Consciousness is an individual´s ability to use various mental faculties.
That's an assumption.
Everyone has their own opinion so it's fine if you believe that but the fact that our conscious awareness continues after death in an environment we call the afterlife was proved by four of the top scientists of their time back in the early 1900s. Since that time, the evidence has increased exponentially through many different categories of afterlife research and investigation.
As for how this occurs, we have the answer from 100 years of research into quantum physics. Materialism has been demonstrated to be false. What the science has demonstrated is that our experience of an external reality is a mental phenomena, the foundation of which is consciousness. Our experiences of the physical world around us can be compared to the same kind of experience in a dream state, where our mind is producing an experience of an external, physical world from available information.
Since consciousness is fundamental, and the experience of an external physical world including our bodies is generated by consciousness, the death of that physical body cannot cause the death of one's conscious awareness. That would be like saying that if my body in a dream died, my consciousness would cease to exist.
The soul and be thought of as consciousness. This is also a debate, as conscious awareness is different from bodily energy. For example, a person in a coma is alive, but they are absent of conscious awareness of this reality.
Science cannot account for what happens to our consciousness when we die. Science has no idea how consciousness is formed or how it develops. There is absolutely no evidence that the brain creates consciousness, so where does it come from? Who created the part of YOU that identifies as YOU?
Is it 'I think, therefore I am'....or is it 'I am, there I think?'
It is reasonable to assume, given the data we have so far, that it is the consciousness we refer to when speaking of 'souls' not the energy that powers our bodies.
There are many verified cases of brain-dead people later regaining brain function and consciousness, complete with memories or 'hallucinations' that took place during the time their brain was 'dead'.
A great example is the case of Dr Eben Alexander. His brain was turned to mush but he still had vivid NDE memories during that time. What makes his accounts even more fascinating is that he is a neurosurgeon. He no longer subscribes to the idea that consciousness is created by the brain, but rather, consciousness is received by the brain. Like a radio receives satellite signals.
Do you mean soul when you write about consciousness?
No, I mean consciousness.
I guess it depends on what we consider a soul to be and what we consider consciousness to be.
Soul=spiritual essence of a person which includes one's identity, personality, and memories.
Consciousness=awareness of internal and external existence, gets also often associated with the soul, a mental state, wakefulness, one's self of selfhood, and much more.
Consciousness is too complex to put it into one category.
Soul is only a human invention
I never said anything about a soul. I believe in consciousness. I don't know about a soul as that is something that was made up by humans and sounds too similiar to our "ego".
There is clearly a difference between ego and consciousness, as consciousness doesn't come from the brain, while the ego is developed during the first three of your life. Everyone is born conscious, many people remember being conscious before their birth, but everyone's ego gets developed during the first three years of their life. If consciousness comes from the brain then it would have been located by now, and yet, none of the scientists can locate where consciousness comes from, even though we know how each part of the brain works. Trying to search for consciousness is like trying to search for time and matter. If consciousness comes from the brain, then the people who were clincally dead and had no brain activity going on, wouldn't have been able to experience anything, but they were.
Every atom in our bodies came from a star that exploded. The brain is one organ in the body with electrical impulses. The brain is one organ in the body which may be damaged and stop functioning normally.
Do you consider consciousness to be physical or non-physical?
Physical=Product of the brain.
Non physical=Non product of the brain (existing outside).
In my opinion, consciousness clearly doesn't have physical properties. If consciousness was physical then we would know by now where it is located but we don't. We know what our brain, heart, limbs, and muscles are there for, we can see them, but we can't see consciousness. I believe consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe and is neither physical nor mental.
Interesting enough, the structure of the cosmic web and galaxies are practically the same as the structure of brain cells. Wonder what's that about.
If man has a soul - when during the evolution did it arise?
I never said anything about a soul.
Has even single-celled life have a soul?
Cells are minimally conscious. They can react to light, dark, gravity, heat, can repair stress and trauma damage, and can replicate themselves. They cannot, however, make complex decisions or decide to change their behaviors, they are primarily reactive.
If the parents have no soul - how can the offspring have a soul?
Assuming that there is a soul, if the parents don't have a soul then obviously their offspring doesn't have one either.
How do you know that people remember something that happened before birth?
There are many people out there who have pre-birth memories. And unless every single one of them lied for no reason, I have no reason to disregard them.
There are people who lie and say wrong about many things
Do you honestly believe that every person who has pre-birth memories is a liar? I remember things that happend when I was 2-3 years old but I know that many other people don't remember things that happend when they were that young. Does that now mean that I'm a liar?
There are many things in life that are impossible to explain unless you experience it yourself. Born b
ind people seeing in NDE, people reporting what the doctors and the nurses were doing while they were brain dead, people reading 5 code numbers while out of body, people sharing the same dream, people having dreams that predicted their future, people having the same "hallucination", remote viewing, sumerian tablets, quantum mechanics, etc.
The human brain can function several hours after death - that is why clinically dead people were able to tell what was going on around them
There are many people who were clinically dead and had no brain activity going on, they were considered dead, but they still experienced an out of body experience during that time where they were able to tell what's going on around them. If consciousness is part of the brain then that wouldn't have been possible because there was no brain activity going on.
Pam Reynolds case:
"Pam Reynolds Lowery (1956 – May 22, 2010), from Atlanta, Georgia, was an American singer-songwriter. In 1991, at the age of 35, she stated that she had a near-death experience (NDE) during a brain operation performed by Robert F. Spetzler at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. Reynolds was under close medical monitoring during the entire operation. During part of the operation she had no brain-wave activity and no blood flowing in her brain, which rendered her clinically dead. She claimed to have made several observations during the procedure which medical personnel reported to be accurate. Within the field of near-death studies and among those who believe in life after death, the case has been cited as well-documented and significant, with many proponents considering it to be evidence of the survival of consciousness after death. Reynolds reported that during the operation she heard a sound like a natural 'D' that seemed to pull her out of her body and allowed her to "float" above the operating room and watch the doctors perform the operation. Reynolds claims that during this time she felt "more aware than normal" and her vision was more focused and clearer than normal vision. She reported seeing the surgical "saw" but said it looked like an electric toothbrush, and this is in fact true. She said she could hear conversations between operating room staff, even though she had earphones in her ears which were making a loud clicking noise many times per second in order to monitor her brain function. At some point during the operation, she says she noticed a presence and was pulled towards a light. She says she began to discern figures in the light, including her grandmother, an uncle, other deceased relatives and people unknown to her. According to Reynolds, the longer she was there, the more she enjoyed it, but at some point she was reminded that she had to go back. She says her uncle brought her back to her body, but she did not want to go, so he pushed her in, and the sensation was like that of jumping into ice water."
There was also a study about 10 patients whose hearts stopped and the ones that had vivid afterlife visions were the ones without brain activity while the ones with brain activity didn't have those experiences. Scientists have no explanation for people who experienced out of body experiences without brain activity going on. Consciousness is a mystery to them just like it is for us.
Or perhaps their stories were false
Would be too many coincidences if their stories were false.
However, it is possible that there is a spirit world. But since we cannot perceive spirits with our senses - how are we supposed to know?
I mean, there's the astral plane, and we know that Astral Projection is a thing.
