As a scientifically minded person. The propensity for the left to go for "woo"...

[nadinbrzezinski]

88. Let me offer you a slightly different view of this

and I know precisely what threads you are talking about.

That is the literal bleeding edge of science. My cousin happens to be in the field, no, not of life after death, but advanced particle physics. So unfortunately at funerals, and shive's we've had some fascinating conversations on string theory, the holographic universe and yes, consciousness as part of the physical world and Quantum Theory.

We simply do not know, what happens after death. We know one essential principle of physics is that information is not lost. If it is, it violates every principle we know of modern physics. Just as energy is preserved, so is information. Some folks have a problem believing this is possible, but it is an accepted principle of modern physics. And yes, it includes your and my memories.

Now soul, and it's existence, that is for theologians to discuss. Science (and the bleeding edge) has nothing to say on heaven or hell, or god (there are a few caveats on the last one) for that matter.

Consciousness, on the other hand, is very much now part of the discussions in Quantum Mechanics, and how it functions. See, that might be essential for the universe to be described and intelligence might be the way the universe expresses it's consciousness and identity. God, I told there were caveats, might be the way we find comfort in the universe, and it is fully a creation of this consciousness. Nor, in reality, is it limited to humans. If everything we know is correct about life and it's rise, we are not alone, we just have not found that out definitely yet. And yet is the operative term and when we do, that will be on the level of the discovery of fire.

Now to the research done by Parker. If you carefully listen to the interview he was clear. While he believes that life after death is possible, this is not a testable hypothesis, unless you are a philosopher. He has nothing to say about the soul. That is for philosophers and theologians. But he has interviewed these kids, and transcribed fifty years of research, of kids with memories not of Napoleon, or Mary Antoinette, or any of these easy to find about people, but of pretty obscure characters. The kids had no logical way to be exposed to them. They were not even related.

So if these kids are relaying memories of events that they had no way to know, or their families for that matter, it is proper to ask what the fuck is going on? And if consciousness is real, as modern bleeding edge Physics now believes it is, and it needs a brain to express itself in a way that you and I will get it, well, it is not that crazy. Though it is truly at the very edge of science.

Suffice it to say, at one time leading edge science said that the world was not at the center of the universe, and a few people, like oh Francesco Bruno, died for that belief, which at the time was called heresy by the church. Nor did they have a good solid way to test it, so under the modern definition of the scientific method, it might as well have been called woo. Then we had another who said things lived in water and were the origin of disease and we should boil milk. Oh he was thought off as nuts, until he came up with a rabies vaccine. Are you saying that science should not go to the edge because you are afraid of woo? Suffice it to say, leading edge science tends to rarely pan out, when it does, it is what Kuhn called "the Nature of a Scientific Revolution." My friend, I believe we are really on the border of one of those due to the nature of the research we are doing in both astronomy and physics.

And yes, Quantum Mechanics, with things like entanglement, is directly related to the quantum brain and consciousness. Oh and many scientists, while will not admit it, are also pretty much philosophers. Just listen to COSMOS, for example. There is plenty of that in Sagan's presentation. You don't believe me? Listen to Adam Greene speak about the universe. And those are just two examples.