Deepak Chopra's New Book Says Afterlife is Scientifically Proven

[Nathyn]

I was listening to Bill Maher and they had Deepak Chopra on there, talking about his new book, "Life After Death: The Burden of Proof," which claims that the afterlife is provable scientifically.

Now, I concede that this guy's a quack. His methods are pseudoscientific, there's no proof for literal "reincarnation," but I do share a similar belief.

From a strictly deterministic (that is, scientific) standpoint, our individual consciousness can only exist as a manifest illusion. Being that it doesn't exist to begin with, it can't "die," but only changes. It is conceivable that such an illusion probably wouldn't exist after brain death, so I disagree with the Hindu concept of "atman," that we have a soul. But rather, our illusion of self dies change after death, going on to form other illusory consciousnesses, so there's no literal reincarnation and records claiming "memories of past lives" are nonsense.

Atheists, if they observe the world empirically and rationally, have to generally acknowledge these facts. The difference, though, is that they don't like being happy or calm about it.

Any romantic, existential, or mystic description of these facts and they have to angrily rant. Deep down, they are upset about death and feel the need to drag everybody else with them, because misery loves company. To truly probe truth with the strongest skepticism yields the fact that all that we know is founded upon intuition, in which case it's hard to even really condemn one idea or another.

Anyway, I noticed some similar threads:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=71964
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=73884

 

[fuelair]

And yet people keep paying him money to spread "fertilizer" all over them.

 

[Cosmo]

But rather, our illusion of self dies change after death, going on to form other illusory consciousnesses, so there's no literal reincarnation and records claiming "memories of past lives" are nonsense.

What?

 

[J. Arthur Hastur]

Okay, now how can it be scientifically proven, and is the experiment reproducible?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

IIRC his claim is that near death experiences prove it.

Same old crap, different crap station.

 

[Nathyn]

What?

I made a typo and I also didn't explain myself very well.

To reiterate my point: All knowledge is founded upon intuition, so if you disagree with any critical assumptions I make, all we can do is agree to disagree.

As it seems to me, the universe is still a singularity. Neither the past nor present moment exist because I can never experience them, but can only experience the movement of the present moment. I would be curious to see what light cosmologists shed on this issue, but for now this is what seems most reasonable to me.

Neither you nor I can be said to be in any way separate because the ego is a mythical idea. How can you say "you" are "you"? Your body is not you. If I chop off your arm, your consciousness still exists. And as it seems, your consciousness is housed in the brain. Your mind, as it seems, is determined by your genetics interacting with your environment. Well, if who "you" are is this body (your body)'s genetics interacting with your environment, then both you and your environment constitute "you." In effect, you are the universe and your ego is the universe as focused upon your body as an expression of itself.

There is no "afterlife," the term "afterlife," is mistaken because death does not exist. Death does not exist, because death can only exist if your ego exists and if things (including illusions of egos) are capable of being destroyed. Your ego is an illusion and nothing can be destroyed, except perhaps illusions. At your body's physical death, it's conceivable that the illusion of your ego will cease to exist (there is no more brain for the illusion to be housed in, unless there's some external faculty we're unaware of), so the illusion of you as you ceases to be.

But the things which make up your body and brain go on to fertilize the ground, to feed plants, which feed animals, which may eventually feed humans. And so, when you are driving your car to work, you are not merely sitting in a "car," but you are sitting in an object made up of billions of other beings, including parts of people. This is true for all objects. And after you die, all that makes "you" up physically will go on to form such things.

I and mainstream atheists agree on the same facts. What we disagree on is how depressing we ought to view them, how plainly we ought to describe them, and how angrily we ought to react to those who disagree with us.

 

[KingMerv00]

I and mainstream atheists agree on the same facts. What we disagree on is how depressing we ought to view them, how plainly we ought to describe them, and how angrily we ought to react to those who disagree with us.

What makes you think "mainstream atheists" are depressed about the lack of the afterlife? I'm sure not. It is nice not to worry about hell.

 

[Miss Anthrope]

What makes you think "mainstream atheists" are depressed about the lack of the afterlife? I'm sure not. It is nice not to worry about hell.

Exactly. Reincarnation sounds much worse than dying, too. The odds of being born in an improverished country, a war torn country or any of the variables sounds positively awful to me. I'll take this life and live it to the fullest, thank you.

 

[J. Arthur Hastur]

Exactly. Reincarnation sounds much worse than dying, too. The odds of being born in an improverished country, a war torn country or any of the variables sounds positively awful to me. I'll take this life and live it to the fullest, thank you.

OR how about living eternally in heaven with scads of fundamentalists! Yeesh! I'll take 'Nothingness' for $500 Alex!

 

[thaiboxerken]

If you are re-incarnated, without any memory of your past life... that's the same as dying. Without memory, you have no personality or experiences or reference, you are not you anymore. People are in a constant state of flux, with the past as reference and the present currently chaning them. If I recycle parts of a computer into another computer, was the first computer reincarnated, even though it has a different OS, new ram, new hard drive and none of the prior data on it?

Reincarnation is a retarded concept.

 

[Beerina]

Neither you nor I can be said to be in any way separate because the ego is a mythical idea. How can you say "you" are "you"? Your body is not you. If I chop off your arm, your consciousness still exists. And as it seems, your consciousness is housed in the brain. Your mind, as it seems, is determined by your genetics interacting with your environment. Well, if who "you" are is this body (your body)'s genetics interacting with your environment, then both you and your environment constitute "you." In effect, you are the universe and your ego is the universe as focused upon your body as an expression of itself.

You are made up of only a tiny subset of "the universe". It is incorrect to extrapolate some meaning from this, much less that "you are" the universe. The well-defined difference between the stuff that is you and the stuff that is me cannot be just waved away.

There is no "afterlife," the term "afterlife," is mistaken because death does not exist. Death does not exist, because death can only exist if your ego exists and if things (including illusions of egos) are capable of being destroyed. Your ego is an illusion and nothing can be destroyed, except perhaps illusions.

You have gone in exactly the opposite direction from Sartre, who pointed out that your experiences, your consciousness, was, as an experience, and therefore exists, and was therefore real (whatever it is.)

What it definitely is not, though, is an illusion.

 

[Nathyn]

What makes you think "mainstream atheists" are depressed about the lack of the afterlife? I'm sure not. It is nice not to worry about hell.

They are frustrated in some way because I see them extremely angry and afraid, despite the fact that they live in peaceful, wealthy countries.

Someone singing Christmas carols or saying, "God bless you," after they sneeze infuriates them.

All of that rage with no apparent source is what makes me think it's an existential crisis.

You are made up of only a tiny subset of "the universe". It is incorrect to extrapolate some meaning from this, much less that "you are" the universe. The well-defined difference between the stuff that is you and the stuff that is me cannot be just waved away.

Well, I don't think anything can exactly be "well-defined," from how everything relies upon intuition and how language is a limited in being able to formalize truth.

I am not the universe, not my ego, no, but the point is that there only is the universe, no ego. My ego is my mind telling itself that it exists apart from the universe. It doesn't, therefore it doesn't exist.

You have gone in exactly the opposite direction from Sartre, who pointed out that your experiences, your consciousness, was, as an experience, and therefore exists, and was therefore real (whatever it is.)

What it definitely is not, though, is an illusion.

Cognitive psychology strongly suggests that individual consciousness as we know it does not exist. Our consciousness is created by our genetics and experiences, and is simply a reflection of those, not a "separate thinking, acting being". The fact that it is an experience is irrelevant. If I take LSD I might be teleported to another dimension -- doesn't mean that place exists. And so too this could be said of all of our experiences.

Ot is critical thought and self-reflection, not experience, which is the ultimate gauge of truth because you can only come to regard our experiences as true through critical thought (or you can call it "skepticism" if you prefer).

If I am truly skeptical, I cannot even regard my own conscious experience as existing until proven. In the absence of being able to use anything other than my mind, I have no proof, and so there is no proof of anything. But despite this, I still choose to exist within this illusion, for whatever reason, and form truths that I intuitively find acceptable. Of these truths, I find the egolessness to be intuitive and experientially helpful.

 

[DangerousBeliefs]

They are frustrated in some way because I see them extremely angry and afraid, despite the fact that they live in peaceful, wealthy countries.

Someone singing Christmas carols or saying, "God bless you," after they sneeze infuriates them.

All of that rage with no apparent source is what makes me think it's an existential crisis.

Who is "they"?

Me thinks you paint with a very broad brush.

 

[Lonewulf]

Someone singing Christmas carols or saying, "God bless you," after they sneeze infuriates them.

Name me one.

I'm an atheist. Saying "bless you" when I sneeze, I don't really care. Christmas Carols, I don't really care. I'm not going to go sing them, and I'll say "bless you" to be polite, but it doesn't change my beliefs.

 

[nescafe]

I was listening to Bill Maher and they had Deepak Chopra on there, talking about his new book, "Life After Death: The Burden of Proof," which claims that the afterlife is provable scientifically.

Hahahaha. What will Chopra come up with next?

From a strictly deterministic (that is, scientific) standpoint, our individual consciousness can only exist as a manifest illusion.

Why is that? Current determinist materialist thought runs towards the idea that consciousness is encoded in the ever-changing pattern of electrical potentials and chemical gradients present in the brain. That relativly stable pattern exists -- calling it an illusion is a mistake.

Being that it doesn't exist to begin with, it can't "die," but only changes
It is conceivable that such an illusion probably wouldn't exist after brain death, so I disagree with the Hindu concept of "atman," that we have a soul.

mmm... translation errors. Whoever first translated "anatta" as "no-self" instead of "no soul" inflicted a grevious misunderstanding upon those of us who do not undertake the effort of learning Pali or Sanskrit to study Buddhism.

(a quick introduction to terminology:
Atman -- a Sanskrit term that in Buddhist jargon denotes an immortal, unchanging soul, or the idea of one. Attachment to this idea is one of the primary causes of suffering.
Anatman (Sanskrit) / Anatta (pali) -- Another term in Buddhist jargon that is the negation of the above term. Essentially a declaration that you do not have an immortal, unchanging part.)

But rather, our illusion of self dies change after death, going on to form other illusory consciousnesses

How? That sounds more like karma or interdependent origination than "reincarnation" of any sort.

so there's no literal reincarnation and records claiming "memories of past lives" are nonsense.

Indeed.

Atheists, if they observe the world empirically and rationally, have to generally acknowledge these facts. The difference, though, is that they don't like being happy or calm about it.

What about those who are both atheist and Buddhist, then?

 

[luvlee]

Me thinks you paint with a very broad brush.

That was my thought exactly. Stereotyping and generalizations like that apply to some but not all of any given sect, as Lonewulf pointed out.

Since everything is in the state of flux, then what is it that defines "me"? I am not the same as I was when I woke up this morning, so how do we define what it is that provides the continuity? Is the continuity just an illusion as well?

 

[Zep]

All well and good discussing the subject properly here, folks. Because Chopra simply trots out gobbledegook that just sounds like a mish-mash of your words run through a blender. That is, don't expect him to actually make sense, just sound like he actually makes sense.

 

[luvlee]

Are we talking mishmash or gobbledegook here, because, indeed, there is a significant difference. I was think hogglewash may apply, but one steps on to precarious grounds when one tries to entangle hogglewash and gobbledegook. It is like trying to utilize the principles of micro biology (or quantum physics, for that matter) and transferring the same principles into the macro. It becomes mishdegook or sometimes gobblemash, which, as we all know, can not be explained.

 

[Zep]

A.k.a: A steaming pile of wombat's doo's.

 

[Complexity]

Nathyn does not know whereof he speaks.

Nate, just admit you have an agenda and quit hiding behind the cloak of words that you don't understand very well.