Of course, and therein lie the two distinct possibilities. The above possibility is the scientific rationalistic theory that there is nothing but physical matter, and that consciousness is an artifact of that, period. End of story. There is no Heaven, no Hell, no God, no afterlife and if you think so you are stupid. Prove differently.
The second possibility is the subjective, anecdotal, often religious idea that there IS such a thing as a 'soul' separate from the physical body that separates permanently at death, there IS an afterlife of some sort, and that this is indirectly proven by a large body of subjective evidence not accepted by the scientfic community, but nevertheless true.
The problem with the first point of view is that it stifles inquiry. We may as well roll up the carpet and go home. The problem with the second point of view is that it invites abject imagination to overwhelm rational discourse. If anything goes, everything does, no matter how silly or unsupported. That's why the first group believes as it does. They are tired of the crazy religious interpretation of reality and the only way to stop it is to reject all of it.
In that, they have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Since this IS the Paracast, I would suggest most people here are at least willing to consider and discuss the second possibility. After all, this is not a committee granting tenure to Assistant Professors who have published a sufficient number of politically correct and acceptable articles in their fields to justify keeping their jobs.
What I hope is the prevailing mindset here is that our wild flights of fancy are held to a higher standard of proof and that folks who have interesting and speculative ideas at least be prodded to back up their claims with as much proof as they can muster.
