A Scientifically Supported Heaven (and Hell)

[BigQuestioner]

I recently had an article published in the Journal of Mind and Behavior. It reveals, describes, and establishes that a natural, i.e., scientifically supported, heaven (and hell) actually exists. “Yeah, sure.” you may be thinking. But to check it out for yourself, just click on the article’s title given below. Be forewarned, however, the heaven that the article describes is likely not all of what you may have been envisioning. Though it can be an eternity of optimal real love and happiness in the presence of God, it’s spiritual, meaning you’re not there in body, and its timeless, meaning no events occur. Also, it’s psychological, meaning “it’s all in your mind.” As such, in Christian terms, it lends even more credence to Luke 17: 21, “… the Kingdom of God is within you.”

A postprint copy of the article, “The Theory of a Natural Eternal Consciousness: The Psychological Basis for a Natural Afterlife,” is posted on ResearchGate. (Note that you can skip through some of the more technical parts of the article if you wish.

I believe that, with an open mind, the natural afterlife can be viewed as compatible with most religions. But what do you think? I also believe that it forces everyone to answer the question: “What do I believe determines the content of my last experience and conscious moment in life: me, random chance, the causality of nature, or a God? Again, what do you think?

[MigL]

17 minutes ago, BigQuestioner said:

establishes that a natural, i.e., scientifically supported, heaven (and hell) actually exists

How is it scientifically supported to actually exist, if it is a mental construct, and different for every 'believer' ?

Does the bolded, underlined have a different meaning for you?

[OldChemE]

"The theory claims, and the article deduces from empirical knowledge", which is stated in the link, involves scientific thought, but does not prove anything, particularly since the authors have no proof for the timelessness they theorize occurs at death.  It might be true, and might be of some benefit in understanding what a person goes through at death, but it is not proven.   As such, its a significant stretch to say it is supported by science.  The idea that a person might experience some feeling attributable to heaven or hell at death is not new (pleasure or regret about how one lived one's life)

Edited September 5, 2020 by OldChemE
clarified

[swansont]

!

Moderator Note

Rules require that you post the details you want to discuss. A link is insufficient.

 

[BigQuestioner]

18 hours ago, MigL said:

How is it scientifically supported to actually exist, if it is a mental construct, and different for every 'believer' ?

Does the bolded, underlined have a different meaning for you?

Yes, it [the NEC] "is a mental construct," and as such it is supported by psychological principles--i.e., more specifically, cognitive science.

3 hours ago, swansont said:

!

Moderator Note

Rules require that you post the details you want to discuss. A link is insufficient.

 

Do not my statements and the "what do you think?" questions I pose in the last paragraph make clear what I want to discuss?  That is, on this forum I really want to discuss the compatibility of the natural afterlife, as described in the referenced article, to religion and, in this regard,  how one's religious beliefs (or nonbeliefs)  might effect their thinking concerning what (or who) determines the content of the NEC and natural afterlife.

Btw, on this forum I do not wish to debate the reality of the NEC or natural afterlife. This I have done often enough over the past three years in person, by email, and on psychology and philosophy forums.  Moreover, with the publication of the referenced journal article, hundreds of psychology and philosophy scholars have now reviewed it and have yet to find any legitimate flaws in the NEC theory, i.e., its logical deduction or the psychological principles upon which the deduction is based, or for that matter in the testing scenario that is presented.

Do I need to edit my post (can I?) to be more clear on what I want to discuss?  This is my first post on this forum.

[swansont]

59 minutes ago, BigQuestioner said:

Do not my statements and the "what do you think?" questions I pose in the last paragraph make clear what I want to discuss?  That is, on this forum I really want to discuss the compatibility of the natural afterlife, as described in the referenced article, to religion and, in this regard,  how one's religious beliefs (or nonbeliefs)  might effect their thinking concerning what (or who) determines the content of the NEC and natural afterlife.

 ...

Do I need to edit my post (can I?) to be more clear on what I want to discuss?  This is my first post on this forum.

!

Moderator Note

From rule 2.7

“members should be able to participate in the discussion without clicking any links or watching any videos.”

As I said, a link is insufficient 

You can put the information in a new post, rather than editing the original

 

[BigQuestioner]

3 hours ago, swansont said:

!

Moderator Note

From rule 2.7

“members should be able to participate in the discussion without clicking any links or watching any videos.”

As I said, a link is insufficient 

You can put the information in a new post, rather than editing the original

 

Okay, I get it now.  Since I can't see how to edit my post, I will add a short overview of the natural afterlife.

22 hours ago, BigQuestioner said:

I recently had an article published in the Journal of Mind and Behavior. It reveals, describes, and establishes that a natural, i.e., scientifically supported, heaven (and hell) actually exists. “Yeah, sure.” you may be thinking. But to check it out for yourself, just click on the article’s title given below. Be forewarned, however, the heaven that the article describes is likely not all of what you may have been envisioning. Though it can be an eternity of optimal real love and happiness in the presence of God, it’s spiritual, meaning you’re not there in body, and its timeless, meaning no events occur. Also, it’s psychological, meaning “it’s all in your mind.” As such, in Christian terms, it lends even more credence to Luke 17: 21, “… the Kingdom of God is within you.”

A postprint copy of the article, “The Theory of a Natural Eternal Consciousness: The Psychological Basis for a Natural Afterlife,” is posted on ResearchGate. (Note that you can skip through some of the more technical parts of the article if you wish.

I believe that, with an open mind, the natural afterlife can be viewed as compatible with most religions. But what do you think? I also believe that it forces everyone to answer the question: “What do I believe determines the content of my last experience and conscious moment in life: me, random chance, the causality of nature, or a God? Again, what do you think?

Overview of the Natural Afterlife

Below I give a short explanation of the natural afterlife, here assumed a heavenly one, at two levels of detail. You will find much more detail in the referenced article.

General. Because of a near-death dream and near-death experience (NDE), you believe you’ve die and gone to heaven. Then you actually do die. Assuming no supernatural consciousness of any sort emerges after death, for all eternity you never know that you are not in heaven, i.e., you will always “believe” (timelessly so) that you’re in heaven.

More Detailed. Below is a quote from the referenced article [with my insertions added within brackets]:

Quote

… we perceive time as a sequence of events, each evolving one discrete, present conscious moment at a time. Outside of these moments, e.g., dreamless sleep, we perceive nothing [i.e., we encounter timelessness]. Before death a still functioning brain produces one last present moment of a perceived event within some experience, perhaps a [heavenly] dream, and then is incapable of ever producing another moment that would cognitively supplant the last one from our consciousness. Therefore, we never perceive and thus are never aware that our last experience is over. So a remnant of consciousness, an experience [of being in heaven] paused in a moment at a point in time, will become imperceptibly timeless, i.e., static, and deceptively eternal relative to our perspective.

 The natural afterlife is actually an illusion, which can only be experienced at death since it is the only time in life in which a conscious moment is not followed by another. Though only an illusion, the natural afterlife seems real to the dying person and, in fact, the emotions evoked by the illusion are real as are the emotions we experience when waking up from a frightening dream. Below is another quote from the referenced article that gives an inkling into this illusion and indicates that the natural afterlife phenomenon

Quote

... is verified to some degree with many human encounters with timelessness—e.g., dreamless sleep—each being perceptively like death. Especially relevant are those encounters after which we awaken instantly startled when our first conscious moment is inconsistent with our last—e.g., when waking up after having an intense dream. One needs only to ask: “Suppose I had never woken up?”

 

Edited September 5, 2020 by BigQuestioner
left of the "d" on "reference"

[Phi for All]

I think you have a different definition of "scientifically supported". I see conjecture and vagueness and hand-waving with emphasis. Lots of belief and guesswork but none of it trustworthy. I recommend you stick to a more rigorous method of identifying where the general concept of an "afterlife" can be meaningfully supported before getting us on board with your version of it. 

Why do you think the concept of Heaven and Hell need to be scientifically supported? Aren't they, by definition, unobservable and therefore outside of measurement by natural means (IOW, supernatural)?

[md65536]

https://www.fallacyfiles.org/redefine.html

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Definist-Fallacy

1. Define "heaven" to be something that's "scientifically supported." (Or maybe something simply vague enough that it can't be scientifically refuted?, ie. "not even wrong"?)

2. Therefore, heaven is scientifically supported. QED.

 

1. Define something as whatever I want to argue.

2. Therefore, whatever I want to argue.

Edited September 5, 2020 by md65536

[MigL]

Perception is not reality.
There is a reason the scientific method is used to define the workings of the world around us.
Your conjectures are by definition, not repeatable, and don't yield the same results when tried on different people.
IOW, this is not science of any kind.

[BigQuestioner]

Perception is what we perceive as reality.  Our emotions are real, and those that are present in our last conscious moment--which will be aroused by our last perceived experience, real or not--is what we will be left with for an eternity.

[joigus]

I do have a picture of Hell for scientists.

It consists of spending all eternity proving every silliest craziest hallucinatory idea wrong. 

And it's here.

I don't know about Heaven, but Hell is nothing like what I expected it to be.

[dimreepr]

33 minutes ago, BigQuestioner said:

Perception is what we perceive as reality.  Our emotions are real, and those that are present in our last conscious moment--which will be aroused by our last perceived experience, real or not--is what we will be left with for an eternity.

Why do you want that to be true?

It only work's if your last perception is a happy/contented one, and that is happening now; so who cares what happens next...

[BigQuestioner]

5 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Why do you want that to be true?

It only work's if your last perception is a happy/contented one, and that is happening now; so who cares what happens next...

The NEC theory and natural afterlife have nothing to do with what I want. They have to do with what is.

[pzkpfw]

I have a dead Plasma TV - pain in the neck to get rid of so sitting in my spare room for now.

The last image it showed before it went "pop" will forever be the last image it ever showed. (Past tense)

But right now it's just blank. It's not doing anything, nobody looking at it sees anything.

So I get that the last thought or feeling a person had before they died is the last thought or feeling that person will ever "have", but I don't see how that has any real meaning. When a person dies, their thoughts and feelings are gone. They are nothing. They don't continue to actually "have" that thought or feeling, especially when you write "Assuming no supernatural consciousness of any sort emerges after death".

So how's this mean anything?

Edited September 7, 2020 by pzkpfw

[dimreepr]

17 hours ago, BigQuestioner said:

The NEC theory and natural afterlife have nothing to do with what I want. They have to do with what is.

Why would you want to fantasise about something you have no control over?

Which is a shame because I like the idea, it's a good incentive to be content with now; whatever now we find ourselves in. 😉

Pascals wager actually works in this scenario.

[BigQuestioner]

8 hours ago, pzkpfw said:

I have a dead Plasma TV - pain in the neck to get rid of so sitting in my spare room for now.

The last image it showed before it went "pop" will forever be the last image it ever showed. (Past tense)

But right now it's just blank. It's not doing anything, nobody looking at it sees anything.

So I get that the last thought or feeling a person had before they died is the last thought or feeling that person will ever "have", but I don't see how that has any real meaning. When a person dies, their thoughts and feelings are gone. They are nothing. They don't continue to actually "have" that thought or feeling, especially when you write "Assuming no supernatural consciousness of any sort emerges after death".

So how's this mean anything?

First of all, your Plasma TV analogy is flawed, as are those I've previously addressed elsewhere (with a projector and a computer).  The flaw is that your TV has zero consciousness, i.e., it does not perceive nor has any awareness of its last image.  

Second, the problem you are having in grasping the natural afterlife, as do many, is that you are viewing the situation purely from a material perspective, i.e., from the frame of reference of the living.  You must view it only from the frame of reference of the dying.  That is, you must remain in the mind of the dying person.  From this perspective, what you see, know, and feel only comes from what you can perceive. (This is not true for a TV.)  Moreover, you know of nothing from that which you cannot perceive, i.e., death.  You may think you're in heaven, because of a dream or NDE, and nothing will ever happen thereafter, because of your transition into and actual death (i.e. subsequent timelessness), to make you ever think otherwise. Get it? It's really not rocket science.

Third, on this forum I would like to discuss the impact of the natural afterlife on religion, so for the benefit of you and others, I repeat what I stated above to swansont:

Quote

...  on this forum I do not wish to debate the reality of the NEC or natural afterlife. This I have done often enough over the past three years in person, by email, and on psychology and philosophy forums.  Moreover, with the publication of the referenced journal article, hundreds of psychology and philosophy scholars have now reviewed it and have yet to find any legitimate flaws in the NEC theory, i.e., its logical deduction or the psychological principles upon which the deduction is based, or for that matter in the testing scenario that is presented.

 

[Area54]

22 minutes ago, BigQuestioner said:

Third, on this forum I would like to discuss the impact of the natural afterlife on religion

The difficulty is that discussing the impact of a hypothetical concept that one finds either wrong, meaningless or trivial is not overly exciting.

My view is that your concept would not be perceived as compatible with the majority view of of the major religions. The only one I can see a possible match (and that a slim one) is with bhuddism.

[MigL]

33 minutes ago, BigQuestioner said:

It's really not rocket science.

You got that right; it isn't any kind of science.

Your whole premise is based on 'concepts' easily dismissed by most people on this forum; which you don't want to discuss.

36 minutes ago, BigQuestioner said:

 on this forum I do not wish to debate the reality of the NEC or natural afterlife.

So, once again, someone claims something impossible/meaningless is real, and draws all kinds of absurd conclusions from that.
I now know what you meant by "scientifically supported to actually exist", and it is definitely not what the rest of us mean.

[BigQuestioner]

4 hours ago, Area54 said:

The difficulty is that discussing the impact of a hypothetical concept that one finds either wrong, meaningless or trivial is not overly exciting.

My view is that your concept would not be perceived as compatible with the majority view of of the major religions. The only one I can see a possible match (and that a slim one) is with bhuddism.

Funny how you don't acknowledge that your analogy was flawed, and don't want to address the specifics of my explanation regarding the need for viewing the NEC (and natural afterlife) from the proper frame of reference.  Makes me think 1) why did I even bother to try to explain and 2) you don't really want to understand the NEC Theory (perhaps because if you did, you might have to deal with it). This ends my dialog with you.

[pzkpfw]

8 hours ago, BigQuestioner said:

First of all, your Plasma TV analogy is flawed, as are those I've previously addressed elsewhere (with a projector and a computer).  The flaw is that your TV has zero consciousness, i.e., it does not perceive nor has any awareness of its last image.  

...

 

 

That the T.V. has no consciousness is no issue, because there is zero evidence that consciousness persists after the death of a person.

It doesn't matter what the last thought of a person was (heaven, hell, pizza), as after death they longer have any thought.

 

[joigus]

3 hours ago, BigQuestioner said:

Funny how you don't acknowledge that your analogy was flawed,

An argument can be flawed; an analogy can't. An analogy can bee too far fetched, or maybe inadequate to illustrate the property it's meant to address. Analogies by definition incorporate only certain features. They are imprecise by construction. Otherwise they wouldn't be analogies; they would be descriptions, syllogisms, etc.

Analogy: a comparison of one thing with another thing that has similar features; a feature that is similar. (Oxford)

The discourse that you're quoting really is flawed. It doesn't take much to find inconsistencies or unexamined assumptions. For example:

On 9/5/2020 at 10:09 PM, BigQuestioner said:

 The natural afterlife is actually an illusion, which can only be experienced at death since it is the only time in life in which a conscious moment is not followed by another.

What time in life is the afterlife that you experience at death, you say? And how do you know anything about the perception of death?

On 9/5/2020 at 10:09 PM, BigQuestioner said:

we perceive time as a sequence of events, each evolving one discrete, present conscious moment at a time.

What evidence do you have that perception of time is discrete? It looks continuous to me.

Or, as @md65536 points out: What is a "heavenly experience"?

On 9/6/2020 at 1:36 AM, md65536 said:

1. Define "heaven" to be something that's "scientifically supported." (Or maybe something simply vague enough that it can't be scientifically refuted?, ie. "not even wrong"?)

Actually, I firmly believe that at the moment of death there is no heavenly anything. There is only the universal experience of absolute jerkiness. It's neither hell nor heaven. It lasts somewhere between 24 and 48 hours. And after that, there is three thousand eons of doubt, ending in an eternity of definite moronity.

How do you like that? Now, tell me that's not at least as plausible as what you're saying.

[BigQuestioner]

31 minutes ago, joigus said:

An argument can be flawed; an analogy can't.

Okay, let's say its a false, or faulty, analogy, which it is for the reason given.

[joigus]

6 hours ago, BigQuestioner said:

Okay, let's say its a false, or faulty, analogy, which it is for the reason given.

Cherry-picking, are we? You seem to have missed these other things I said:

6 hours ago, joigus said:

The discourse that you're quoting really is flawed. It doesn't take much to find inconsistencies or unexamined assumptions. For example:

On 9/5/2020 at 10:09 PM, BigQuestioner said:

 The natural afterlife is actually an illusion, which can only be experienced at death since it is the only time in life in which a conscious moment is not followed by another.

What time in life is the afterlife that you experience at death, you say? And how do you know anything about the perception of death?

On 9/5/2020 at 10:09 PM, BigQuestioner said:

we perceive time as a sequence of events, each evolving one discrete, present conscious moment at a time.

What evidence do you have that perception of time is discrete? It looks continuous to me.

Or, as @md65536 points out: What is a "heavenly experience"?

On 9/6/2020 at 1:36 AM, md65536 said:

1. Define "heaven" to be something that's "scientifically supported." (Or maybe something simply vague enough that it can't be scientifically refuted?, ie. "not even wrong"?)

Actually, I firmly believe that at the moment of death there is no heavenly anything. There is only the universal experience of absolute jerkiness. It's neither hell nor heaven. It lasts somewhere between 24 and 48 hours. And after that, there is three thousand eons of doubt, ending in an eternity of definite moronity.

How do you like that? Now, tell me that's not at least as plausible as what you're saying.

You have an impressive ability to sidestep every major argument people give you and concentrate really hard on the most irrelevant accessories and adornments. No wonder you can prove anything to yourself.

How do you define "heavenly"? My suggested picture of the afterlife I find every bit as compelling as yours.

[MigL]

12 hours ago, joigus said:

My suggested picture of the afterlife I find every bit as compelling as yours.

That's what happens when people  ( more specifically, BigQuestioner ) start confusing subjective beliefs and opinions with actual science.