'I've seen proof of the afterlife'

Dexter Sinister

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I don't believe anybody's seen proof of the afterlife. What they've seen is things they interpret as evidence in support of that belief, without understanding how lamentably easy it is to fool yourself into believing things you want to believe. Personal experience and anecdote are worth nothing in this context, that's why legitimate scientific testing has such elaborate safeguards against things like fraud, error, and coincidence. Read this for instance. A rational skeptic is really just somebody who's learned that memory and perception cannot be trusted.
 

lone wolf

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Nov 25, 2006
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I don't believe we would really recognize proof of an afterlife. We can only know logic as it exists on this plane. There's no reasoning the unreasonable - and what may or may not exist in a hereafter isnt something we are capable of or comfortable understanding.

Wolf
 

Dexter Sinister

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Oct 1, 2004
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I don't believe we would really recognize proof of an afterlife.
Oh, I think we would; it shouldn't be particularly difficult if it's real. If somebody like John Edward or Sylvia Browne or any of the others who claim to be able to talk to the dead could produce something other than platitudes--I'm happy, I love you, I forgive you, I'm fine, it's lovely here, etc.--about what the dead want to tell us and provide real information instead, I think that'd be pretty convincing. If they could reliably get rich dead aunts to tell us where they left the keys to the safety deposit boxes and what's in them, for instance, that'd be a good start. But they never do. It's always just comforting platitudes and BS from people skilled at cold reading.
 

Niflmir

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Dec 18, 2006
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The major problem with anecdotal evidence (besides the fallacy), even self experienced, is an analog of the chinese telephone effect: over time the accuracy of memory degrades but the self-reported certainty increases. This is especially a problem in court rooms where on appeals the eye-witnesses are more certain than before but clearly the memory could not have improved.

The following statements about memory are widely believed but contradicted by experiment:
  1. Memory is like a video recording of your observations that can be played back at will to remind you of what you saw
  2. When you are very confident about your memory for an event you observed, you are much more likely to be correct
  3. Your memory is stable over time
  4. Your memory for what you originally saw can be kept separate from things you learned after observing the event
  5. People's faces stand out when you observe them and it is easy to remember faces, so recognition of faces is rarely in error
  6. An eyewitness report is accurate evidence as to who was present and what happened
  7. Having to tell the same story of what happened over and over reinforces it and makes it more resistant to change
  8. When a weapon is visible during a crime, witnesses are more accurate in remembering the details of the crime.
  9. Personally experienced traumatic events are remembered more accurately than everyday ones.
  10. Observed violent events are remembered more accurately than everyday events.
In time, an individual who opened the front door and saw a bright flash of lightning and jumped back in surprise will report being thrown back from being struck by lightning. They will feel extremely confident about the memory due to its supposed traumatic effect and from the many times they have told the story over and over again.

A faulty memory is not psychotic, having an unwavering belief in any one of the preceding 10 statements might be.
 

Minority Observer84

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Sep 26, 2006
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Science can and has studied the paranormal , and event taking place in the natural realm is testable by science and reason. I'am not dogmatic it does seem however that people that hold to this belief are immune to the sheer extent that these ideas defy not what we do not know but what we know for a fact . I roll my eyes talking reasonable about the unreasonable just causes animosity ,
 

eanassir

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Evocation of Spirits


(or Communication with Spirits)


[Certainly, there is an after-life world of souls; but a human soul cannot carry any material object, like a cup and so on, even he cannot carry a bird's feather; because of being ethereal, not material.]

A large number of people evocated the spirits, and asked them about things unknown to them, and the spirits answered their questions. But the heavenly religions prohibit the evocation of spirits and consider it unlawful; because some genies (or demons) and evil spirits meddle in their evocation; so that a profligate or disbelieving genie (or demon) will play the role of the spirit to be evocated. This genie (or demon) will answer the questions but, together with the correct answers, he will mix false words: words of infidelity, blasphemy and association [with God.]

E.g. if they ask him about a patient, will he be cured or will he die, the demon will say to them: Take the patient to the shrine of Imam Abbas, the son of Ali, and tie him to the gold cage of his shrine, and he will be cured. Or he may say to them: Sacrifice a sheep for the Imam, and the patient will be cured, or some other requests that are some sorts of disobedience and association or sharing [with God.]

The same is applied to the followers of other religions like Christians or Jews: the devil or the demon :) the genie) will order them to vow to Virgin Mary or to Saint Peter in case of Christians or to Prophet Ezekiel, or hakhams etc.in case of Jews. That is because the worship and servitude should be exclusive for God alone without sharing or associating others with Him; eventhough the others being prophets, saints or imams. And when the worship and servitude is not pure for God alone, then He will refuse to accept it and will punish them accordingly.

The demon or the genie is alive; he can carry material objects and can speak with an audible voice or can sometimes show himself to people; but the soul of a dead man cannot do that, unless during sleep or after man dies.

However, the person who asks, will believe in the words of the demon; because he thinks, within himself, that the evocated person died and went to the next world or the Hereafter, the World of the judgment of truth, so he should not lie to us; but he then does not realize that the one speaking to him is a disobedient or sinful demon, and he is not the spirit supposed to be evocated.

There is a story of evocation of spirits, mentioned in the Torah or the Old Testament, First Book of Samuel(1Sa), chapter 28: about the evocation of the spirit or the ghost of Prophet Samuel, by a woman :) medium) as she was requested by king Saul.


 
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Praxius

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I don't believe anybody's seen proof of the afterlife. What they've seen is things they interpret as evidence in support of that belief, without understanding how lamentably easy it is to fool yourself into believing things you want to believe.

Sounds a lot like science, only science plays around for a while to make it seem like they know what they are talking about.

....things they interpret as evidence in support of that belief.....

That's all life is.... that's everything in which we as humans do. No matter how much you study something, how much you write it down or record it, or test it, what happens in the end and what you write down are your own interpretations of what just occured, or influenced interpretations based from other's own explanations of the surrounding information in which you used..... therefore no matter what you do, it's all the same.

If you don't come to the conclusion based on your own understanding, then someone else will. In the end, you'll just accept their own explination because you determined already that they're more experienced in the topic in question and therefore must be correct.... so long as they present their explination with some scientific jargon.

Personal experience and anecdote are worth nothing in this context, that's why legitimate scientific testing has such elaborate safeguards against things like fraud, error, and coincidence.

And even those "Elaborate Safeguards" are not perfect and have been worked around countless times in many things over the last century alone, so that one person's conclusions or tests are the absolute. Decades later someone decides to retest and finds that something was missed or overlooked which changes the entire outcome of those original conclusions, and then what then?

Oh... Science saved the day did it? Science screwed it up originally and saved itself.... bravo. When science gets something right, then science is the greatest thing to man kind.... when science screws up.... oh.... it was so-n-so's fault for not putting something into calculation/factor, even though so-n-so was following proper proceedures at the time to come to the conclusions everyone agreed apon.... it's never science's fault itself. Science is a perfect system which can explain everything in the universe.

It hasn't yet.

Read this for instance. A rational skeptic is really just somebody who's learned that memory and perception cannot be trusted.

And yet, science itself is the illusion of thinking you are following proper procedures to come to an unbiased and accurate outcome or answer. The problem is, is that hardly anybody when studying something with just science alone can not account for every possible outcome, solution/answer or conflict, but only the most common based on limited tests and studies they produced over time, or studies which they took from other scientists, trusting themselves that those studies are accurate. This further clouds the overall answer to which one is studying.

And besides all that, you can not tell me there is no level of bias and propaganda at work with the entire Global Warming swindle that's been going on. If there wasn't, then why are some scientists conflicted with others between Global Warming existing, and just plain old fashion Climate Change?

Sorry, but Science isn't the golden religion we're all seeking and science itself, much like past religions, can not answer everything we want to know as humans, and will eventually through a long period of time, will reach its own end based on it's own limitations on study.

Am I all Scientific? Nope.

Am I some Religious guy? Nope.

Am I a believer in a life after this?

Based on the collective scientific studies on the matter, based on historical reports and encounters of various people with various backgrounds of study and education, based on even Einstein's own explinations and beliefs of the afterlife, based on what we as humans understand about energy.... merged with the concepts of a few other things, plus my own experiences, there is more evidence provided and available to back up that there is an afterlife, then not.

Just because science hasn't evolved enough to figure out how to test for certain things, doesn't mean they don't exist. One thing that always pissed me off about science in paticular, is it's leeching of everything in and around it.

For decades, a religion or someone could claim one thing in paticular exists or has happened. For those same decades, science will say it didn't exist or occured because there is no way of studying it or proving that it did. Then eventually science figures itself out, finds a way to study the topic in question, and then claims it did exist or has occured.... therefore it's scientifically proven.... even though buddy has been saying that for decades and knew it did based on common sense and personal experience.

Humans have a brain and an imagination for a reason. We are not robots to think and operate based on rules and proceedures to come to our own conclusions. We are not supposed to just stop thinking or believing something because science claims it can not be tested or proven. Half the damn inventions and things we use today were designed more so by imagination first.

Humanity's mind is Imagination First, and if anything, Science second. If you have no imagination to think of something to test of see how it works, then what's the point of science?

Science itself requires the human imagination to think outside of the normal box of understanding. Human imagination helps people figure out alternative approaches to a problem or situation, beyond tests already done in the past that has not worked. If anything, Science, like Religion, is just a tool for understanding, it is not an answer.
 

Praxius

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I don't believe we would really recognize proof of an afterlife. We can only know logic as it exists on this plane. There's no reasoning the unreasonable

The unreasonable is what we don't yet understand. What is unreasonable can be understood very clearly. What is unreasonable is usually based on personal bias.

Before it was unreasonable to think we could ever fly, break the sound barrier, or even reach space.... let alone land a man on the moon. Science did not make these things happen directly.... science was used as a tool to make them work based on human understanding and imagination.

It was human imagination in which created science to begin with.

- and what may or may not exist in a hereafter isnt something we are capable of or comfortable understanding.

Wolf

I personally disagree on that one. Some humans are comfortible with understanding what the afterlife is all about, and some are not. Are we as humans capable of understanding what it is?

I believe so... but only through time collectively. Individually, I believe some on this planet already have a clear understanding of what the afterlife is. Humans have always strived to understand and to get answers to the things around us. Through time we have come across a great level of understanding on many things. There is plenty more to come as well.

And not all of this was based around science. Science wasn't around when humans invented tools, weapons, ships, villages, towns, castles, cultures, money, how to grow food..... Science is like 3M.... they don't make the products you use, they make the products you use better.

Added:

Oh and those people who claim to talk to the dead? I don't believe most of them either.
 

mrgrumpy

Electoral Member
Wishful thinking and delusional concepts of immortality.

The only "afterlife" humans will experience is as wormfood and all natural fertilizer.

If humans weren't so prone to believing the unbelievable but instead working harder to make our earth a paradise we wouldn't always be craving for pie in the sky solutions dreamt up by writers of fictional nonsense posing as holy script.
 

eanassir

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Jul 26, 2007
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The only "afterlife" humans will experience is as wormfood and all natural fertilizer.

If humans weren't so prone to believing the unbelievable but instead working harder to make our earth a paradise we wouldn't always be craving for pie in the sky solutions dreamt up by writers of fictional nonsense posing as holy script.

But to their disappointment, they will discover, immediately following their death, that they have become some ethereal souls; the soul is the true man; it is the soul that sees, hears and perceives the pain and pleasure, and it is immortal.

It is only the material body that will decay and eaten by worms and decayed by bacteria.
But then, after death, they will regret and will wish that would they have become dust and that there will be no punishment or reward.

This is in the Glorious Quran 78: 40-41

إِنَّا أَنذَرْنَاكُمْ عَذَابًا قَرِيبًا . يَوْمَ يَنظُرُ الْمَرْءُ مَا قَدَّمَتْ يَدَاهُ وَيَقُولُ الْكَافِرُ يَا لَيْتَنِي كُنتُ تُرَابًا

The explanation: (We [: God] warn you [atheists,associaters and idolaters] of an imminent chastisement [following your death.]
The day when [believing] man shall behold what [charity] his hands have forwarded [to the Hereafter], but the unbeliever shall say: "O would that I were dust [to get rid of the torment like my body that has become dust so it has got rid of the punishment.]")




 
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eanassir

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I don't believe we would really recognize proof of an afterlife. We can only know logic as it exists on this plane. There's no reasoning the unreasonable - and what may or may not exist in a hereafter isnt something we are capable of or comfortable understanding.

Wolf

Once when I was in the secondary school, I wrangled with a man about the next world: that man was nearer to belief than to disbelief. That man said:
" Who is that have gone to the next world then come back to tell us what is there!? "

Then later on I found such a thing: a man, a truthful and righteous man, who during his childhood, fainted and lost conciousness, after falling from a height, then his soul went in the world of souls for one hour, then he regained conciousness and told to people what is there in the next world: the world of souls or the spiritual or ethereal world that coexists with this material World but it is invisible to us.

Here is his story:
Was it death or fainting? (or an hour among spirits.)
http://man-after-death.741.com/#Was_It_Death_or_Fainting_


eanassir
http://man-after-death.741.com
 

Dexter Sinister

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Sounds a lot like science, only science plays around for a while to make it seem like they know what they are talking about.
Aw, yer so full of crap. You obviously have no idea what science is or how it works. It has only one core belief, that the cosmos is consistent and comprehensible, at least in principle, though we may not be smart enough to comprehend it all. It has nothing in common with religious belief, as you've tried to claim in other threads here (it does, for instance, change its mind), and it's been spectacularly successful in improving human lives in the last 400 years in ways no belief system ever has. Unfortunately its lessons have been inconsistently applied around the world so not everybody lives as well as we do here, but you cannot deny that it works. It's made mistakes, of course, because it's fundamentally a human enterprise and suffers from all the same flaws any human enterprise does, like ego, dogma, tradition, and all the rest of it, but it's eventually self-correcting. It's also the only successful method we've ever found for testing the truth content of empirical claims about the nature of reality. If you've got a better one, lay it out for us.
 

eanassir

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Oh and those people who claim to talk to the dead? I don't believe most of them either.

You are right; most of such people either are impostors or are cheated by some demons that mock them by assuming they are the souls of the dead when in fact they are invisible demons or genies, alive not dead.

Although not all of them; there is a story of evocating the spirit of Prophet Samuel for the behalf of King Saul by a woman that was a medium; the story is in the Torah or the Old Testament, First Book of Samuel(1Sa), chapter 28:

See:
Evocation of Spirits (or Spiritism)
http://man-after-death.741.com/1.htm#Evocation_of_Spirits_


eanassir
 
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Dexter Sinister

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Oct 1, 2004
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You are right; most of such people either are impostors or are cheated by some demons that mock them by assuming they are the souls of the dead when in fact they are invisible demons or genies, alive not dead.
Yeah, yer full of crap too. There's no good evidence for any such claims, it's all adequately explained by your first option: impostors. I'm running out of patience with nonsensical, evidence-free thinking.
 

Scott Free

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May 9, 2007
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You are right; most of such people either are impostors or are cheated by some demons that mock them by assuming they are the souls of the dead when in fact they are invisible demons or genies, alive not dead.

Invisible genies and demons!?! I'm sorry but this made me lol.

I suppose your referring to the jinn mentioned in the Koran? The belief in which is still being used as an excuse to murder people in Afghanistan?

I suppose people possessed with jinn in Canada should be put to death too?

What does your wretched book say on that?
 

eanassir

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Jul 26, 2007
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The major problem with anecdotal evidence ... They will feel extremely confident about the memory due to its supposed traumatic effect and from the many times they have told the story over and over again.

A faulty memory is not psychotic, having an unwavering belief in any one of the preceding 10 statements might be.

How can you then interpret this incident that I myself saw?

My father is dead; my brother Hussein works in another province; Hussein was very much similar to our dead father in body and even in the voice; my uncle and my younger brother lived alone at our family house.

I went one day to visit my uncle and may brother who were alone in our big family house; it was late afternoon, the sky was cloudy; so it was not very light nor it was yet dark.

We sat in the living room, the electric power was off then, and the room was darker than outside, when I saw, through the glass of the window, somebody pass along to the kitchen; he wore a white shirt; but I did not see the details, but only he was like my brother Hussein, so I immediately jumped to welcome him; but there was none; I went to the kitchen door: I found it locked from inside; then where did this one go? I went to the inside of the house to the kitchen, but there was none.

I told my younger brother and my uncle: they said that it may be an imagination! Well I said it may be an imagination: to assure them, so that they would not fear. I think they said their words also to assure us, and that we would not fear.

But my son (who was sitting beside me, and who was then 15 years old), said: "Yes, father, I also saw him", and he added: "I saw his face with whitish obscure face [like a light veil on his face]"; he did not see a well defined face, but saw some whitish or some light on the face: the face was not clear.

I myself saw that one pass with confidence, as if he was one of the family members; he knew his way very well.

When I told one of my colleagues [a pious one] next day, he said: What about your mother? I said: She is OK in a nearby city, taking care about her daughter's children. He said: Check about her condition; it may be your father wanted to tell you something. Next day, or so, they brought her having CVA.


 
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talloola

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I wonder how many people have died in the history of the world, and then I wonder how
cluttered up the air is with ghosts flitting around all over the place, maybe a new clue to
global warming?:lol:
 

eanassir

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I wonder how many people have died in the history of the world, and then I wonder how
cluttered up the air is with ghosts flitting around all over the place, maybe a new clue to
global warming?:lol:

This is quoted from the book: Man after Death which is at our website http://man-after-death.741.com

"Know, also, that spirits are with us in our houses, basements, shops and mosques; they crowd in every place: seeing our deeds and hearing our words, but we neither see nor hear their words, nor even do we hear their footsteps on the ground.

God - be exalted - said in the Quran, 19: 98
و كَمْ أهْلَكْنا قَبْلَهُمْ مِنْ قَرْنٍ هَلْ تُحِسُّ مِنْهُمْ مِنْ أحَدٍ أو تَسْمَعُ لَهُمْ رِكْزاً ؟
The explanation:( And how many a generation before them have We destroyed! Can you [O man] perceive [any movement of] any one of them, or hear from them any foot-fall sound?)

It means: their footsteps when they walk on the ground."
The soul after death


eanassir
http://man-after-death.741.com
 

talloola

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The idea of this happening is absurd.:-? The spirit of all of these people who have passed
on is in the heads of those who 'miss' them. I know it's hard to let them go and put that
part of our lives behind us, and some can't do that. I believe that they believe that they
see ghosts or spirits, or whatever you want to call them, but it is not really happening.
The power is in our heads, as our brains have the ability to do many things for us, and to
us.
So, if some want to go that far with their thinking, enjoy yourselves, if it makes you feel
better, so be it, what harm does it do.