On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 7:25:59 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:

On Sat, 3 Nov 2018 05:50:30 -0700 (PDT), Gary Harnagel
wrote:

Apparently, it is true that information has no mass, but all of our
understanding of information is that it must reside in some form of
matter. Hence, it is not unreasonable to expect that "spirit" has
some kind of mass.

It is more reasonable that the spirit resides in the mass of the
body. And if the body is destroyed, so is the spirit.

Only in your conceited opinion :-)

Muslims believe that on Judgements Day, not only the spirit but also
the body is resurrected.

Me, too. Does that make me a Muslim?

And therefore they don't want the bodies of their dead to be cremated.

Cremation might make resurrection a bit more difficult, but I'm sure
God will manage.

However, the claim that the human spirit somehow survives the
physical death of the body, to go on living forever in heaven or
hell (Christianity, Judaism, Islam), or to be transferred to another
body (Hinduism, Buddhism), is highly doubtful.

Why is that "doubtful"? Where is your evidence for this? You have
none, of course, so you "doubt" in a vacuum.

I didn't say "disproved", I said "doubtful". It is doubtful for two
reasons. First, we know of no natural process through which this
could happen. And, second, we have no reliable evidence that this
does happen.

"O ye of little faith" :-)

Our worldview would become very unmanageable if we were to believe as
a fact everything which has not been disproved - for instance that
there are big green Pac-Man-like monsters living on an unknown planet
orbiting Sirius. Nobody has been able to disprove that...

But there IS evidence that spirits exist, some experimental and a LOT of
anecdotal. Your argument is specious.

But what happens after death is in the future

Not for those who have had near-death experiences :-)

Near-death is not death.

Apparently you don't know what those words mean. In many NDE cases the
patient was DEAD by medical standards - brain dead.

Just like a nearly total solar eclipse is
not a total solar eclipse, or nearly winning the lottery is not
winning the lottery...

Or almost making it to heaven and not making it :-)