Yes, all of that is all well and good, Mea Culpa and all that.
But in light of all you have told me in the posts above, I am asking some very simple questions; again to help you out, I will repeat them:
**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.
**
Nobody here has claimed to be able to do what you are demanding-what we are doing is weighing all the evidence on one side versus the empty anecdotes on the other. There is a massive amount of evidence(NOT “proof”-please quit substituting one for the other) in support of the theory that consciousness resides in and originates from the brain, and nothing but wishful thinking and vague supposition that it resides elsewhere.
“The race may not always be to the swift nor the victory to the strong, but that’s how you bet.” -Damon Runyon
Why do you think consciousness is some special separate thing? According to everything we’ve discovered to date, consciousness is just another thing that accompanies intelligence, a sufficiently complex brain. Thinking of it as ‘you’ rather than as just part of you doesn’t follow from the evidence. As has been pointed out, it’s something that can be altered by altering the brain. I think it comes from thinking of souls as a separate ‘you’, and not thinking of the brain as ‘you’.
One of those posts answered your question directly. Using bold text doesn’t turn it into a devastating retort, nor does it disguise the lack of evidence and credibility for your theory.
You have to be careful with analogies, but I think this one applies very well here. Imagine that we gave a bunch of modern notebook computers to scientists 200 years ago. They spend time observing the operations, opening the cases and seeing what happens when they mess with the pieces, sometimes parts get damaged and they get to see how the damage affects the operation, and they’ve even begun to dig into the computer chips and see how electrical current flows in many of the structures.
That’s pretty much equivalent to the state of our brain knowledge. They know that the fancy displays they see are the result of the goings-on inside the box, because of all the work that they’ve already done. Sure, it looked magic at first, but even though they don’t have a complete understanding of how electricity moving around in all those billions of tiny structures bubbles up into the thing that some people call “computing,” they’re pretty darn sure that this concept called computing is a result of all that complexity working together.
Then some guy walks into the room and says they have no basis for thinking that computing is a product of the physical workings of the box - that this “computing” thing really is magic that no one has ever observed or even explained how it could possibly work. And then this guy has the gall to tell the scientists that unless they can explain exactly how computing is done from all those little structures, his belief in magic is just as valid as their belief that it’s physical.
I admire your tenacity, and I know you are correct, there are hundreds of verified past lives and NDEs where the consciousness lives after the death of the brain and body. However modern science will not accept the data as valid because it violates their theories. In the future it will be accepted because this is the course of all new discoveries. It will eventually be accepted. I remember reading in a Carl Sagan book where he was presented with evidence of a past life. His answer was “I can not dispute the data but I still don’t believe it.”
No, there aren’t. There are reported NDEs that can occur without the “near-death” part and which aren’t matched with periods of no brain activity, as supporters claim they are, and there are “past life” reports that are mostly just kind of embarrassing.
Oh no not again. Anything but another round of lekatt and NDEs. I thought we took the needle off that broken record.
You’re wrong lekatt. You’ve been wrong every time youve posted this, and I’m willing to bet that you will be wrong for some time to come. You cite easily dismissed anecdotes, and ignore the mountain of evidence shown to you. There have not been 100s of verified past lives and NDEs. Modern science would would have fistfights to see who got to research the new thing is any of this could be shown to be even a little true, it does not reject data. You are wrong, plain and simple.
I watched that - I think his brain is broken. How can anyone take him seriously?
He notes that NDEs are different based on what cultures people come from, and instead of reaching the obvious conclusion that it’s a malfunctioning brain struggling to interpret what’s going on, and instead somehow thinks that this fact supports that NDEs are evidence of non-physical consciousness.
If you get close enough to death you can kind of look over the side, I guess. That’s clear evidence for souls even though you can have the same kind of experience without dying or even almost dying. For example you could have an experience of this type through some kinds of brain stimulation, oxygen deprivation, or just in a dream.
People who claim to recall past lives have a very eurocentric view of their past lives. Multitudes of people just happened to be in Jerusalem when Jesus was alive, and tons of people lived in medieval europe or in other cultures that western nations can trace their traditions back to (Greece, Rome, etc). Far more than you would expect based on the statistical probability of those lives being among the 60-100 billion or so human lives that have occurred on this planet.
People generally don’t recall lives pre-civilization (we spent the first 200k years of our existence with no agriculture), nor do they recall lives in Africa, nor do they recall lives where they died in childhood (billions have died in childhood).
But these are among western new age believers and their past lives. I have no idea how Hindus feel about their past lives.
Then you’ve got the math issue, there were once only a few thousand humans, now they are 7 billion. Where do all the extra souls come from if we each have a reincarnated soul, etc. And how can the 7 billion (which could represent 10%+ of all humans who have ever lived if only 60 or so billion humans have lived) recall multiple past lives? How does the math work?
Volunteering, giving money to charity, being nice to people. Arguing with strangers over the Internet is fun, but I don’t pretend it’s my good deed for the day. That’s especially true when we’re arguing about nonsense like this. Even if the soul exists outside the brain - a proposition supported by no good evidence and which there’s no reason to consider - what would it matter?
I quoted your entire post, so perhaps the five words you typed were evidently not sufficient to communicate your point. The truth is that it was a ridiculous thing to say. You’re posting about NDEs but don’t care if anyone is convinced because you care about people? If you care about people and this is important information (it’s not), it would stand to reason that you want people to believe it. And you’ve spent lots of time arguing with people about it, so it’s hard to believe you don’t care if anyone is convinced.