Not necessarily. If we can adequately explain not just life but the sensation of consciousness - that personal identity which is said to persist into the afterlife - in terms of physical interactions which terminate and decompose when the body dies, then strictly speaking it requires additional unwarranted suppositions to assume that this explainable and now terminated physical phenomenon persisted and continued to operate in some hidden spiritual world. It requires implicit rejection of Occamian world view.

I find it to be an interesting philosophical question, I've been quite affected by some ideas from logical positivism, specifically what a meaningful statement is and just how limiting that can be. Using Occam's razor to reason about the existence of xrays before they where observed would lead you to believe that they don't exist, and rightly so, I think as a scentific method it's very helpful.

I view the scientific method to be an instrument to gain knowledge with a common criteria for evidence, not something that represents absolute truth, which in my oppinion is not within reach outside of logic and maths and other self contained systems. But there is a trade off there, in that they by themselves can not produce anything but tautologies without empirical observations as a basis for the premises, unless you believe in synthetic a priori.

No, it would not. Anything that exists outside the universe and time is not subject to conjecture of any sort. Applying logic to such a thing is meaningless; there is no reason for logic to exist outside of the universe. In other words, absolutely nothing meaningful can be claimed about an afterlife (unless such a thing exists within this universe which seems doubtful).

What you are arguing is called mind dualism. It is subject to very many difficulties, and does nothing to resolve pesky issues like neurologically damaged and split brain individuals (what happens in their afterlife?) or explain why there is this magical correspondence between the spiritual realm and physical reality, without any causal connection (see my point about Occam priors).

Certainly any afterlife would necessarily be non physical, no? Alternatively, I would be delighted if you gave proof otherwise.

At any rate, I'm not arguing for mind dualism nor will I attempt to answer any of the questions you posed. I argue that it is completely pointless to speculate in any way about something which exists outside of the bounds of knowledge (science).

I was merely agreeing with the assertion of the OP:

> [faith is required] if the claim is that there is or is not an after life

An afterlife can not be shown to NOT exist even if consciousness if fully explainable by science. There is no special knowledge to be found in logic/philosophy that exist outside of science. Therefore, we only have faith in either case.

In the entirety of the human endeavor, everywhere we have looked the simplest explanation which explains all of the evidence has turned out to be correct. This Occamian world view has never failed us. Not once.

So yes, it would be quite a leap of faith to assume that there is some spiritual existence where our minds reside and which happens to line up perfectly with events in this this causal world. Doesn't mean it's wrong - this hypothetical modern version of the afterlife is cleverly constructed to be completely untestable from this side of death's veil. But it can be shown rigorously and mathematically to be a strictly more complex theory with precisely the same predictive power for this world (and with lots of odd answers when questions are pressed).

It's like positing epicycles for the motions of the planets. Personally I just find it easier and more satisfying to believe the Earth moves. I adjust all the other collected knowledge Occamian reasoning, so why not this too? I don't like being a hypocrite.

The reason is because the entire history of the world can not be used for evidence for an afterlife that exists outside of the world. No knowledge or intuition (from this world) can be applied to something that exists outside of it.

>It's like positing epicycles for the motions of the planets.

The two are not at all related, unless one of us claims the hand of god or some other metaphysical force is moving the planets. Such a claim would not be testable and the same caveats would apply to it, too.

Your intuition could be correct, but how would we verify it? We have no experience with the afterlife. It is impossible to test this knowledge in any way (apart from dying but then communicating the results are the problem).

The only thing we can do is acknowledge the fact that we can not say anything sensible one way or the other.