/lit/ - Literature

>>20992991
This is like the weakest argument I've ever read in any context. And the title of the book is just offensive. Stop posting about this crap.

>>20993072
not an argument

>>20992991
Wait, isn't it pretty much an established, scientifically observed fact that your brain releases DMT into your system at the point of death or in this case near death experiences? Or did I just subconsciously accept this as truth from a JRE episode I watched? Either way, it definitely seems much more likely that it's your brain giving you a nice little trip as an exit gift.

>1
Anecdotal evidence
>2
Anecdotal evidence
>3
Anecdotal evidence
>4
Anecdotal evidence

saagh sleab
時鳥

What makes a NDE different from a k-hole?

>>20993109
mümmel salpicándolos

>>20992991
seems to me more like evidence of what our brain goes through when we are dying. i mean i have dreams too and i dont think i get teleported to different places at night

>>20993115
Intredasting. Tell me more.

>>20993094
>Wait, isn't it pretty much an established, scientifically observed fact that your brain releases DMT into your system at the point of death or in this case near death experiences?
No, It's just people who research drugs saying it sounds similar, there is no physical evidence. Plenty of drug abusers have had NDEs and report that it feels completely different.

>>20993100
How many people would be required to present reports before you believe it? 10% of the population? 50%? What if every human besides yourself reported it?

>>20993126
Interesting you bring up dreams as the book talks about that, Almost every testimonial from NDErs talks about how their experience felt more real than real life in the exact same way normal life feels more real than dreams. When you wake up from a dream, you almost instantly know you are awake and can make a clear distinction between 'real' and 'dream' (unless you have severe mental illness, I suppose), this experience is the same. Even hardcore atheist neuroscientists are completely convinced afterwards.

>>20993154
>How many people would be required to present reports before you believe it?
About tree fiddy.

But tbhqhdesusempai, in order for me to take this seriously you'd need to have a lot of people from different cultural backgrounds and belief systems in a lab environment going through NDE's, then getting those people some DMT in order to see the differences in their brains.

Did the "i heckin love science!" people get to me? Maybe, but otherwise people reporting being abducted by aliens don't mean shit to me.

>>20993172
Also, it would need to include unwilling/unknowing participants, people who should go to hell, and children.
You know, for the soience.

there's no control group for NDEs. if we could find a community of people who had never been exposed to the idea of an afterlife, and we could monitor them for signs of NDE, that would be convincing. other people could have polluted their experiences through a cultural lens to make sense of what happened.

>>20993195
>people who should go to hell
not a bad idea honestly, find some sick murderer rapist and study them. Maybe even politicians, too.

>>20993127
No

I have no evidence nor any real insight to add to this thread. But during my acid or MDMA trips I've felt utter ease and absolute certainty that life is on our side and is organised as a friend to us, even during our challenges and death. In those states I felt nothing but gratitude for it. But I was just a tripping midwit. I can understand the 'more real than real' viewpoint these reports seem to contain though. That's exactly how you feel.

>>20992991
>we can be persuaded that afterlife exists strongly enough that we can’t see any alternative
>therefore it exists
Wow… I can use this argument to prove that so many things exist now!

>afterlife is easier to prove than God
Funny how that works

>>20993196
>a community of people who had never been exposed to the idea of an afterlife
I don't think that exists, pretty sure even cavemen had a concept of afterlife.

>>20992991
Is this really the opening argument of the book? Like, the one that's supposed to get you more interested to read on? Because it's so completely facile that it could only have a ring of credibility if you were ALREADY committed to believing in an "afterlife".
Ask yourself which is more likely: that there is some spooky otherworldly realm that is completely at odds with all scientific knowledge (not to mention the philosophical and logical absurdities of dualism - do just the barest reading on this), or that the brain (an extremely complex organ which we are only just beginning to understand) fires off in ways we don't currently understand shortly before death?
The fact that some people have weird sensations when their brain is under extreme stress means literally nothing. The fact that some people are convinced in the reality of these sensations means literally nothing. (Schizos and people who take certain kinds of hallucinogens can be just as convinced in being god.) If you want anything even APPROACHING evidence then you'll much more than just some people talking about some weird experiences they had one time. You need to completely rewrite everything we know about the universe and resolve every single metaphysical contradiction. You're better off just dropping any pretense of rationality and joining a new age religious cult that tells you things you want to believe.
I know believing in an "afterlife" is an emotional need for you, but at the very least try to fix your life problems before your giving yourself over to delusional nonsense and people who grift on other people's fear of death.

>>20993100
Also known as 'cope'

>>20992991
If you read reports from patients who have been involved in clinical trials with psilocybin as a means of dealing with fear of death/existential depression (in terminal cancer patients), as well as a means for countering various mental illnesses including addiction, ocd, and depression, you’ll find in nearly all of these cases that the participants report having undergone an experience nearly identical (at least in terms of their descriptions) to what those who have undergone an “NDE” describe. This leads me to believe that there’s a very high likelihood of such experiences simply being a result of the brain going haywire in response to a traumatic event, in a similar fashion to how psychedelic experiences are produced simply by serotonin receptors being flooded with an alternative neurotransmitter (the drug), and then triggering a flood of new activity (and new connections between various regions that don’t normally communicate with each other) across the brain. If you’re curious about this, Michael Pollan’s book How to Change Your Mind goes into a lot more detail regarding observations that have come up in these recent trials.

>>20993127
kirgisischen
AT LEAST!

sjónvarpstæki

>>20992991
>have severely traumatic experience
>body releases endorphins to compensate
>feelsgoodman.jpg
This is literally all that happens in a near-death experience.
And a NDE is not the afterlife, therefore no-one can assert the existence of an afterlife based on a NDE.

>>20993454
>The fact that some people have weird sensations when their brain is under extreme stress means literally nothing. The fact that some people are convinced in the reality of these sensations means literally nothing. (Schizos and people who take certain kinds of hallucinogens can be just as convinced in being god.)
I can't speak for the author, but the kind of person who uses this book as "evidence" of YEC and the like will typically argue an extreme form of subjectivism. That is, if someone feels something, then it is real. The obvious problem that this allows for things like LGBT raises a red-flag to anyone with a brain, but people who need to use this as a pillar to support another, pre-existing, view will typically deploy the "demons" argument. This is where, yes, you are indeed feeling what you are feeling, but because it's caused by "a demon" the subjective experience is real, and thus true, but actually false.

>>20993454
>>20994537
Currently reading through the book out of curiosity. It seems his main defence against the charge of NDEs being neurological in nature is that the experience is consistently described as more real than real. Don't know if that really disqualifies hallucination (he does mention that NDErs with psychedelic experience think of the NDE as unlike anything drug induced).

>>20994113
Anywhere I can read about this other than that book?

>when you skip Kant

>>20994571
One of the major sources the book relied upon was research conducted by Roland Griffiths, and you can find some of his papers (or at least abstracts of them) on the NIH.gov website. Here’s one of the relevant studies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3308357/

>>20992991
>Obviously
Nothing obvious about it. If every time someone died a beam of light ascended them to heaven or a fiery pit to hell opened up beneath then it would be obvious.

>>20993094
>Wait, isn't it pretty much an established, scientifically observed fact that your brain releases DMT into your system at the point of death or in this case near death experiences?
No, there's no evidence of that.
You can look up David Nichols, one of the leading psychedelic compound researchers, talking about this. There's a lecture on YouTube.
The basic gist of it, IIRC, is that the experiment that this theory is based off, used DMT with iodine (for radiolabeling purposes) which is eliminated from body much slower and normal DMT is typically found in amounts too low to cause a trip.

>>20994571
>he does mention that NDErs with psychedelic experience think of the NDE as unlike anything drug induced
Pretty sure I saw some research with opposite data, I will try to find it.

>>20994687
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2019.01.011
It's on sci-hub.

>>20993263
I'm reading a history book that claims there a (very small) number of tribes that don't believe in an afterlife or at least don't have any gods that they worship. So we just have to grab one of those people. They are practically fauna anyways so probably morally gray at worst.

NDEs depend on personal beliefs, people of different faiths will see whatever their religion told them is supposed to happen after death.

>>20992991
I can’t tell if multiple people are interested in this book, or if it is literally just (You) making posts about it, day in and day out on multiple boards.
Either way no, it’s scary and I don’t want to think about it and you can’t make me nanananana

>>20994720
Thanks. Interesting that ketamine turned out to be most similar to an NDE.

>>20993109
K holes are great and sometimes have Tom Hanks as his character in The DaVinci Code leading you through an infinite triangle prism. NDEs do not have Tom Hanks.

>>20992991
Una grossa americanata. Read Severino.

>>20992991
How can an afterlife exist when there is no such thing as death?

>>20994847
Jump off a cliff and prove it to us.

>>20994850
Energy only transforms. It doesn't increase or decrease. First law of thermodynamics.

>>20994865
Entropy only ever increases within a closed system. Second Law of Thermodynamics.

>>20994871
Entropy isn't death. When you "die," you are just changing form.

>>20992991
The main bit of this argument seems to be that the intensity of your perception of something increases the likelihood of the perceived thing being real. But people dreaming, on drugs, or who are deeply mentally ill can all have extremely strong visions which we don't consider as occurring in a different realm.

>>20994878
Entropy is the steady and inevitable dissolution of all matter and energy.
Not only do you die, you die a little more every second.

>>20994915
>dissolution
This is just change. The amount of energy in the universe remains a constant. The "I" is just an interpretation from the brain.

>>20993072
>And the title of the book is just offensive
Hey Anon, back from daycare I see.

>>20994955
>The amount of energy in the universe remains a constant
But it becomes increasingly more disorganised, tending away from complex forms, such as living organisms.
Entropy is killing the universe. One day the stars will all go out. Deal with it.

>>20992991
One cold hard look at human psychology BTFOs afterlife. The body and mind has evolved to avoid pain and death yet in a nature's paradox death and annihilation of self is inevitable. Hence the need for belief in an afterlife for a self aware being.

>>20996532
Yep, it's the ultimate cope.
Humans are the only beings who are conscious of mortality, so they invent comforting stories to allay the fear.

>>20993154
People also report that taking certain psychedelics makes them feel like they are experiencing some truer form of reality, yet I doubt you'd accept that as evidence that psychedelics are a way to temporarily "wake up" from our current state.

>>20992991
That's only a convincing argument for those who want to believe anyway. Humans delude themselves constantly, and (like supposed religious experiences like angels talking to morons) NDEs don't mean anything. There are no facts beyond a shared delusion found amongst folks programmed to expect it (which is, I admit, logical).

I was on the fence when I read this book but I found it actually quite convincing. I think a lot of people here have a kneejerk reaction to it. I'd encourage anyone to read the whole thing, but be wary that the book does need an editor.

>>20994720
This doesn't feature people who are NDErs and have experienced psychedelics. Similarity is established through a questionnaire.

>>20997664
>psychedelics
Pretty irrelevant, actually.

>>20997949
Well, the study was used to argue certain psychedelics can pretty much reproduce and NDE, but that can be settled unless you take someone who's had an NDE and also used ketamine (the drug most like an NDE according to the study).

>>20992991
I'm surprised by the effort put into this

>>20998206
Yeah the NDE case reads like a 1:1 cope, to that of Tim Leary and friends insisting that because a lot (not all) of people sometimes see guiding spirits or hear voices in heavy hallucinogenic trips, therefore it’s definitely real and machine elves exist.

>>20998232
Me too :o

Retroactively refuted by Becker (pbuh).

>>20992991
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/afterlife/#ParNeaDeaExp

I spent quite a bit of time reading through nderf some years back and I'm fairly convinced it's nothing supernatural. The big reason for me is the contradictory explanations people get on the "other side." One person will claim that Jesus told them there is no evil, someone else will claim that their grandma told them that evil is present everywhere and must be fought, another person will say we will be reincarnated, another will say that God personally told them that there is no reincarnation etc. So between the various messages told about evil, good, Jesus, an apocalypse, reincarnation, religion etc. I can't really believe in it.

>>20999999
>>21000000

>>20999937
> An interesting counterexample to explanations in terms of the “dying brain” is found in the NDEs experienced by mountain climbers in the midst of what they expected to be fatal falls (Heim 1892); it is hardly credible that these experiences can be reduced to either drugs or oxygen deprivation.

Intredasting

>>21000009
Reminds me of Guenon explaining the variety of religions as being the primordial truth expressed in a way adapted to a particular people at a particular time and place. Could be that what one gets is something one can understand.

>>20992991
Stop shilling your faggot book Jens

Reading through this: https://infidels.org/library/modern/keith-augustine-hndes/, it's freaky the part were people are told it's not yet their time and are sent back. Seems particularly difficult to explain as the brain going haywire.

>>20994788
>I'm reading a history book that claims there a (very small) number of tribes that don't believe in an afterlife
Yeah, if I were you, I would chuck that book in the trash where it belongs, anon. Does the author give any examples? Usually you just get some retarded contradictory bullshit like pic related.

>>20992991
You don't even need facts and logic. Just observe where materialism gets people and what faith does to many including supposed hopless cases. Trying to "know" instead of just having faith is the issue. The most you can empirically prove is that you can disprove many other theories but not this one.

>>20992991
I thought the lucid dream state matches NDE? At least in the insects they tested.

>>20993072
>And the title of the book is just offensive.
How and why does that matter?

>>21000204
I suggest reading Michael Raduga's book on "the phase" (umbrella term for lucid dreaming, astral projection or whatever since it's the same phenomenon with just a difderent dogma) it doesn't probe or disprove anything grand but worth trying and observing for yourself. I've done it and it feels realer than life.

>>20993154
>How many people would be required to present reports before you believe it?
If literally every person on the planet including myself reported that they had a near-death experience and visited an afterlife that felt like it was real it would still not be sufficient evidence.
Everyone sees mirages. You can photograph and film a mirage. It doesn't make them real.
It doesn't matter how many people see the puddle of water on the asphalt on a hot day, it isn't there and you can't drink it.
At one point in time everyone on the planet "experienced" that the Earth was flat and it wasn't and isn't. We also "experienced" that continents don't move and they do.
Human minds are faulty and they'll experience any number of wrong things.

>>21000286
This, and it gets worse.

Death is a subjective experience. You're not going to get a peek. You'll find out only when you personally go there. If a deceased relative came to you in the flesh and told you step-by-step what was going to happen, you could never know if you're talking to the real thing, a copy, a deceptive agent, etc. If god himself told you, subjectively there would still be cause to doubt the information. Existential questions don't get worldly answers. You're not going to get an answer so it makes no sense to even try.

You won't know anything for sure one second before you yourself are dying.

>>20992991
I haven't read it yet, and obviously I will respond before reading it, cos the thread will 404 by the time I do. So yeah, NDE's, summary, etc: my NDE was just being drunk, followed by a moment of blackness, interrupted by vomiting, and then hospital. No experience in between. I have been told I stopped breathing in the ambulance a few times. This more than any other arguments convinced me of the deathness of death. I am open and have been looking at and for alternatives but yeah. Just saying, if the main argument here is the experience of other people, I also have experience.

>>20993263
>I don't think that exists, pretty sure even cavemen had a concept of afterlife.
Don't Jewish people basically have no concept of afterlife?
The closest thing they have is sheol which is like a nothingness that all return to.
Also some Ancient Greeks didnr believe in it.

>>21000319
>If god himself told you [...]
Not him but yeah, this is something I have been personally struggling with now, how would you tell the difference between God talking to you and you going insane? You, as a subject and recipient of God's communication, must somehow experience it, but you as a rational agent must conclude that you're insane if you do...

>>20994537
>And a NDE is not the afterlife, therefore no-one can assert the existence of an afterlife based on a NDE.
Exactly, the notion that it proves the afterlife makes no sense since you're still in-life, whereas an afterlife would be beyond consciousness, i.e not something you can experience.
If you're experiencing it by definition it wouldn't be afterlife.

>>21000371
afterlife by definition is the assertion that consciousness persists through death, thus it is by definition something you experience. now the more fun consequence of this is that you don't know if you're not in the afterlife right now... how long ago did you die, anon?

>>21000338
Not remembering having an experience doesn't mean you didn't have an experience, but it will obviously feel like you didn't.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6172100/
>>21000354
Jewish people have had a vast array of different ideas about the afterlife throughout time.
>>21000371
A prime example of a redditors mind at work.

>>20992991
You can make the exact same argument for alien abduction claimers proving aliens abductions exist, or ghost seers proving ghosts exists, or bigfoot witnesses proving bigfoot exists.

>>21000384
>afterlife by definition is the assertion that consciousness persists through death, thus it is by definition something you experience.
Sure, but a consciousness not tied to our body and temporal experiences, otherwise there would be no reason to call it "after" life. So I think it's safe to say NDE experiences don't prove an afterlife since it's still something you're experiencing filtered through your senses and brain. Whereas I would think to prove an afterlife it would have to be an experience that is genuinely beyond life. For example someone whose brain is exploded being resurrected and telling us that after his brain was exploded he saw an afterlife. That has never happened and likely never will, and so the notion of an afterlife is inherently unprovable and unempirical.

>>21000387
>Jewish people have had a vast array of different ideas about the afterlife throughout time.
I'm sure they do. I was just giving an example of a group that, for at least some, don't have a concept of an afterlife.

>>21000439
>and telling us that after his brain was exploded he saw an afterlife.
And even then, that wouldn't prove it because we would have no way of knowing that what the person said they experienced was actually after the point their brain exploded.

>>21000439
I like provable and empirical things too, but it's really unjustified optimism that all true statements will also be provable. Useful and practical optimism, but still unjustified. Anyway, I'm just filling in the gaps of the discourse. We're gonna have to die to see what it's really like, and that's the only thing one can say without making assumptions. I still offer the following puzzle: assume afterlife exists. how do you know you're not in it?

>>21000472
Non-empirical doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just that we cant observe it. I personally don't think an afterlife exists, but there's no way to know. The question is inherently something we can't verify using our senses. Because if you are observing an afterlife is it really an afterlife? I would think if there is still an observer with all the normal senses we have in this life, then you're still in this life.
>We're gonna have to die to see what it's really like, and that's the only thing one can say without making assumptions. I still offer the following puzzle: assume afterlife exists. how do you know you're not in it?
I agree the only way to really know is to die. Your second question is similar to asking how do we know we're not in a simulation. We don't know because we have no reference point other than our existence and experience here and now. We can't really know anything essential about the reality we are in. It could be anything but it really makes no difference.

That a hypothesis is affirmatively proven because it hasn't been completely disproven is a classic logical fallacy. The author should know better if that is really the crux of the argument. I will try to find some time for it this weekened to give it a shot.

Clearly many human beings regardless of human background, race, etc. experience very profound and often very similar things when near death. It definitely is an area that deserves and is receiving scientific interest.

>>21000441
They did and do have a concept of an afterlife though lol. It's not like they had a lack of concepts concerning the afterlife, they just didn't really have a unifying belief.

>>21000527
I have no objections to this post.

>>20992991

>claims thing is obvious
>feels it necessary to write a book explaining in great detail why the obvious thing is obvious

>>21000544
You're being intentionally obtuse. Im not an expert on Judaism. Idont claim to be and its entirely possible you know better. My understanding is that their concept of an afterlife was in ancient times rather vague and poorly defined. Unlike Christians that have a much more defined belief that life persists afterwards.

>>21000538
>That a hypothesis is affirmatively proven because it hasn't been completely disproven is a classic logical fallacy.
That's literally how science works, except they never claim that anything is proven, just that X hypothesis is the most strongly supported. (So in a sense, yes, scientific discoveries are just varying degrees of logical fallacies).

>>21000568
The initial comment was concerning a community that had never been exposed to the concept of an afterlife. The point is that they had been exposed to the concept of an afterlife, and therefore don't fit the criteria.

>>21000691
Okay whatever man idc. I was just giving them as an example of a people that don't believe in an afterlife, or at least don't have a clear understanding of an afterlife.

>crazy shit happens when your brain is shutting down
heckin afterlife bro! praise jesus!

>>20996452
Disorganization =/= death

Read the Gospel of Thomas. Jesus uncovered the truth about so-called "death."

>>21000361
Then don't be a rational agent. Be a person going through something. Existence is irrational. If God talks to you maybe hecs actually talking to you. Talk with a priest about it or something though.

>>20993094
>>20994687
>DMT
Here is a report of someone who had an NDE and also tried DMT after it trying to recreate it. This is this person said:

>"So I had an NDE in 2018. It was an awe-inspiring and profound experience. I already had an interest in DMT but hadn't tried it. But all the descriptions of the DMT trip aligned with my NDE experience. I wanted to experience it again. So I got some DMT and tried it. It took several tries over a few days to do it properly. It's a pretty wild ride. 3 big hauls on it and off to a strange new world.
>Ultimately though. The DMT paled in comparison to my NDE. The NDE was coherent, the patterns deliberate and meaningful, and everything was hyper HD. Whereas the DMT was abstract, random, and dream-like. The entities that were there felt more like a dreamed up extension of myself than meeting another seperate entity. My mind felt like I was lucid dreaming, rather than fully awake and rationally aware.
>It was a disappointment. The NDE is far more profound than DMT."

>>21001386
Another interesting comment from that thread:
>"Your husband is going to believe what he wants to. When I tell people that I listened to a conversation far from my body (no WAY my ears heard it), they just decide I'm lying for no apparent reason.
>Show them someone like Tricia Barker and her NDE, and they will LEGIT claim that everyone, doctors and nurses included, are "making it up", because they want to believe what they want to believe. Doctors and nurses would, in their minds, risk their careers to lie for no return on it. No fame, no money... they just... lie. Because why not, I guess??
>When you have an NDE, you do KNOW it's not in your head. Every excuse people like your husband try to use to excuse it away fall flat. "It's lack of oxygen to the brain." Except a brain denied of oxygen experiences lack of lucidity and experiences memory loss. "Well, then it's DMT released by the brain as it dies." Except DMT lasts a minimum of 30 minutes (so they'd still be high and hallucinating for another 25 minutes if they were only dead for 5 minutes--as example), the pituitary isn't big enough to produce enough for a trip, and DMT has never been found in dead human brains in any clinically significant amount.
>Etc. etc. etc.
>People like your husband love to pretend they're analytical and critical thinkers, but they believe absolutely ridiculous things like this without questioning it. The sheer number of 'skeptics' who I've spoken to who BLINDLY and UNTHINKINGLY accepted the "dmt in the brain" thing is hilarious. It started out literally as a GUESS by a PARAPSYCHOLOGIST.... these supposed science nerds never looked into it at all. "Oh, sounds good. Whew!" and they accept it as "science" without question.
>No disrespect to your husband, he's welcome to BELIEVE whatever he wants. But it's pretty awkward to realize he's BELIEVING something completely unscientific while claiming to be a rational skeptic, no doubt."

>muh DMT
DMT isn't even the most powerful psychedelic there is.

Also https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01424/full

>>20993100
>Anecdotal evidence
>evidence
So you agree that it's evidence.
Also, would you think the equivalent type of anecdotal evidence via the testimonies for what's in the thought experiment room would be useful or meaningless in terms of telling us what's in the room? Why or why not?

>>21000588
It's not at all how science works. If you ever take a test on pure logic you will 100% be given a scenario like what OP is doing.

X
Some say not X
But they don't 100% disprove X
Therefore X

This is what the book is doing.

>>21000399
>You can make the exact same argument for alien abduction claimers proving aliens abductions exist, or ghost seers proving ghosts exists, or bigfoot witnesses proving bigfoot exists.
Uhm... where is the evidence that those who claim to have been abducted by aliens, seeing ghosts, or seeing bigfoot are (1) all convinced, (2) that they did thorough experiments on the aliens (rather than the other way around), on the ghosts, and/or on bigfoot, and thus were justified with their knowledge, and (3) that those who report alien abductions, or seeing ghosts, or seeing bigfoot were representative of the population as a whole?

Because last time I checked, albeit not too carefully, there were no evidence for either (1), (2), or (3). But maybe I was being too hasty? I am open-minded, show it to me. It would be interesting to investigate further.

And I will grant you (4) for free without needing evidence for it, that there are many of them.

>>20993072
This post is right, OP has been spamming this advertisement for a while now.
>>20993078
It is an argument.

>>21001518
That runs counter to what that guy who has both tripped on DMT and had an NDE says. It's only using a questionnaire to establish "similarity"

How do I induce an NDE?

>>21003535
a good amount of initiatory rites are designed solely to do that

>>21001386
>>21001394
The thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/NDE/comments/sh2hpw/can_an_nde_be_replicated_with_dmt_ive_often/

>>20992991
If before birth there was nothingness (leaving out the difficulty of what it even means), and after death you come back to nothingness, it doesn't imply you cease to be in whatever way possible,since otherwise how could you even arise out of that nothingness in the first place?

>>21004581
Random chance after billions of years of missing your chance, maybe?

>>21004581
Idk anon. "Cease to be" seems to be pretty valid when maggots eat up every ounce of flesh in your rotting corpse

>>21004626
Lol NTA but you're probably right, BUT if the universe dies and is reborn infinitely and time is indeed a circle, who is to say that "you" will not get a chance to be born as a stranger in another rounding of time? Or as yourself again, back into the same life? This seems somewhat scientific to me, a midwit.

>>21004639
You mean this horror will continue again and again forever?

Please God, let the universe be flat and euclidean.

>>21004626
If one were the flesh, there would be no hard problem of consciousness.

>>21004684
The hard problem is clearly a meme and some variant of panpsychism is correct

>>21004668
yeah I know I had the same fear recently actually, one night a couple weeks ago actually I just laid in bed turning over and over the thought that the every moment in the universe is carved in time and that we are living it exactly as it is "carved" into the tablet of time with no deviations whatsoever, because every moment, every action is already prefigured in it. To think that we live this exact same set of choices and circumstances on and on without respite is absolutely terrifying, I agree, and means even suicide is no escape, because you'll just be born into the same spot in a couple billion years (an eyeblink) to do the round all over again.

Of course the "good news" is that's all just a theory though, and I have no idea how well it's backed up by evidence, though I'm sure there are quantum physicists out there who are losing their minds studying it. If it is true though, hey at least you'll never die, right?

>>21004639
Look at it like this; If things did come together in another universe or in this universe that resembled my neuronal function, but they existed right now, while I'm still alive, I would still be me. I mean, such things could exist what with runaway inflation among other ideas. There could be infinite perfect copies of me out there right now, but still I seem to have zero causal connection with them. I don't "become them" when I lose consciousness, or warg between their POV and my POV, so we're sort of causally disconnected.

I don't see why I get the privilege of my POV after I'm dead. It seems like other instances of me all have their own thing going.

>>21004714
It's not the privilege of your own POV after you die though, that's not what I'm saying. I guess it would be more like saying, instead of YOU keep coming back, "you" are a kind of microcosm of an unknowable lifeforce/observer that is split off into a billion perspectives at any one time and when "you" die, "you" experience another perspective from another vessel, because "you" are all the same. I guess that's basically just Panpsychism or that Hindu idea of Brahma or whatever the fuck, but I think it makes some sense, even if it takes a lot of leaps of faith to believe. I don't know man, I'm inclined to think the Dharmic faiths are a lot closer to the nature and foundations of reality itself than the Abrahamic faiths or Atheistic notions of "it's just endless millennia of blind oblivion after death lel"

>>21004746
I know there is a small trend towards panpsychism in philosophy of consciousness right now, but I think those thinkers are off on a bit of a tangent. I'm not a big "hard problem" aficionado as I think its just over-explaining what it's like to be a conscious human. I understand the inaccessibility of subjective experience but don't find it to be anything more profound than functional brain states functioning.

Also the misappropriation of interpretations of QM has really stained the field. Add those together and you get this inertia towards making ends meet with eastern spiritualism. Its getting a little ridiculous.

>>21004779
hey man I'm a complete layman here, just trying to make sense of it. Does QM mean Quantum Metaphysics?
Also what do you think of time my friend? Is it a circle? Is it a snake forever swallowing its own tail? Or is it a straight line? With a terminus?

>>21004806
Quantum Mechanics, which forced physicists to adopt some bad philosophy and inspired philosophers to create some bad philosophy of consciousness.

Time is probably something we will never understand. Right now we have the whole forward arrow decided by entropy thing, but my bet would be there is a more robust but inaccessible portion of the phenomena out there, sort of like the noumenal component of time. Its as though our understanding is the tip of the iceberg and greater things dictating the nature of time lay below the water line.

>>20992991
I smoked DMT before and I'm not some faggot who believes in a spiritual realm. It's all a neurological feedback loop. Take your meds.

>>21004840
What is the "noumenal component of time"? Please remember you are talking to a bonafide retard here. Does this mean there are more "dimensions" of time than we can even imagine? And if so, what the fuck does that even mean?

>>20993072
Coping.

>>21004705
I guess you can take solace in good things in life being repeated as well. Though I ask, would a new you still be the same you? Quite difficult to answer since human individuality is something we evolved with and may not be a feature of underlying reality.

>>21004684
Yeah, pretty HARD to have any consciousness at all when the spinal cord has turned to dust and the brain turned to smoke

>>20996620
Oh if only we could all de-brain ourselves at birth to deny the crippling contradiction. Oh to be a retard swimming in bathwater and its own piss, sinking quietly and slowly under the life-denying water, happy as a clam could ever be. Utopia lies in denying the collective IQ of the human race the ability to go >75

>>20992991
according to this argument, every braindead drug addict rambling on a streetcorner is also correct about the profound truth of whatever bullshit they saw when they were tripping. If you actually find this argument "astonishingly good" then I guess it's time for you to reevaluate some of your assumptions.

>>21004840
Quantum Physics forced physicists to not bother with philosophy at all. Feyman famously quiped, "just shut up and calculate". This approach lead to particle physics and standard model but fundamental physics has been kind of stuck ever since.

>>21004876
>would a new you still be the same you?
Who can say? That's a hard one, but I think ultimately it doesn't really matter, because either way every time you'll have no memory whatsoever that you've lived this series of moments a billion times through the eons. I have no doubt whatsoever that if this is how reality works, this is far from my first go-round of this life, but I'm going to continue to live it as if it's my first and only, because I'll never be sure either way, you know what I mean anon?

>>21004863
Its the old Kantian distinction of what we can and cannot know. The quick and dirty is that phenomenal is what we have access to and noumenal is what we don't.

There is a sort of new agey philosopher/neuroscientist making the rounds called Donald Hoffman that has gained some traction with his theories about humans only perceiving what was advantageous (in terms of natural selection) to perceive and the "greater reality" probably not fitting that narrow band. I'm not a fan, but he is giving the distinction some new legs.

>>21004901
I'm NTA but are you advocating for a return of philosophy to science? Physics specifically? Cause personally I think that would be absolutely based.

>>21004915
Oh yeah I'm familiar with the distinction between noumenal and phenomenal but I thought maybe there was some established concept called like the "noumenal component of time", my bad lol, misunderstanding.
That's interesting though about this Donald (gay name) Hoffman; are you aware of that shrimp? I think it's the mantis shrimp or the pistol shrimp maybe, and supposedly (I don't know how this was studied) it can perceive a whole different spectrum of colors than human eyes can? Now granted, they're probably just a bunch of gay and boring variations on green and red like grey-green and grey-red or something, but who knows? I think there is something to be said about "ultimate reality" being so subjectively different to different species and individuals even, that maybe objective/ultimate reality is either nonexistent or really different than what we're thinking.

>>21004894
NDE accounts are perfectly coherent, unlike drug addled ranting.

bumphausen

>>21000729
>Read the Gospel of Thomas
Get fucked, godtard.

>>21000384
Consciousness doesn't even persist through sleep FFS.

>>21003535
Don't worry, you'll experience an NDE shortly before your DE.

>>21004903
>I'm going to continue to live it as if it's my first and only, because I'll never be sure either way, you know what I mean anon?

Best way to go about it tbqh. Certainly better than losing your grip on this one for hope of a better afterlife, which may or may not come. Something you can never know. I mean can you see the contradiction of people blowing their real bodies up to have sex with virgins in an afterlife?

>>21004916
I don't think physics was ever divorced from philosophy to begin with. But the current paradigms, despite their shortcomings, seem to work quite well so far. Many physicists have called for a fundamental shift in paradigm to crack some of the core problems. But I'm sceptical if philosophy, as it stands now, has anything worthwile to offer.

>>21004994
and yet consciousness 'reboots' from sleep. Who's to say that this property is completely inherent to the fleshly computer that it's contained within?

>>21004972
NDE accounts literally are drug-addled ranting.

>>21004941
Well yeah, I mean the greater EM spectrum was really our first indicator that something was fucky with our perception, even though these things are very physical well-established phenomena that we use for damn near everything.

I just look at like its a safe bet that an earth hominid did not evolve to understand all of nature and leave it at that; There will be no "theory of everything." just maybe a theory of everything we can perceive.

>>21004982
I'm not that anon, nor am I Christfag but this is very unbased of you, anon. Very gay indeed. Not having faith in something inexplicable and having the intellectual humility to allow for some irrationality is one of the gayest things you can do and this is, therefore, cringeposting. How does it feel knowing you posted cringe?

>>21005005
yeah dude, people will do just about anything for pussy I guess huh? Even metaphysical pussy. Imagine when ol' Jabar gets to the afterlife, still a virgin (except for that 12 year old girl he raped in Baghdad), and all of the pussy is gone or never there to begin with and he's just left standing there before the throne with his shriveling dick in his hand. Bet he'll feel like a goddamn fool for blowing his whole earthly vessel up, huh?

>>20996532
>psychology
>the meme science in which the vast majority of studies can't even be replicated
>Take these ssri, seratonin is the cause of depression
>wait no, that's not linked at all whoops

Lmao ok.

>>21004941
>>21005013
The concept of nuemena goes beyond just aspects of objects outside of our perception. Though there is definitely a link here.

Sure our eyes may have evolved to see a very small part of EM spectrum because that's the band with most intensity in sunlight and we don't perceive all the radiations. But the idea of EM and spectrum band itself is derived from experience of phenomena. The nuomena is truly a dark place that cannot be known since everything that could be known is phenomena

>>21005043
>Bet he'll feel like a goddamn fool for blowing his whole earthly vessel up, huh?

Poor guy will feel nothing at all cuz he'd be dead.

>>21005085
You don't have to study the "science" of psychology to see this. Pedestrian understanding of human behaviour is enough to come to this conclusion. Though it funny when people attack one form of psuedobabble to defend their own psuedobabble

>>21005085
>the meme science in which the vast majority of studies can't even be replicated
that's every scientific discipline these days

>>20993100
Despite the common 'gotcha' saying, the plural of anecdote literally is data.

>>21005128
True but psychology is one of the worst offenders.
The claim that was made was that a hard look at psychology btfo the concept of an afterlife, which frankly is absurd when referring to either psychology in its institutional form or the general one.
I don't expect NDE to convince people of the existence of an afterlife or God at all, but physicalism is the ideology of subhumans, as evidenced by their fruits.

>>21005144
Psychology does have one subfield that replicates extremely well IQ

>>21002333
It is absolutely how science works.
>take a test on pure logic
Science is not pure logic, it is at best inductive logic, but in reality it is an empirical method totally distinct from pure logic. As I just said, from the perspective of pure logic, there is not justifiable scientific data. In case you really are this thick, what science does is propose hypotheses and then try to refute them, so it does exactly what you just said. X, X is not disproven by all our best attempts, therefore X is likely correct. That is how the scientific method works in a nutshell; the more data for testing the hypotheses, the more accurate the outcome.

>>21005203
Holy positivism cancer. It doesn't work but refutation, or works by positive confirmation. Obviously refutation is an indication your theory is wrong but that's not what the majority of empirical evidence is

>>21005213
Empirical evidence is only useful with respect to the hypotheses, because it's the only possible way we can make predictions (noting that empirical evidence cannot positively prove anything). Please explain to me how science uses deductive logic to arrive at its results.

>>21005219
Empirical evidence is "metaphorical" and pragmatic. I agree it is not deduction. But it's still positive confirmation

>>21005240
>But it's still positive confirmation
It's not, because you cannot create positive general confirmations from positive specific confirmations; this is the entire problem of induction all over again, which even someone as old as Aristotle was aware of. The only thing an empirical datum positively confirms is that particular empirical datum and nothing else (ie, it confirms "this observation itself is valid as observation", it cannot positively confirm any general statement or relations between data, all it can do is negate general statements. Again, this is foundational scientific method, and you're confusing quantity of data with positive confirmation per se; it is the quantity of data (due to the increased chance of falsifying [negative] empirical data in a large dataset) which is the positive confirmation, not the empirical data point itself, which only has value as a potential general negation of a hypothesis.

>>21005274
No a single data point is already confirmation. You just add more

>>21005203
You have to be 18 to post on this site.

>>20993100
>four (4) total pieces of evidence
We're starting to collect a pretty hefty dataset here, boys!

>>21005282
>No a single data point is already confirmation.
Correct, it is a confirmation of itself, as I just said. It is not a confirmation of a hypothesis.
>>21005285
>no argument

>>21005298
It is a confirmation of the hypothesis. It could have been a refutation, but it accords with the theory and is therefore a confirmation.

>>21005144
Nah. The idea is so obvious that there's simply no counter to it. Humans would want to believe in an afterlife because they are afraid of death. The idea of their "self" disappearing terrifies them. This is a fact and you'd have to be a 10 year old down syndrome kid to not see this.

>>21005303
>It is a confirmation of the hypothesis
No, it isn't. It simply does not negate the hypothesis, but at the same time it does not affirm it, because the hypothesis might still be wrong after we receive more data. You're again confusing the lack of negation for affirmation, it is very similar to saying because I did not deny that I like X, therefore I like X, this is a false inference.
>but it accords with the theory
A singular datum of evidence can accord with virtually any hypothesis, and as such is almost meaningless in itself (except, as already stated, when it negates a given hypothesis).

>>21005321
If I have a theory that apples fall when dropped and then I drop an apple and it falls that is 100% confirmation even if subsequent apple droppings would induce a higher level of certainty. You will never convince me this is wrong

>>21005327
>If I have a theory that apples fall when dropped and then I drop an apple and it falls that is 100% confirmatio
This is exactly what I've been saying: it's a 100% confirmation that that particular apple fell when it was dropped. This is what I mean by "positive specific affirmation", it is a positive specific affirmation of that particular empirical datum, but it is not a positive general affirmation of the hypothesis that "apples fall when dropped." To come closer to affirming the latter requires large (or at the very least >1) quantities of empirical data in order for us to be nearer to certain about its generality, and if even one apple does not fall when dropped (negating the possibility of a general affirmation), then we have to choose a new hypothesis, or more than one for different contexts, which can be grouped under a higher unifying genus or meta-hypothesis which will be different to the original hypothesis that "apples fall when dropped."

The problem with your belief is exactly what Hume wrote about with respect to causality. You've been acquainted with things regularly occurring in a pattern since birth to the point where it's an innate belief that something happening once means it will probably happen again under a similar circumstance. This is not scientific or logical at all though, it just an extremely strong belief, and you're probably right that I will not be able to convince you otherwise because it seems like you will die on this hill.

>>20992991
Stupid title. If it's obvious why do you need a book to explain it?

>>21005355
A particular apple dropping is confirmation that apple's in general drop. You only ever gain more confirmation. There is no phase change in reality between apple 1 and 2, please remain serious

>>21005355
Didn't Popper already did away with this by making falsifiability the base criteria?

>>21005364
>A particular apple dropping is confirmation that apple's in general drop.
No, it isn't, not anymore than a particular monkey using a typewriter is confirmation that monkeys in general use typewriters
>You only ever gain more confirmation.
This is wrong, because we can gain negations of that hypothesis, for example in space where an apple does not in fact fall towards the Earth.
>There is no phase change
There is no phase change in general, I'm starting to think you are not aware what you're even speaking about.

>>21005387
If you see an apple fall and then you dont update to the opinion "apples in general fall" you are literally retarded. You're ignoring the only evidence you have for absolutely no reason

>>21005379
I've been stating the entire time that falsifiability is a basic criterion for scientific hypotheses, albeit without using that term.

Anyway, Popper is not a good source to rely on for solid thought and foundations. You'll want to stick to a combination of actual philosophers and critical thought.

Jesus didn't believe in an afterlife.

>>395796298
>>395796298
>>395796298

This entire thread is just proof of the adage that is starting to become common in NDE circles about how there are two types of people who comment on NDEs, that is, there are those who have read the literature, and then there are the skeptics. This >>21001394 is a good example of this.

>>21005314
Believing in materialist annihilation has its allure too, e.g. wanting to be seen as sober and reasonable, and hardened enough to deal with real truth, and so on.

>>21004994
How would you know?

>>20993072
fpbp

>>20992991

I see shadow people when I get sleep paralysis, and many other people have had these same experiences.Therefore shadow people are real.

QED.

>>21005657
>NDE circles
Cringe.

Why would supernatural entities reveal themselves only during NDEs?

>>20993100
>Anecdotal evidence consistently repeated through a large dataset
>Just because everyone saw something doesn't mean it's real, you have to bottle it and run a lab test in it according to our scientusm instead of infer through common insight beause I'm jealous I'm not specual enough to have seen it.

The cop out of "even if it happened to everyone you can never know for sure really" is retarded because while there could be extenuating circumstances and you can't ultimately know something (I think it was Socrates that saud "I know no-thing.") we don't operate on that level in reality. We operate on
>The sky is blue until it isn't
>1+1=2
Because that's how it is on the surface. Mathematically, there's definitive evidence there's life after death and a creator to a creation. What exactly those are is the real question. I can respect different theists and agnostics if they come to their conclusions sensibly. Who I can never respect are atheists because it isn't a natter of debate. The math is done. There's something greater than ourselves. It's like calling Scientology a valid conclusion. Atheists are just angsty nihilists cursing the world for being and/or simply not thinking about anything meaningful.

>>20993454
>spooky otherworldly realm
Calling heaven and paradise "spooky" really shows how afraid you are of the paranormal, which in turn just highlights your inherent bias against it.
>that is completely at odds with all scientific knowledge
What? Literally what? What scientific knowledge do we have to abandon if we accept that there's an afterlife?
>not to mention the philosophical and logical absurdities of dualism - do just the barest reading on this
You don't actually have to be a substance dualist to accept the reality of NDEs, as most who do I think are idealists, that is, we are all one consciousness etc and there is only the idea of matter within the mind.
>or that the brain (an extremely complex organ which we are only just beginning to understand) fires off in ways we don't currently understand shortly before death?
You do know that you can believe both these things simultaneously, right? There can be an otherwordly realm, and the brain goes crazy before death, which it clearly does. That does not mean that the brain is responsible for the perceived idea of the other realm though.
>The fact that some people have weird sensations
It's not a "weird sensation", it's an ultrareal experience, far more real than what you experience as you are getting upset reading what I write here. Trying to belittle or ridicule the experience again just highlights your bias and dogma.
>The fact that some people are convinced in the reality of these sensations means literally nothing. (Schizos and people who take certain kinds of hallucinogens can be just as convinced in being god.)
So your argument is essentially "Some people sometimes hallucinate. Therefore, everyone who has an alternative experience to sober reality must be hallucinating." Again, it does not follow.
>You need to completely rewrite everything we know about the universe and resolve every single metaphysical contradiction.
Nope. You can just say, "everything we know about the universe remains true, plus there's an afterlife when we die." Whew, that was easy!
>
I know believing in an "afterlife" is an emotional need for you
And remaining a materialist is CLEARLY an emotional need for you. Afraid of thinking for yourself? Of the infinite love in the afterlife? Of everyone there knowing your secrets? Of believing in the supernatural and being ridiculed for it? Of changing your worldview?
See, everyone can be an armchair psychologist.

Also, finally, your entire post reeks of somehow who not only has not read this book, but who has never read any book on NDEs.

>>20992991
And how exactly is this a more plausible explanation than psychological factors?

>>21006773
>Mathematically, there's definitive evidence there's life after death and a creator to a creation
Ok.

>>21006838
Glad you understand.

>>20992991
the human mind is excellent at deceiving us when its objective is to keep us alive and functioning, a person finds hope and solace in the thought of afterlife

>>21006842
I'm glad you provide a good laugh.

>>21005314
On the contrary, it is the hope of oblivion and a painless non-existence that is the cowards lot. The concept that reality may extend beyond human comprehension, that actions may hold greater weight than simple causality, and the promise of judgement is much harder to face than materialism, and the consequent nihilism, hedonism or stoicism that accompanies it.
Your argument can be summed up as: haha you're just scared, to which I reply, no u.

>>21005364
No it isn't, that's the entire problem of induction. When one event occurs, you cannot logically say that it will always occur.
You can assume it based on the data you're able to collect, but it's not necessarily true.

That which has never been born will never die.

What a disappointing thread. I guess it’s only natural for any thread to be so reactionary; but holy hell I might as well be on reddit.

>>21005664
"No u" tier arguments is all you can come up with because your worldview is inferior, trash and demonstrably false.

>>21007241
>On the contrary, it is the hope of oblivion and a painless non-existence that is the cowards lot.

Stop projecting your suicidal ideation onto others.

>Your argument can be summed up as: haha you're just scared, to which I reply, no u.

That's all you can do anyway. That's all you ever did on this board. Pretending that your fantastical and irrational stone age fabrications are in any way reflective of reality. At the end of the day you are deluding no one but yourself. Shutting off your senses and your mind you are no different from the child who plugs his ears and goes "lala". You deliberately turn yourself into a wall that is impossible to talk to since everything thrown at it would only bounce back. Hence as we slowly inch closer and closer to a better understanding of the world we reside in, and employ better tools and viewpoints for that purpose, you still choose to cling to old age outdated mythos which offer nothing besides a temporary balm for the troubled mind.

So you don't have to tell me you are an ignorant buffon who can only ever go "no u", I already know that.

ITT: Materialists have a knee jerk reaction to a book they've never read

>>21007340
Yeah. It's so funny reading through this thread with countless short quips that are probably the first (and only?) thing the materialists thought when confronted with it, as if they are the first one to ever think these things, and as if no NDEr or NDE researcher has ever thought about these things. It's cute and endearing in a way actually how innocent they are, and how embarrassing it is realized to be as for those who have read the book to see these comments when they know that virtually all skeptical objections mentioned in this thread is either explicitly or implicitly refuted in the book, or with references to other books who refute what is said. Like this guy >>21007305, who wrote:
>Pretending that your fantastical and irrational stone age fabrications are in any way reflective of reality.
This naïve mindset is addressed in the book.

>>21007305
I came up with a no u argument for very specific reasons that I laid out for you - the fact that you are relying entirely on an ad hominem, calling non-materialists 'scared.' Your claim that they act out of fear is no more valid than mine that you do the same.
>stop projecting your suicidal ideation
My worldview is inherently respecting of life and all that entails, not so the case with the ultimate outcome of yours.
> pretending that your fantastical and irrational stone age fabrications are in any way reflective of realtity
They aren't reflective of it, they ARE it.
>shutting off your senses
It's far more foolish to rely only upon them, empiricism is idiotic.
>we slowly inch closer and closer to a better understanding of the world we reside in
No we don't, we drift further away from understanding every day, mechanistic engineering is not understanding, and does nothing to improve the lives of humans beyond providing material gain.
You non-ironically sound you hecking love science (TM) and belong on that other site, that I won't name.

>>21004994
>Consciousness doesn't even persist through sleep FFS.
Depends how we're defining it. If by consciousness you mean awareness, sure I agree, but your brain is still active just in an altered state. Arguanly thats not really non-conscious because a consciousness is still there. In your dreams you're still experiencing things.

>>21006453
>Why would supernatural entities reveal themselves only during NDEs?
NDEtrannies please explain.

>>21009269
They technically don't, if you count religion, mysticism and occultism. But most likely we come here to learn specific things we can't on the other side.

>>21000561
>what are different degrees of obvious?

>>21004994
Yes it does dumbass. First of all your brain is still active, and regulating your body. Second of all, no matter how deep your sleep is, you are still aware of your surroundings: a balloon popping or getting water thrown on you, or you somehow choking, will immediately wake you up.

>>20993100
>tranime

>>21008163
>Your claim that they act out of fear is no more valid than mine that you do the same.

What makes you think I give a single fuck about the "validity" of your claim. All I did was point out the mindset that precludes adamant and irrational beliefs in afterlife . And what I pointed out later was your sheer inability to respond to it in anyway other than a "no u". This schizo pattern is kinda worrying

>My worldview is inherently respecting of life and all that entails, not so the case with the ultimate outcome of yours.

Doesn't matter if its mired in falsehoods and superstitious fabrications. I wasn't even talking about your worldview. I specifically quoted what I was replying to but of course you have to be a dishonest faggot about it

>No we don't, we drift further away from understanding every day, mechanistic engineering is not understanding, and does nothing to improve the lives of humans beyond providing material gain.
You non-ironically sound you hecking love science (TM) and belong on that other site, that I won't name.

Lol. This drivel sounds just like the nonsense spouted by a drunk septuagenarian sitting in a park on a cold tuesday evening. The most meaninglessly midwit of all takes.

>he rejects fanciful flights of imagination into the realm of fairies and ghosts and dragons and afterlife and spirits and ghouls and wraths and magic and Gods because its not empirical hence he comes from "that" Site.

Sure bud. Since you've shown that you can irrationally project your imagination onto reality , I don't know how seriously I should take anything said here.

But I'll give you this. Technology did have its impact, just not in the way you think it did. You are in the right direction when you "feel" that it is making us drift further away from "understanding". But your perspective is all messed up. The truth is that commonly shared religion and myths did serve a purpose in organisation of human effort and intellect in agrarian societies. People derived their moral law, behaviour and outlook from it. Heirarchies were organised in accordance. But technology killed that lifestyle. A post-industrial society is differently structured, it required its own new set of myths, like nation or laws or corporations or State to function. The old myths are no longer needed and so they are discarded . And since you cling to them it doesn't feel right to you.

This is something most atheists get wrong. No degree of empiricism, scepticism, rationality, logic or even scientific knowledge could make a men shed his superstitions if he's toiling the fields for his family, lord, king and god.

So if you were living in ancient Greek I wouldn't even blame you for holding the beliefs that you do.

>>20992991
Our egos get us in trouble by thinking we can make people change their minds when it comes to the awareness of God. But God designed it in such a way that we have the choice to come to him or not. We as humans cannot force people to see him in their hearts.. thats a choice we all make on an individual level.

>>21001514
LSD is the most potent psychedelic, is also one of the most potent drugs on Earth in general, but the "most powerful" is entirely subjective.

>>21010916
Potent by mass, yes.
As for "power", while it is subjective, 5-MeO-DMT by far outranks every other widely known psychedelic according to reports of so called psychonauts in terms of intensity (headspace) of average experiences.

>>21007340
I have a knee-jerk reaction to it not because I'm materialistic, but because its premise is inherently egoistic and suggestive of dualism. It posits some kind of metaphysical self, distinct from the combined totality of everything, that somehow supposedly exists beyond the disjunction, decomposition, of the human body to experience reality through the frame of that same biological composite that no longer exists as it is defined.

>>21011170
>I have a knee-jerk reaction to it
So still a knee-jerk reaction to it because of <insert your reasons for incredulity here>, while uncharitably assuming that it is not taken into account by the book.
>its premise is inherently egoistic
Huh? What do you mean by this and how is it relevant? "Oh no I think of an afterlife as a selfish idea and therefore it upsets my feelings, therefore it can't exist!"
>suggestive of dualism
Not necessarily, that is just one way to interpret the idea of disembodied consciousness and an afterlife. But there is also idealism, for instance.
>It posits some kind of metaphysical self, distinct from the combined totality of everything
Again, h ow little about the NDE have you read? NDErs tend to say that we are all one consciousness, so that the entire physical world only exists as an idea in our mind. So disembodied self does not exist separate from it, but rather everything right now is something that is happening in our mind, a shared illusion. There is no matter, there is only the very persuasive idea and illusion of matter.
>b-b-but I can't believe that
Neither could many of the NDErs before having an NDE. After, however, they had no choice. And neither would you as per the argument in the book (which I know you won't ever read because >muh stubborn knee-jerk reaction).

>>21011275
>Huh? What do you mean by this and how is it relevant? "Oh no I think of an afterlife as a selfish idea and therefore it upsets my feelings, therefore it can't exist!"
Stopped reading here. The fact you don't understand how egoism is related to the argument of the book shows there's absolutely nothing for me in this discussion.

>>20992991
>An NDEr will more often than not say that the reality they encountered while they were going through this experience was a lot more real than this reality we participate in as humans on a daily basis, and the prevalence of this attribute is strongly correlated with the depth of the NDE.

Yeah any person whose been in a car accident or in danger can tell you that adrenaline rush is crazy and...

>3.More than forty years of scholarly research has shown that no physiological, psychological, nor sociological predictor has yet been identified as either necessary or sufficient to cause or prohibit an NDE

...Lol. I get so angry reading nonsense like this. Simple sophistry.

>>21011278
It is impossible for me to understand how egoism relates to the argument since you are the one who has made the claim that it does, but not explained it. And that is also why I asked. So here is some help:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egoism

How does that relate to the argument of the book, or as a counter-argument to it?

But I am going to make a guess. You think that belief in an afterlife is based on the desire for it to be true, i.e., the ">muh paradise pl0x"-mindset. And therefore you think it can not be true or something, because any belief in it must always be clouded by that desire?

But again, I am honestly clueless on what you mean. But you also have not explained it, so the onus is on you to do so.

>>21011278
Don't take the bait anon. You can do it. I believe in you.

>>21011311
>Yeah any person whose been in a car accident or in danger can tell you that adrenaline rush is crazy and...
As can NDErs, some of them have had adrenaline rushes as well, and they say that the NDE is nothing like that. Also, the fact that you think the realer than real aspect of NDEs is anything like an adrenaline just highlights how deeply naïve and uncharitable and irrationally dismissive you are.
>...Lol. I get so angry reading nonsense like this. Simple sophistry.
The claim is insanely well-sourced in the book, but, I guess your feelings trump facts. Pic related huh?

>>21011332
>Also, the fact that you think the realer than real aspect of NDEs is anything like an adrenaline just highlights how deeply naïve and uncharitable and irrationally dismissive you

>3.More than forty years of scholarly research has shown that no physiological, psychological, nor sociological predictor has yet been identified as either necessary or sufficient to cause or prohibit an NDE or its depth when someone has a survived proximity to death. Therefore, NDEs are equal opportunity experiences

Your own source just called you a fucking bigot lmao holy shit you're terrible at this

>NDErs
*NDEtrannies.

>>21011338
Could you be any more incoherent?

>>21007340
Why would anyone want to read your book you lazy nigger? If you understood it then you could recapitulate it instead of posturing.

>>21011352
>his or her book
lol
anyway as you please, im not that anon but i found a video and an article that summarizes it somewhat
https://youtu.be/U00ibBGZp7o
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/mysteries-consciousness/202204/does-afterlife-obviously-exist

>>20993072
What makes it weak?

>>20992991
I think I'll take the Shinji Option.

>>20992991
So feelz before realz, got it

>>21007285
>What a disappointing thread.
Much of /lit/ are edgy atheists not interested in challenging their worldview. And that is on top of all the lazy posters who never actually read books.
>but holy hell I might as well be on reddit
If so, here might be some good places to start:
https://www.reddit.com/r/NDE/
https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy
https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPhilosophy/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Afterlife
https://www.reddit.com/r/books/

I can only hope you find more curious people there. I wish you the best of luck.

There are no solutions, only cowardice masquerading as such.

>>20992991
>I was just wondering if anyone had a refutation because I can't find anything online
Many people gave you refutations when you kept spamming this shitbook on /sci/ and don't come at me with
>bhut tHaT WaSn't MeEEE
Don't play me for a fool you fucking asshole.
You're obstinate without a fucking doubt. Absolutely in denial.
>but it's more real than real so it's not a dream
Read, faggot, read.
https://www.dreamviews.com/general-lucid-discussion/140017-realer-than-real.html

>>20994878
Energy is just an abstract mathematical concept.
I could transform all of you into potential energy. Now tell me how a pile of shit colliding with earth at very high speeds has anything to do with "you"?

>>21012772
>https://www.dreamviews.com/general-lucid-discussion/140017-realer-than-real.html
If you think this is a refutation of the realer than real argument I am embarrassed for you, and it also proves that you did not read the book.

Cringe thread
Fuck off and read books

I believe in Heaven but I have no proof of it. I just feel it. I'm also quite sure that most geniuses throughout history have believed in it. There's a nice quote by Wernher von Braun that comes to mind.

>>21006773
>I'm jealous I'm not specual enough to have seen it.

>>21013838
>I believe in Heaven but I have no proof of it. I just feel it

Far more honest and respect worthy than delusional midwit pseudo-nerd retards who try to peddle it as objective fact built on unshakable grounds.

>>21005136

>>21004994
Guess you also weren’t concious when you were 3 because you don’t remeber it

>>21005274
>The only thing an empirical datum positively confirms is that particular empirical datum and nothing else
Now this isn't meant to argue against any of your other points but pardner, you ever done a standard curve?

>>21014184
Is a bacteria conscious?

>>21005406
this

The problem of induction is logically consistent but ignoring it is necessary for about 100% of scientific progress. The healthy mental conclusion of analytic philosophy is to instead become a scientist.

>>20992991
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUl-ek3P-08
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNhpk-kFLT4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Uz6anwm47g

>>21010298
What absolute rot, so this is what materialism does to the brain.
>All I did was point out the mindset that precludes adamant and irrational beliefs in afterlife .
You didn't point it out, you gave your opinion without any substantiation, which is why it merited nothing more than a 'no u,' a fact that I explicitly explained to you, and your ignorance of it indicates either incredible stupidity or willful ignorance.
>doesn't matter if it's mire in falsehoods
Prove that any of it is falsehoods, you're not making any argument, just spewing the rhetoric of a 14 year old that discovered Hitchens.
>because it's not empirical
No one takes empiricism seriously anymore, and I ought not take you seriously by that token either.


>commonly shared religion and myths did serve a purpose

Sure, but that doesn't mean they originated from that purpose, you have no way of knowing or proving that, being that it was prehistory and our understanding of it is sketchy at best. Any statement you might make about it is just colored by your personal biases that we already know well of.

Your revisionist take on history is laughable, and a clear example of confusing a 'how' with a 'why.' Technology didn't kill that lifestyle or God, they merely distracted us from him, and that's why our happiness continues to decline, why more and more people require medication to simply function in your vaunted modernity, and why all objective truth and sanity has begun to vanish. It's the inheritance of humanist trash that transexual foolishness springs from to give an example, and yes, that's easily demonstrated as causally linked.

>This is something most atheists get wrong. No degree of empiricism, scepticism, rationality, logic or even scientific knowledge could make a men shed his superstitions if he's toiling the fields for his family, lord, king and god.

Even if you had all of 'things' and you took all of that away from man, he would still 'cling' to 'superstition' for some reason. That reason is simple - the belief of a higher order is inherent in all mankind, even in you, regardless of whether you try to suppress it or not.

Tiresome.

>>21012548
Appreciate the links brother

>>20992991
>wisdom is Self-proximity
>consciousness is non-local, i.e. modulation(s) of the 'signal' (thought, body) are not the broadcast/source; you are tuned to receive Yourself, and not the 'radio'/'receiver' as such
NDEs suspend that comingling in a way that removes interference, and the particularities of one's own 'signal-modulating' factors vis-a-vis the Absolute. Self-similarity, self-proximity in the NDE experience is uniformly numinous and harrowing owing to this, hence the experiences are recognizable, and follow certain themes.

>>21014369
why does it look like a goatse...

>>21014369
Time is a measure, and has all the substantiality of other arbitrary measures like 'waves' and 'shadows'. Perception/involution of it is necessary for coherence, self-awareness. All knowledge is mediated by the modality of the Knower -- and that knower - the Self - is only temporarily consubstantial with the vehicle of this body and life. You are not that which dies, or ages, but the one whom experiences and lives it. That Subject isn't subject to annihilation, just because this particular modality/vehicle loses coherence;-- and there is every reason to believe that a suitable vehicle attuned to receive one's Self may arise once more (even if it is only in the Eternal Recurrence sense, flawed as that infographic's representation is).

>>21000209
Not even at all, and NDErs who have experienced both say that there is no comparison.

What an absolutely golden thread
Thank you all, bros, for making me learn and laugh at the same time

>>21014823
>t.

NDEtrannies basically have one argument against endogenous theories: there are things that are similar, but they're not similar ENOUGH.

>>21015673
The very existence of afterlife hinges on the existence of not just immaterial objects but entire immaterial realms outside our experience. Such a thesis is inherently unfalsifiable and hence its veracity can never be confirmed.

And this is where NDEs fail as evidence. Since for an evidence to work in a conventional sense it would be required that the thesis it sets out to prove or disprove is falsifiable.

Even if NDEs didn't exist at all, it would still not convince a christcuck about the non-existence of an afterlife. Therefore this entire thread is just one big attempt at biased cherrypicking.

>>21015650
That's a cute Chihaya and the only redeeming post ITT

>>21014823
>No one takes empiricism seriously anymore

>>21015665
>>21015719
retard samefag

>>21012548
>https://www.reddit.com/r/NDE/
Meh.
>https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy
No.
>https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicPhilosophy/
Nope.
>https://www.reddit.com/r/Afterlife
Meh.
>https://www.reddit.com/r/books/
Why are you directing people to /r/books, anon?

Anyway, here is Rudolf Steiner describing the death process in a 1916 lecture: https://rsarchive.org/Lectures/MomDea_index.html

Whether it's an afterlife or my brain tripping out in the throes of death I just hope it's pleasant, which everybody who ever reports an NDE seems to say they are.

One thing I always find interesting on counter arguments for OBEs is that outside senses are helping the experience out make details in their surroundings while unconscious. If anything that opens a whole can of worms on not only senses but the reach of our conscious from our bodies

>>21015885
Retarded sam-ACK

>>20994813
Oh are you sure about that?

>>21000150
What if guys that do die get told the same but you don't know because they fucking died? your brain could just come up with something comforting to hear and that's it

>>21004581
Sometimes I wake up from a dream that I remember nothing of other than knowing that I woke up from a dream, and I later forget about it and move on with my life. I still had that dream.

This is such arrogance. We still haven't made sense of physical reality and there's people that seriously think we have any hope making sense of anything beyond that? It's pure nonsense. The true answer to all of these god, ghost, fairy tales and whatnot things is that we just do not know, and that science is meant to observe physical phenomena and therefore doesnt even have anything to do with any of this shit.
Whatever it is that you believe(or dont believe) is and has always been pure faith, to believe that humans can ever go above that is pure delusion.

>>21017880
>seethe and cope incoming

>>21017880
>we don't know everything about this universe
>therefore, we can't know that there is an afterlife
k.

>>21014369
Reminder Mario killed himself because these stupid theories drove him insane.

https://www.lakemchenryscanner.com/tag/mario-alejandro-montano/
https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadRedditors/comments/foii87/uvitrifyher/

>>20993072
>>20993100
If you guys disagree, that's cool, but you should try arguing.
>>20993094
I'm pretty sure Dr. Parnia brought that up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkTh6wNlYao
Another interesting video on the topic (though not scientific, and a video worthy of skepticism since the creator is a Christian) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnTVPCwPjhI

>>21019245
Parnia himself is suspect, as I recall him having some odd metaphysical beliefs on Coast to Coast. Also the AWARE study still involves no brain death, just a period of low or no signaling, in which the NDE experience can still be characterized as the before or after event relative to.
Its like asking when exactly a dream occurred.

That being said, its not like those of us skeptical of NDEs are blindly following some dogmatic materialist handbook. Don't you think the world would like to know this? Do you truly believe all of academia is in lockstep against this because they just don't like it? They're human beings. Trust me, they want to know. We want to know. If there was something compelling here, in these accounts of people who were severely injured but never actually died, as they were able to give living accounts of their experience, I would deeply like to believe it.

You're going to have to live with the fact that some individuals, even very open-minded ones, are simply not convinced.

>>21019280
Your entire post is so cute and reeks of naïveness.
>Don't you think the world would like to know this?
No, definitely not. Religious people do not want to know because they want to remain religious. And same for many materialists, they want to remain materialists. They do not want to change their worldview, part ways with their peers on this ideological core they share with them.

>If there was something compelling here, I would deeply like to believe it.

If you actually meant this, you would read the book. OP has already stated "It honestly makes an astonishingly good argument based in Facts and Logic. ... It might very well convert me from being a materialist."

One endorser wrote "On finishing it, I doubt any reader will not be convinced that death is not a dead end."

Reviewers have stated:

>"The author makes a logical, almost irrefutable case that simply by looking at four elements of the NDE, we can know with as much certainty as we know just about anything that the afterlife is real. ... As far as I am concerned, he makes an airtight case. ... There is very little we can ever know with 100% logical certainty. If you're willing to concede that and simply require overwhelming "proof" of the afterlife, you cannot walk away from this book unconvinced."

>"I found here refreshing new ideas that are laid out very convincingly to convince even hardened skeptics that there is life after this life, based on solid findings from NDE research."

>"I do often wonder what would be the best argument to put forward to try and convince non-NDErs that the kinds of 'afterlife environments' that NDErs claim exist actually do exist and that the claims of NDErs should be taken seriously? I have read several books trying to do that but none of them left me convinced, if I was a non-NDEr myself, that the case argued in the books would actually work for most non-NDErs and move them from being sceptical to 'believers'. This book by Jens Amberts is different. Amberts builds a solid philosophical argument piece-by-piece that by my reading would convince most people that NDE accounts should be taken seriously. This is the only book I've read on NDEs (and I have read a great many) that succeeds in doing this, because it is so well and clearly argued."

And yet, you (and most other materialists and atheists commenting with their gut reaction in this thread) Just.Won't. Read. The. Book. That should tell you that you are completely wrong. You don't want to know. You just want to rant about your worldview, pretending that you are open-minded, while never actually reading the literature.

And it's not just this book. One NDE researcher said: "I don't know a single person who has responsibly read and investigated the NDE literature who has not been convinced by it. So when you know that, and you still refuse to read the data, there is something else going on other than rational activity."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXFUUu_KvdM

>>21012839
The "I" is just an interpretation. Death is just an interpretation; it relies solely on a brain.

>>21019631
>Just.Won't. Read. The. Book.
More soispeak from NDEtranny.

>>20993100
>>20993195
>>21001394
>>21002283
>>21004601
>>21005657
>>21007340
>>21011275
>>21011332
>>21013558
>>21013864
>>21015650
>>21019075
YWNBAW.

>>21012110
What's that?

>>21019914
YWNHAS
You will never have a soul

>>21020112
Insecure NDEtranny.

>>21005009
>more real and coherent experiences than life
>it must be drugs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111!1!!!1!1!!1
Lookie at this open-minded and reasonable fellow!

>>21019914
Why do you think that people posting pictures of females on 4chan must be men who want to be females?

>NDEtranny trying to bump xirs thread by replying to random posts

>>21017880
One of the biggest mistakes that materialists make is demanding physical proof for non physical phenomena.
>hur dur where's my double blind peer reviewed study on that
This craven adherence to the scientific method at the exclusion of all other forms of knowledge would have one asking for a "source for that" when you state that the sunset was beautiful.

>>20992991
You're going to need a lot more proof to prove that an afterlife exists. As far as we know, dying is fundamentally no different from turning off a switch. there is no more signal.

>>21022250
Yes

>>21000076
Why the long face?

>>21007270
Or live.

>>21014184
I don't remember half the things I did yesterday. Does that mean I wasn't conscious while I did them?

>>21023427
>mere contradiction
>didnt read the thread
thanks for the contribution anon

>>21019280
>Parnia himself is suspect, as I recall him having some odd metaphysical beliefs on Coast to Coast
I didn't know about this. I saw him on closer to truth and he came across as someone who refused to speak on things he didn't have evidence for.

>>21013864
i hadnt considered that that may be a psychological driving force behind some skeptics

>>21019280
>Parnia himself is suspect, as I recall him having some odd metaphysical beliefs on Coast to Coast.
what were they? and can you please provide a source?
thanks! <3

>>20993100
What is life but a big anecdote? Why should the afterlife not be one?

>>20992991
>1.The overwhelming majority of people who have a sexchange become personally convinced of the reality of them being women/men based on their experience, and the prevalence of this aftereffect is strongly correlated with the depth of the sex change
If that book uses logic and facts, it’s also logical and a fact that trannies are women

>>21023165
>One of the biggest mistakes that materialists make is demanding physical proof for non physical phenomena.

This can be translated as:

>One of the biggest mistakes that reasonable people make is demanding proof for my imaginary fantasies

>>21026124
>makes an argument based entirely upon non-agreed presuppositions.
>throws out a snide non sequitur

The absolute state of materialists.

>>21026222
I did not make the argument and its not my problem that you pre-suppositions are based on fiction

>>21026222
And please, learn what the phrase "non-sequitur actually means.

>>21026117
kek

>>21026252
You cannot make a claim about 'my' presuppositions based upon your own personal preference and expect to be taken seriously. Again, one cannot expect to provide material evidence for non material phenomena, that's foolishness. The fact you can't cope with the non material is just your own sad issue.

>>21009269
>>21010280
>>21011341
>>21015673
>>21016612
>>21019746
>>21019914
>>21020139
>>21022250
>>21026117
wut

>>21019631
How can you have this experience without risking death? The video mentions meditation, and that's the research I'm really interested in. Mediation that can reliably reproduce these experiences without being near-death.

>>21029816
>How can you have this experience without risking death?
You can't and that's what is so frustrating about it. If NDEs could be replicated, and especially if they could be replicated safely, whoever could provide such a service would become a billionaire.

>>21027972
>You cannot make a claim about 'my' presuppositions based upon your own personal preference

I'm sorry that facts don't agree with your made up personal preferences. You are mistaken if you think that any of us more rational people just "chose" our beliefs. If I could I would choose a different world. I would prefer if bad people were punished in an afterlife. But that does not mean I should delude myself into believing in one.

>>21027972

>You cannot make a claim about 'my' presuppositions based upon your own personal preference

I'm sorry that facts don't agree with your made up personal preferences. You are mistaken if you think that any of us more rational people just "chose" our beliefs. If I could I would choose a different world. I would prefer if bad people were punished in an afterlife. But that does not mean I should delude myself into believing in one

>>21005364
>A particular apple dropping is confirmation that apple's in general drop
No it isn't. This is actually a big problem in math. There are examples of patterns that hold for literally billions of iterations breaking. You can never assume something is true just because a pattern holds for X because there is always the chance that the pattern can break after X + 1.

This is why science that relies on empirical proof is always less certain than mathematics that uses rigorous logical proofs, and in some senses less certain than philosophy.

>>21025956
not that anon but https://youtu.be/4VMfM45bK3Y

>>21030873
>I'm sorry that facts
What facts?

>>21031501
That there is no evidence for an afterlife and that its entirely made up fiction.

>cope and seethe about how evidence is not needed because.... I SAID SO

>>21031549
>That there is no evidence for an afterlife
There is evidence, though.
> and that its entirely made up fiction.
This is not a fact, it's just something you made up.
Why would I cope and seethe when I am the rational one here?

Aaaaaand the retard is back at it

>>21031549
>there is no evidence for an afterlife and that its entirely made up fiction.
Sigh, see this >>21019631, because you are a textbook example.

>>21032557
Calm down Amberts, you ain't getting a penny from me