I've been trying to understand your point of view, and I think I sort of get it.
What you might be overlooking, is the principle that can be summed up by noting that things tend to go on as they have before. In the physical world an action, if accurately repeated tends to give the same result. An object in motion continues to move unless acted on by some external force. Just two examples but I hope sufficient to make the point. Even when exceptions are known, we apply this to our everyday lives. We know that car brakes sometimes fail, but we still press the bake pedal when we want to slow down, relying on our experience that it works most of the time.
OK, now let's apply this to survival after death. We observe that physical death is final in all cases that we observe. It's not so easy to observe the lack of spirits, and there is evidence presented that if verified would support survival, but one would think that with all the people desperately hoping that their deceased relatives have survived, lots of testable evidence would have arisen. (To me this is the worst example, because I do think there is enough evidence of a subjective nature to allow a reasonable possibility).
The problem here is that since the dawn of recorded humanity, humans have observed that when something living, dies, that some immaterial aspect of that life form that was clearly present, goes away. And is no longer present. And the question has always remained, where did this “spirit”, life force, essence, or whatever it was, and whatever we want to call it, go? We have seen with our own eyes that an ‘essence of being‘ was present, and then it was no longer present. And because we instinctively understood that something cannot just become nothing, we have long wondered what becomes of this essence of being when it no longer inhabits a physical body?
You and others claim that all that was ever here was the physical body. But humans from the very beginning until now have universally recognized that this was not so. And they recognized it especially upon the moment of death, when that mysterious essence leaves the body Exactly as it had always been, and yet it is now completely changed. As the force that had animated it is gone.
But gone where? To exist how?
That is the evidence of the “afterlife”. Not some ignorant assumption that a live body and a dead body are equivalent because we can’t physically identify or quantify the mysterious thing that makes up the difference.
I won't go on in detail, because I'm just after a general approach. My point is that previous experience (or the lack thereof) is a perfectly reasonable way to predict future events. Why? Because it works most of the time, and that's about all we can hope for in a very complicated world. I'll agree that built into this should be a readiness to consider contradictory evidence, which covers your demand for an open mind, I think.
I really don't see how we don't agree on this. Most of what you say is what I am saying, then you veer off to claim something different.
I'll just wait for you to tell me I'm wrong again, then move on.
Until you’ve died, at least once, I see no “previous experience” from which you can formulate your assessment of probability.
