Are near-death experiences merely illusions ?

[XenoFish]

20 minutes ago, Alchopwn said:

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.

Do you remember your dreams? I'd think the same principle would apply.

[Alchopwn]

2 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

Do you remember your dreams? I'd think the same principle would apply.

A reasonable statement, except for the fact that you can put an EEG on my head while I'm dreaming, whereas these people had the selfsame EEG on their head and they weren't producing signals.

[XenoFish]

5 minutes ago, Alchopwn said:

A reasonable statement, except for the fact that you can put an EEG on my head while I'm dreaming, whereas these people had the selfsame EEG on their head and they weren't producing signals.

And? Wouldn't it be reasonably to think that a memory would have formed as the brain is shutting down, and being brought back would simply "reboot" the brain? Like turning off a computer. Unless there is brain damage of course. 

[Alchopwn]

5 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

And? Wouldn't it be reasonably to think that a memory would have formed as the brain is shutting down, and being brought back would simply "reboot" the brain? Like turning off a computer. Unless there is brain damage of course. 

So for extra credit, why do these people exhibiting no brain activity generally have OoBEs? LINK

It all seems weirdly specific, for a brain that has stopped working and should be dead.

Edited August 22, 2019 by Alchopwn

[XenoFish]

1 minute ago, Alchopwn said:

So for extra credit, why do these people exhibiting no brain activity generally have OoBEs? LINK

It all seems weirdly specific, for a brain that has stopped working and should be dead.

How many of the experiences have been done under controlled circumstances? 100's? 1000's? 

How many of these stories have been told after the fact? How many are false/fabricated memories? 

[Alchopwn]

17 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

How many of the experiences have been done under controlled circumstances? 100's? 1000's? 

The subject has its own publication LINK and is the subject of considerable academic interest LINK.  In terms of experimentation, you will find that ethics boards have some pretty large concerns about giving the go-ahead for such studies, unsurprisingly.  Nevertheless, there have been plenty of doctors who have voluntarily undergone such experiments in secret.

[psyche101]

2 hours ago, Alchopwn said:

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.

30 minutes sufficient? 

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28231862

[skliss]

On 8/19/2019 at 7:34 PM, XenoFish said:

Because they prove nothing. Absolutely nothing. The only thing it does show is that the brain short circuits. Some people are so desperate to believe in the after life that they'll latch on to anything that confirms their beliefs. 

You seem desperate to believe it's not true. 

[XenoFish]

2 minutes ago, skliss said:

You seem desperate to believe it's not true. 

Why would it be true. I don't deny NDE's happen. I don't believe they point to any spirit realm. 

[skliss]

On 8/20/2019 at 1:46 PM, XenoFish said:

You tell people you've seen ghost, finish their sentiences, and just know things you shouldn't. Do stuff like that enough and people call you crazy. Hear it enough and you think they're right. Then you look for proof and find nothing. Wouldn't you be a tad bit cynical? 

No one has called me crazy. Maybe instead of denial you need to find someone that can help you learn to block the experiences or control them better.

[skliss]

On 8/20/2019 at 1:58 PM, XenoFish said:

Not if they're Christian. They might want to beat the devil out of you. 

I don't know any real Christian that would do that. 

[XenoFish]

4 minutes ago, skliss said:

No one has called me crazy. Maybe instead of denial you need to find someone that can help you learn to block the experiences or control them better.

Someone who will throw pills at me.

3 minutes ago, skliss said:

I don't know any real Christian that would do that. 

I do.

[skliss]

19 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

Someone who will throw pills at me.

I do.

No, someone who experiences the same things and have learned to control them. Years ago there was a show on called Psychic Kids where kids who were having these types of experiences were helped to learn to block and control them along with a trained therapist. No one gave them pills. Any way, I saw a commercial on the travel channel that its coming back and the kids from the long ago show are coming back to help the new kids with their experiences. Maybe you should watch and see if they have advise you could use. Got nothing to lose. 

[skliss]

And the whole science thing does make me laugh. My sister and her husband are both scientists and are the most religious people i know.  They work for a major university and personally know and have been in contact with scientists from around the world for almost 30 years and the majority of them either are religious themselves or feel that nothing in science disputes the notion of a creator, in fact many feel that the complexity of scientific discoveries indicate that intelligence not coincidence or happenstance are involved. Science does not negate intelligent design, in fact for them the opposite is true.

[XenoFish]

11 minutes ago, skliss said:

No, someone who experiences the same things and have learned to control them. Years ago there was a show on called Psychic Kids where kids who were having these types of experiences were helped to learn to block and control them along with a trained therapist. No one gave them pills. Any way, I saw a commercial on the travel channel that its coming back and the kids from the long ago show are coming back to help the new kids with their experiences. Maybe you should watch and see if they have advise you could use. Got nothing to lose. 

So go back to a life of delusional, wishful, and magical thinking. It's all about whatever makes you feel good right.

[Habitat]

1 hour ago, psyche101 said:

30 minutes sufficient? 

25 minutes, I have reason to suspect.

[+Liquid Gardens]

3 hours ago, Alchopwn said:

So for extra credit, why do these people exhibiting no brain activity generally have OoBEs?

Because the brain apparently provides odd experiences when it's deprived of oxygen?  Where is the evidence that people are having OBEs at the exact same time there is no brain activity?  From your link:

Quote

One near-death experience has commanded so much media attention that it deserves some of ours; that of Eben Alexander, III, MD, a neurosurgeon versed in neuroscience principles. [Editor’s note: See Missouri Medicine January/ February 2015;112:17–21.] In the midst of severe delirium from E. coli meningitis he describes a fantastic NDE sojourn. Later believing his brain had completely ceased functioning during his NDE, he titled his book, Proof of Heaven.22 However, a simple question seemingly dismisses his contention: When in his delirium did the NDE arise? Since he provides no answer to that question, I believe there is no scientific basis to his assertion that his experience happened with his brain completely shut down.

 

[+Desertrat56]

13 hours ago, VastLand said:

"“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”" -Dumbledore (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J.K. Rowling)           haha 

Science can at least validate that life's motion is directly influenced by light, even down to chemical reactions. Biology claims that the "Pineal Gland", who produces "Melatonin", which itself is responsible for the dream state, and coordination of your metabolism, is directly programmed by the circadian cycles of the sun. The "Pineal Gland" of course, needing sunlight in order to produce "Melatonin". It does not take an extensive browser search to find these things out.

Inside of your head, where you can conceptualize images in your head, through imagination, is a "photo" if you will, that can be in motion, quite literally generated by "Photons" which traverse neural networks as electricity, and "fire" in synapses, emitting bio-photons, that are measurably existent.

Interestingly enough, there is a lizard, called the Tuatara, who has a literal, and complete, third eye, on the top of his head. 

Giving a bit of wonder, we can ask, does the human brain actually have a third eye, in our heads? as we are told that we do, by ancestors.

It is possible that the bio-photons and electrical signals may be giving an actual image to the "retina" if you will, of this third eye? Is this why we see the images we imagine?

Light, gives warmth, energy, and after all, motion, to matter. We observe that quite simply when Water absorbs photons, and enters reaction, to form a higher state of matter, vapor, a gas; or when metal absorbs photons, the stored heat begins to expand molecules, causing the metal to expand. Complacent matter, to expanding matter, or rising matter, is indeed motion, is it not?

Light brings life then, as the heart would not beat without the electric charge, that first "spark plug" jolt, which was fed by the original absorption of light, that entered the stone, and the plant, to produce energy.

Light brings life; life, and consciousness is what we call existence, then light must be the existed; the existing light brought an image into your mind. 

The whole world, we call earth, could not live/exist as a dimension, or realm, set apart from the universe, without a star, to warm her core, shield her sky, fix her in place, give her motion. 

My final opinion, based on my personal philosophy, the realm in your mind, exists purely of light, and is perceived by your eye, and it exists...

Perhaps your energy form, inside your body, throughout the whole neural network as electricity, throughout the whole bloodstream and heart, as "electromagnetism", and throughout all your muscles, synapses, and blood, as "bio-photons", is quite literally experiencing, and "transponding", into the realm conceived of your mind, given motion by light.

I respect cheer  and love you all.

 

@VastLand it is called the Pineal gland. 

[eight bits]

4 hours ago, Alchopwn said:

A reasonable statement, except for the fact that you can put an EEG on my head while I'm dreaming, whereas these people had the selfsame EEG on their head and they weren't producing signals.

Umm, perhaps you've noticed that memories don't come with time stamps. For every memory, without exception, if I say that "I recall that this memory refers to my experiences at time T," then I infer that that is the case, based on when the recalled version of events seems to me most likely to have occurred. Note that that is an inference plus an assumption - that the events in question did actually occur.

Since all memories have this attribute, they all feel more-or-less "real" to us. Occasionally, we will find the inference difficult, and so become aware of the problem. When we do, we often lose confidence in the correctness of the recalled quasifact. And sometimes, it's worse than that, for example, when there are other witnesses and especially durable records that contradict our version of events. And conversely, when I find my birthdate on a slew of records, I enjoy supreme confidence in my recollection - even though I have no articulable memory, none, that actually stems from that event.

When somebody says "I remember thinking such and such at noon yesterday," and yet we thought dude was dead yesterday noon, because all the instruments said so, then this is the same as "I remember when we met, it was raining and I loaned you my umbrella," and the lady pulls out a newspaper clipping showing that we met during a drought; it hadn't rained for a week and wouldn't rain for another ten days more.

Memories are unreliable. How would we know any specific memory is wrong, except that it conflicts with known facts that render the recalled version impossible? How is remembering thinking something when your brain was measured to be nonfunctional not scored as yet another mistaken recollection of which life is so full?

Well, for one thing, there's no fantasy wish fulfillment in scoring it that way, and surely no chance your book will be picked up by Oprah's book club.

 

 

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by eight bits

[psyche101]

11 hours ago, skliss said:

And the whole science thing does make me laugh.

As does your post. You're obviously not overly famiar with the subject. 

Quote

My sister and her husband are both scientists and are the most religious people i know.  They work for a major university and personally know and have been in contact with scientists from around the world for almost 30 years and the majority of them either are religious themselves or feel that nothing in science disputes the notion of a creator,

That's not supported by statistics. My sister is a scientist at Edinburgh and I have the very opposite experience. 

Plenty disputes the notion of a creator. Your sister and husband are more than welcome to provide any evidence here to the contrary. The claims attributed to Yaweh for instance have been largely disproven. He did not create the earth, let there be light, create humans from mud or cause a global flood. None of that happened by the hand of a God. All natural. 

Nothing disputes the notion of a creator because there is nothing to dispute. Its a story. There is nothing in nature that supports a creator or God. That does not mean the liklihood of God being real is 50/50 at all. It means someone made something up and there's no way to prove it one way or the other, just like unicorns. See Russell's teapot for the actual odds of God existing. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

Quote

in fact many feel that the complexity of scientific discoveries indicate that intelligence not coincidence or happenstance are involved.

That's simply not true at all. Very few give intelligent design the time of day. 

Ever heard of Stephen Hawking? Lawrence Krauss? Sean Carroll? 

You might want to have a look at their discoveries. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/63854-stephen-hawking-says-no-god.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/all-scientists-should-be-militant-atheists/amp

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/writings/dtung/

Quote

Science does not negate intelligent design, in fact for them the opposite is true.

Sorry but that is utter nonsense. ID is just creationism using sciencey terms. When was the last university lecture outlining the arguments of intelligent design or a creator? 

[DieChecker]

22 hours ago, psyche101 said:

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

You posted a meme that said "Question everything", and then proceeded to say you have "no question" in what you believe. 

You dont see the irony in that?

[psyche101]

23 minutes ago, DieChecker said:

You posted a meme that said "Question everything", and then proceeded to say you have "no question" in what you believe. 

You dont see the irony in that?

Sorry still not following. I said I have no doubts, that is regarding evidences, and that my prejudices are well founded. 

That's because I question things. So no, not seeing it. I didn't say I have no question, which would still be very different from questioning claims. 

[skliss]

13 hours ago, XenoFish said:

So go back to a life of delusional, wishful, and magical thinking. It's all about whatever makes you feel good right.

Wha? No one is saying anything remotely like that...you say these things are still happening to you and you deal with it by ignoring and denial. But you also say it's torturous... I thought you might benefit from some help. I do tend to forget there are people who enjoy their misery and may be you're one of those...so....do whatever you want. 

[skliss]

1 hour ago, psyche101 said:

As does your post. You're obviously not overly famiar with the subject. 

That's not supported by statistics. My sister is a scientist at Edinburgh and I have the very opposite experience. 

Plenty disputes the notion of a creator. Your sister and husband are more than welcome to provide any evidence here to the contrary. The claims attributed to Yaweh for instance have been largely disproven. He did not create the earth, let there be light, create humans from mud or cause a global flood. None of that happened by the hand of a God. All natural. 

Nothing disputes the notion of a creator because there is nothing to dispute. Its a story. There is nothing in nature that supports a creator or God. That does not mean the liklihood of God being real is 50/50 at all. It means someone made something up and there's no way to prove it one way or the other, just like unicorns. See Russell's teapot for the actual odds of God existing. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

That's simply not true at all. Very few give intelligent design the time of day. 

Ever heard of Stephen Hawking? Lawrence Krauss? Sean Carroll? 

You might want to have a look at their discoveries. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.livescience.com/amp/63854-stephen-hawking-says-no-god.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/all-scientists-should-be-militant-atheists/amp

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/writings/dtung/

Sorry but that is utter nonsense. ID is just creationism using sciencey terms. When was the last university lecture outlining the arguments of intelligent design or a creator? 

Just because your religion is science doesn't mean you are right.  My sister and her husband have experienced exactly what I said within the scientific community and I'm not sure why you think they need to convince you of anything. You can link, i can link it doesn't change what I said but it does always seem curious to me the lengths non-belivers go to as if they are so insecure in their belief. Always makes me think they have some underlying doubts about it

[Habitat]

19 minutes ago, skliss said:

but it does always seem curious to me the lengths non-belivers go to as if they are so insecure in their belief. Always makes me think they have some underlying doubts about it

So underlying in fact, that they have no inkling that the doubts are there. Having doubts is good, and it certainly does not oblige anyone to sign up to any dogma, by admitting to them.