This question may seem simple, but to be clear is a big topic. Because this question involves atheism and theism, it involves religious, folk, scientific and other aspects of the view. In fact, to concentrate on one point, it is still a question of whether the soul of a person still exists after death and whether he can be reincarnated.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="2" > first we determine what the soul really means</h1>
I think that whether it is science or religion or folk, there is a general common understanding, that is, the soul is the human mind and spirit, in more scientific language, that is, human consciousness, including self-awareness, empirical memory, and logical thinking.
The mind and spirit of man are more important than the body, and are the most important signs of whether a person is alive or not. Why? Because a person is mentally dead, or the brain is broken, there is no consciousness, even if the body is still "alive", it is also a living dead, because it is not he (her) who is "alive", and he himself does not know who he is.
So the human body is not "dead", the spirit is dead, and the person is gone. Do you agree with me when I say this?
So is the soul material or immaterial?
If it is matter, it has mass, which is weight under the gravity conditions of the earth. The so-called dead man's weight experiment is an experiment to weigh the soul. The experiment was done by an American physician named Duncan McDowell at the beginning of the last century, who wrote a paper on his experiments and research, published in the April 1907 journal American Medicine, entitled "The Hypothesis that the Soul is Matter and Experimentally Prove the Existence of Soul Matter."
Duncan's experiment was to find 6 dying people and weigh their weight before and after death. Duncan placed the patient on a bed he had designed on a sensitive scale, and Duncan continued to carefully observe the patient's weight change before the patient died.
He observed a dying patient with tuberculosis for 3 hours and 40 minutes continuously, during which the patient's weight slowly decreased, an average of 28.3459 grams per hour, until the moment when the patient lost his breath, the scale's pointer suddenly dropped and froze, the result was 21.26 grams lighter, thus, the rumor of the soul weight of 21 grams spread, has been spread for more than 100 years, more and more god, and has endured for a long time.
If this rumor is true, then the soul is really material and has a precise weight.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="11" > Duncan's test reliable? </h1>
It can be said that this is a gimmick and not reliable at all. Because he only got the data of 1 person who died of tuberculosis mentioned earlier, the other 5 people did not get an accurate data, or the weight change of each person was completely inconsistent, and the data was messy. As a result, this conclusion was overturned at the time and was never recognized by the scientific community.
People believe that this experimental result has many influencing factors, human body fluid evaporation, convection of air on the scale and the activity of human bacteria, as well as the error of the scale itself may lead to changes in the pointer, everyone's measurement results are completely inconsistent is this reason, so this experiment is not rigorous and reliable, does not meet the conclusions of scientific experiments.
There are three major criteria for judging whether a theory or discovery conclusion is true or not, and whether it is scientifically rigorous, namely: 1. whether it can reproduce the proposed theory or discovery conclusion; 2, whether it can explain the contradictory results that arise from the theory or conclusion; and 3, whether it can make new predictable predictions through its own theory or discovery.
None of this so-called soul weighing experiment met the above scientific criteria, so from a scientific point of view, this experiment failed, or the results obtained falsified the soul weight theory, or had nothing to do with science.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="16" > religious and folk interpretations of the soul</h1>
Since ancient times, people are full of mystery about the soul, because human consciousness is really strange, especially people have a strong sense of self, everyone is self-centered, always feel that they are the special one, feel that this self-consciousness and empirical memory will not disappear with death. In particular, the ancients lacked scientific knowledge and could not explain some natural phenomena, which would naturally be attributed to the soul, and the specific carrier was the ghost god theory.
Passed down from generation to generation, the soul theory is very common in the folk. People who believe in the soul theory regard human life and death as the transformation of the soul, birth is the reincarnation of the soul, death is the reincarnation of the soul, the body is only the carrier of the soul, the body is broken, the soul is still there, the body can be exchanged, and the soul is eternal in reincarnation.
This idea is also embodied in Chinese Buddhism and Taoism, which holds that the mortal body is only a "stinky skin bag" and that the soul does not die after the death of the body. Some monks call "sitting", cremation nirvana rebirth, chanting and fasting super-degree revenant souls, etc. are the embodiment of this kind of thinking.
Christianity believes that man is the spirit of all things, the soul is immortal, through the resurrection, and eventually go to heaven or hell with the same resurrected body; the Islamic view of the soul, according to the Qur'an, believes that the soul is created for the Allah (Allah), Allah will create a soul for each new body, the soul does not die, will go to heaven or hell, when the resurrection, the soul and the body will be reunited.
These spiritual views of religion, like their doctrines, were put forward by a founder based on folklore and reflection on natural phenomena, based on subjective speculation, without any evidence or scientific logic, but catered to the spiritual aspirations and sustenance of many folk people, so they swept through many generations.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="22" > near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences</h1>
The so-called near-death experience is that when people are on the verge of death, they generally refer to people who talk about some subjective feelings they experience after the heartbeat stops or even the brain waves disappear and then regain consciousness. This experience is the phenomenon that humans reflect the most, involves the soul and has many cases, and it is also a phenomenon that science acknowledges.
The experience takes place in all parts of the world, with people of all races, classes and ages, and more than 13 million people in the United States alone have had near-death experiences. This kind of thing not only happens to ordinary people, but also many celebrities have had this experience, such as Hemingway, Maupassant, Goethe, Edlen Poe, Dostoevsky, etc., have had this experience, so this phenomenon is real and undeniable.
The "soul" theory revealed by near-death experiences is more well-founded than folklore, and is therefore recognized by both folk, religious and scientific communities. Many scientific studies have also conducted rigorous research on this topic, listing that there are many kinds of near-death experiences, roughly as follows:
1. Tunnel and bright light. Experience people feel like entering another dimensional space, seeing a dark tunnel, there is a white light at the end of the tunnel, this light makes people happy and comfortable, there is an impulse to rush to the light, it feels that there is heaven; experiencing the tunnel will have a feeling of squeezing and pulling, some will see the deceased relatives or gods to pick themselves up; some will feel hell, ghosts and demons to bite themselves, judged by the gods.
2. Out-of-body experience. Some feel their own bodies and the doctors' rescue process; some feel the soul rushing out of the room and flying to the sky and the universe; others see the cries of their loved ones, but they can't communicate with them, and their relatives can't hear their own cries.
3. Panoramic review of life. Some people claim to have watched the entire course of their lives, some are very specific, some are very short, most of them are happy scenes with their relatives, and some are hunted down and judged by their enemies.
4. Regression. Many people recall that at the end of their near-death experience, they will communicate with various gods, and they will hear a loud voice telling themselves that you have not yet reached the limit (or that your life expectancy is not over) and hurry back; others recall that they are asked to make a choice whether to go to the light or return to their physical body. Some people believe that these voices are Gods, while others think that they are Shakyamuni or Taishang Laojun or relatives.
The combined near-death experience is roughly these, and generally people who have experienced this experience will undergo certain changes, such as their views and personalities on life, and some people will see things in life more lightly and face death more calmly; some will do the opposite.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="31" > various views and explanations of the phenomenon of near-death experience</h1>
The consensus now is that there is an acknowledgment that near-death experiences exist, but the interpretation of such experiences is different. Some people who worship ghosts and gods are more convinced of the existence of ghosts and gods, believing that people will receive karma after death, or go to heaven or go to hell, and there will be good rewards for good, and evil will be rewarded with evil.
Religion believes that the human soul exists, the spirit and the flesh can be separated, the soul is immortal, and the soul can go to heaven or hell after death, or it can be transcendent. After the soul is detached from the body, it can return to its original body and be reborn, or it can be attached to a new human body and reborn. Near-death experiences confirm the existence of gods and ghosts, and the descriptions in religious texts are correct, which is a portrayal of heaven and hell.
Scientific research has not yet reached a unified conclusion on near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences. There is an idea that the soul is a special experience of consciousness, an Orch-OR effect (an objective return of consciousness) that acts on the microtubules of the brain by the effect of quantum gravity. The near-death experience is the soul formed by quantum matter, leaving the nervous system to interact with nature, causing the gravitational effect of the brain microtubule quantum, and the soul can enter the universe.
The study was proposed by Dr. Stuart Hameroff, head of the Center for Consciousness Research at the University of Arizona and professor in the Department of Anesthesiology and Psychology, who collaborated with British physicist Sir Roger Penrose to propose a quantum theory related to consciousness. But this theory has not been universally endorsed by the scientific community, and many believe that their study is closer to religious doctrine and deviates from the correct track of quantum mechanics.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="36" > mainstream scientific community about near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences</h1>
The mainstream of the medical science community believes that the near-death experience is only an emergency response of the human brain and the human body under extreme conditions, and it is a physiological response. The so-called soul is a general term for consciousness, spirit, and mental activity, which is the result of the physiological activities of the brain, the product of physical and chemical reactions, and cannot exist without the brain. After death, brain activity ceases, consciousness is lost, and the so-called soul is gone.
Some of the strange experiences that occur in the near-death state of human beings are closely related to personal experiences and beliefs. From the recollections of some people, it can be seen that different beliefs, different experiences, and people of different ages have greatly different experiences. Some people see God, some people see Shakyamuni, some people see good people, some people see evil people. Children, on the other hand, have no more social experience, and the feeling of near-death experience is more bizarre and has a sense of timelessness, because they have not yet formed a certain fixed pattern of the world.
Professor Rakhmer Chavala, who works at the University of Washington Medical Center in the United States, conducted a study in which he monitored the brain waves of 7 patients who were critically ill before death and found that people had a brief outbreak of electrical activity before death. He called this outburst an "electric storm, which he believes is caused by the violent electrical activity of the human brain when it runs out of oxygen. This brainwave burst lasts between 30 seconds and 3 minutes, and this activity begins to occur in one area of the brain and then spreads rapidly. He believes that this may be the reason for people to get vivid and realistic spiritual feelings.
Other studies suggest that near-death experiences are hallucinogenic phenomena caused by a lack of oxygen in the brain. Before death, the brain is in a state of hypoxia, the initial stage of low pressure of brain oxygen will have a sense of pleasure, comfort, which is also the reason why some people indulge in suffocation, thousands of teenagers die of suffocation every year; some studies believe that it is related to the high carbon dioxide level in the human blood when dying, which will break the chemical balance in the brain, so that people can see some incredible scenes, such as out-of-body experience, feeling pleasure, seeing light, tunnels, deceased relatives and past experiences.
Drug use or some poisoning, such as eating mushrooms, can also have hallucinogenic effects, producing some feelings similar to near-death experiences, which is the truth.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="42" > out-of-body experiments</h1>
Out-of-body experience is the most important reason why many people insist that the soul can exist independently of the human body. In particular, some people are out of the soul, can fly to the ceiling to watch the doctor rescue themselves, can say the details of the rescue after resurrection, and even some people can say which secret drawer the doctor puts his dentures.
It's amazing. Scientific explanation has a kind of "brain supplement hypothesis", that the brain has a set of processing mechanisms for information, can distinguish between hallucinations and reality, when dying, the source of sensory information is cut off, the reality model is unstable, and the brain can only construct reality based on existing information (memory). One feature of these memory events is a bird's-eye view.
Let's recall some of the images that happened in the past to see if there is a feeling of overlooking.
The brain supplement hypothesis explains the sense of detachment from the soul, floating to the ceiling, or overlooking from the sky, but it does not explain some details of how to know what was not known after rebirth. However, some scientists believe that these so-called stories of knowing the details are difficult to reproduce.
Near-death stress stimulates the brain to secrete phenolic polyphenols, which makes people feel comfortable; the increase in visual cortex noise creates a sense of tunneling.
In order to verify the feeling of the soul out of the body, the scientists did several experiments, such as having subjects watch videos of their own body's pulsations synchronized with the heartbeat, triggering the subject's conscious out-of-body experience, showing that the physical presence experience of people depends on the dual perception of the inside and the outside.
One of the more famous experiments is the consciousness ex vivo experiment conducted by Jane Asper of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology with colleagues such as Lucas Heydrich and Olaf Blanco. The purpose of this experiment was to instill conflicting sensory information in subjects that led them to transfer their self-perception to virtual bodies or mannequins.
The 17 participants in the trial wore helmets with displays, some of whom saw their own backs in the displays, while others saw the back of a model. Both backs are wrapped in a halo generated by the software. The participants wore electrodes on their chest that recorded their heartbeat, and the heartbeat signal echoed the halo flashing around the back, which either synchronized with the heartbeat or was slightly different from the heartbeat.
Under the guidance of the assistant, the testers were moved backwards by 1.5 meters, and then let them return to their original positions on their own, and these people unconsciously walked to both back positions.
As a result of the test, they showed feelings of wanting to leave the physical body and enter the virtual body or model in front of them. This experiment showed that out-of-body experiences can be triggered by neurological mechanisms, and that intrinsically perceived signals are important for self-localization and self-identity. The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.
Many scholars who study self-perception have affirmed the results of this experiment, and Thomas Metzenchenger of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, believes that the experiment tells us that human self-consciousness is deeply constrained by the effect of internal sense, and this anchoring method is stronger than previously recognized.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="53" > summary:</h1>
Human research on consciousness is still in its infancy, and the study of this near-death experience and out-of-body experience is still inconclusive. However, the mainstream of the scientific community generally believes that the so-called "soul" arises and dies with the birth and death of human beings, and it is impossible to exist naturally in the universe permanently, or can be reincarnated and reborn.
The simplest fact to deny the immortality of the soul is that human beings have hundreds of thousands or even millions of years of evolutionary history, if you trace back to the ancient apes of the distant ancestors of human beings, there are already tens of millions of years of history, if there are really immortal souls, then these souls will exist from the ancient ape people to the evolutionary stage of various human beings, and even the souls of orangutans will also exist, where are so many souls? Has anyone ever seen it?
A near-death experience is simply an experience of people who eventually come back to life, and can be thought of as certain feelings that arise when a person is about to die. But near-death experiences are no substitute for death, because people who actually die cannot tell post-death stories.
Now some top scientific research institutions are studying the transfer or uploading of human consciousness, which can also be said to be the soul, to computers or virtual people, which shows that the scientific community or some scientists agree that consciousness can exist independently of the human body, but this existence is not naturally formed, but artificially realized through high-tech means.
At present, the more representative research is the Google team's brain and consciousness transfer research; Musk's team's brain-computer interface and consciousness upload research; and the Russian tycoon Mitri Itzkov's "Avanti Plan", which is solving the problem of consciousness preservation and transfer, and they all threaten to make breakthroughs within a few decades. However, the top science and technology of retaining and transferring consciousness is extremely difficult, and there may be breakthroughs soon, or it may require the unremitting efforts of generations and generations of dozens of generations.
I myself believe in science, and I also believe that the ultimate goal of humanity's future evolution is to exist ideologically apart from the body. Because only in this way can human beings get rid of the shackles of the flesh, get rid of the limitations of illness and life span, and let human civilization upgrade to an advanced state and go farther into deep space.
What do you think about this issue, welcome to discuss and leave a high opinion, thank you for reading.
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