Quote Originally Posted by bu villain View Post
This isn't evidence for an afterlife. It is evidence that religions understand a promise of reward/punishment helps to change behaviors.

One of the main purposes of religion is to answer the scary and difficult questions in life in order to make people feel better or more comfortable. If a religion claimed there were no afterlife it sure would be harder to control people's behaviour.

Even though I don't necessarily agree I will concede there are legitimate paranormal phenomenon for the sake of argument. That still doesn't prove an afterlife. We certainly don't understand such phenomena (if they exist at all) so I think it's rather premature to use them to claim it proves an afterlife. For example, it could be a lingering energy thats like a snapshot of a person's thoughts before they died. It hardly proves they still have consciousness. Also, there is absolutely no reason to believe its for eternity either.
Gary Schwartz's study demonstrated that something is left of the consciousness of people who are deceased. He of course gets flaked for it because it is not mainstream, but none-the-less he provided hard data that when looked at objectively makes a good case for something going on that is legitimate.

Also, the idea of whether or not there is an eternity is a different discussion, we can go into that too, but I thought this thread was simply about what we thought happens when you die. Even if that afterlife is only for a couple of moments to a couple of decades there is still something left to be understood about what makes us who we are.

Humans are physical, mental, and spiritual. We possess something that cannot be measured through hard science and numbers because these things transcend the physical. To understand their existence and to define them scientifically are two different things. I am suggesting that there is life...I am not suggesting that we have been able to scientifically pen the specifics of the transition into that life after life.