What will happen to the materialistic non-believers?

[iamthat]

Originally Posted by EdmundJohnstone

Still, the same physicist stated that "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood" and “There’s no way within those laws to allow of the information stored in our brains to persist after we die.”

Concluding that "For life after death to be possible, Carroll argues the laws of physics would have to completely change."

What do you have to say about this?

Hmmm. I suspect that physicists in the 19th century likewise considered that the Newtonian laws of physics explained the universe, and then along came Einstein and they had to rethink everything.

Ideally a scientist is open-minded, searching for answers and willing to adapt their ideas of the universe as new information is discovered.

In practice, science is often bound by very fixed ideas, and anything which does not fit these ideas is rejected or else they come up with an explanation which allows them to hold on to their existing model of the universe.

The obvious example is the scientific belief that consciousness, the mind, thinking etc are all products of the physical brain, and when the body dies then that is the end of consciousness and the mind.

So they say that Near-Death Experiences cannot possibly be consciousness leaving the body and experiencing events in other dimensions. Instead it is all occurring in the brain which is busy firing neurons as a final response to the impending physical death.

So yes, for life after death to be considered possible then the accepted laws of physics would have to change. Or maybe it is truer to say that scientists will have to accept that there are laws of physics that they have yet to discover.

I've just read an interesting piece put out by an assortment of scientists in a variety of disciplines called 'Manifesto for a Post-Materialistic Science'. A couple of extracts:

6. Science is first and foremost a non-dogmatic, open-minded method of acquiring knowledge about nature through the observation, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. Its methodology is not synonymous with materialism and should not be committed to any particular beliefs, dogmas, or ideologies.

12. Some materialistically inclined scientists and philosophers refuse to acknowledge these phenomena because they are not consistent with their exclusive conception of the world. Rejection of post-materialist investigation of nature or refusal to publish strong science findings supporting a post-materialist framework are antithetical to the true spirit of scientific inquiry, which is that empirical data must always be adequately dealt with. Data which do not fit favored theories and beliefs cannot be dismissed a priori. Such dismissal is the realm of ideology, not science.

You can see the full manifesto at http://opensciences.org/about/manife...ialist-science

Peace.