This is going to sound smug. Don't care.
Every idea we encounter is filtered through a set of theoretical lenses that are crafted through personal experiences, upbringing, culture, and formal education. It's a frustrating trend for people to conflate their lenses with "THE" truth, without realizing that they're applying more scrutiny to new or counter ideas -- turning that skeptical dial up more to these "different" ideas-- than they are to their own model(s) of reality. This is also oddly true for people formally-educated in one area addressing ideas in a separate area. We often don't see or grasp how ignorant we are and how worthwhile the counter-arguments are.
This is painfully obvious in philosophy of religion and certain ("controversial") areas of scientific inquiry:
-- There are worthwhile philosophical arguments for (at least classical) theism (by e.g. Hart, Feser, Kerr, Fradd, Rasmussen, Koons, Pruss, Loke, and, yes, even WL Craig... etc.), and of course there are worthwhile critiques and rejoinders (Oppy, Malpass, Fodor, Mackie, Rowe, Grayling, Morriston, etc), but most people don't know the literature. At all. That's fine, actually; no problem. The problem comes in when people smugly, obnoxiously, and authoritatively PRONOUNCE on issues they don't know anything about. So many people (believers and doubters alike) have no clue about this literature, and so they routinely raise ridiculous arguments and objections. Many believers will smugly argue for "God" with pseudo syllogisms that would make knowledgeable 7th graders blush. But the same is true of the anti-theistic arguments made by so many atheists (e.g. "who made God?" or "special pleading exemption for requiring a cause of his own" or "God's alleged intrinsic properties are self-contradictory" etc). Don't get me started on disputes over Biblical inerrancy and contradictions, which miss the deeper issues altogether. Again, believers and doubters alike are guilty.
-- There are strong arguments for an "afterlife"/ the continuation of personality and personal identity after the body dies and many of these arguments are not susceptible to explanations in terms of the mundane "usual suspects" (e.g. Braude 2003, Sudduth 2016 -- although the latter is more skeptical). These are based on either philosophical arguments about mind-brain relationship or, more interestingly, actual empirical observations that *seem* best interpreted as cases of postmortem survival. The best counter-explanation for the latter is itself "paranormal" one (e.g. again, see Sudduth 2016), albeit one that avoids an afterlife conclusion. There are too many other worthwhile references to list, but the list includes (in no particular order) Hodgson (1898), Kelly and Kelly (2007), Carter (2010, 2012), Blum (2006 for a review of the history of the SPR), Beischel (2015; yes, it's a good paper and most skeptics appear to not understand the methodology!), Rock (2014), etc. And here too most believers and doubters alike run their mouths without the slightest awareness of the literature. The purely-philosophical arguments can go back and forth forever, but the arguments based on certain empirical observations (which still require philosophical input) *must* be explained as *either* genuine afterlife glimpses or at least genuine psi-mediated experiences.
-- On psi issues, see Cardena (2018), Radin (2006), Storm et al (2010), appendix of Kelly and Kelly (2007), etc. As statistician Jessica Utts has argued, using the standards applied to every other area of science, psi effects have been established beyond reasonable doubt. Alcock, Wiseman, Carroll, Krauss, French, Hyman, etc. are simply wrong. Demonstrably wrong.
Of course, the experts themselves are also often blinded by biases, but the authors mentioned here are generally earnest truth-seekers, even if they end up disagreeing with each other.
No, I don't expect EVERYONE to read all of the references I mentioned (which is just the tip of an iceberg), but it would be nice if more people made some serious effort to get to the bottom of these issues and thereby advance the status quo of dialogue. I am constantly stunned at the level of superficiality and shallowness of the conversations and arguments.
These are hugely important issues. We can do better. You can do better.
