Is the idea of immortality in any way possible?

by logansrun 20 Replies latest jw friends

  • logansrun
    logansrun

    The traditional Christian view of immortality hinges on some form of dualism -- the notion that your consciousness is not dependent on the brain and can survive the dissolution of the body. Modern science has not found any evidence for this whatsoever. It seems rather likely that our consciousness and mental abilities are bound to our brains and their neuronal firings. Have a few martinis to prove this point if you are skeptical.

    This materialist/reductionist view seems to make much empirical sense. It is parsimonious and efficient. For those of you who believe in some form of immortality (and for those that simply play with that idea), how do you rationally explain your position in light of this fact? Is it simply a matter of faith?

    Bradley

  • ball.
    ball.

    Well what I noticed about todays news was that the cloning of embroys is all about having "spare parts" available for future use. I can see a future world where the rich can afford spare body parts to double or triple their life span and the poor die.

  • Frannie Banannie
    Frannie Banannie

    To answer the topic question, Bradley....only in yer genes....er....dreams....

    Frannie B

  • Satanus
    Satanus
    Modern science has not found any evidence for this whatsoever.

    That's true, well almost. There has been some scientific type evidence now and then. For instance, there was a scientific study of nde's in france, which gave some proof of the mind able to exist apart from the body. However, in an issue such as this, abundant proof should be required.

    There is always the scientific theorem that energy cannot be destroyed or created, only converted. How much energy is the life/mind of one person whose life has glowed for 70 yrs?

    Btw, that report is in the lancet dec15-2001 vol358 num9298.

    SS

  • codeblue
    codeblue

    Logan:

    Glad you brought up this question...and I am anxiously awaiting to see the answers!!!

    Codeblue

  • Narkissos
    Narkissos

    Frankly, do we want immortality?

    There may be some comfort in knowing, or believing, that something of ourselves will survive (and already does) in people we met and loved: expressions, smiles, ideas, attitudes... as "we" also are made of a number of lost people. Feeling that we are more than Leibnizian monads trapped in ourselves. Who really asks for more?

  • Satanus
    Satanus

    Here is a link to the aricle. The study was in holland, not france. http://www.zarqon.co.uk/Lancet.pdf

    SS

  • Double Edge
    Double Edge

    Gee, maybe 'scientists' have an agenda in keeping the stale old thought of "reality" is what you can see and "prove". A hundred and 25 years ago scientists believe there were atoms, but they couldn't see or prove them (fools, or was it that they just didn't have the right instruments?) Numerous articles can be found about scientists who believe in life after death as a matter of science. The following is just one thing I found quickly on the internet. I believe in life after death, but not as a scientist, but through experience....

    Censored in Great Britain THE SCIENTIFIC PROOF OF SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH By Michael Roll

    Here is an extraordinary paradox. Only those who can be relied upon to dismiss the findings and conclusions of our pioneers of radio and television are allowed on radio and television!

    Our scientists who support the British pioneers of radio and television - Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge and John Logie Baird - have been blocked from speaking on the radio or appearing on television up to March 1999. Only a handful of local radio presenters have defied this official and unofficial censorship, and James Whale on Talk Radio in July 1997.

    There are two expert opinions as to what so-called paranormal phenomena are, but in this "free" country the British people are only, allowed access to the explanation that is politically correct, the first version that is listed below, because it is no danger to the powerful religious and scientific establishments:

    1. Paranormal Phenomena Does Not Exist.

    The mind and the brain are the same. This is the official teaching across all scientific disciplines. The parapsychologist Dr. Susan Blackmore has been given complete freedom of every, radio and television programme that is meant to be examining the subject. This is because she is the establishment mouthpiece and can be relied upon to never mention what is revealed in this pamphlet. Dr. Blackmore protects the scientific establishments adopted stance, which only gives a materialistic model of the universe. Professor J. Wheeler, a top physicist, stated in 1994 that acceptance of survival or paranormal phenomena would destroy the basis of science as taught in our universities.

    2. Paranormal Phenomena Does Exist.

    The mind and the brain are separate. This pamphlet carries on where Crookes, Lodge and Logie Baird left off. This is what we are never allowed to hear on radio and television or read about in scientific magazines and large circulation papers.

    "The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge, it has no place in the endeavour of science."

    Carl Sagan. "Cosmos" 1980

    A great moment in television history was featured in Carl Sagan's outstanding thirteen part series on astronomy called "Cosmos". He was pictured in New York library surrounded by millions of books. He pointed to a tiny section and said, "It is only possible in one person's lifetime to read this many books." He then turned to the camera and made the following profound statement:

    "The trick is to read the right books."

    The books contained in this thesis are the ones that the religious and pseudo-scientific establishments are praying with all their might that the people never find out about.

    "I completely agree with Michael Roll's arguments about the reality of paranormal phenomena and the existence of a normally unseen world . . . Quantum Physics: the presence of a wave nature in subatomic particles. The vital difference between a wave and a solid particle is the wave properties of superposition and modulation. Put simply, these properties allow waves of different frequencies to occupy the same space without direct interaction. Therefore it is quite possible for parallel universes to exist separated by a difference in some fundamental wave characteristic. This theory springs directly from wave mechanics which unfortunately were not available to the Victorian researchers when the greatest breakthroughs with mediumship were made."

    Michael Scott BSc. Graduate in astrophysics. Edinburgh University.

    ___________________________________________________________________________

    Republished, March 1998 Republished. April 1997 Published, January. 1995 by Michael Roll 28 Westerleigh Road - Downend. Bristol B S 16 6AH Tel. 0117 9561960 Copyright 1995 by Michael Roll I.S.B.N. 0 9525021 00

    ___________________________________________________________________________

    WHAT IS MEANT BY SCIENTIFIC PROOF?

    This must consist of repeatable experiments backed up with a theory that has a mathematical base. A good example is proving that the world is round and not flat. The Greek scientist Pythagoras was the first to put forward the idea that the world was round. This was 2,600 years ago. However, it was 300 years later that another Greek scientist - Eratosthenes - came up with the mathematical theory for a round earth. This lacked the scientific impact it should have had because the experiment had not taken place. This came much later when Magellan sailed round the world in 1522. The experiment together with the mathematical theory completely, destroyed the medieval obscurantists -the Flat Earth religious fanatics.

    Proving survival after death is exactly the same, but not quite as easy, because here we are dealing with phenomena that are beyond the range of our five physical senses. In order to detect this type of phenomena we have to work with a medium - a machine that can do the job.

    It was the invention of the achromatic microscope in 1830 by Joseph Jackson Lister that enabled his son to write his paper on antiseptic surgery. From this moment on we have had the proof that reality also exists in the invisible. Radio and television sets are also detecting normally invisible phenomena. They are mediums sorting out signals at different frequencies. This is the reason why, we are forced to work with a human medium in order to prove survival after death. No machine invented so far is as sophisticated as the human mind and brain. However we have to be extra careful when carrying out experiments using people. There can be no room for error where lives are concerned.

    ___________________________________________________________________________

    THE EXPERIMENTAL PROOF OF SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH

    We have had the experimental proof of survival after death ever since Sir William Crookes published the results of his experiments in the leading scientific journal of his day - The Quarterly Journal of Science" in 1874. These were repeatable experiments under laboratory conditions. International teams of scientists then repeated the experiments and obtained the same results. People who had once Iived on earth came back and proved to these scientific teams that they had conquered death and were still very much alive. This is what Professor Charles Richet, the French Nobel Laureate for medical science said about the experiments:-

    "There is ample proof that experimental materialisations should take definite rank as a scientific fact."

    The purpose of this pamphlet is only to bring to peoples' attention these exciting discoveries in subatomic physics. My job is easy, all I have to do is just point to the books that have been published but suppressed. The main reason why this incredible scientific discovery did not cause a revolution at the beginning of this century is because these experiments lacked the backing of any detailed mathematical theory. This is what Sir Oliver Lodge said in 1929:-

    "We have to be guided by the facts; and if the facts seem incredible as the they do - we have first of all to assure ourselves that they are facts, and then conclude that there is a department of knowledge to which we have as yet not got the key"

    At the end of the century we now have the key, the missing mathematical theory to back up these revolutionary, scientific experiments.

    References

    Lodge. Sir Oliver, "Phantom Walls" 1929 (Hodder & Stoughton)

    Medhurst. Dr. R.G "Crookes and the Spirit World" 1972 (Souvenir)

    Crookes. Sir William. "Experimental Investigation of a New Force" Article in "Quarterly Journal of Science" July Ist 1871 (Early experiments)

    Richet. Professor Charles. "Thirty Years of Psychical Research" 1923 (W. Collins & Sons). The French scientific team.

    Notzing. Baron Von Schrenck. "Phenomena of Materialisations" 1923 (Kegan Paul. Trench. Trubner). The German scientific team.

    Hamilton. Dr. T. Glen. "Intention and Survival" 1942. (Regency Press) The Canadian scientific team.

    Warrick. F W. "Experiments in Psychics" 1939 (Rider& Co. London)

    ___________________________________________________________________________

    THE ETHERIC WORLD MUST HAVE AN ASTRONOMICAL LOCALITY

    As Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir William Crookes were the pioneers of radio and television they were able to put forward a rational explanation to account for the seemingly supernatural phenomena appearing at their experiments. They said this etheric world is the same place as our radio and television signals, but at a much higher frequency. Recent discoveries in quantum mechanics - the study of the building blocks within the atom - completely vindicate what these great physicists said at the beginning of the century.

    They were adamant that we all survive the death of our physical bodies. The experiments proved that we must possess two bodies. One finite body containing the brain that dies and another infinite body, containing the mind that separates when our short stay on earth is over. Lodge said the people from the "next world" who are appearing at the experiments must possess bodies that are made of the same invisible matter as our radio and television signals. He called it an etheric substance.

    Few will disagree that the discovery of this etheric substance is the most important scientific task in history. I must admit to jumping the gun and getting over excited when I saw a report in the "Sunday Times" on 13th December 1981. It said that physicists could have been wrong for forty years about the make-up of the universe. They were saying that nine-tenths of the universe is missing. When we look through a telescope at a galaxy we are only seeing one tenth of the mass. The motion of distant galaxies and the stars in them can only be accounted for under the laws of gravity if there is far more mass associated with each galaxy than there is in the visible stars that comprise it. One theory for this missing mass was centred around a ghostlike subatomic particle called the neutrino that was discovered in 1956. The report said a neutrino would stand a good chance of penetrating a thickness of lead stretching to the nearest star without hitting anything. This really caught my imagination. Arthur Koestler showed in his book "The Roots of Coincidence" that science had discovered something in the building blocks of nature that started to give a rational explanation accounting for the millions of reports from people who say they saw a "ghost" walk through a solid wall. However, my astrophysicist pals Mike Scott and Sam Nicholls, although very supportive of the survival theory, did not share my enthusiasm that the neutrino was the missing piece needed to make up the etheric universe.

    References

    Lodge. Sir Oliver. "Ether and Reality" " 1925 (Hodder & Stoughton)

    Koestler. Arthur. "The Roots of Coincidence" 1972 (Hutchinson)

  • Enishi
    Enishi

    Our souls surviving death does not necessarily make them immortal. Anyway, there is evidence of the afterlife, though no absolute proof. Here's some websites on the subject in case anyone is interested.

    http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/

    www.cfpf.org.uk/

    www.victorzammit.com

    www.monroeinstitute.org

    www.near-death.com

  • Double Edge
    Double Edge

    http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/ I thought this site a little "weird"

    www.cfpf.org.uk/ Interesting

    www.victorzammit.com very interesting IMHO

    www.monroeinstitute.org "educational"

    www.near-death.com very interesting

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