Skepticism is acting as a boarder patrol, policing the boarders of rational scientific thought, thus maintaining an established and dignified paradigm. But what is the life cycle of a human paradigm, and how often have paradigm shifts occurred and isn’t it time for another one?

And this is why I love your work

There is no Bigfoot.
In this case the evidence that should be there if Bigfoot exists, is not there.
Sixty years! There is no Bigfoot. Let’s move on.

Evidence for life from non-life:
Viruses and prions – life or non-life?
Evolution – incremental change from simple to complex.
Plausible mechanisms for generating life from non-life.
Generation of the building blocks of life from non-life.
Absolutely no evidence for supernatural agency in the four decade history of science.

The afterlife:
Quite simply, there is no scientific evidence for an afterlife.
Therefore, it is irrational to believe in an afterlife.

I think it is OK for you to discuss any topic from your point of view. I don’t think that people are turned off to a discussion about how accurate or reliable certain types of evidence are.
For example- if you want to make the point that a claimed sighting of bigfoot with a blurry photograph isn’t proof of bigfoot’s existence, then I think you will have no problem with that. Anecdotes aren’t proof.

If you want to say that there is no bigfoot, then I think you’d have a problem because that is the same as claiming bigfoot will never be discovered.

Think of it this way… We can agree that nobody has ever come up with a chemical formula that produces life de novo. Further, we can see that past claims to the contrary were not evidence.
Now, can we agree that such a formula will never be found?
Why would one conclusion be demanded in the one case (bigfoot hasn’t been found, therefore there isn’t one) and the opposite conclusion be demanded in the other case (formula for life hasn’t been found, therefore we know it exists)?

Similarly with Dr. A’s NDE story– if you want to say his story isn’t proof of heaven- then that is clearly true and a point needing to be made.
If you want to claim there is no heaven (as you seem to hint in the last part of the posting on this), then I have no idea why I would agree with that.
Certainly Dr. A’s story doesn’t disprove the existence of heaven.

It seems we go from, “This person isn’t thinking clearly on topic ‘A’,” to “Therefore what he is saying about topic ‘A’ is wrong.”
But that is illogical.
Example– “I had a vision from the other side. I know without doubt due to this vision that the sun is about 93 million miles away.”
My reason for knowing might be crazy- but what I know isn’t.

Does any of what I’m saying make sense?

Modern physics shows us that there can’t be an immaterial mind that interfaces with a material brain. Conservation of mass/energy, spin, momentum, and so on, simply don’t allow something immaterial to have effects on something material. Do we reject all of physics so as to allow for spooky ghosts? Or do we abandon the idea of an immaterial mind?

The problem is that human intuition tells us things which are wrong. Our intuition tells us that there is an agent animating the brain and so we call that agent, the mind.

The idea of people having an immaterial mind can be harmless nonsense, or it can motivate people to do great harm. SBM has adopted brain death as being the definition of death, irreversible destruction of the brain. This definition allows us to state with complete certainty that a mass of human tissue without a living and functioning brain is not and cannot be a living human being.

However there are people who do want to change the definition of what a human being is, such that a single cell, a fertilized egg or zygote is a living human being with a full panoply of human rights. The number of living brain cells a brain must have to be considered to be not dead is not well established, however that number cannot be zero.

Again you miss the point. This was never about whether or not there is an afterlife. It was about how a specific person evaluated his own experiences, how trustworthy those perceptions are, and what reasonable conclusions he (and we) can draw from them. The afterlife was just the interpretation that the person put on those experiences in this case, but the topic could have been any number of experiences

I agree that people can find comfort in the idea of an afterlife but that is a separate issue altogether, but you want to conflate them. There have been many posts on this blog in which Steve has pointed out the flaws in a person’s thinking, yet you object to this one in particular. Just because this one is peripherally related to (barely brushes up against) the concept of religion, does not give it special priviledge against analysis of claims made. A reasonable person would not find offense to such a discussion, and ultimately this one surgeon’s experience has no impact on whether there is an afterlife regardless of a person’s point of view.

I never said, nor implied that you were. Why are you implying that I did?

locutusbrg-I can think of several instances where the belief in an afterlife may not be a good thing:
1. Crazy religious zealot who kills their self,spouse and children because they believe that this world is wicked/doomed/too flawed (whatever) so that they can be together in a perfect afterlife.

2.Someone sleepwalks through this life because they see it as a mere stepping stone to the ‘really good stuff’ on the other side.

3.Deeply religious person who values this life,does not take the necessary precautions,medical advice or planning for their eldercare,because God will provide,and if they miscalculate,all will be well in the afterlife (optimistic fatalism).

Anything that provides that ‘It will all come out in the wash’ kind of contentment,can also have a darker side that can mean misery,heartbreak,and burden on the believer,their dependents,and whomever has the unfortunate task of caring for them,if it comes to that.