RE: Is there any evidence we dont live on in some way after death
July 14, 2011 at 3:54 am
(This post was last modified: July 14, 2011 at 4:18 am by Anomalocaris.)
(July 14, 2011 at 3:08 am)BethK Wrote: Well, the simple answer is that there is no evidence for or against life after death. The truth of the matter is that no one who has died has come back to tell us one way or another. Many many people have tried to contact the dead, and Harry Houdini had a code to give his wife/widow, and no medium or spiritualist ever came up with it. Sure, there are Near Death Experiences, but the key word there is "near". Those people were not actually dead.
What makes you think we are "part energy"? It's true that energy cannot cease to exist, but what's the evidence for that which makes each of us "us" is any sort of measurable energy, beyond that in the molecules and atoms making up the neurons in our brains, storing our memories and personalities?
Actually, there is evidence both for and against preservation of consciousness after death. It's just that evidence for is much more ambiguous than evidence against. Story of near death experiences may count as evidence for. The fact that consciousness in life, including near-death experience, is incontrovertibly associated with patterns of measurable neurological activity which is demonstrably no longer there after death would count as evidence against.
We are all energy in the E=MC^2 sort of way. But ultimately lump of granite the same mass M as you have the exact same amount and nature of imperishable energy. Can you commune with the granite after death? If not, then clearly more needs to be there than energy for life to go on. No? That your carbon atoms would last till the end of universe is neither here nor there as evidence of the continuation of your life. No? What needs to be there? We are not totally sure. But for starters, how about such structure as to permit the pattern of neurological activity mentioned above? If that no longer exists, neither would you. Sounds like a more reasonable assumption?