I don't know if this has been brought up yet but if it has please lock. I just stumbled across a review of Dinesh D'Souza's new book trying to make the argument about life after death, Life After Death: The Evidence.. I haven't read the book yet but it sounds very interesting about how he takes on Dawkins and other prominent atheists by focussing his argument on rational rather than mystical arguments. Here is the link to a review from Newsweek. http://www.newsweek.com/id/220296?GT1=43002 Its a bit long so I'm not going to post the whole thing but here are some interesting points. [rquoter]D'Souza's book attempts to build a case on unshakable scientific grounds for the survival of consciousness beyond death. Ghosts, mediums, and miraculous cures by the intercession of saints play no role in his argument, which draws instead on quantum mechanics, neuroscience, and moral philosophy.... D'Souza, who likens this to fighting with one hand tied behind his back, is a frequent debating opponent of prominent atheists including Christopher Hitchens (God Is Not Great) and Sam Harris (The End of Faith). He regards the emergence of such enemies as a God-given opportunity to bring Christian apologetics into the new century. "C. S. Lewis addressed issues from his own era, such as the Holocaust," D'Souza notes, "but today we have new questions—about Darwin, brain science, modern physics, and Islamic terrorism. ... Skeptics may object to D'Souza's mode of argument, which is to state a proposition, present the evidence for both sides with an elaborate if spurious show of impartiality, and proceed briskly to the conclusion that his own preference is obviously the winner. But on some level, D'Souza believes, even skeptics would like to be convinced. ... The "evidence," of necessity, is indirect: D'Souza doesn't claim to have communicated with anyone who has died, and he doesn't expect to. Instead, he looks to the human heart, and finds therein a universal moral code underlying acts of self-sacrifice and charity that appear to run counter to the Darwinian imperative to outcompete thy neighbor. This is a time-honored argument for the existence of a God who created human beings in his image and imbued them with a moral sense, as well as the free will to follow, or ignore, it. Berlinski uses the argument in his book, and Collins credits it with turning him from atheism to evangelical Christianity. (D'Souza acknowledges that the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has offered an evolutionary explanation for human goodness, but he doesn't buy it.) In a Jesuitical display that does credit to his reputation as "an Indian William F. Buckley Jr.," D'Souza turns to his advantage one of the atheists' favorite arguments, God's apparent tolerance for human suffering. Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death. "The postulate of an afterlife enables us to make sense of this life," he writes. It worked for Dante, didn't it? ... "Near-death experiences show that clinical death may not be the end," D'Souza writes. Thus they support his larger point, that "neuroscience reveals that the mind cannot be reduced to the brain … consciousness and free will … seem to operate outside the laws of nature, and therefore are not subject to the laws governing the mortality of the body." The latter assertion has been at the crux of Western philosophy since Plato, but it's taken until now to devise an empirical test for it. In the AWARE study, randomly generated images will be projected in the rooms of critically ill patients, in locations where they can be viewed only from above—by someone having an out-of-body experience, for instance. If patients who survive NDEs can identify these images subsequently—well, not to overdramatize, but several centuries of materialism in the natural sciences will have to be rewritten. The director of AWARE is Dr. Sam Parnia, a fellow at Weill Cornell Medical Center. He told NEWSWEEK that researchers at 20 hospitals have identified about 600 subjects for interviews. Parnia expects to publish his results in 2010. [/rquoter]
The strongest evidence that life goes beyond death is this: The physical universe is absurd. Meaning, no explanation - even imaginary one...no explanation, no matter what liberties you take, no matter what you can come up with, makes any sense whatsoever. Where did time and space come from for instance? And more absurd...why did time and space even come into existence? Heck, even saying there is a god doesn't really help answer that question.
sure it does. It's really a matter of what you want to believe. If Jesus Christ came to Earth tomorrow and proclaimed himself the saviour of the universe, King of Kings and the path to heaven, I'm pretty sure a bunch of people will still call bs.
Well people claim to be those things all the time, and we generally call those people crazy. So I agree.
Human consciousness is the result of electromagnetic energy exchanges within the neural network of the brain in response to stimuli from the sensory organs. If you can figure out a way to do that without a functioning human body, please let us know. I would be happy to consider any wild ass conjecture you can come up with.
As the article state the evidence by nature is indirect and just based on what I read in the review I don't buy it but I do think it is a very intriguing line of thought and worthy of debate.
After watching Yao in the second round of the playoffs I fully believe his will to win is as great if not greater than Shaq's. His body just isn't as durable.
Yep, I thought so too. Personally, I think what makes us individuals in how we think is simply brain biology/chemistry, something which isn't understood by any means. My evidence of this? Certain brain disorders can cause particular behavior which shows that every action someone takes could certainly be caused by their brain's particular biochemical structure. While is hardly evidence of anything concrete, I find it more plausible. It certainly doesn't represent anything about thought processes and morality, but I think these are just biological things we have yet to understand.
You mean if he came to earth in like a space ship? I am not sure what you are saying - there's plenty of people who walk around today claiming this already. Let's say Jesus came down and the world stopped turning and everyone at once saw him and he preformed a bunch of miracles and everyone said, YES - He is god! Let's say that happens. That still doesn't explain what the heck is going on. That doesn't explain where space and time came from because if Jesus is a conscious entity then you have a paradox since consciousness implies a boundness by time if not space (to be boundless by time means to be completely unchangeable and therefore to not have any kind of thoughts so how could Jesus "decide" to create time and space? - that would be a paradox).
There are some very interesting NDE and out of body stories out there -- I also love the quantum connection -- everything is just empty space and energy.
Of course life is absurd. How can anything made up of absurdity not be absurd? What makes "life" special? Well..the fact that ALL life has this stuff called DNA. How the heck is all life made up of the same freakin replicating molecule that has to intentionally on occasion erroneously misreplicate itself in order to ensure it's continuation. When you think about the only thing that's been constant about life for the past billion years - it's that freakin DNA molecule. If god created life on this planet, all he had to do was inject the oceans with a bunch of DNA and proteins.
His will to win is far greater than Shaq's. Willpower shouldn't be measured by how hard you beat your chest, but rather by how much work and dedication you put in. By now there shouldn't be any questions at all about Yao's work ethic and desire to win. If Shaq had Yao's work ethic, he would have had an even better career by this point.
