Are near-death experiences merely illusions ?

[DieChecker]

12 hours ago, eight bits said:

Joe smiles and saunters off, 25 cents poorer, but assured of internet fame.

----

Hey, last night at Walmart I found a penny on the self-checkout kiosk. Can I go viral, too?

That's a nice story and certainly possible. But it disproves the quarter story about as well as bigfoot stories prove bigfoot.

We can Conclude that the stories are bunk, but ultimately those are individual opinions.

It would take video of the operating room, and the NDE person. With one making the claim, with time/date stamp. And the other finding the quarter. Even then there would be the possibility of someone setting up the whole thing days, or weeks ahead of time. However, setting it up would have been similar to Bush setting up the 911 attacks... unlikely.

So it seems not possible to prove either way. But opinions are doubtless to be plentiful. 

Edited August 22, 2019 by DieChecker

[DieChecker]

13 hours ago, psyche101 said:

 

....

I have no doubts, my prejudices are well founded.

You do see the irony in your post? Posting Carlin saying to question everything in issue of religious inflexibility. And then in the next paragraph insisting on your own inflexibility......

[psyche101]

14 hours ago, Habitat said:

contrary to your idea that I am imagining things because of grief, it is you that has failed to come to terms with a family situation involving your mother and JW's, and whatever damage all that did to the family, which has led you to think you can chuck schitt at anyone who even allows the slightest latitude to religious ideas. That is your narrow, ignorant perspective. it is a bit like having a drunk in the family, who wrecked the harmony of the home, and instead of looking at the situation realistically, you go on a crusade against the demon drink, as the entire cause of the problems. Wrong answer. Ditto your attitude to religion, disentangle yourself from the accidents of personal history, and quit the carry on that would have people believe that you have solved the mysteries that have intrigued humans, forever. All you've done is make yourself look silly, to my eyes, because I happen to know, that you are hopelessly wrong.

Nothing like that at all. Your mystic powers fail you as do your evaluations of others. Your tiny mind is grasping at straws to find some way to back out of the plain fact that you fear the science that refutes you leaving you with no argument, just personal belligerent ranting. Everyone can see this even though you try and hide that with trollish angry behavior. You're not fooling anyone. 

You have no credibility. You have no support for your ridiculous claims. You have a bad attitude and some regurgitated camp fire spook stories  which are actually pretty lame. Your great morse code office in the sky idiocy just shows that your just another Napoleon impersonator. 

Get over yourself. 

[psyche101]

3 hours ago, DieChecker said:

You do see the irony in your post? Posting Carlin saying to question everything in issue of religious inflexibility. And then in the next paragraph insisting on your own inflexibility......

No I don't, the next paragraph is based on questioning things and the results from those questions. You might have to be clearer. 

[Habitat]

42 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

You have no credibility. You have no support for your ridiculous claims.

 

The only claim I argue for, is that no judgement ought be made, basically because there is no compelling reason to, nor sufficient information available.

[psyche101]

1 hour ago, Habitat said:

The only claim I argue for, is that no judgement ought be made, basically because there is no compelling reason to, nor sufficient information available.

Nonsense you have repeatedly claimed certainty of life after death. You have claimed sciences to be wrong and misrepresented and claim mystics have some special insight. There are laws of physics that refute such ideas which you have been unable to discuss due to your ignorance of the subject. You make judgement calls very regularly hypocritically contradicting yourself. You tell others to dismiss science for anecdotes just like PG does. You two have much in common. 

[Habitat]

27 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

There are laws of physics that refute such ideas

No, there are not. Nor even ones that help you "close in on the core" LOL

27 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

You tell others to dismiss science for anecdotes just like PG does. You two have much in common. 

PG is more polite, but we do have a similar, less dogmatic approach, to mysterious subjects.

[psyche101]

21 minutes ago, Habitat said:

No, there are not. Nor even ones that help you "close in on the core" LOL

Of course they are, your ignorance, deliberate and otherwise, do not negate physics just because you are too dim to grasp it. 

Everybody has seen them, and agree with them or not, one thing we can all agree on is that you fear them and do not understand them. You are simply to scared to approach that which seriously questions your whack morse code religion. 

21 minutes ago, Habitat said:

PG is more polite, but we do have a similar, less dogmatic approach, to mysterious subjects.

At times he can be, usually he just runs from any discussion that he is quite obviously losing, which is pretty much all of them. You both have more dogmatic approaches based on ancient superstitions that you seem to find comfort in. And both of you are at least 50 years behind current understandings of the sciences. The PG  scale is that the more ridiculous a claim, the more he supports it. I could see that working for you. 

[eight bits]

6 hours ago, DieChecker said:

We can Conclude that the stories are bunk,

You have either missed the point of my brace of posts, or else mistaken me for somebody else.

I never reach the question of whether the stories are bunk, because whether they are truthful, fabricated or something in between, the stories as presented are irrelevant to the announced topic of the thread. First, the stories are anecdotes, and second, they are identical to stories offered in support of other alleged phenomena which if those other things actually ever happened, then they would fully explain the claimed feats whether or not people don't really die.

I study dreams. A lot. I couldn't tell you how many times I have encountered the claim "I dreamt something and it came true." As if dreams were some kind of portal to the Wonderland of Woo. You know. like "almost" dying is supposed to be a portal there, too.

Die, it's the same fracking claim. Dreaming that somebody dropped a quarter in an odd place, and waddyaknow, somebody did is not evidence that dreams have any supernatural component. Being very sick when you have the dream adds nothing to the evidentiary value of the report.

6 hours ago, DieChecker said:

but ultimately those are individual opinions.

Yes, and normatively so. Whenever no useful evidence is presented, then there is nothing but opinion to discuss. That is the situation here. We have amusing anecdotes, humorously light on the gee-whiz factor ("I almost died and found a quarter!"), but instead of arguiing that dreams come true, the current storytellers wish to argue that death is an illusion.

Edited August 22, 2019 by eight bits

[Habitat]

1 minute ago, psyche101 said:

your whack morse code religion. 

Turns out to be correct, but who know how.

1 minute ago, psyche101 said:

The PG  scale is that the more ridiculous a claim, the more he supports it.

I will admit there have been times when he has been semi-accepting of what looked to me like bullship stories, but maybe that was me being too judgemental.

[Habitat]

10 minutes ago, eight bits said:

I study dreams. A lot. I couldn't tell you how many times I have encountered the claim "I dreamt something and it came true."

And you condemn them all as mere co-incidence ?

[psyche101]

18 minutes ago, Habitat said:

Turns out to be correct, but who know how.

You just keep telling yourself that. At least you and PG believe it. 

18 minutes ago, Habitat said:

I will admit there have been times when he has been semi-accepting of what looked to me like bullship stories, but maybe that was me being too judgemental.

Semi accepting? LOL

Don't worry, you will catch up to him soon. Maybe you finally found a friend with a similar imagination hey. It won't take long before you too can believe in mermaids and leprechauns, going by your great morse code office in the sky, story, I'd say your well on your way down that path. Will real Napoleon please stand up

[eight bits]

27 minutes ago, Habitat said:

And you condemn them all as mere co-incidence ?

They've been a mixed bag in my experience. Dreams are thoughts, and some proportion of our thoughts are forecasts, and some of the forecasts will be usefully accurate.

There're a lot of dream predictions that fall under the rubric of confirmation bias. The dream involves an event with a broad target cross-section, lots of things would "make it come true," and in retrospect, a "hit" gets claimed. It doesn't even have to come true, it could be that whatever happens reminds you of a dream (You dream that you will meet a tall dark stranger, and you run into Peter Dinklage, OMFG, how did I foresee that I'd meet the very opposite of a tall dark stranger?; well OK, he is a stranger, but still ...)

A fair number involve the dream directing the dreamer's attention to some actual or plausible situation in waking life that has otherwise been overlooked. If you haven't noticed that your car's battery is becoming unreliable, a dream where your car didn't start will be called a prediction when your car, in fact, doesn't start (or "almost" doesn't start, speaking of broad target cross-sections).

Of course, quite a few will be "mere" coincidences, although the mechanism is more inevitable than mere. A broken clock is right twice a day. Remember enough dreams and something that happened in a dream will occur, more or less, in subsequent waking life. Eventually. If you look at it the right way.

Edited August 22, 2019 by eight bits

[Habitat]

4 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

mermaids and leprechauns, going by your great morse code office in the sky, story, I'd say your well on your way down that path. Will real Napoleon please stand up

You obviously believe in red herrings, because that sums that lot up nicely.

[psyche101]

28 minutes ago, Habitat said:

And you condemn them all as mere co-incidence ?

Dreams are a brain making sense of a days input. Why wouldn't that occasionally result in a prediction? 

[psyche101]

Just now, Habitat said:

You obviously believe in red herrings, because that sums that lot up nicely.

Have you seen PG comment in the cryptozoology section? 

I'd say not going by your ignorant comment? 

[Habitat]

5 minutes ago, eight bits said:

Dreams are thoughts

I really don't know what they can potentially be said to be, especially if you accept they can forecast happenings well beyond any chance of a random "hit".

[Habitat]

3 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

Dreams are a brain making sense of a days input. Why wouldn't that occasionally result in a prediction? 

That is an old line I've heard trotted out a hundred times. I don't think they are all of that character, at all. 

[Habitat]

3 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

Have you seen PG comment in the cryptozoology section? 

I'd say not going by your ignorant comment? 

What comment ?

[psyche101]

3 minutes ago, Habitat said:

That is an old line I've heard trotted out a hundred times. I don't think they are all of that character, at all. 

Why is it not plausible? 

[psyche101]

3 minutes ago, Habitat said:

What comment ?

Any of them. 

[eight bits]

14 minutes ago, Habitat said:

I really don't know what they can potentially be said to be, especially if you accept they can forecast happenings well beyond any chance of a random "hit".

So, does that mean we agree or disagree?

Look, you asked a question and I answered it. No, I do not consider all agreement between dream content and subsequent waking experience as mere coincidence. From the looks of it, neither does @psyche101.

Hell's bells, you and psyche agreeing on something is a much bigger miracle than somebody finding a quarter in their hospital room.

Edited August 22, 2019 by eight bits

[Habitat]

3 minutes ago, eight bits said:

So, does that mean we agree or disagree?

Look, you asked a question and I answered it. No, I do not consider all agreement between dream content and subsequent waking experience as mere coincidence. From the looks of it, neither does @psyche101.

Hell's bells, you and psyche agreeing on something is much bigger miracle than somebody finding a quarter in their hospital room.

The key point obviously, is that with pre-cognitive dreams, is there a plausible mechanism by which the outcome could have been inferred. I've certainly had dreams that were not explainable by that.

[Habitat]

30 minutes ago, psyche101 said:

Any of them. 

I don't know what you are referring to.

[Alchopwn]

On 8/21/2019 at 1:43 PM, psyche101 said:

Because the brain is actually still working. It takes longer to shut down than anyone realised. Death is not cardiac arrest anymore. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxnews.com/science/when-you-die-you-know-youre-dead-because-your-brain-keeps-working-scientist-claims.amp

I am not talking about what happens after your heart stops beating as is explained in the article you provided.  I am talking about occasions when there was no neural activity detected at all, and the heart had stopped for a prolonged period, the patients were still revived and claimed to have had  OOB and other experiences.