Science is not incompatible with belief in an afterlife, it simply has nothing to say on the matter.
Then you're not looking in the right places. The very definition of life includes:
- Homeostasis
- Organization
- Metabolism
- Growth
- Adaptation
- Response to stimuli, and
- Reproduction.
Every single one of those processes completely, distinctly, obviously and irreversibly
stops within a short time after the death of a human being.
In lower animals, some of those processes can continue for a while and may be restartable under the right conditions, making it difficult to distinguish death from sub-lethal trauma. And of course in the other five kingdoms of simpler organisms--plants, fungi, algae, bacteria and archaea--it's even more difficult.
But we're dealing with mammals here, the most complex of all organisms. When a mammal dies, it ceases living, completely and irreversibly. The consciousness that we associate closely with life and the unconscious brain activity that we associate closely with woo-woo (dreams, trances, the "near-death" experiences that are merely "this is your brain on hypoxia," etc.) are all electrochemical processes that fall into categories 2 and 6 above, Organization and Response to Stimuli.
When a human brain runs out of oxygen (at room temperature with no medical intervention this incontrovertibly happens within less than ten minutes of heart stoppage) the synapses lose their charge, the chemistry breaks down, and the conscious and unconscious thoughts degrade and disappear. Before too long the tissues begin to decay. There is no infrastructure to support the process of thought, so there is no thought. No ideas. No experiences. No journeys. No observations. Nothing. That's why we call it "death."
Many scientists believe in life after death.
Many scientists also believe in gods and angels and devils and a man who came back from the dead. Do you also insist that we be sanguine about these other forms of pure bullshit, out of respect for their diplomas and their lab coats? Scientists are no less complicated than the rest of us and have just as many weaknesses, idiosyncrasies and as much
cognitive dissonance as we do.
According to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, the definition of science is "knowledge attained through study or practice," or "knowledge covering general truths of the operation of general laws, esp. as obtained and tested through scientific method [and] concerned with the physical world."
Technical foul declared here. You're using a layman's dictionary to support an argument that is way beyond the layman's level. No layman can list more than two of the defining characteristics of life and no layman understands the scientific method: empirical observation, logical reasoning, peer review, the Rule of Laplace, Occam's Razor, etc. If you want to define science for us--many of whom have scientific backgrounds--then please be recursive and give us a
scientific definition of science, not something from the Sunday supplement.
We can not test the afterlife through empirical objective study, but this does not mean science has disproven the afterlife.
You're not much of a scientist if you don't know that
it is never necessary to prove a negative. The burden of proof is always on the party who makes a positive assertion. If this were not true, then the finite resources of science would be dissipated every day on disproving the the claims of every crackpot, wacko and religious nut who knocks on the door of the academy.
It's a quite sensible rule that
the person who makes a claim has to be the one to provide evidence.
When an animal, plant, insect or human dies its life in the form of a field. . . .
What woo-woo is this now? Life is not a "field." Life is a collection of processes that function in concert: homeostasis, metabolism, organization, etc.
BTW, you're also not much of a scientist if you don't understand that insects and humans are animals too. You also haven't mentioned the other four kinds of organisms. Do fungi, algae, bacteria and archaea also have this "field"? Or is it limited to the two most advanced taxonomic kingdoms? Inquiring minds want to know.
. . . . may go somewhere, this has not been proven yet, but science has not disproven it either.
As you've already been told, science is never required to disprove something for which no evidence has been provided. When I took Logic 101A it was not in a scientific curriculum so this was not in the list of Classic Fallacies (Recursion, Correlation, Authority, etc.). But I think it should be:
The Fallacy of Demanding Proof of a Negative.
Bring your evidence, and then we'll talk. Oh, and by the way, it had better be damn good evidence because you're already subject to the Rule of Laplace: Extraordinary assertions must be supported by extraordinary evidence before anyone is obliged to treat them with respect.
darryl said:
Also... Many scientists have claimed the afterlife is real
What do you mean, "Also"? You just said that in your immediate preceding post.
There's also many modern scientists who claim the afterlife is real.
And if you're going to repeat yourself I guess I will have to repeat myself too: Many scientists also believe in gods and resurrections. Belief in the supernatural is clearly an instinct (or an "archetype" as Jung called it in the days before the effect of genetics and evolution on behavior had been identified). The human forebrain is enormously larger in proportion to our animal midbrain and hindbrain compared to all other mammals, even the other apes--three to four times larger than our closest relative, the chimpanzee. This gives us a unique ability to override the instinctive ideas and behaviors with which we were born, with reasoned and learned behaviors. Some of us do that; others don't bother.
Surveys continue to show that some 97% of the people in the United States, Southern Americas and it is estimated that in the United Kingdom, Australia and in most countries accept the possibility that life continues after physical death.
I wonder if you're going to make a clean sweep and cite every one of the Classic Fallacies in a single thread? It doesn't matter how many people believe something. That is not evidence. 100 years ago 85% of Americans believed that black people were inferior (the 85% of them who were white and I don't know if I've got that ratio quite right).
Surely there must be something to it, all these scientists research cant be pure bunk.
You haven't really described their research. When one is attempting to coax people into into investigating a topic, it is customary to provide an abstract in one's own words. You know, like those "book reports" we all learned to do in the sixth grade? Did you think as an adult you'd never need that skill?
Life is way too short to click on URLs! If you've put so much thought into this stuff, surely you can give us a synopsis that will whet our interest.
As for it being impossible for all of the scientists on your list to be engaged in research that is in fact "bunk," now you're just being naive. Have you not heard of corporate science? These days arguably most graduates with science degrees go to work for corporations because they need the work and that's where the work is. They end up disgracing their principles: the goal of science is to test hypotheses until you find the correct one. The goal of corporate science is to prove a hypothesis is true because it will make money for the company, so you quietly ignore all the competing hypotheses.
This is "bunk." There's lots of bunk in science today. I've never heard of the scientists you're quoting but without seeing their credentials and, preferably reading a peer-review of some of their work from a scientist I know to be trustworthy, I have no way of knowing that their work is not also bunk.
One of the problems the Electronic Revolution has brought us is the ease with which anyone who is merely a good writer can communicate directly with the public.
Hey wait a minute. I'm a good writer! I should start my own blog. I'll convince everybody that HBO should bring back "Fraggle Rock."
The only reason the question of afterlife comes up is because it was handed down for centuries (in the Judeo-Christian cultures) probably originating sometime after the conquest of Alexander and before the second razing of the temple in Jerusalem (AD 70).
Various notions of an afterlife come up in other religions too. This is why Jung calls these things "archetypes": legends, images, rituals, etc., that recur in almost all cultures in almost all eras. The Hindus believe in a sort of continuous afterlife. When you die your soul is reborn in another creature. If you've been good it may be a king or a corporate executive; if not it may be a swamp rat or a dung beetle.
