It's impossible to see how any proof of an afterlife could be either. — Janus

How about this: I die, I see my body buried by mourners. Empirical evidence, slam bang on.

What evidence of afterlife would satisfy a skeptic? I am a skeptic; it would statisfy me, one skeptic, that there is an afterlife.

But you're right, most skeptics would not be satisfied as my experience would be non-transferable.

Continuity of personal experience. It's not logically impossible is all I'm saying, not that I believe in it myself..

Yeah you could say that would be experiential evidence for the individual who had died, but not empirical evidence for anyone else.

You didn't answer my question.

Living is always near-death, that's only evidence of life not "after life".

So you think that if you experience such an event you'd still rationalise it like that?

When I was younger I had the experience of seeing auras around people. That stopped around the time I went to university. I never had a decent explanation for it. To this day I'm open to there being more than just what we'd expect from what science would predict because if those experiences. As a result, I can imagine that at a personal level such experiences can be received as proof for those who had such experience.

I too have had my share of "inexplicable experiences". Coupled with nearly a decade of psychoactive drug use and decades more (minor) "flashbacks", I'm no stranger to altered mental states, etc which persistently have raised questions of non-natural (otherworldly) phenomena. That said, we know scientifically that most of what our brains (unconsciously, subpersonally) do is confabulate and fool us in order to generate-process our experiences (e.g. vision). And subjectivity is extremely parochial and cognitively-biased – mediated – so, fascinated as I've been by 'waking visions' and whatnot, I've very little to no confidence in interpreting these limit-experiences (Jaspers) 'non-naturally' and prefer these "what the fuck – wow?" gaps in knowledge, or my understanding, to typical tabloid "new age" woo-of-the-gaps ad hockery such as NDEs, OBEs, past life memories, astral projections, déja vù "glitches in the matrix", ghosts / after lives, etc.

At times, my own experiences, including those using substances and those which I had naturally do make me question, even though I do not see them as proof, of any potential life beyond this one. I have experienced a number of strange out of body experiences naturally, which can occur if I am under severe stress or haven't eaten enough.

The big experience which does make me wonder about life beyond the body was the one which I had on acid, which I mentioned in one of my threads. It was where I went to the mirror, expecting to see some kind of monster. Instead, I could see the walls around me, and the radiator but I was not there at all. It was as if I had got out of my body truly. The whole experience was one in which I knew that I had some connection with my body, but it did seem to have become unhinged in some remarkable way. I was able to walk, but I had the sensation of being able to walk through people. I spent the night lying down and having sips of water, and in the morning I felt that things had gone back to normal. When I felt that I wanted some breakfast, I felt that this was a sign that I was back in my body, and I felt safe to leave the warehouse and make my way home.

Interesting. Well, I've never experienced a (drug-induced or naive) altered mental state that made me question my ordinary perceptions or memories, only whether or not there was "more beyond" them. Music, for me, suspends ordinary perception / memory so completely that I literally buzz (unaided!) with the numinous more often than not. It's the wonder of the brain enchanting (or fucking with) itself, which shows time again that I/we experience the world how I am / we are than 'how the world itself is' and that science is the least worst method-practice for 'observing the world as it is': more deeply complex, far richer and weirder, than we ever subjectively, near-solipsisticly, experience it.

Simple. Something that I can see with my own eyes and physical senses. And also something that makes sense logically/rationally, instead of 'hopeful/beautiful' emotional delusions/illusions unfortunately too common nowadays.

I wondered about your own experience of altered perception. I definitely find music to be one way of experiencing the numinous, and have some kind of natural affinity with psychedelic experience.But, I do have intense hypnagogic and hypnopompic experiences at times, in which I am floating around in the room, knowing that my body is lying on the bed, and these are a bit unnerving.

It also seems to me that some people are more inclined to have OBEs than others, and I think that comes into play when people use any kind of substances. But, I do think that Huxley's book, 'The Doors of Perception/Heaven and Hell' is so interesting too, especially how it points to the idea of the mind being a reducing valve for mind at large, which is based on Bergson's idea. I am not saying that I am sure that perspective is true, but I do see it as a possibility.

However, what makes the OBE or NDE difficult to be seen as real 'proof' is that the person is still alive enough to return to life. But, I think that it may be the furthest proof. But, of course, it is possible to go into the real territory of 'woo'land, with people who claim to have been visited by spirits and I have a friend who speaks of having encounters St Augustine. However, all these ideas are open to critical analysis, and I of all people am aware of the need for this based on my experience of psychiatric nursing.

Seems a bit nitpicky. Replace 'life' with 'consciousness' - 'Is there individual consciousness after death?' seems like a pretty coherent question. Unless you believe the concept of individual consciousness is incoherent or fuzzy, but surely then it'd be up to you to make that case.

I know evidence that the conscious mind continues after bodily death is rare and iffy at best. But what type of evidence would be reasonable to convince skeptics that an afterlife probably is a real possibility? — TiredThinker

Why do you want to convince them?

For their own good?
For your own good?

But you will not answer this, will you?

But 'failure of imagination' is not itself an argument against even ludicrous, evidence-free ideas like "after lives" or "past lives". — 180 Proof

Character assassination is a classical proselytizing method. It seems to work quite well on many people.

I do wonder sometimes if mass shooters really believed they would go to hell for their actions, whether they would carry them out. The belief that ‘death is the end’ might be part of the rationale for such massacres, in that the perpetrators believe that when they die there won’t be further consequences. So that belief might be, ironically, consequential. — Wayfarer

At this point, the seriously injured Valeen Schnurr began screaming, "Oh my God, oh my God!"[127][131] In response, Klebold asked Schnurr if she believed in the existence of God; when Schnurr replied she did, Klebold asked "Why?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre

It can only be speculated how far the perpetrator's religious or spiritual quest went. But it sure is telling that at a critical moment like the one above, he wondered about the reasons for belief in God. We can speculate that he was wondering about these things for some time already before the shootings.

While I agree that belief in God might deter some prospective perpetrators from their actions, it's also worth noting that the despair and the social stigma resulting from a person's failure to believe in God can contribute to desperate actions (which might have been intended as attempts to force God "to show himself").

Both theists and atheists often underestimate the intense personal struggle of a person who makes an effort to believe in God but fails.

Is there individual consciousness after death?' seems like a pretty coherent question — coolazice

Maybe, but this is just a basic panpsychic position - if you're going to explicitly couple consciousness with the state after death, the implication is that not-living (=dead) things can have consciousness. And I'm not convinced anyone knows what that means.

But it's telling that the afterlife position can only be sustained by these kinds of word games that simply swap out one word for another, whichever is most convenient. It simply isn't philosophy. It's just some temporal extrapolation from one's present state to a state after death, and exactly how it's supposed to be given any coherent conceptual form is totally irrelevant. It's just ad hoc throwing together of terms - whatever it takes to justify this fantasy of extrapolation. The 'philosophical' content involved is wish fulfillment, nothing more. It doesn't respond to any problem, it doesn't illuminate anything - it's a vague notion aping at philosophical justification after the fact.

I think the issue I'm seeing here is that for example in popular fiction (or ancient religious tales), the afterlife is depicted as you getting a new body with your memories intact, and you continue living life. That’s coined as the term "afterlife" or you can call it second life or whatever. Like is the concept so muddled that one couldn’t follow the story plot or something?

But imagination isn't reality. Part of the benefits of fiction is that you can ignore the gaps of understanding (to an extent) for the sake of the plot and it works out for entertainment purposes. That explanation of magic doesn't make sense? Who cares, I like watching wizards shoot things out of their wands at each other. But if you want to talk about the concept as it plays out in reality, you have to propose something on solid coherent grounds, related to things we're familiar with and have evidence for, and so on in a way that you can describe what it is and how it works. There can't be any gaps, that's my own take that I extracted from anyways.

Most religions believe in continued existence. It largely hasn't been cause of suicides compared to other reasons.

Who's "them"?

Multiple people corroborating evidence is the nature of science. If it wasn't necessary than my own subjective experience would be plenty to be sure that I won't get deleted. Lol.

Who's "them"? — TiredThinker

The skeptics your OP is seeking to convince.

It would be good to have proof that all people, not just skeptics, could rely on as an alternative to blind faith.

Why would it be good to have such proof?

'Is there individual consciousness after death?' seems like a pretty coherent question. — coolazice

If by "individual" what's also meant, indeed presupposed, is embodied, then this question makes no sense whatsoever. (Unless, despite given that death reduces a lived body to a corpse (i.e. supple flesh to rotting meat) there's evidence of 'disembodied consciousness', which, of course, there isn't.) We are each of us, in fact, individuated by our bodies which are always uniquely positioned in and moving through spacetime, incorporating our unique self-experiences in the biochemical continuity of memories, every moment until each body's irreversible brain-death, no? Thus, dead means your you – "self-consciousness" – ceases ... like a candle's flame flickered out or a symphony's final note fallen silent.

:clap:

Yes. Also had a bit over half a decade of such experience, powerful ones at that. The only thing they taught is how powerful the mind/brain is, but it did not offer me an iota of evidence of anything else. These types of experiences tend to support whatever you already tend to believe in.

I think I did. You were trying to cast the idea of afterlife as an incoherent logical contradiction like a "square circle". I pointed out that the continuation of some form of life for the individual after the individual's body has died is not logically contradictory or incoherent, however implausible you might think it is. That is the difference you were asking for.

@StreetlightX "After life"? But life after life is just as conceptually incoherent as south of the south pole; so how might we conceive of this (topic) coherently?

It's only incoherent if you conceive of life as inseparably linked to the body, to physicality. This does seem a most plausible assumption, but it remains an assumption. There is no logical contradiction in the idea of disembodied life if you don't make that assumption.

So, it's not a matter of life after life per se, but a different form of life after physically embodied life. Not very plausible, indeed, but not logically contradictory or incoherent either.

That’s really the only concept of life we know of though, concepts are built upon the evidence we’ve seen of the phenomenon that allow us to make descriptions.

Now we can ask something like “can biology be built with silicon instead of carbon” without observing the former. We can make sense of this because they both consist of atoms, a familiar bedrock of concepts, so there is a path to affirm the claim. But as for afterlife, you’re otherwise proposing an unknown concept that you just attribute life to. We don’t know how to make sense of a disembodied life because we never observed such a thing, unlike molecular constructions, the problem is not just lack of data.

The embodied life / consciousness "assumption" is warranted by evidence as well as absence of the contrary, so I'd say it's more of an axiom. "Disembodied life / consciousness", however, is not logically contradictory, I agree, though it is clearly an incoherent juxtaposition of terms each of which are inconsistent with the observed facts of consciousness / life. I sniff special pleading ...

If by "individual" what's also meant, indeed presupposed, is embodied, then this question makes no sense whatsoever. (Unless, despite given that death reduces a lived body to a corpse (i.e. supple flesh to rotting meat) there's evidence of 'disembodied consciousness', which, of course, there isn't.) We are each of us, in fact, individuated by our bodies which are always uniquely positioned in and moving through spacetime, incorporating our unique self-experiences in the biochemical continuity of memories, every moment until each body's irreversible brain-death, no? Thus, dead means your you – "self-consciousness" – ceases ... like a candle's flame flickered out or a symphony's final note fallen silent. — 180 Proof

I think this can be the only reasonable understanding. People seem to want to peddle the notion of consciousness as briefly inhabiting our body then, at death, flying off to heaven/next life/whatever - but it seems pretty clear that consciousness is what the brain does and we have zero evidence of any disembodied consciousness existing. And frankly, having seen many people with brain injuries and organic diseases like dementia, it appears clear that consciousness is a fragile thing entirely dependent on one's corporeal conditions or meat suit...

There might be a way to find evidence of at least partial life after death if one lives on in one's donated organs:

"A few authors have reported perceived behavioral changes, mostly after heart transplantation. Pearsall et al6 report heart transplant recipients who have experienced changes in their music tastes to match the donor’s tastes or who have developed aquaphobia after having received the heart of a patient who drowned, without any knowledge of the donors’ tastes or death circumstances. Joshi reports the case of an 8-year-old child who received the heart of a murdered 10-year-old girl. The recipient began having recurring vivid nightmares about the murder, and later described the crime scene to the police with sufficient details to allow them to find and convict the suspect. However, to our knowledge, there has been no systematic research on this population." https://www.dovepress.com/perceived-changes-in-behavior-and-values-after-a-red-blood-cell-transf-peer-reviewed-fulltext-article-IJCTM#ref8

And:

"Nevertheless, there are indications that organ transplants are metaphysically contraindicated, both for the donor and recipient. At issue is whether the consciousness actually leaves the body at the moment brain wave activity and vital functions cease or whether it lingers for hours or even days. Also, there are indications that premature removal of organs can result in the possession of the recipient by the donor, causing the donor to remain "earthbound" and the recipient to be negatively influenced." (Tymn, Michael. “Are organ transplants metaphysically contraindicated?)

Here are a few relevant links:

Memory Transference In Organ Transplant Recipients - Am I You?

Can a heart transplant change your personality?

My personality changed after my kidney transplant.