In other words, research into past lives and souls and NDEs is already flawed and often fraudulent, and if it became a big-money area, it wouldn’t improve and might get worse? Why should we spend more money on it again?
No, it would make it consistent with main stream science: read the link I posted above.
With the influx of money there would be the same amount of fraud and misconduct as there is in mainstream science, but we would also get some real science, and some real answers.
So the “widespread fraud and misconduct” wasn’t really a concern- it was a false equivalence intended to deflect attention from frauds on the past life side. Actual science shows there’s nothing going on here. (That NDERF link is chock full o’ nonsense.) Why would more money change that? Stevenson’s problem wasn’t a lack of funds, it was that he believed fervently in something that was unscientific and put his thumb on the scales to prove himself right. In other words you’ve claimed over and over again that there just isn’t enough research being done to draw conclusions. You’ve never substantiated that, and it’s wrong.
OK, I stand corrected.
Please provide some links to this “actual science” and other research to which you refer.
On “out of body” type experiences. Neuroscience and near death experiences. How OBE-type feelings can be induced.
OK, so we add the opinions of these researchers to those of all the others.
How does this negate my contention that the facts will only emerge as a result of more formal scientific research?
Formal scientific research has already been done. Are you proposing that we are obligated to continue until we get results you can agree with?
I had an expriece once(many years ago,It wasn’t about a past life , but I believe it was an unusal experience that could be like one. If the mods think it shouldn’t be here I would not be offened if they take it off.
I once dreamed I went back to a place in my childhood, between our home, and the school there was 20 square miles of woods, no house., In my dream, I dreamed that the cement block school I went to was torn down, and the blocks were piled near the new building, I was standing on the blocks (in my dream), then I went the road where we used to walk home from school and there was a pink Ranch house built in the woods. Several years after I had the dream, my husband and our family went there (at my request) and things were as I had dreamed them. I was amazed,but felt it was a coincedence, and maybe some one in my family had mentioned it at one time or the other and I had forgotten it.
You do admit there was no death,just NEAR DEATH, and that is a wide margin?
Here you go again, simply asserting that neuroplasticity suggests that consciousness is separate from the brain. What I keep asking is how you make that connection. I don’t see how you get from the fact of neuroplasticity to thinking this means a non-material consciousness. Please explain it, don’t just assert it again using different words!
It’s obvious?!? Neuroscientists don’t think so. Why do you think that?
Well, when a mommy and daddy love each other very much…
What are you even asking? Development from a fertilized egg to an adult is a complex process, and happens every time an egg is fertilized - for any animal, not just humans. So it’s happened countless trillions of times.
Rather than rehash previous arguments, I can summarize what is known in nero science.
Having recently read a couple of dozen papers on neurobiology, neuro-chemistry and neuro-physics, it is strikingly clear to me how much is known about the specific biochemical and electrochemical processes involved in brain activity. Credit is due to the scientists who have elucidated these processes.
However the most conspicuous aspect arising from all this knowledge is the fact that the chemistry is pretty ordinary and unremarkable.
There is nothing involved in the chemistry involved that is not consistent with established chemistry theory; there is nothing in the chemistry or physics that cannot be duplicated by your average chemistry graduate student in an average lab.
However, the most important thing is lacking: an explanation and mechanism describing how this mundane chemistry produces aggregate brain functions.
There is no causal link between the chemistry and consciousness, thought, reasoning and programmed brain functionality.
Apparently, they are associated events, but there is no evidence for a direct cause and effect relationship. There is no linking evidence that brain chemistry causes consciousness.
Similarly, there is no evidence that brain functions are the result of the random accumulation of chemical reactions. In fact that assertion is nothing short of ludicrous.
However, the accumulated evidence is consistent with the brain and body being mere devices serving as mediums for the expression of consciousness; consciousness and its associated functions have an independent existence from the mobile lump of meat.
Until such time as the people in the white lab coats can conclusively map out a detailed path that shows a causal link between the mundane electrochemical reactions present in the brain and consciousness, their opinions are no more than speculation, and no more valid than the speculations of the woo whackos.
Nero science is my favourite typo ever.
So until scientists(“people in the white lab coats”-cute)can prove everything to your satisfaction they are on equal footing with the woosters, even though there is mounds of evidence for the former and zero evidence for the latter?
The fact that damaging the brain damages consciousness is very good evidence for that.
Why can drugs alter behavior, if your mind is a floating energy field? You are standing on a boat, denying that boats can exist. It’s kinda weird.
In any case, your problem is that you equate making up explanations with finding them via evidence.
We don’t know the details yet of how it all gets bubbled up into consciousness, but there’s loads of data indicating that consciousness is a product of the brain. Here’s one way to get there: take an insect, say a fruit fly. It has a tiny little brain. Chemical reactions in that brain produce responses that the fruit fly makes - decisions to fly away, to eat, to mate. Do you agree that the fruit fly’s behavior is a product of the chemistry in its brain? Or do you think that the brain of a fruit fly is just a medium of expression for a non-material fruit fly behavior generator thingy?
If you accept that a fruit fly’s behavior is a product of its brain chemistry, then we can take one step up in complexity - consider a lizard. Is its behavior a product of its brain chemistry? What about a bird? A dog? Every step up this ladder is just a bigger brain and more complexity, but there’s nothing fundamentally different about what they do? So where do you draw the line?
Who said anything about random? There is plenty of evidence that brain functions are the result of chemical processes in the brain.
Plenty of evidence? Could you please name some of it? I’m not aware of any actual good evidence for this. We have plenty of crappy anecdotes, but nothing approaching solid evidence.
The state of the science now is that we have lots and lots of evidence that points to consciousness being a product of brain chemistry. On the other side, we have some crappy anecdotes from people who don’t understand how easily they can fool themselves. Clearly, the burden of proof is entirely on the woo wacko side.
Seems that in their haste to make a knee jerk response, some of the posters here didn’t bother to read what I have said. So let me re-iterate:
“Science” has accumulated a large volume of data regarding the chemical and physical processes involved in brain function. No argument there.
However, what “science” does not have is any concrete evidence definitively establishing that those chemical processes are responsible for the establishment of consciousness. Nothing. Nada. Bupkiss.
So any comments by “science” regarding consciousness are pure speculation; and the speculations of a scientist carry no more weight than the speculations of the homeless guy under the bridge.
There are numerous observations that physical insult to the brain is correlated to behavioral and functional abnormalities; no argument there. But those observed effects are correlation, not causation. As already noted previously, the effects can be explained in other ways.
In addition to which, we have numerous instances of evidently normal people functioning with minimal brain mass. I find it absolutely astounding that “science” has so far generally ignored this phenomenon; it has profound implications for the entire issue.
What is required is that science show where in the chemical processes of the brain consciousness arises.
So, I ask the people who have responded to my comments to tell me exactly where in the chain of reactions that “science” has identified in the brain, consciousness arises. As a follow up question, where in these reactions does consciousness reside, once it has been established?
I will make it easy for you: I have in front of me a copy of “The Merck Index; Ninth Edition”. Starting on page 1,317 is a listing of “Organic Name Reactions”.
Please provide me with the combination of these name reactions which give rise to consciousness. As a bonus question, please provide the combination of name reactions that contain consciousness once it has been established.
The facts emerged a long time ago. You’re not happy with what they say, so you’re insisting that this is a totally unsettled discussion. It isn’t.
Consciousness is a function of the brain. Despite what some believers want us to think, there’s no plausible evidence to the contrary.
That’s the worst false equivalence I’ve seen here in a very long time. It’s embarrassingly bad. Theories about souls and consciousness floating outside the brain might be equivalent to the kinds of things you hear from delusional people - in fact you often hear delusional people talk about things like these; it’s how we know they’re delusional - but those speculations are not on par with scientific research. We know a great deal about how the brain works, and if we don’t know exactly how consciousness arises, we do have a lot of related information. And people who do actual science understand there is no reason to consider the hypothesis (and I am being nice by calling it that) that maybe consciousness lives somewhere outside the brain.
I have not seen those explanations.
Science isn’t ignoring the issue. You are attempting to make it mean something it does not, and which there is no reason to consider.
How about you tell us what the soul is and it works first?
Hey… I have some Gaps, I think God may be in them!
Seems that in all the reading I have been doing of late, I seem to have missed the fact that “the science is settled” and “science” already has all the answers. Silly me!
That being the case, you should have no problem answering the questions I posed in my previous post; just to help you out, I will reproduce them for you here:
*So, I ask the people who have responded to my comments to tell me exactly where in the chain of reactions that “science” has identified in the brain, consciousness arises. As a follow up question, where in these reactions does consciousness reside, once it has been established?
I will make it easy for you: I have in front of me a copy of “The Merck Index; Ninth Edition”. Starting on page 1,317 is a listing of “Organic Name Reactions”.
Please provide me with the combination of these name reactions which give rise to consciousness. As a bonus question, please provide the combination of name reactions that contain consciousness once it has been established.*
What have you been reading? Was it anything posted in this thread? For example:
Maybe you’re finding this annoying, but if so, too bad. There’s no evidence for extra-brain consciousness beyond poorly documented or unverified or debunked anecdotes. Meanwhile neuroscience continues apace. The problem with the theory you’re pushing isn’t the lack of funding for scientific research, it’s the fact that it’s not science.