Survival of Consciousness after Death - Skeptiko Community Led List

Hello Skeptiko!
Alex asked me to take the lead on developing a little bit of a primer on survival of consciousness after death with the help of everyone in the forums. We’d like you all to throw in some interesting points you’ve come across either on Skeptiko or through your related interests. Hopefully we can have a discussion around them and create something along the lines of a ‘Top Ten’ list around the topic that can then be posted on the website for anyone, whether they’re just discovering either the Skeptiko pod and community or the survival of consciousness issue. There is enough knowledge and wisdom among the Skeptiko community that it’d be a crime not to get those of you interested involved in the discussion.


- Consciousness is not produced by the brain - during NDEs the blind see, the deaf hear

-After-Death Communications - mediums having encounters with 'spirits of the dead' where information is given that could not have come from another source, and is later verified

- Reincarnation - Children with memories of a past existence that is later verified

- Crisis Apparitions/ Death-bed Visions/ Shared Death Experience - Those close to death report seeing spirit beings who appear to help them into the next realm. Also, a recently deceased person's 'spirit' may appear to close friends around the time of death (multiple people report seeing). Also, those close to someone at the point of death have reported sharing the experience of dying spontaneously, later verified. (do these go together??)

-NDE After-effects - Those who've experienced an NDE later report major personality/life changes, spontaneous healing of terminal/serious illness, and the Pauli Effect (electrical interference)

- The existence of God/Supreme Being - in Dr Jeffrey Long's extensive reporting, nearly 97% of those who've experienced an NDE return with specific conformation about the existence of God/Supreme being

- Out of Body Experiences (Veridical NDEs?) - people report floating to alternate places and overhearing conversations they could not have

- Hauntings/Ghosts - Hauntings and ghosts associated with places/people (??)
 
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An easy example to begin with is:

  • A functioning brain is not necessary for the existence of consciousness. OR Consciousness exists outside of the human brain

There are any number of sources to use here, but the one I had in mind is “Mindsight” by Ring & Cooper. It is a study of Near Death and Out of Body Experiences in the blind.

Obviously when blind people are having verified accounts of sight while clinically dead, survival of consciousness after death seems to be a shoe-in
 
I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for, but I have written somewhat on the evidence for the afterlife:

Evidence for the afterlife
https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/summary_of_evidence
Some of the best evidence for the afterlife is:


People on their death beds see spirits who come to help them make the transition. These experiences have been confirmed in various ways and shown to be objective phenomena and not hallucinations. Sometimes other people attending the dying also see the same spirits at the same time. In one case a spirit communicating through a medium told of how she assisted a dying man. A relative of the man was sought out and the information the man related to the relative confirmed what came through the medium. (see below: Death Bed Visions)


Near the time of their death the spirits of the dead have appeared to friends or relatives at distant locations where more than one person present at the location sees the spirit. (see below: Crisis Apparitions)


Mediums sometimes receive communications from spirits who are unrelated to and unknown by the sitters and the medium. These spirits come through to communicate for purposes important only to themselves. They give verifiable information about their identity and cause of death. (see below: Drop-in Communicators)


Mediums can receive communications from spirits even when the person getting the reading is not present in the room with the medium. In these cases, the medium may not know who the sitter is and cannot get any type of feedback from the sitter yet the medium can bring through specialized knowledge known by the spirit. (see below: Proxy Sittings)


When people are unconscious and near death, they sometimes experience leaving their body and when revived, bring back information that they could not have obtained with their normal senses even if they had been conscious and that information is later verified as correct. "Scientific" explanations cannot explain this and other aspects of the phenomena. (see below: Near Death Experiences)


Children have been studied who remember past lives. They can speak languages they have never heard. They remember geography, faces, and names of people in locations they have never been to. They have birthmarks on their body where they had sustained injuries in the previous life. An investigator interviews everyone involved, the children, the current families, surviving members of the families from the previous life and everything checks out. (see below: Reincarnation)


Spirits have communicated parts of messages through different mediums. When combined, these partial messages produce a complete message. The messages contained very specialized knowledge known to the spirit and were communicated spontaneously, not at the request of any living person. These messages show that the spirit lives on after the death of the body, retains knowledge from its earth life, and continues to have the ability to initiate, organize, and carry out complex activities. (see below: Cross Correspondences)


Experiments attended by scientists and a stage magician have been conducted under controlled conditions where voices of spirits were heard, objects were materialized, and images imprinted on photographic film. (see below: The Scole Experiments)


When physicists study matter at the atomic level, they find that the properties of matter are not determined until a conscious being perceives that matter. This demonstrates that physical matter depends on consciousness for its existence and therefore consciousness cannot arise from matter. The brain, which is composed of matter, cannot produce consciousness so consciousness must have an existence independent from matter. While this interpretation of quantum mechanics in not universally held by all physicists, some of the original founders of quantum mechanics, including Nobel Prize winners believed this. (see below: Quantum Mechanics)


Other individual cases include:


The spirit of a grand master chess player plays through a medium at the grand master level in a style characteristic of the time of his life on earth. (see below: Individual Cases)


A scholar of Asian languages speaks in an ancient Chinese dialect with a spirit who successfully explains an ancient Chinese poem that modern scholars did not understand. (see below: Individual Cases)


Spirits of crew members of a crashed dirigible, R-101, "provided technical details about its design and construction, recollections of test flights, discussions of political pressures and unrealistic deadlines that plagued the project, and a description of the crash itself and its causes" † and "the personalities of the dead airmen also came through in recognizable detail" †. (see below: Individual Cases)
Much more at the link


http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/articl...by-subject.html#articles_by_subject_afterlife
There is extraordinary evidence for the afterlife.
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/summary_of_evidence (Includes links to free e-books on the evidence for the afterlife.)
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/04/near-death-experiences-and-afterlife.html#facts_evidence

This evidence includes:
Mediumship: Proxy sittings, Drop-in communicators, Cross-correspondences.
Near-death experiences, veridical near-death experiences, and shared near-death experiences.
Death-bed visions, veridical death-bed visions, and shared death-bed visions.
Apparitions and multiple witness apparitions.
Children who remember past lives including those with an unusual type of birth mark on their body where an injury was sustained in the previous life.

Neither ESP or Super-psi can explain the evidence for the afterlife:
Poltergeist phenomena not associated with a particular person, drop-in communicators, cross-correspondences, etc.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2009/06/survival-and-super-psi.html
Mrs. Piper's Mediumship:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2009/05/further-record-of-observations-of.html

Nobel Prize winners Max Planck, Erwin Schrödinger, Brian Josephson, Sir John Eccles, Eugene Wigner, George Wald and other great scientists and philosophers such as John von Neumann, Kurt Gödel, Wernher von Braun, Karl Popper, and Carl Jung believed consciousness is non-physical because of the evidence:
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/eminent_researchers

Consciousness is not produced by the brain. Consciousness is not an illusion or an epiphenomenon or an emergent property of the brain. Objective measurable physical phenomena cannot produce unmeasurable subjective experience. Correlation does not prove causation, the brain does not produce consciousness it filters consciousness. Natural selection would not produce consciousness. The brain is not a conscious computer.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-materialist-explanation-of.html

Why you should not automatically trust "skeptics" but should demand the same high level of proof from "skeptics" that they demand for claims of the paranormal: Skeptical Misdirection:
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/skeptical_misdirection


http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-materialist-explanation-of.html
Consciousness is not an illusion or an epiphenomenon of the brain.

Consciousness Cannot be an Emergent Property of the Brain".

Claiming consciousness is an emergent property of the brain is just an fancy way of saying, "Materialism cannot explain consciousness".

Consciousness, a subjective phenomena that cannot be measured objectively, cannot be produced by physical processes all of which are in principle measurable.

Correlation does not prove causation. The correlation between brain processes and mental states is not proof that consciousness is produced by the brain. The theory that the brain is a filter of non-physical consciousness explains more of the empirical evidence.

If materialism were true, natural selection could not produce consciousness.

Humans are more than biological machines that operate strictly according to physical laws. (If materialism were true, you would not know you are reading these words.)

The Brain is not a Conscious Computer. Human mathematicians can identify truths that cannot be proven by a computer program. And if you believe your mind operates according to the laws of materialism, like a computer, it is irrational of you to believe anything.
At the link, each of these points has a link to a separate article explaining the assertion.


http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/07/materialist-explanations-of-ndes-fail.html
None of the materialist attempts to explain NDEs can really explain them. NDEs cannot be explained by: a lack of oxygen, a dying brain, hallucinations, religious expectations, cultural expectations, hearing about medical procedures after the fact, hearing during resuscitation, brain dysfunction, inhibitory network failure, retinal dysfunction causing an image of a tunnel, brain chemicals such as ketamine, endogenous opioids, neurotransmitter imbalances, or hallucinogens including DMT, REM intrusions, epilepsy or seizures, psychopathology, unique personality traits, residual brain activity during unconsciousness, the experience occurring before or after brain activity stopped, brain activity during CPR, evolutionary adaptation, depersonalization, memory of birth, medication, naloxone, defense against dying, partial anesthesia, misuse of anecdotes, or selective reporting.
 
I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for, but I have written somewhat on the evidence for the afterlife:

Evidence for the afterlife
https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/summary_of_evidence


Thanks Jim, That's a wonderful post! You've just about covered it!

One thing I'd throw in the mix here is the existence of God/Supreme Being/Higher Power
In listening to Dr. Jeffrey Long on episode #327 he throws out the stunning figure that nearly 97% of those returning from an NDE experience specifically verify the existence of a Supreme Being etc
 
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At the link, each of these points has a link to a separate article explaining the assertion.


http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/07/materialist-explanations-of-ndes-fail.html

A note on this thread...

We may change the direction, but for now let's separate the NDE Science & Materialist rebuttals side of the picture, and save it for a different thread perhaps.

Obviously the two issues are closely related, but the final form of this 'Top Ten' list might be better served if it focused solely on issues around survival of consciousness after death. The Materialist ideas that say survival of consciousness isn't possible don't really lead anywhere when faced with a lot of points you've made above!
 
Thanks Jim, That's a wonderful post! You've just about covered it!

One thing I'd throw in the mix here is the existence of God/Supreme Being/Higher Power
In listening to Dr. Jeffrey Long on episode #327 he throws out the stunning figure that nearly 97% of those returning from an NDE experience specifically verify the existence of a Supreme Being etc


I've written somewhat on that subject too.


http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/articles-and-links-arranged-by-subject.html#articles_by_subject_god
"Evidence That God Exists: People Who Have Near Death Experiences Meet God."
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/09/evidence-that-god-exists-people-who.html

The beginning of the universe, the fine-tuning of the universe to support life, and the failure of multiverse theories to explain this, demonstrates the existence of a transcendent designer and creator of the universe.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/62014-...-afterlife.html#articles_by_subject_cosmology

Nobel Prize winning physicist Eugene Wigner believed that, according to quantum mechanics, an observer such as God or a cosmic consciousness is needed to explain how the physical universe could come into existence from a quantum probability wave.
http://dailygrail.com/features/michio-kaku-impossible-science

"The physical universe is like a simulation running in the mind of God."
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/occasionally-i-post-something-to.html#misc_universe_sim_god

The Effectiveness of Prayer:
http://www.deanradin.com/evidence/Leibovici2001.pdf

"Nonlocal Mind, Distant Healing, And Prayer" by Larry Dossey, M.D.
http://www.stephanaschwartz.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/distant_healing_biblio.pdf

"Atheists: 'Science shows there is no good reason to believe in God'. Nobel Prize Winning Scientists: 'The scientific evidence is best explained by the existence of God'".
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2014/04/atheists-science-shows-there-is-no-good.html

"John Lennox Explains why Atheism is a Delusion Incompatible with Science"
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/03/video-lecture-by-john-lennox-explains.html

"John Lennox Explains Some of the Scientific Evidence for God"
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/03/video-lecture-by-john-lennox-explains_23.html

Nobel Prize winners Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein, Werner Heisenberg, Guglielmo Marconi, Brian Josephson, William Phillips, Richard Smalley, Arno Penzias, Charles Townes, Arthur Compton, Antony Hewish, Christian Anfinsen, Walter Kohn, Arthur Schawlow and scientists, Charles Darwin, Sir Fred Hoyle, John von Neumann, Wernher von Braun, and Louis Pasteur, believed the scientific evidence demonstrates the existence of God or that the universe was designed:
http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/eminent_researchers

"Primer: Summary of Problems with Biological and Chemical Evolution"
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/1510
More on Intelligent Design:
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/62014-contents-evidence-for-afterlife.html#articles_by_subject_id

"What Spirits say about God.": Spirits communicating through evidential mediums believe in God.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2016/05/what-spirits-say-about-god.html

"Realizing the Ultimate": God and oneness.
http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/03/realizing-ultimate.html

Intelligent design does not presuppose who the designer is, but I'm including it below because some people will say the designer is God by definition, ie. whoever designed the universe and life on earth should be considered God even if that entity is not the God of the bible. (If you are going to pursue this subject, you should also be aware that some other people object so strenuously to the God of the bible that they are not willing to accept the use of the word "God" under any circumstances and will demand a different word for any entity Supreme Being identified by scientific or other empirical evidence.)

Anyone who is not familiar with intelligent design should be aware it is not based on negative arguments (ie: "if science can't explain it, it must be God"). Intelligent design is based on positive arguments such as the logic Darwin used: phenomenon that occurred in the past should be explained by processes known to be occurring today that are capable of causing the phenomenon. Intelligence, known to be capable of producing codes and using mathematics, is the best explanation for the genetic code and for the fine tuning of the universe to support life. See the links for details of the argument and rebuttals to common objections:

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/articles-and-links-arranged-by-subject.html#articles_by_subject_id
Intelligent Design
Overviews
FAQs
Origin of Life
Origin of Species ("Macro-Evolution")
Human Origins
Cosmology
The Politics of Intelligent Design
This is a table of contents of summaries of articles arranged by subject. Each summary contains a link to the full article.
 
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I've written somewhat on that subject too.


http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/articles-and-links-arranged-by-subject.html#articles_by_subject_god


Intelligent design does not presuppose who the designer is, but I'm including it below because some people will say the designer is God by definition, ie. whoever designed the universe and life on earth should be considered God even if that entity is not the God of the bible. (If you are going to pursue this subject, you should also be aware that some other people object so strenuously to the God of the bible that they are not willing to accept the use of the word "God" under any circumstances and will demand a different word for any entity Supreme Being identified by scientific or other empirical evidence.)

Anyone who is not familiar with intelligent design should be aware it is not based on negative arguments (ie: "if science can't explain it, it must be God"). Intelligent design is based on positive arguments such as the logic Darwin used: phenomenon that occurred in the past should be explained by processes known to be occurring today that are capable of causing the phenomenon. Intelligence, known to be capable of producing codes and using mathematics, is the best explanation for the genetic code and for the fine tuning of the universe to support life. See the links for details of the argument and rebuttals to common objections:

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/articles-and-links-arranged-by-subject.html#articles_by_subject_id

This is a table of contents of summaries of articles arranged by subject. Each summary contains a link to the full article.

Can i add in PMH Atwaters thing about saying people who have had NDE's seem to experience aftereffects like electrical interference , i dunno if you used it but it could be handy :D

funnily enough, ghost detectors/hunters use electrical devices like EMF detectors and that to try detect ghosts, so .... i guess i could link the two together

so unless chest paddles and something fancy in the hospital drugs are causing these weird incidents .... its kind of extra verification that there was something happening with the NDE
 
Can i add in PMH Atwaters thing about saying people who have had NDE's seem to experience aftereffects like electrical interference , i dunno if you used it but it could be handy :D
...

What you are referring to is called the Pauli Effect, named after Nobel Prize winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli who was banned by physicist Otto Stern from his lab because Pauli would damage his laboratory apparatus simply by walking into the room.
https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/eminent_researchers#researchers_pauli
 
An easy example to begin with is:

  • A functioning brain is not necessary for the existence of consciousness. OR Consciousness exists outside of the human brain

There are any number of sources to use here, but the one I had in mind is “Mindsight” by Ring & Cooper. It is a study of Near Death and Out of Body Experiences in the blind.

Obviously when blind people are having verified accounts of sight while clinically dead, survival of consciousness after death seems to be a shoe-in
Hey Zack... thx for kicking this off. I wonder if we should work from the bottom up i.e. find the shows/guests we want to highlight and then do the top 10, or go top down with the list first and then the show/guest. here are some of the ones that come to mind:

- peer-review science on reincarnation shows that yr consciousness survives death.
- tightly controlled experiments with mediums suggest that after-death communication is real
- over 200 published papers on near death experience science suggest that consciousness survives
- virtually all great thinkers throughout time and across every culture have concluded consciousness survives death
- science doesn't know enough about consciousness to conclude otherwise
- philosophically weak (don't know how to phrase)
 
I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for, but I have written somewhat on the evidence for the afterlife:

Evidence for the afterlife
https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/summary_of_evidence

Much more at the link


http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/p/articl...by-subject.html#articles_by_subject_afterlife



http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-materialist-explanation-of.html

At the link, each of these points has a link to a separate article explaining the assertion.


http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2013/07/materialist-explanations-of-ndes-fail.html
thx Jim. there's a lot of great stuff on yr blog... great resource for this project.
 
What you are referring to is called the Pauli Effect, named after Nobel Prize winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli who was banned by physicist Otto Stern from his lab because Pauli would damage his laboratory apparatus simply by walking into the room.
https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/eminent_researchers#researchers_pauli

looks like the wikipedia article has been hit by the skeptics o-e and wired

Oddly enough i've kind of had the pauli effect at times, but i found it might be related to my blood type?
 
Hey Zack... thx for kicking this off. I wonder if we should work from the bottom up i.e. find the shows/guests we want to highlight and then do the top 10, or go top down with the list first and then the show/guest. here are some of the ones that come to mind:

- peer-review science on reincarnation shows that yr consciousness survives death.
- tightly controlled experiments with mediums suggest that after-death communication is real
- over 200 published papers on near death experience science suggest that consciousness survives
- virtually all great thinkers throughout time and across every culture have concluded consciousness survives death
- science doesn't know enough about consciousness to conclude otherwise
- philosophically weak (don't know how to phrase)


Sounds good Alex. Here's a little start.

Jeffrey Long #329 - I think this may be one of the most encompassing pods I can think of. Dr Long covers a ton of ground and in terms of a top pod to listen to in order, this may be a good #1 to start with, or #10 depending on how you see it...

PMH Atwater #152 -
Can i add in PMH Atwaters thing about saying people who have had NDE's seem to experience aftereffects like electrical interference , i dunno if you used it but it could be handy :D

Thank you ellyroo for throwing this into the discussion. It's a great pod to consider for the list. One thing she mentions is that she considers the after-effects of an NDE to be an important classification of whether or not one has experienced an actual NDE. A re-thinking of the guidelines for what an NDE experiencer is may be an important point...

Piero Calvi-Parisetti #319 - This one is nice to add as it focuses on the grief and bereavement alleviation that goes along not only with experiencing an NDE, but also in cases of those who've lost close relationships- simply learning about NDEs and survival of consciousness after death can help ease suffering around death.
 
how about NDE cases of , athiests meeting jesus, maybe muslims meeting jesus, christians meeting buddha, etc etc

also NDE's that have brough back information that they and others may have not have known in terms of like, figures like unknown deities, or meeting relatives that have passed they simply would not have known about, then discovered (through the NDE) could be good verification, cause it could refute the whole didn't see the number in the room thing
 
A couple more pods:

Lisa Smartt #348 - this relates to 'Crisis Apparitions' & 'Death Bed Visions' two of Jim_Smith's well-defined points in his first post

Paul Davids #321 - Although this pod is a little light on the actual stories of after death communication and the guest is not involved in research, the story itself speaks volumes about the issue. An atheist promises on his death bed that if life after death exists, he will attempt to communicate with his friends from the afterlife and sure enough...
 
A couple more pods:

Lisa Smartt #348 - this relates to 'Crisis Apparitions' & 'Death Bed Visions' two of Jim_Smith's well-defined points in his first post

Paul Davids #321 - Although this pod is a little light on the actual stories of after death communication and the guest is not involved in research, the story itself speaks volumes about the issue. An atheist promises on his death bed that if life after death exists, he will attempt to communicate with his friends from the afterlife and sure enough...
both of these are great... an ideas in terms of how we would title in a top 10 list?
 
looks like the wikipedia article has been hit by the skeptics o-e and wired

Oddly enough i've kind of had the pauli effect at times, but i found it might be related to my blood type?
I wonder if we could use the nonsense on wiki as a counter-point-that-make-the-point on our top 10 list?
 
we oughta define who our target audience is for this post/yt/episode... any thoughts?
 
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