George Lakoff is an American cognitive linguist and philosopher, best known for his work, Metaphors We Live By, which he co-authored with Mark Johnson. In this six-minute interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn, he makes a powerful case against the very coherence of the notion that we have an afterlife.
For my part, I think Lakoff’s case against personal immortality is the strongest one I’ve ever seen, and I’d be interested to see how readers respond to it. I have a few brief thoughts, which I’d like to share.
Dr. Jeffrey Long is a radiation oncologist who has studied over 5,000 NDEs. In a video titled, “Can science prove the afterlife?”, he discusses cases of people born blind who claim to have experienced vision during their NDEs. The case of Vicki, which he mentions one minute into the video, is particularly impressive. (Dr. Long has also authored an article titled, “Near-Death Experiences Evidence for Their Reality” [Missouri Medicine 2014 Sep-Oct; 111(5): 372–380] which discusses these cases in the section titled, “Line of Evidence #3.”)
Lakoff would doubtless object that the very notion of disembodied seeing makes no sense, and that the accounts should be accorded no credence. NDE proponents might regard this rebuttal as a manifestation of materialist prejudice, but I think Lakoff has a point. If one is going to defend a doctrine of immortality, then one needs to be able to coherently state it. To his credit, NDE researcher Raymond Moody (who has a PhD in philosophy as well as an MD) recognizes this problem and squarely faces up to it in a recent interview hosted by Sergei Davidoff, on the About Freedom show. In his interview, Moody laments the fact that most people who attend public gatherings on NDEs have no desire to philosophize about survival after death. What they want is to hear more NDE accounts.
Two questions that NDE proponents need to tackle are: who is it that sees in an NDE, and what is it that they see with?
Who is it that sees? Is it the individual who’s clinically dead? That would be the most straightforward interpretation. Another possibility is that it is God who is doing the seeing, and that the clinically dead individual sees “with God’s eyes,” as it were. Perhaps it is only when we are dead that we are able to see in this way.
What is it that these individuals see with? The notion of a disembodied spirit seeing something seems to make no sense. Spirits don’t absorb or reflect light. The notion of “consciousness apart from the body” seeing, as Dr. Long proposes in his video, appears to be vulnerable to the same difficulty. Do these individuals see with an astral body, and not a soul? But in that case, why is it that blind people are unable to see, in everyday life, even though they presumably possess an astral body? The hypothesis that clinically dead individuals see with God’s eyes sounds more promising, but it raises a host of questions about God’s physicality (if He can see, then He must be in some sense physical) and His relationship with the cosmos, as its Creator. Perhaps Isaac Newton was on the right track when he described space as God’s sensorium.
I don’t claim to have any answers to these questions. Nevertheless, I believe they must be addressed. Until NDE researchers put forward a provisional model of the mechanics of immortality, their message will be rejected out of hand by many people of a scientific bent. Does anyone know of a book that proposes such a model? Over to you.
colewd,
I’m as bad as anyone at typos, Bill, but your regular references to Blazing Saddles still make me chuckle.
colewd:
Don’t you see the irony? If I’m a “frog in the well”, then so are you. You’re telling me “you can’t judge God from down here”, yet you’re judging God from down here.
God sacrificing his son is a loving act, but by itself it only shows that God can love, not that his love is perfect. If God’s love is perfect, he never does anything unloving, not one single thing. That means that it only takes one unloving act to prove that God isn’t perfectly loving. I could spend all day listing the horrible things that God (assuming he exists) is responsible for, and you have to argue that not one of them is unloving. Good luck with that.
keiths:
colewd:
We don’t have complete autonomy. There are things we can’t do, no matter how much we want to. And if the development of mankind is the goal, why doesn’t God just create us already developed? It would save an awful lot of suffering.
colewd:
keiths:
colewd:
“Driven to do the will of the Father” doesn’t sound much like freedom, and in any case you haven’t responded to my point. If the ability to choose evil is an essential part of being human, then Jesus wasn’t human. This contradicts Christian doctrine. If you accept Christian doctrine and believe that Jesus was fully human, it inescapably follows that the ability to choose evil is not a requirement for being human.
colewd:
It’s a thing. It’s recognized by both theists and atheists as a serious problem for theism.
keiths:
colewd:
Unless earthquakes and other natural evils are possible, free will doesn’t exist? That makes no sense.
Again, why doesn’t God just create us already developed? If he’s omnipotent, he has the power to do that.
keiths:
Alas, I estimate the large majority of people use the former method, because it leads to ironclad conclusions. It basically defines “facts” as whatever assertions support the desired conclusion. Any other assertions are “alternative facts” or maybe “subjective” or “not proven to my satisfaction.”
I have come to accept that your “conversion” at age 14 may have changed your target, but not your method, which continues to be impervious to the slings and arrows of different viewpoints, which are of course “not valid”.
I am not judging God. I am simply inferring that the universe is best explained by a creator and that the bible is a credible description of the Creators role in human history. I fully acknowledge that I am not in position to judge the Creator of the universe. Were both in the well 🙂
I think this is important common ground that we have come to the same inference. Perfectly loving is something I need to think about as it may not make sense in an imperfect world driven by free will.
Suffering is a complex theological issue and maybe better for its own op.
The ability to choose evil is different than not choosing evil. He spent 40 days in the desert training himself not to choose evil. I had not thought about the significants of Yeshua’s (Jesus) time in the desert until you brought this up. Thanks
Do you have any ideas why God might have chosen the path He did?
Flint:
I’ve had pretty good success with my method, which is to change my views in response to good arguments but not in response to poor ones. For example, I could be persuaded that it was “inappropriate and useless” for me to assume for the sake of argument that the Christian God exists, as I’ve done throughout this discussion, if someone were to present a sound argument in support of that claim.
You and I were debating that claim, but you haven’t responded to my latest comments (here and here), in which I point out that faith-based claims and factual claims aren’t mutually exclusive* and that it’s legitimate to assume for the sake of argument that a factual claim is true.
* A prime example is the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary. Pope Pius XII declared:
That’s about as faith-based as it gets, but it nevertheless is a factual claim. It asserts something about reality. It asserts that it’s a fact that Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven.
colewd:
But you are judging God. You’ve judged him to be perfectly loving. If it’s legitimate for you to judge him from inside the well, then it’s legitimate for me.
By the way, if you think that “the bible is a credible description of the Creators role in human history”, you should know that nowhere in the Bible is it claimed that God is perfectly loving. It’s the opposite. The Bible explicitly describes many horrific and unloving acts committed by God, as when he ordered the slaughter of the Amalekites:
Nothing loving about that, much less perfectly loving. Or consider the story of Job. God allows Job to be tormented mercilessly, not for any noble reason, but simply because he wants to win a bar bet with Satan. It’s appalling and unloving.
colewd:
Most Christians believe that God is perfectly loving. It’s good that you’re willing to consider the possibility that they’re wrong. The evidence certainly suggests that they are.
colewd:
keiths:
colewd:
It’s relevant here, because a perfectly loving God wouldn’t want his creatures to suffer unnecessarily.
keiths:
colewd:
If Christian orthodoxy is correct, Jesus didn’t need to be train himself not to choose evil. He was sinless. He had spent his entire life up to that point not choosing evil, and since he was God, there was never even the remotest chance that he would choose evil.
colewd:
keiths:
colewd:
No, not if he’s both perfectly loving and omnipotent. Can you think of any good reasons?
I have not Judged him I have simply not rejected the claim based on your arguments.
Again you are attempting to judge Gods actions. I understand what this looks like from a human perspective.
Why did he have to spend 40 days in the desert?
To build a civilisation that has lasting value.
colewd:
You’ve argued that he is perfectly loving based on Jesus’s sacrifice:
You also say:
You’re arguing in support of a claim about God based on evidence you’re citing. How is that not a judgment about God? I, too, am arguing for a claim about God based on evidence I’m citing. If it’s illegitimate for me to render a judgment, then it’s illegitimate for you. You’re right here beside me at the bottom of the well.
Also, note that the evidence you cite — God’s sacrifice — is itself a judgment about God. You’ve judged that God exists, that Jesus is his son, and that Jesus’s death amounted to a sacrifice on God’s part. You presumably also believe that Jesus’s death atoned for our sins, and that faith in Jesus provides a way for us to achieve salvation. All of those are judgments about God, and you’re making them from our shared position at the bottom of the well.
keiths:
colewd:
The human perspective is all we have, and from that perspective, God doesn’t appear to be perfectly loving. Why would you assume that he is? It’s a faith-based claim that runs counter to the evidence.
I’m willing to bet that you believe that God is perfectly loving not because you’ve considered the evidence, but rather because it’s part of standard Christian doctrine. You were taught that God is perfectly loving, and you simply accepted it on faith.
keiths:
colewd:
I think it’s because someone thought it made a good story, so it became part of the oral tradition upon which the gospels were later based. It doesn’t make any theological sense since there was never any chance that Jesus, being God, would succumb to temptation.
It does make sense if the person who came up with the story thought that Jesus was human, though, and there’s a lot of evidence that Jesus himself didn’t think he was God.
keiths:
colewd:
keiths:
colewd:
Are you paraphrasing someone? I ask because of your use of the British spelling.
Why doesn’t God create us already developed, so that we can form a civilization of “lasting value” from the get-go? Why subject us to all of this unnecessary suffering?
I have argued that Jesus sacrifice is evidence for the claim he is perfectly loving. This is a different claim than asserting that he is perfectly loving.
I am not assuming he is. My claim is quite modest on this point.
You’re making an incorrect assumption here. I have no theological commitment to the claim of “perfectly loving”. A term which I have no idea how to define.
Or because he needed to as a process to overcome his human nature to be tempted.
No just spell check correction.
How would a human and God partnership be possible with this strategy?
colewd:
OK, but you did say that you had “no basis to doubt this claim”. If you don’t doubt that God is perfectly loving, doesn’t that mean you accept that he is perfectly loving?
Anyway, if you don’t feel the need to toe the line of Christian orthodoxy on this question, that’s a good thing. There’s a lot about Christian doctrine that doesn’t make sense.
Here’s a stab at it: God’s love is perfect if it is boundless, unconditional, and universal. A perfectly loving God never does anything unloving.
keiths:
colewd:
If he had led a sinless life up to that point, why did he suddenly need to overcome his human nature? It was never a problem before. His divine nature always called the shots.
And if he did need to go through the process, how did that work? Did God ring up Satan and say “Hey, could you do me a favor? Jesus is out in the desert and he needs someone to tempt him so that he can overcome his human nature.”
Also, the fact that Satan even bothered to tempt Jesus is evidence that Satan himself didn’t think Jesus was God. Why waste the effort if he knew there was no chance that Jesus would give in? The story makes far more sense if Jesus was human.
keiths:
colewd:
Why wouldn’t it? What about being already developed would prevent humans from entering into partnership with God?
Do you know of the origin of the “perfectly loving” claim?
I have a somewhat different take from Keiths on this stuff:
Sorry, but there are no gods. Not even yours.
Nonsense. Your imaginary god is about the worst possible inference. It assumes facts not in evidence, it’s not consistent, and it cannot be tested in any way.
Flat-out bullshit. The bible might be a credible description of some construction methods that were used, but beyond that it’s simply ludicrous. Which is obvious since gods are imaginary. The Bible is a work of fiction, and stonkingly implausible fiction at that.
Agreed, you can’t rationally judge what doesn’t exist. Why not focus on what we can learn from observation and test? You are deliberately blinding yourself.
You consistently assume your conclusions. There are no gods. These nonexistent gods do not “choose” anything. You are building one silly assumption on top of another – IF there are gods, yours exists. And IF yours exists, it does as you believe. And IF it does as you believe, actual reality is difficult to rationalize away. So, like Kurt Wise, you are obligated to dismiss reality in favor of fantasy, lest you lose your faith and must live in an inferior world. Poor boy!
But back up a few assumptions, and question the first one. Rational people not raised brainwashed into a religious faith have no problems with reality. I know you can’t try that, but your efforts at self-delusion are at least funny.
colewd:
I’m pretty sure Augustine believed it, but I don’t know if it originated with him.
Anyway, the fact that it’s a post-biblical innovation shouldn’t be surprising given that the Judeo-Christian concept of God has been evolving for centuries and continues to evolve today. Yahweh used to be the son of another god El (Jesus’s grandfather, lol), he had siblings, he had a body, he wasn’t omniscient, he made mistakes, he could change his mind, he could be dishonest, and so on. Compare that to the immaterial and perfect God of Aquinas. They might as well be different Gods, and you could argue that they actually are. They’re connected by a bunch of evolutionary intermediates, just as humans are connected to ancestral species that are markedly different from us.
Flint, to colewd:
I’m not sure Bill is a lifelong believer, or not a strong one, anyway. A couple of weeks ago he wrote to Alan:
Bill,
I remember you saying that your wife is an Episcopal priest. Did you marry before or after Swamidass suggested you look into Christianity? Were you raised as a Christian, and if so, did you fall away from the faith at some point?
Flint,
Do you understand that you have not made an argument only bald assertions?
keiths,
Hi Keiths
We married long before my discussion with Josh. My wife was ordained in her 60s. I was raised in a semi secular environment. My grandparents were church goers and my parents were not. My grandfather was an agnostic church goer but taught my brother and me the lords prayer.
In high school and most of college I was agnostic and would debate Christian friends on the same side you and Flint do. I accepted evolutionary theory and a natural explanation for life’s diversity made sense.
My grandfather died in 1977 towards the end of college and I started feeling the presents of something bigger than us. There was no factual change only a sense that I may have been mistaken in my agnosticism. When I met my wife she was a believer in Christianity and this was interesting to me. I attended church with her but never felt a strong attachment to the Christian doctrine. I did however now believe in a Creator.
About 10 years ago at my Fathers memorial service I was chatting with my youngest son and my closest friend (one who I would argue Christianity with in college) and we were talking about the statistical probability of a life bearing planet and solar system forming in nature. My son brought up the protein sequence problem to add to the conversation. He had just randomly read about it on the internet and it was probably from Meyer or Axe.
I have a fair math and statistics background so this caught my attention and started to research it. I was amazed that this problem existed and was not a part of the main stream scientific discussion on evolutionary theory. I have an older friend who is a math and physics Phd who worked in Clintons administration and engaged him with the issue. He was very skeptical at first but after doing his own research he agreed there was a big problem with evolutionary theory.
I ended up writing a paper for friends and family and a copy got in the hands of the epidemiologist who discovered the link between low blood levels of vitamin d and cancer. He ended up recruiting me to show the biochemical mechanisms that would support his work. Evolutionary theory was part of his theory of cancer. I Spent 3 years on this but the benefit is I learned about the cell and how it works. I started going on websites like SZ, Sandwalk,UD and PS to get collaboration but the bigger discussion of evolutionary theory is what people were talking about.
UD is where I met Josh Swamidass and the time I started looking into the viability of Christianity. I stated listening to debates and followed with tools to better understand the Bible and other works.
Hope this puts all into perspective.
Thanks, Bill. That fills in a lot of blanks for me regarding how your faith (and your skepticism regarding evolutionary theory) developed over time. You should keep a link to that comment so you can direct others to it when they have questions similar to mine.
You wrote:
Have you considered posting it somewhere? I’m sure it would generate a lively discussion.
Hi Keiths
Here is a post generated about my story by Josh. You will see a lot of my comments above in post #1 and #6
.https://discourse.peacefulscience.org/t/science-engaged-entrepreneur-who-is-bill-cole/1320
As far as the paper goes it is too old to post. I will probably generate a new one one of these days.
This is what prohibits communication. EVERY SINGLE DAMN LAST ONE of your religious claims is a bald assertion. You make not one single argument. Your claim of gods is based on the will to believe and on nothing else. And you have the gall to accuse me of not making an argument since all I have is reality. Which you seem to have no use for.
So here are some arguments. First, IF your god were real, the world we live in would be drastically different in many ways. Second, IF your god were real, we would have the track record of trillions of prayers not answered except by force-fitting reality to the prayed-for outcome (or to any outcome – just claim that whatever the hell happens, it must have been your god’s will.) What I’m speaking of here is actual, testable, repeatable evidence intersubjectively corroborated across cultures. If you faith is ignored or rejected outside your cult, this is a hint that perhaps your cult is a bubble. Of course if it’s a bubble, then YOU ignore or reject the truth values of other faiths (or none). Which you do.
Now, Keiths has been busy showing that your beliefs are inconsistent with both themselves and the real world. I find that approach too accommodating, since the ornate superstructure of your religion ultimately rests on nothing whatsoever, except what you choose to imagine or invent. I just don’t see the sense of arguing over how many angels can dance on a pin, without first establishing the existence and nature of angels. Why argue over whether your god actually does anything, until you have established the existence of it? (Note: established, not simply asserted.)
I think a great deal of extraordinary architecture and music has been based on religious faith, but that doesn’t make the faith real, only the architecture or music. Besides, non-Christian cultures have produced their own great artworks and literature, inspired by beliefs both as certain and as idiotic as your own.
By the way, there are serious problems with nearly every scientific theory that exists. But scientists don’t simply reject as invalid, theories that are only mostly well established. They work to learn in more depth. Whereas Douglas Axe is notorious for making claims about biology (and evolution) he KNOWS are false, then doing competent lab work to disprove claims nobody else ever made (and never would), and that are in conflict with actually well understood aspects of evolution and biology. And this is done for religious reasons – Axe is not trying to add to human knowledge, he is trying to discredit knowledge that conflicts with his religion. This is dishonest, but Axe must choose between honesty and religion.
A scientist asks essentially “what’s going on here?”, not “how can I force the facts to conform to my religion, ignoring those that can’t be forced?” I don’t know how many times I’ve read of someone who claims to be agnostic, and who read something by a Discovery Institute type (why would they even do that, if they were truly agnostic) and decided that there are “fatal flaws” in theories they don’t understand and couldn’t understand without a very narrow advanced degree.
Do these folks (yes, you too) even understand that these charlatans don’t find serious problems with theories and spend their lives solving them? Instead they desperately glom onto some bogus claim because they NEED to “find”, rather than solve, problems which, if real, would ratify their faith. Like, “my god is real. Hey, I found this protein sequence problem! I don’t know what it is, but who cares, since it proves my god is real” And then they go away satisfied with the fundamental rightness of their religious faith (without which they wouldn’t be looking for “scientific flaws” in the first place), so why bother understanding?
Scientists do not ignore real problems, do not sweep them under the rug, do not use them to support their imaginary gods, do not invent congenial bogus problems. Yes, there are major issues with some major theories. We know this because there are whole books (and a steady stream of periodicals and published papers) addressing these problems and suggesting ways to approach testing proposed methods of analysis, etc. If you find someone saying “Golly, here’s this major problem that undermines all of evolutionary theory, and nobody is even looking at it” you have found a religion-addled person. If he actually understood the problem (and if it were a genuine problem, not careful misinformation), he’d be looking for a solution, not for a god.
colewd:
Do you no longer stand behind it? Otherwise I can’t see why its age should matter.
keiths,
Hi Keiths
The basic thesis has turned out to be correct. The paper is too involved as it compares theories in too much detail for general interest. There is also a lot more genetic data now that can make the points easier.
I have a newer paper on vitamin d and cancer if you are interested I will post it.
Flint,
Keiths has made some arguments. You have not yet made an argument. You have asserted that God is not real or unless God meets your conditions for inferring His existence He is not real.
If you wake up and open your eyes you will see a very complex universe with observers. Is there any coherent explanation for this reality without an intelligent Creator?
Based on prior discussions you have used evolutionary theory as part of your explanation. You are not on solid footing here as the genetic differences between species do not support a reproductive relationship.
We also have a book, the Bible, that describes the relationship between God and man written over thousands of years with 44 authors that delivers a cohesive message. Have you ever read this book and looked at expert commentary by theologians such as NT Wright?
keiths:
colewd:
If you still stand behind it and you think the basic thesis is correct, then why not post it somewhere?
The question is whether the paper supports your claims, not whether it is of “general interest”.
If so, you could always cite that data during the discussion of your paper.
Based on what you wrote above, I assume your “basic thesis” is that there is some sort of “protein sequence problem”. I’ve seen you attempt to defend that thesis before without much success. Does your paper contain arguments that you haven’t already made online?
Flint (I think), writes, “the ornate superstructure of your religion ultimately rests on nothing whatsoever, except what you choose to imagine or invent.”
That’s a good line. I like “ornate superstructure” to describe the whole theological framework involving an omni-everything God and its relationship to a little bitty sub-group of creatures on our planet.
keiths,
The paper is mostly about the problems with protein sequence and origin of life. It shows that both adaption and populations and general relativity are valid based on the scientific method. It does not attempt to test universal common descent.
It also attempts to show how life uses quantum mechanics. An obvious example is photosynthesis.
If you are interested in looking at it my email is colewd@aol.com. It is not worth my time at this point to publish it here or anywhere.
For what it’s worth, here is a long article in Scientific American about NDEs and the dying brain:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-near-death-experiences-reveal-about-the-brain/