Does an Afterlife Exist

[basics]

a) No one has ever been 'raised from the dead'. Either you're dead, or you aren't. If you disagree with this please enlighten me as to how necromancy works exactly.
b) Evidence from near death experiences is exactly that. Not after death experiences, near death.

You aren't looking at this with enough depth for what you are saying to actually mean anything at all. Died and seen light? Did they see the light before or after their vital signs died out? How is there any way of measuring this? Did they experience some kind of time effects like you would form taking DMT?

jockmcplop,

But that is exactly what Jesus did in the case of the young girl for whom the mourners were already doing their business. He said that she was only sleeping proving the point that death is not the end in itself rather a transitional point on the way to another life. Is that not what the argument regarding His resurrection is all about? Some believe and others don't but nonetheless witnesses bear fruit that these things happened. Did Luke not spend the best part of his life investigating these things, coming up with the answer that they did happen?

The people whom I speak of were pronounced dead by doctors according to what I read and yet they revived with their stories of lights and feelings to the amazement of those around them. So your statement is a rather bold one if only because you weren't there in any of these events. Of course you can make as many rudimentary observations as to why it shouldn't happen but these will never take away the fact that they did. As for me, I look forward to life after death which according to Scripture will not be in this body but another specially made for me.

[jockmcplop]

jockmcplop,

But that is exactly what Jesus did in the case of the young girl for whom the mourners were already doing their business. He said that she was only sleeping proving the point that death is not the end in itself rather a transitional point on the way to another life. Is that not what the argument regarding His resurrection is all about? Some believe and others don't but nonetheless witnesses bear fruit that these things happened. Did Luke not spend the best part of his life investigating these things, coming up with the answer that they did happen?

The people whom I speak of were pronounced dead by doctors according to what I read and yet they revived with their stories of lights and feelings to the amazement of those around them. So your statement is a rather bold one if only because you weren't there in any of these events. Of course you can make as many rudimentary observations as to why it shouldn't happen but these will never take away the fact that they did. As for me, I look forward to life after death which according to Scripture will not be in this body but another specially made for me.

lol it normally takes about 20 pages to reach a point where i'm not even going to bother arguing. Its pointless, you will always think what you think and that's fine with me.

Personally, when i'm confronted with very strange phenomena i like to look into it a bit and try and explain it (or at least figure out how it works). Luckily for you, you never have to do that cos there's a book with all of the answers ready for you! They aren't... satisfying for me though.

[Nicov55]

Living organism are made of matter. And matter contains energy.
Energy that disappear will reappear somewhere else under a different form.
So yes, in theory, it is possible.
Now can we really call it an "afterlife" similar in some ways to "life". I doubt any living being will ever be able to tell for sure and i'm sorry for the paranormal activity fans, but dead people usually don't come back to witness.

[fkizz]

Thought crime requires the concept of an omnipresent entity, a God, the simulacrum in Orwell's lexicon is Big Brother, a carbon copy of the Abrahamic God in every significant aspect.
I think you need to look up the definition of irony again.

Abrahamic God freed Hebrews from slavery and gave them a chance to form their own community. His initial presentation is as a God who gives guidance on how to escape slave life.. Not as a God who is creator of Universe, but as a God who gives help to escape slavery.

How is this comparable to the Big Brother who wants to enslave, dehumanize, take away free will from the people, and make them easily disposable? Also 1984 Orwell was inspired in USSR, that had State Atheism.

The idea of "false idols", "idolatry", "man playing God gone wrong" is also present. Keep in mind, in 1984, the Big Brother does not allow for faith in God or Capitalism, for such things could discredit and weaken the Big Brother.

It won't.

How can we be intellectually honest that we are sure or un-sure about that? Saying "no" is as much a leap of faith as saying "yes".. or depends on experience of each individual in question.

entire lack of feeling is the only logical assumption (the same as before existence).

I never understood "the same as before existence" argument, because, I simply have no memories of how was before existence, and I have no proof to know if there was or not a previous sort of life or not.

That said, I have lack of feeling, or better said, lack of memory, for events that there is physical evidence that happened when I was younger. I simply accept the pictures of me in that place doing my thing as real, even if there is no direct memory of me in it. Lack of memory does not imply lack of existance.

Lets be careful to not fall under Solipsism.

[sumskilz]

Lack of memory does not imply lack of existance.

If there wasn't a lack of existence, it wouldn't be "before existence" though. If there is a "before existence", then it is logical to assume that "after existence" would be the same. As I said, that line of reasoning is based on the assumption that our physical selves are our only selves. It won't follow if you begin with a different assumption about the nature of reality, say transcendental idealism.

[Aeneas Veneratio]

Yeah, that is a different issue (and something that can be explored). I was referring to what Mangalore was talking about. Assuming that what we consider to be ourselves is entirely physical, and there is plenty of evidence to suggest that, entire lack of feeling is the only logical assumption (the same as before existence).

That kind of defeats the purpose of spending money on education or getting an education. A person spends 10-15 years learning skills and obtaining knowledge through different levels of education, and it's all taken away at one's death. Life is truly devoid of purpose.

[fkizz]

If there wasn't a lack of existence, it wouldn't be "before existence" though. If there is a "before existence", then it is logical to assume that "after existence" would be the same. As I said, that line of reasoning is based on the assumption that our physical selves are our only selves. It won't follow if you begin with a different assumption about the nature of reality, say transcendental idealism.

I simply meant, empirically speaking, we don't even know if there is a before-existence thing or not, or if it's pre-life. Lack of memory or lack of feel is not valid, for lack of feel/memory can refer to events that did happen in the past of a person life, with existing proof that the said "lack of feel/memory" events did happen.

We are humble/arrogant creatures in the middle of a dust of the universe, knowing we are born without knowing fully why, knowing we certainly will die but without knowing for what purpose and why, and here we are, trying to find a meaning for millenias.

That kind of defeats the purpose of spending money on education or getting an education. A person spends 10-15 years learning skills and obtaining knowledge through different levels of education, and it's all taken away at one's death. Life is truly devoid of purpose.

There you go.

[chriscase]

With the advent of communication, we have been able to transmit information across generations. Not only is this a way for individuals to leave a legacy behind them, it forms the basis of culture. These things may not salve our desires for individual immortality (as the concept of the afterlife itself vividly attests) but they have enabled us as social creatures in ways that benefit our descendants tremendously. You could even posit the yearning to extend beyond death as an extremely successful behavioral adaptation - or at least as a precursor to many such adaptations.

[basics]

Is there any doubt that in the history of humanity an afterlife was accepted as being either the reward or punishment from a Supreme Being, such examples being sacrificing in almost all cultures. Where did this knowledge and hope come from? Warrior cultures were fed on it, like the North American Indians and those of the Southern hemisphere. We can't forget the Viking culture either plus others on our side of the world. Is it too much to say that every culture has in its history the same evaluation of life after death?

Until Jesus came on the scene there was no visible proof of an afterlife yet when He did come that proof was shown many times in what He showed and what He taught. Oh yes there were many miracles in the years before Him but never anyone walking on water, changing water into wine, stilling the wind, restoring sight and limbs. But the best of all was His raising the dead and the same power being given to His disciples, because that never happened before. Therefore His telling us that there certainly is life after death shouldn't be frowned upon.

[jockmcplop]

You still haven't answered my question basics, which is how does necromancy work? I guess you're not interested in the small details like that...

[Mangalore]

...

... Oh yes there were many miracles in the years before Him but never anyone walking on water, changing water into wine, stilling the wind, restoring sight and limbs. But the best of all was His raising the dead and the same power being given to His disciples, because that never happened before. Therefore His telling us that there certainly is life after death shouldn't be frowned upon.

That is just factually false. There are plenty of mystics in that era who did precisely the same stuff as him. From the waterwalking to the raising of the dead. That's why there are some theories of him not being real but a complete composite of existing holy men because his miracles were not very special and well known in stories of other people in the wider region for centuries.

[Cyclops]

A vast majority don't really believe in the afterlife. If they did they would all be much nicer people.

You underestimate human stupidity.

[basics]

You still haven't answered my question basics, which is how does necromancy work? I guess you're not interested in the small details like that...

jockmcplop,

Seeking the Spirits has gone on for a long long time and was one of the things God demanded should not be done. As to how it works I wouldn't know since I have never had communication with any Spirit outside of the Spirit of God. Now having said that, if I can experience that, then of course it must be possible for some to communicate with spirits as they claim to do. What I do know though is that anything not of the Spirit of God is evil as He is the sole communicator with man.

Mangalore,

Can you please name them then? I dare say that there might have been, might have been, some with various claims but never in the history of man has anyone done all the things that Jesus did as a regular feature of His character and yet still alive enough to continue to build His church as is happening even as I write.

The whole point of His claims are that He is not dead as all the others are, why? Because He is our Creator, our God, our Redeemer and Comforter in the One Being and it is He who governs the lives of others, deciding when they leave this planet, where they will go and what they are destined to do.

[jockmcplop]

Well basics i would say that this is definitely worth having a look at. Everything else 'God' did in the universe has a sort of physical basis that mean we can analyze a sequence of events, find causal relationships and work out how things work and how to repeat them. If God created a way for us to bring people back from the dead, surely its a matter of urgency that we need to look into this and see how it was done. God never did anything else in the universe that can't be explained by science so why should necromancy be any different?

[Himster]

Is there any doubt that in the history of humanity an afterlife was accepted as being either the reward or punishment from a Supreme Being, such examples being sacrificing in almost all cultures. Where did this knowledge and hope come from?

Wishful thinking is not knowledge.

Is it too much to say that every culture has in its history the same evaluation of life after death?

Not every culture, but most cultures.
Implying a unified past, which is supported by the evidence of a genetic bottle-neck around 70,000 years ago, which is further supported by archaeological/paleontological/geological evidence.

Until Jesus came on the scene there was no visible proof of an afterlife

There were plenty of claims of miracles and resurrections long before Jesus and long after. The claims made about Jesus are far from unique.

Oh yes there were many miracles in the years before Him but never anyone walking on water, changing water into wine, stilling the wind, restoring sight and limbs

.

All of those had been done before, turning water into milk in Hinduism, walking on water was a common trick for Native American folklore heroes, it's mentioned in the Aeneid, Buddhist texts and Hindu texts, controlling the weather is even more universal than the concept of an afterlife, in Hinduism the Asvins restored sight to the blind and limbs to the limbless so commonly that it hardly qualified as a miracle.

But the best of all was His raising the dead and the same power being given to His disciples, because that never happened before.

It did happen before and has happened since.
Of course I say "happened", when really all we have are claims of such happenings.

Therefore His telling us that there certainly is life after death shouldn't be frowned upon.

If you truly believed that; based on such paltry evidence, then you'd have to believe the miracles of Hinduism, the tales in the Iliad and Aeneid, the folklore of the Native Americans etc. because they're all based on the exact same evidence: anecdotes.
If the anecdotes of your religion are valid evidence then explain why the anecdotes of other religions are not valid evidence.
Is it just because you've had dreams and visions and hallucinations? Well they've had dreams and hallucinations too. It's well known that people often dream about what they want to believe: I'd like to be able to fly therefore I dream of flying, some people like to think there's a God/Gods: Guess what they dream about, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

[MaximiIian]

There were plenty of claims of miracles and resurrections long before Jesus and long after. The claims made about Jesus are far from unique.

Indeed. Some of the things claimed about Jesus were also asserted for Dionysos, Orpheus, and even Pythagoras. Nothing really special. The unique things are the parts relating to Jewish eschatology and prophecy, but even that stuff isn't all that special. There were other people claiming to be the Jewish messiah during the time period.

[basics]

Well basics i would say that this is definitely worth having a look at. Everything else 'God' did in the universe has a sort of physical basis that mean we can analyze a sequence of events, find causal relationships and work out how things work and how to repeat them. If God created a way for us to bring people back from the dead, surely its a matter of urgency that we need to look into this and see how it was done. God never did anything else in the universe that can't be explained by science so why should necromancy be any different?

jockmcplop,

Talking to the spirits of the dead appears in Scripture, in one case by Saul raising the spirit of Samuel and in many others by the spirits crying out to Jesus because they knew who he was. Apart from these God banned the practice. Getting on to life and death, it is important to know that no life begins without the breath of God upon it. And, when it comes to death, nothing can die without God withdrawing His breath from it. So, if someone dies and is resuscitated that too comes down to God for whatever reason He might have. The thing is, we are all in God's hands whether one believes or not.

Himster,

Knowing that Jesus Christ died on a cross that I might live on in heaven one day in the future is not wishful thinking, rather certain knowledge that my future is assured.

If a culture has dropped the knowledge of an afterlife, I would be interested to know which one? The only unified past there is is that which came out of Noah's loins plus the loins of his sons and that certainly wasn't 70,000 years ago. So, if one wants to get into ages again, why is it that Carbon 14 only has a half life of just under 6,000 years and can be found in just about everything that was ever created? Were things much older as you say there shouldn't be any Carbon 14. That also goes for the decay in Helium. Perhaps the guys you mention are using a faulty measuring system as is well known.

Of course there were miracles before Jesus came onto the planet as is testified by Scripture. The thing is that whether in heaven or on the earth all were associated to Him if indeed they were to point to Him. So, who healed leprosy, walked on water, raised the dead, restored limbs, created the world, created the garden, created the stars, died and was raised up after three days and was seen alive for forty days after, before returning to heaven as happened with the Lord Jesus Christ?

As I can not verify other than what I have seen myself, I therefore cannot comment on the things that you claim, and claim without any verification by yourself. But what I do claim is from my experience and there is no coincidence there. Now the thing is that my experiences have been in line with all that Scripture says about someone who belongs to Jesus Christ. And what's the strangest thing about that is that I personally am not the greatest Christian in the world and yet by grace God still answers to all that He says about Himself to me. I live by the expectation that miracles, small or large, will happen in our lives as well as others, having already witnessed quite a few.

Maximilian,

There were indeed many who grasped at the mantle of being Messias so that is not unusual considering the picture that the Jews had painted of Him. Who wouldn't want to be the new King David, throwing off the yoke of Rome once and for all? But that was not the picture that the prophets painted all the way back to the first prophecy in the garden at the fall. Indeed it's not even the prophetic picture that David painted when he wrote his Psalms. Jesus Christ fulfilled in every way the prophetic pictures and the good news is He is still doing so.

[Aulus]

The only unified past there is is that which came out of Noah's loins plus the loins of his sons and that certainly wasn't 70,000 years ago. So, if one wants to get into ages again, why is it that Carbon 14 only has a half life of just under 6,000 years and can be found in just about everything that was ever created? Were things much older as you say there shouldn't be any Carbon 14. That also goes for the decay in Helium. Perhaps the guys you mention are using a faulty measuring system as is well known.

In regards to this thought, I'd like to present the following graph:



While you are correct in saying Carbon-14 has a half-life of under 6000 years, that doesn't mean all the carbon is gone at that point; rather, only half of the carbon is gone, thus the term half-life. The carbon will decay for many thousands of years, halving itself every 5700 years. Think more along the lines of Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox rather than carbon-14 decaying in two halves and then being gone. It's possible to accurately measure out to 10 half-lives, or 57,000 years, but I've read that it is possible to measure a few additional half-lives and find objects that are 70,000 years old. There will be only trace amounts of carbon-14 left, but that's the point - the less carbon that is found, the longer it has been since the object was alive. As to why carbon-14 has the half-life it does, and not a longer one like some other isotopes, is an entirely different topic that could be brought up in the Athenaeum if you so desired - one of the resident chemists or physicists could likely give you an excellent explanation.

If you wish to criticize the science, you are free to do so, but your arguments will be more substantial if you know what it is you are arguing against.

[Time Commander Bob]

To even attempt to answer this question requires the answer to a more difficult question: what is a person?

Taking human processes as entirely physical, it might seem that we are the collection of stuff at a given time. But the material contained with a human body is constantly changing throughout it's life and we essentially have a Ship of Theseus problem about when it ceases to be the same person. It could be answered that even the slightest material change makes it a different person and that our minds are deceiving us into thinking we are continuous individuals. In this case, if energy were to reconfigure itself in the same way again some time long afterwards, however improbably, this would be the same person as the previous time.

Alternatively, identity might essentially be programs than run in our minds, rather than the hardware itself. In this case we can, in theory, "kill" someone without destroying their bodily functions by erasing this mental state. Furthermore, this mental program could be transferred to different or several bodies. We could also restart people anew by running their same mental program after it was terminated the first time. In this case we would have to recognise it as the same person.

[basics]

Aulus,

Yes, your graph would be fine if the age of the earth was as is assumed it is by science in general. But God says He created all things in six days just some 6,000 odd years ago, which would make Carbon 14 figures of just under 6,000 perfectly correct and viable for the stuff to be there. By billions of years it just shouldn't be any more than Helium should be.