?
This has gone to the level of JZ Night channeling the Atlantian time traveller “Ramtha”?
It’s all chemistry in your brain. That’s it.
I have various in-circuit emulators for processors and debugging. How cool would that be to single step a brain? Unfortunately the brain is not a synchronus state machine like a processor. There is no operating frequency, thus it can’t be halted and examined.
I’m not arguing that it wasn’t “real research”. I’m just saying that you can’t point to the conclusions that someone makes about something and call it evidence. It is a hypothesis, or a theory at best.
As a Christian… I’m probably somewhere in that 90% that you talk about.
As someone with a background in science… I do. I’m not going to try to force my beliefs into science, as they don’t have any place being there. If science presents something that goes against my beliefs, it’s up to me to reconcile it; not science.
Science doesn’t want to be God, and science will never know all there is to know. There’s always further examination that can be carried out on something.
I agree. But that isn’t science.
LilShieste
A good retort, I think. More particularly, it points out that I should be more careful with my words. In that spirit (pun intended), I would interject that “feel” and “experience” are not equivalent.
My return question is: “feelings are evidence of what?” As I meant to use the term, “feelings” (that is, emotional responses) are only evidence that there exists a phenomenon we call “consciousness”. They do not provide evidence in support of any particular explanation, whether “spirit”, “emergent property”, or “illusion”. Rather, they (necessarily) fit comfortably in any and all plausible explanations.
I’m not so sure of that. Granted, there is no explanation yet worked out (if there ever will be). However, I’d think that having a plausible mechanism does carry (at least some) explanatory power. And, to be more precise, I suppose we should be using “electro-chemical activity”. Perhaps that’s simply pedantry in action, but it does clarify a concrete link between organic physical bodies and what are otherwise non-corporeal processes.
As a Christian you are coming from a different direction than most. I am not a Christian neither am I a scientist. I don’t need the baggage that comes with the titles. I can look at the results of an experiment, study, or research and not have to fit it into religious or scientific dogma. I am free to take it at face value without the second guessing and “what if’s” that usually accompany something a little left or right of mainstream thought. I am free to choose what I will believe or not believe. It’s great.
Now science is supposed to be interested in truth, wherever it comes from, and religion is supposed to be about the teaching of love to everyone. We both know that doesn’t really happen, because of the human factor.
Having said that I will remind you that the research I posted on this board ended in evidence of consciousness living after the death of the body. Evidence. The link I left continues to show more research from other scientists that show more evidence of the same thing. I did not do the research or the studies, but I do believe they are correct. Partially from the research itself and partially from my own personal experience.
People can do anything they want, think anything they want, and be anything they want. It is ok with me.
We’re kind of a rare breed. 
The main thing I’m trying to get across is the difference between evidence and a hypothesis. The evidence being presented in this research is of people’s recollections of events, while they were clinically dead. A hypothesis that explains this, revolves around OBEs. You’re claiming that the evidence shows that consciousness is outside of the physical brain, and we’re claiming that there are probably better explanations for the evidence provided.
LilShieste
Well, but I’m not talking about hotness and smoothness as properties or abstractions, I’m talking about them as experiences - the feeling of hot or smooth.
I don’t know whether hamsters feel hot. To take a simpler example, I’d argue that when a roach runs from the light, it doesn’t know that there is light, or that it is running. It’s simply reacting to a stimuli. Whether hamsters are aware or conscious, I don’t know.
Computers don’t know anything. They have no awareness, and no consciousness, at leas so far as we know.
I don’t know, but I doubt it. Consciousness is clearly reliant on the brain, but I don’t think it IS the brain, and I don’t think it’s something physical.
There couldn’t possibly be any evidence that would satify you as valid, so it is in fact dishonest to complain that you haven’t seen any.
I guess what you are missing is the verification of those people’s observations by the physicians in attendance. That makes it evidence. That’s what the research was all about. They are called veridical experiences because they have been verified.
It would in fact be dishonest of me to say I had seen evidence of local consciousness in the brain. If you have some please present it.
I didn’t miss that at all. All it shows, though, is that the people were able to somehow correctly identify things that they probably shouldn’t have been able to. The evidence says nothing about how they were able to do so. IOW, their observations have been verified, but the explanation has not.
LilShieste