What is the best proof there is an afterlife?

[SonOfMan]

What count as evidence?

As evidence for what? bigfoot, vampires, all that stuff I mentioned? A live specimen, a corpse, video proof, DNA samples, archaelogical evidence, and so on.

 

[GEddie]

An afterlife, if true, is not experienced via the human body.

Science can only track human experience via the human body.

So, science cannot prove (or disprove) a human afterlife.

ICXC NIKA

 

[SonOfMan]

An afterlife, if true, is not experienced via the human body.

Science can only track human experience via the human body.

So, science cannot prove (or disprove) a human afterlife.

ICXC NIKA

Mary, Jesus, and potentially Elijah and Enoch all have their human bodies.

 

[ericc]

As evidence for what? bigfoot, vampires, all that stuff I mentioned? A live specimen, a corpse, video proof, DNA samples, archaelogical evidence, and so on.

Stick with the afterlife. I am not interested in bigfoot and UFOs and other irrelevant info.

What constitute evidence for afterlife in your view. Define your version of afterlife firstly. Give examples. Are ghosts evidence an example of afterlife for instance. No point in going after a subject if you can’t define it. Must afterlife be material so that you can poke instruments into it or subdue or capture/decapitate it such as zombies (as portrayed in movies) or can it be non-material wispy like Casper?

 

[GEddie]

Stick with the afterlife. I am not interested in bigfoot and UFOs and other irrelevant info.

What constitute evidence for afterlife in your view. Define your version of afterlife firstly. Give examples. Are ghosts evidence an example of afterlife for instance. No point in going after a subject if you can’t define it. Must afterlife be material so that you can poke instruments into it or subdue or capture/decapitate it such as zombies (as portrayed in movies) or can it be non-material wispy like Casper?

Zombies do not constitute an afterlife: if they occurred, the original mind would be absent and the body not even alive (“undead”).

Non-solid does not mean “nonmaterial”. If ghosts exist and can be seen, recorded, sensed etc, even though not solid in the manner of the human body, in some way they must be material.

ICXC NIKA

 

[SonOfMan]

Stick with the afterlife. I am not interested in bigfoot and UFOs and other irrelevant info.

What constitute evidence for afterlife in your view. Define your version of afterlife firstly. Give examples. Are ghosts evidence an example of afterlife for instance. No point in going after a subject if you can’t define it. Must afterlife be material so that you can poke instruments into it or subdue or capture/decapitate it such as zombies (as portrayed in movies) or can it be non-material wispy like Casper?

An interaction would be nice, for starters. That the interactions be consistent and somewhat testable would be great. Whether my definition of afterlife is material or immaterial is irrelevant.

 

[GEddie]

An interaction would be nice, for starters. That the interactions be consistent and somewhat testable would be great. Whether my definition of afterlife is material or immaterial is irrelevant.

Not really, as if immaterial, no such tests would be possible.

ICXC NIKA

 

[ericc]

An interaction would be nice, for starters. That the interactions be consistent and somewhat testable would be great. Whether my definition of afterlife is material or immaterial is irrelevant.

What if no equipment is advanced sufficiently to measure it? Does it disprove its existence?

 

[Tomdstone]

The only thing close to “proof” I’ve ever seen with my own eyes has been a well-known psychic medium who seems to communicate with those who have passed on.
He has been able to do this since he was a child.
I’ve seen him bring forth information hundreds of times that he could not have known himself and often, information the client doesn’t even know, but later checks and finds to be true.

Not sure how else to explain what he can do.
.

Magicians can do the same.

 

[adrift]

I can’t help but think right now about the murder of Hypatia in the 4th Century–the Greek
mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher in Egypt…head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy…murdered because her smarts and innovative thinking branded her a witch by the Bishop of Alexandria.

.

Really?

A few years later, according to one report, Hypatia was brutally murdered by the Nitrian monks who were a fanatical sect of Christians who were supporters of Cyril. According to another account (by Socrates Scholasticus) she was killed by an Alexandrian mob under the leadership of the reader Peter. What certainly seems indisputable is that she was murdered by Christians who felt threatened by her scholarship, learning, and depth of scientific knowledge. …

What is your source? Is there another source besides Socrates or Chronicle of John of Nikiu ?

 

[adrift]

The only thing close to “proof” I’ve ever seen with my own eyes has been a well-known psychic medium who seems to communicate with those who have passed on.
He has been able to do this since he was a child.
I’ve seen him bring forth information hundreds of times that he could not have known himself and often, information the client doesn’t even know, but later checks and finds to be true.

Not sure how else to explain what he can do.

Other than that, everything else seems to be heresay.

Near death experiences can easily be brain chemicals and such. Visions of dead people can easily be hallucinations and wishful thinking, etc.

.

Cold reading

 

[esmero]

It is impossible for “hard proof” of the afterlife to exist.

The material world can be fully explained without such hypothesis, so Occam’s Razor will always dispense with it.

The afterlife is an spiritual reality, and as such it will only enjoy precisely the same scientific status of any other spiritual reality, like God, angels etc. Meaning it will never be scientifically proved or disproved. This is by design.

Every culture ever has always had traditions that involve the spirit world, even the “rational” and atheistic Buddhism has a very extensive spiritual mythology of the afterlife. Spirit sightings and encounters have been reported and recorded for thousands of years, and yet it’s 2015 and science is not an inch closer to a final verdict. This is by design.

The spiritual reality is not readily accessible to/through our material reality. When it’s been revealed to us, it’s not so we can learn more about the reality of the world, as if we’ve just discovered a new planet or state of matter. No, the only purpose for which the spiritual world is made manifest is to aid in our salvation. This is the design.

That said, here’s what kickstarted me on the path of discovery of the spiritual reality:

The argument from desire.

From Peter Kreeft:

Premise 1: Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.

Premise 2: But there exists in us a desire which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.

Conclusion: Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire.

You can read more here: peterkreeft.com/topics/desire.htm

As you can see, it’s not “hard proof”, like a mathematical proof or even scientific evidence. For the skeptic, the second premise can be perfectly explained away by the scientific idea of hedonic treadmil. Indeed, for many years, it was a sufficient explanation for me as well.

But as the article says…

Even the atheist Jean-Paul Sartre admitted that “there comes a time when one asks, even of Shakespeare, even of Beethoven, 'Is that all there is?”

And the “answer” doesn’t come from an impulse to deny that the material world should be everything. It comes from an attitude of “well, ok, let’s take it as an axiom that there is an spiritual reality and see how things fall into place from there.” At least for me it worked out that way.

By which I mean, the discovery of the spiritual reality is not just an intellectual-- and thus material-- matter, but a spiritual one. This is by design.

 

[GEddie]

"Let’s break out the booze, and have a ball

If that’s all there is."

ICXC NIKA

 

[SonOfMan]

Not really, as if immaterial, no such tests would be possible.

ICXC NIKA

The afterlife isnt immaterial. Mary and Jesus have material bodies, and potentially Elijah and Enoch too, or so it is taught. I mentioned this in a previous response to you.

 

[SonOfMan]

What if no equipment is advanced sufficiently to measure it? Does it disprove its existence?

We dont have equipment that can examine the human body? The last I heard, Mary and Jesus have their physical bodies and exist in the afterlife.

 

[GEddie]

The afterlife isnt immaterial. Mary and Jesus have material bodies, and potentially Elijah and Enoch too, or so it is taught. I mentioned this in a previous response to you.

I said that if the afterlife were immaterial, running tests would be impossible. This in response to a remark that immateriality was “irrelevant.”

ICXC NIKA

 

[SonOfMan]

I said that if the afterlife were immaterial, running tests would be impossible. This in response to a remark that immateriality was “irrelevant.”

ICXC NIKA

No, I said MY definition of the afterlife is irrelevant, but the Church obviously teaches that it is material.

So now that youve recognized that, according to the Church, the afterlife is material, running tests isnt impossible at all. What seems to be impossible at this point is that we have nothing to test or work with.

 

[ericc]

We dont have equipment that can examine the human body? The last I heard, Mary and Jesus have their physical bodies and exist in the afterlife.

1. You are assuming that the afterlife MUST come with a solid body then? What you heard is not important, but what you define the characteristics of afterlife is. We must have common understanding what the subject matter is in order to discuss it.
2. Would you include those that are immaterial as afterlife? Those which no existing equipment can measure or capture. A yes or no would do.

I am not denying that afterlife can not come with solid bodies. I am asking about those that don’t come with solid bodies. Even the ones that come with apparently solid bodies like Jesus, I am not sure that materiality of his body is the same as our common everyday bodies. He can walk through doors and walls, he can ascend into the clouds, he can walk on water, stuff that ordinary bodies can’t. But it would be unfair to pit God against the common everyday afterlife. So shall we stick to the common non-deity afterlife? After all for thousands of years, ghosts and spirits have been known throughout almost all cultures. For most part, they are not under our command to appear or disappear to do our bidding or for us to poke our instruments into.

Assuming that you have no capability to seize and control the denizens of the afterlife, how else would you determine the existence of such denizens?

 

[fred_conty]

I am generally religious (I believe in God), but not quite certain about the afterlife.

What is the best proof or arguments you’ve seen, heard, or read, proving that there is an afterlife?

And I mean actual empirical or logical evidence, not bible verses.

What is proof to one may not be proof to another. Some want to SEE it themselves and will not accept the testimony of others. So proof in this in itself requires some sort of faith in other people telling the truth and that they were not being fooled by someone else’s tricks or lies. Therefore we are not talking about some type of HARD proof but SOFT proof.

So it all really depends on what a person will accept as proof, and that it falls into the category of common sense.

Into this category of common sense would fall the goodly number of times that people have been seen to be taken over by some other type of evil being(s), commonly termed possession. In some of these cases, there can be no doubt that a person is controlled by another being because of what this evil being is able to do thru them and even to others around them. This isn’t the place to give a lengthy list of what they do because it would take to long in this thread. But there is plenty of evidence given in our modern day which positively points to some other beings besides ourselves that exist. Yet we cannot see them with our eyes in the person in whom they reside, but we can see their activities.

To me and to others, these other beings have said that they are from another place, and have given that other place a name … hell. If a person would believe their existence and what they say then there is another place besides earth where life exists.

To me there are too many cases of this going on today, not to mention those in the past, not to believe this. But again, anything can be denied, even the obvious.

Here are some “look see”.

ewtn.com/library/NEWAGE/BEGONESA.htm
diabolicalconfusions.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/the-story-of-r-the-real-life-story-that-inspired-the-exorcist/#more-123
unamsanctamcatholicam.com/apologetics/87-eucharistic-apologetics/338-nicola-aubrey-the-apologetical-exorcism.html
holyspiritinteractive.net/columns/guests/tomhoopes/darkbackward.asp
wnd.com/2008/03/58835/

 

[ericc]

I don’t understand why you’d say “there can be no doubt” that a person can be “possessed” by an evil being…when psychiatrists and mental health specialists have *many *possible mental and biochemical explanations for this phenomena.

.

Sometimes after all these secular professionals have been exhausted do the patients seek unconventional treatment i.e. exorcism. In exorcism, it is rather easy to detect possession based on the reaction to holy objects unbeknownst to the possessed whether an object is holy or otherwise. The exorcist must determine beyond doubt that it is not a medical issue.