Taking “debate” lessons from Kozmik, huh?
It’s gotta have soul, baby. 
But seriously, off the top of my head, I’d define artform as a heightened mode of expression, via a particular medium, which proceeds by a set of generally accepted rules, but which can be intensified even more by the deliberate stretching or breaking of those rules.
Your momentum has kept us from accurately determining your position. And Jackmanii has pointed that The Lancet has, in fact, been known to publish junk.
You have been asked many times by different posters to define soul and afterlife. You haven’t bothered to do so.
I have given you an abridged reading list of sources that contain the facts from which I am comfortable drawing my conclusion that there is no afterlife.
Oh, and just because scientists are researching consciousness doesn’t mean that they give any credence to the idea of an afterlife. I’m not a scientist – I’m simply an aging doorman who has always loved to read, but I’m extremely interested in knowing the exact mechanisms by which consciousness appears in the meat, and I hope we find out during my lifetime.
And Lobo hasn’t bothered to define “uneasy truths”.
And Kozmik hasn’t bothered to form a cogent post in this thread.
Until this one, that is. The truths are those I spoke about in the thread. Read my last few posts.
I read all your posts. Including this one:
What are uneasy truths?
Read my replyto woodstockbirdybird’s scenario. Define “having existed”.
And here we have another tactic typically employed by wooists - citing as authorities people who have no or insufficient expertise in the field at issue. Neither Hameroff nor Penrose are neurologists, and I am unaware of any research they have conducted to back up their fabulously jargonesque theories about consciousness, like this one (from one of Stoid’s Hameroff links):
“Roger Penrose and I have developed a model in which quantum superposition, objective reduction and quantum computation occur in microtubule automata within brain neurons and glia. Microtubuleassociatedproteins (MAPs) provide feedback and “tune” the quantum oscillations; the proposed OR is thus selforganized (“orchestrated” objective reduction"Orch OR”)15-21. In the Orch OR model microtubule quantum computation is isolated from decoherence (Box 1) and continues until threshold is met (E=h/T) and an OR event occurs (Figure 2b). For example an OR event coinciding with one 40 Hz cycle (T = 25 msec) would require E = 2 x 1010 superposed tubulins (roughly 20,000 neurons). "
Isn’t that a doozy? At first I wasn’t sure why that had a familiar ring to it - then I remembered that one of the leading lights of homeopathy, Dr. Lionel Milgrom has invoked quantum field theory to explain his conviction that homeopathic drugs (i.e. water) retain a “memory” of what was dissolved in them, even when diluted to the point when not a single molecule of the “active substance” remains.
Apparently the presumption is that if you throw the word “quantum” into your arguments often enough it’ll infuse them with awesome credibility. But what we are actually dealing with in both cases is quantum woo.
Your own post about the 2011 Consciousness conference in Stockholm lists Chopra as one of the speakers (on “Vedic approaches to consciousness and reality”). In fact, he’s one of two headliners who get big promos on the conference announcement page (Chopra will be teaching participants how to alter their own autonomic body functions, including not just heart rate and blood pressure, but also body temperature - woo-hoo!) He’s fair game for criticism. If the other participants in this conference want to be taken seriously, they need to steer well clear of Chopra, who is a laughingstock among serious scientists.
Here’s what Chopra has said about life after death:
Who could argue with that? :dubious:
:smack:
You’re a few "vast"s short of convincing us via argumentum ad human credulum. Also needs larger and more colorful font.
There are basics of critical thinking and evidence-based medicine with which you’ll need to become familiar in order to debate the existence of an afterlife, or indeed anything argued to have a scientific basis. To summarize briefly: Evidence rules. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It is incumbent upon those making such claims to furnish said evidence. Neither you nor your sources have provided any.
I look forward to your giving us some when you return. Maybe the ongoing hospital study where the near-dead float up towards the ceiling and identify objects placed on high shelves will provide a quantum breakthrough. 
The cosmos is indifferent to your existence, or mine. It is indifferent to your consciousness, or mine. Consciousness exists because the physical constants of the universe don’t prohibit systems from increasing in complexity. Consciousness is the result of chance. Consciousness ends with death. There is no soul, no afterlife.
What are you trying to get at with these faux-sophical questions? Why not simply state what you think or believe?
Did I ask woodstockbirdybird any questions in my post? No.
What I was referring to was your request to Lobohan to ‘Define “having existed,”’ which is actually, although not endstopped with a question mark, a request for information; a question. Earlier in this thread you posted a number of questions which were all similar to it – similar in that they read as if intended to be redolent with metaphysical mystery, and that by asking them you were offering us a chance to imbue ourselves with wisdom if we would only take them seriously and spend our days thinking about them.
So I ask you again: Why not simply state what you think or believe?
I again refer you to my post in response to woodstockbirdybird’s scenario.
Memory is a fiction.
I’ve read it. I fail to see what you’re getting at. Yes, without the universe we would not exist. So?
Memory is notoriously unreliable. And it may be that each time we access a memory the original encoding of that memory is destroyed and a new encoding is made with new or associated material added. Fortunately we are able to document events and facts using other media than our brains.
Anyway, with that said, yes, I’m comfortable with the idea that memory is a fiction. But what has that to do with this thread?
So it takes the power out of your claim that the universe is indifferent to your existence, or mine.
What’s indifferent to the universe’s existence?
What I’m getting at is that it is possible, in woodstockbirdybird’s scenario, that we would not have to experience this life; birth, death, whatever.
The universe cannot but be indifferent to my existence – it doesn’t matter to it because it can’t matter to it; anymore than it can matter to my desk (which by the way is, though its existence is dependent upon the universe’s existence, is indifferent to that existence), as neither suffer the affliction 
of consciousness.
The question assumes I have a specific definition, which is odd, given the point of the thread. I don’t, other than what I’ve given: Meat Plus, vs. Meat.
Meat: pure flesh, and everything about us is a product of flesh and ceases entirely in the absence of flesh. (Materialist-emergence-physicalism)
MeatPlus: some aspect of consciousness, being, self exists in some way even in the absence of flesh. (Dualism)
I have absolutely no personal conviction or belief as to how any “plus” might manifest or exist, where it came from, absolutely nothing - I’m just interested in what others think, hypothesize, and what research has been done. If there has been experiments and testing that covers all the questions and results in a very strong likelihood that we are meat, that’s fine. If there validated experiences that create questions that remain unanswered, suggesting the possibility that we are meatplus, that’s also fine. All of it is interesting, and the fact that Assertion A is met with Refutation B, in a thousand different instances, just reinforces the obvious fact that the search for answers continues.
If you don’t have a definition than don’t use the word. If you don’t have a definition, you’re basically admitting that you’re just using nonsense words. Prove there’s not a glork. Prove there’s not a skrank. If you ask me what those are, I will tell you in an enlarged and indignant font that I don’t have a definition.
This is just begging the question. Meat plus what?
You are not answerting the questioon, you are just rephrasing the nonsense. What “aspect of consciouness” do you believe can be separated from the brain?
No research has been done on “souls” or “afterlifes” because no research as possible is possible. You might as well try to research leprechaun gold. The inquiry itself is ludicrous, There is no “plus” or any physical possibility of a "plus. If you disagree, please explain exactly what part of consciousness you think can exist without a brain and why. Please cite actual evidence, not just links to woo believing websites and pseudoscience articles from frauds and quacks.
That we are ,meat as opposed to what? What else is there? What is this magical “plus” you keep referring to?
There are no such “validated experiences.” Sorry.
No, it really isn’t. It’s tiresome and anti-scientific really.
Could you please just say what you mean, for once?
I believe that the video, and the article, speaks for itself. It will make it a lot easier (and maybe we can end this Great Debate thread) if you just read the whole article and watch the entire video. Pay close attention to #2 “How are memories stored and retrieved?” in the video.