Consciousness After Death

Most people believe that life after death is a matter of religious faith and that there can be no scientific certainty about it. But, as my Solving the Big Questions book (BQ), podcasts, and Youtubes explain and document, that is not true.

There are hundreds of scientific studies proving that consciousness survives physical death. (BQ chpts. 42 & 43) These studies are ignored by religionists because they conflict with dogma about death and life thereafter. Materialists-evolutionists-atheists (MEAs), believing we are nothing more than matter, also ignore the science. 

Near death experiences, better termed after death experiences, is one category of scientific study. These people are declared dead by all medical measures, including flat-line electroencephalograms. 

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SIGNS OF DEATH

• The heart stops and there is no blood pressure.
• Pupils don’t respond to light.
• No reaction to pain.
• The eyes don’t blink when the eye surface is touched (corneal reflex).
• Eyes don’t move when the head is moved (oculocephalic reflex).
• Eyes don’t move when ice water is poured into the ear (oculovestibular reflex).
• There is no gagging reflex when the back of the throat is touched.
• The person doesn’t breathe when the ventilator is switched off.
• No response by electroencephalogram.

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People studied are those resuscitated from clinical death. From 5-15% of them report vivid experiences in a nonphysical realm while they were dead. 

Some of the features reported by those revived:
⠀⠀Awareness of being dead and being out of body.
⠀⠀Moving through a tunnel.
⠀⠀Confrontation with a brilliant light.
⠀⠀Time speeds up or slows down.
⠀⠀Thought processes speed up.
⠀⠀A return of scenes from the past and a life review.
⠀⠀A sudden insight, or understanding.
⠀⠀A feeling of peace, pleasantness, happiness, and joy.
⠀⠀A sense of harmony or unity with the universe.
⠀⠀A sense of being home and belonging.
⠀⠀The senses feel more vivid.
⠀⠀An awareness of things going on elsewhere, as if by extrasensory perception (ESP).
⠀⠀Experiencing scenes from the future.
⠀⠀Experiencing an unearthly world, a celestial landscape, and extraordinary colors.
⠀⠀Encountering a mystical being or presence, or hearing an unidentifiable voice.
⠀⠀A feeling of all-embracing, non-judgmental love.
⠀⠀Coming to a border, or point of no return.
⠀⠀Meeting with deceased persons.
⠀⠀A reluctance to return to the body and to Earth life.

​People blind since birth reported seeing themselves lying in state and described things they have never seen.
 
Follow up study of survivors over many years revealed transformations, including loss of fear of death, increased intuitive senses, rapid healing of injuries, and being more empathetic and less ego-centered. (In other reports, children increase IQ scores dramatically after an NDE.)
 
No physical causes such as anoxia, drugs, prior beliefs, resuscitation efforts, or release of endorphins explain the experiences or the transformations.

More than 3500 individual cases have been reviewed in one or another study carried out by over 55 researchers or teams of researchers. There is the International Association for Near-death Studies and the Journal of Near-Death Studies. Research has been conducted world-wide and published in peer-reviewed highly respected journals, such as the Lancet. Methodologies and study designs have been exceptionally rigorous due to opposition by status quo MEA scientists. 

In the face of such evidence, MEAs claim that the brain is not really dead and is producing the awareness. Although no proof is ever provided that dead brains are conscious, they resort to faith that science will one day provide it. Religionists who have been taught dogma about heaven, hell, purgatory, etc., and that faith is a virtue, claim any evidence to the contrary is simply the devil's work.

As for the legitimacy of religious faith taking preeminence over actual evidence, one would have to determine if religion is human-made and flawed, or Creator-made and flawless. (BQ chpts. 22-33) 

Here, let's examine the MEA's defense of hope in future scientific discovery. 

1. The  glaring logical flaws:
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• Although absence of evidence, may not be evidence of its absence, neither is it proof of its presence. The burden is on the MEAs, in the here and now, to provide any evidentiary proof that the matter in dead brains is conscious. They don't. 
  
  
• MEAs say that because previously unknown things were later discovered by science, that's reason to believe dead brain matter will be discovered to be conscious. Similarly, we could assert that cows jump over the moon, and prove it by saying science will someday discover it to be so. Obviously, such reasoning is false because it permits belief in anything. 
  
  
• MEA's contend that it can't be proven that consciousness cannot be found in dead brain matter. But it's logically impossible to disprove a negative. It's like saying it can't be proven that Santa Claus and the tooth fairy won't one day be found. One would have to claim omniscience, knowledge of every nook and cranny of the universe, to prove Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy don't exist. Likewise, one would require knowledge of every nook and cranny of a clinically dead brain to prove consciousness cannot exist there. (By contrast, a positive assertion is logically possible, e.g., Santa Claus is stuck in the chimney—proving it simply requires pulling him out, dusting him off, and getting proper ID) 
  
  
• By reductio ad absurdum, if MEAs are correct in their belief that dead brains are conscious, it would be inhumane and murderous to bury or cremate dead people. ​

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• MEAs base their faith that matter contains explanations for all phenomena upon their belief in evolution and materialism. But evolution and materialism are false beliefs since they violate actual science and the laws of nature. (BQ chpts. 1-21)

2. Science is observation, testability, and repeatability, not belief in what might be or what is hoped for. Although repeatedly alluding to science, MEAs provide no science to prove their thesis that dead brain matter is conscious. 

3. After death experiences are only one of many scientifically supported proofs that consciousness exists apart from a physical brain. Other examples include out of body experiences, medium communication with the dead, past life remembrance, quantum physics, the existence of free will (BQ chpt. 41), and a variety of psi phenomena not reducible to matter and neurons. (BQ chpts. 34-44) 

4. Remarkably, after death experiences are similar regardless of age, race, gender, religion, nationality. (BQ chpt 44) One would expect that brains molded by different genetics and environs would think differently. The fact that they don't in after death experiences speaks to a common and real realm that the immaterial consciousness transitions to upon death.
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The commonly held belief that life after death cannot be proven is denied by decades of research, science, reason, and evidence. On the other hand, those who claim we are mere matter, or that our destiny is determined by human-made religions, have no proof whatsoever.

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Words of Wisdom: 
Birth til death, we travel between the eternities.