I regularly reflect on those people they studied who had the corpus callostomy (split brain) surgery and the questions they asked them. In particular the people who, when asked if they believed in God, said "yes" and wrote "no."
If your left brain can believe in God while your right brain doesn't (or vice versa) it doesn't surprise me that peoples' responses to questions of belief change based on the wording.
This incredibly stable 80% belief in the afterlife is pretty astounding to me, though. Perhaps there's something to Ecclesiastes 3:11: "God has also set eternity in [80% of] the human heart[s]."
As far as I can tell nothing a of person's consciousness persists after the physical death of their brain. All of the reports of near death experiences, resurrections, ghosts etc. either can't be investigated to confirm or fall apart upon attempts to investigate and confirm. I don't think the idea of souls/afterlife is impossible, just not warranted to be believed in based on current data. So this is the one and only life I know I have. They fact that it is finite and temporary, makes it more precious and meaningful to me. It fills me with wonder and purpose, not despair and nihilism.
I know this is a minority belief, and most people find the idea of the end of their existence horrifying, unintuitive, and that the natural consequence would be justification for moral nihilism. I suspect that if there was less societal stigma/avoidance regarding discuss mortality and questioning supernatural assumptions, that these beliefs would be more common. At the same time I think to many it represents a unpalatable possibility and so may never be widely held.
27 years ago, I had a shared death experience with my grandfather. I’d never even heard of shared death experiences at that time. It was as real as anything I have ever experienced. So, yes, I believe in the afterlife and not on religious terms. There is actually a research group called shared crossings that are studying these things.
I hadn't heard the term "shared death experience" but I'm trying to think if this is considered one.
My father, who for most of his life was a very nominal Mainline Protestant and not very given to talk of the supernatural, always insisted that he knew the exact moment his father died because he clearly heard his father say: "Daddy loves." They were living on opposite ends of the US at the time, he only called home about once a week, and his dad had been sick for a long time, so there was no rational reason for him to be able to predict the minute his dad died.
I've never been quite sure what to do with this story.
Actually, from my understanding, that is a shared crossing. Sometimes people are in the same room, sometimes they are far away. The link to the shared crossing project allows people to view videos of what others have said. But they can also be contacted and will set up a Zoom meeting to do research for people who think they’ve had one
Constants are dramatic when we expect big variations!
One variation does seem to be consistent in many of these small wiggles. There's an inflection point around 2000. Possibly from 9/11?
The distinctions between the sections of Boomers pretty clearly reflect Vietnam. Those of us who were old enough to be drafted lost more of our beliefs, while the post-1955 births show less of a loss. They reached 18 after the war was over and the draft was halted.
Does, unfortunately, the move towards right wing politics skew what people believe now? What I mean is, are these results of "band-wagoning" vs person faith or belief?
I regularly reflect on those people they studied who had the corpus callostomy (split brain) surgery and the questions they asked them. In particular the people who, when asked if they believed in God, said "yes" and wrote "no."
If your left brain can believe in God while your right brain doesn't (or vice versa) it doesn't surprise me that peoples' responses to questions of belief change based on the wording.
This incredibly stable 80% belief in the afterlife is pretty astounding to me, though. Perhaps there's something to Ecclesiastes 3:11: "God has also set eternity in [80% of] the human heart[s]."
As far as I can tell nothing a of person's consciousness persists after the physical death of their brain. All of the reports of near death experiences, resurrections, ghosts etc. either can't be investigated to confirm or fall apart upon attempts to investigate and confirm. I don't think the idea of souls/afterlife is impossible, just not warranted to be believed in based on current data. So this is the one and only life I know I have. They fact that it is finite and temporary, makes it more precious and meaningful to me. It fills me with wonder and purpose, not despair and nihilism.
I know this is a minority belief, and most people find the idea of the end of their existence horrifying, unintuitive, and that the natural consequence would be justification for moral nihilism. I suspect that if there was less societal stigma/avoidance regarding discuss mortality and questioning supernatural assumptions, that these beliefs would be more common. At the same time I think to many it represents a unpalatable possibility and so may never be widely held.
You might find this interview (of an atheist who studies NDEs by another atheist) interesting. They seem to think that the data is more compelling than you do, but sill don't conclude that there's a God or an afterlife as a result. https://tim.blog/2024/10/25/near-death-experiences-dr-bruce-greyson-transcript/
27 years ago, I had a shared death experience with my grandfather. I’d never even heard of shared death experiences at that time. It was as real as anything I have ever experienced. So, yes, I believe in the afterlife and not on religious terms. There is actually a research group called shared crossings that are studying these things.
I hadn't heard the term "shared death experience" but I'm trying to think if this is considered one.
My father, who for most of his life was a very nominal Mainline Protestant and not very given to talk of the supernatural, always insisted that he knew the exact moment his father died because he clearly heard his father say: "Daddy loves." They were living on opposite ends of the US at the time, he only called home about once a week, and his dad had been sick for a long time, so there was no rational reason for him to be able to predict the minute his dad died.
I've never been quite sure what to do with this story.
https://www.sharedcrossing.com/
Actually, from my understanding, that is a shared crossing. Sometimes people are in the same room, sometimes they are far away. The link to the shared crossing project allows people to view videos of what others have said. But they can also be contacted and will set up a Zoom meeting to do research for people who think they’ve had one
Good evidence that Americans aren't becoming less religious -- they're becoming less Christian.
Constants are dramatic when we expect big variations!
One variation does seem to be consistent in many of these small wiggles. There's an inflection point around 2000. Possibly from 9/11?
The distinctions between the sections of Boomers pretty clearly reflect Vietnam. Those of us who were old enough to be drafted lost more of our beliefs, while the post-1955 births show less of a loss. They reached 18 after the war was over and the draft was halted.
Does, unfortunately, the move towards right wing politics skew what people believe now? What I mean is, are these results of "band-wagoning" vs person faith or belief?