God

[torridon]

How long do you want to carry on this 'yes, it is'...'no, it isn't'...discussion?!

You are never going to admit that the after-life is a real possibility as experienced through NDE's.  I am never going to say that NDE's are entirely brain generated illusions. 

So...cheers.

You're the one making fantastic claims.  It's up to you to justify your position, with reason, evidence.

[Sriram]

A nice article from Scientific American...   Does not say anything reassuring about an after-life but is still fairly 'middle of the road'.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-near-death-experiences-reveal-about-the-brain/

**********

About one in 10 patients with cardiac arrest in a hospital setting undergoes such an episode. Thousands of survivors of these harrowing touch-and-go situations tell of leaving their damaged bodies behind and encountering a realm beyond everyday existence, unconstrained by the usual boundaries of space and time. These powerful, mystical experiences can lead to permanent transformation of their lives.

NDEs are not fancy flights of the imagination.

But NDEs are recalled with unusual intensity and lucidity over decades.

The results suggest that the NDEs were recalled with greater vividness and detail than either real or imagined situations were. In short, the NDEs were remembered as being “realer than real.”

Noticing patterns in what people would share about their near-death stories, these researchers turned a phenomenon once derided as confabulation or dismissed as feverish hallucination (deathbed visions of yore) into a field of empirical study.

Interestingly, NDEs are no more likely to occur in devout believers than in secular or nonpracticing subjects.

Why the mind should experience the struggle to sustain its operations in the face of loss of blood flow and oxygen as positive and blissful rather than as panic-inducing remains mysterious.

***********

Just FYI.

[torridon]

not 'middle of the road' as in keeping an open mind between competing explanations, one scientific, the other supernatural.  The author spells that out :

"I operate under the hypothesis that all our thoughts, memories, percepts and experiences are an ineluctable consequence of the natural causal powers of our brain"

[Sriram]

not 'middle of the road' as in keeping an open mind between competing explanations, one scientific, the other supernatural.  The author spells that out :

"I operate under the hypothesis that all our thoughts, memories, percepts and experiences are an ineluctable consequence of the natural causal powers of our brain"

He is however careful to call it a hypothesis. That is not bad. And he acknowledges that researchers are turning NDE's into a field of empirical study instead of deriding it. He also questions why the mind should experience such peaceful and positive things when it is shutting down.

Let me add that there is nothing 'supernatural' about an after-life. Everyone goes through it. It is natural too...just outside the limited sphere of physical laws.

[torridon]

He is however careful to call it a hypothesis. That is not bad. And he acknowledges that researchers are turning NDE's into a field of empirical study instead of deriding it. He also questions why the mind should experience such peaceful and positive things when it is shutting down.

Let me add that there is nothing 'supernatural' about an after-life. Everyone goes through it. It is natural too...just outside the limited sphere of physical laws.

Using a 'hypothesis' is just standard science.  People deride the woo that these phenomena attracted, not the experiences themselves. A bit like some aspects of quantum theory, such as the Copenhagen interpretation, they tend to attract woo-merchants hoping science has validated their unhinged ideas.

There is nothing in the domain of life sciences that would support the notion of after-life. So in that sense, the claim is a supernatural one.

[Enki]

He is however careful to call it a hypothesis. That is not bad. And he acknowledges that researchers are turning NDE's into a field of empirical study instead of deriding it. He also questions why the mind should experience such peaceful and positive things when it is shutting down.

Let me add that there is nothing 'supernatural' about an after-life. Everyone goes through it. It is natural too...just outside the limited sphere of physical laws.

There is nothing in the article(which I have read bfore) which I disagree with when read in its entirety. Unfortunately, by selecting out your own favoured parts, you tend to distort the picture given in the article proper. For instance, the author regularly refers to alternative events which can and do produce similar NDE like effects(ingesting psychoactive substances, induced loss of consciousness in test pilots and NASA astronauts, complex partial seizures, electrical stimulation of parts of the cortex). Not one of your quotes refer to any of these.

And quite sensibly the author suggests that he works under the hypothesis that they are brain driven events. At the very least we have limited evidence for this and the potential for testing to gain more evidence.

Whereas:

Let me add that there is nothing 'supernatural' about an after-life. Everyone goes through it. It is natural too...just outside the limited sphere of physical laws.

is simply pure conjecture and assertion.

[torridon]

At the very least we have limited evidence for this and the potential for testing to gain more evidence.

yes, he references using a lab mouse as a model.  if similar phenomena are detected in mice, no doubt Sriram will be claiming the mouse is therefore also on its way to its next life   

[Udayana]

A nice article from Scientific American...   Does not say anything reassuring about an after-life but is still fairly 'middle of the road'.
...
The results suggest that the NDEs were recalled with greater vividness and detail than either real or imagined situations were. In short, the NDEs were remembered as being “realer than real.”

Exactly...

...
Interestingly, NDEs are no more likely to occur in devout believers than in secular or nonpracticing subjects.

Exactly...

Why the mind should experience the struggle to sustain its operations in the face of loss of blood flow and oxygen as positive and blissful rather than as panic-inducing remains mysterious.

Not if you think about it or experience it.

[Sriram]

It is a standard argument that even people who are not near death have an experience of this phenomenon. I have discussed this already with some of you who have experienced such phenomena.

That argument does not dilute the matter, rather it reinforces the reality that everyone has a soul which merely occupies the body. The soul could leave the body at any time due to various reasons. Therefore the out of body experience can be had by anyone though it is probably more common under stressful circumstances.   

[torridon]

It is a standard argument that even people who are not near death have an experience of this phenomenon. I have discussed this already with some of you who have experienced such phenomena.

That argument does not dilute the matter, rather it reinforces the reality that everyone has a soul which merely occupies the body. The soul could leave the body at any time due to various reasons. Therefore the out of body experience can be had by anyone though it is probably more common under stressful circumstances.

Nope. No way Hose. No need for fantastical explanations when mundane ones will work without needing to rewrite the entirety of life sciences knowledge. Mr Ockham would disapprove of your flippant disregard for due process.

[Sriram]

The soul explains matters in a much more simple manner than all the convoluted 'explanations' that scientists struggle to come up with.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Sriram,

The soul explains matters in a much more simple manner than all the convoluted 'explanations' that scientists struggle to come up with.

And Thor explains thunder in a much more simple manner than all the convoluted 'explanations' that scientists struggle to come up with.

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

(H. L. Mencken) 

[Enki]

It is a standard argument that even people who are not near death have an experience of this phenomenon. I have discussed this already with some of you who have experienced such phenomena.

That argument does not dilute the matter, rather it reinforces the reality that everyone has a soul which merely occupies the body. The soul could leave the body at any time due to various reasons. Therefore the out of body experience can be had by anyone though it is probably more common under stressful circumstances.

On the contrary, all the examples given in the article to which I referred all point towards an alteration in brain state. There is no reality that everyone has a soul unless or until you can give evidence that this is so. Until then you are simply repeating your beliefs in the form of assertions and as such they carry no scientific weight whatever.

[Sriram]

 

The evidence for a soul is the out of body experience that many people (even healthy people) have.  But you attribute this rather stubbornly, to brain chemistry..... 

What other evidence do you expect?

[torridon]

The soul explains matters in a much more simple manner than all the convoluted 'explanations' that scientists struggle to come up with.

No it doesn't.

All experience is created by brain function. NDEs are just another particular circumstance giving rise to certain types of experience. No need for magical thinking.

[Enki]

 

The evidence for a soul is the out of body experience that many people (even healthy people) have.  But you attribute this rather stubbornly, to brain chemistry..... 

What other evidence do you expect?

Just because one has an out of body experience doesn't necessarily mean that there is an actual part of you which is separate from one's body, especially as there is not the slightest evidence for this being true and even genuine experiments to verify such experiences(e.g. reading a hidden message in an operating theatre) have so far had no positive results whatever.

[torridon]

The soul explains matters in a much more simple manner than all the convoluted 'explanations' that scientists struggle to come up with.

A bit like thunder being a sonic shock resulting from a sudden increase in pressure and temperature from a lightning bolt when in reality it was just Thor being in a bad mood.  Who needs 'convoluted' explanations eh ?

[Theoretical Skeptic]

A bit like thunder being a sonic shock resulting from a sudden increase in pressure and temperature from a lightning bolt when in reality it was just Thor being in a bad mood.  Who needs 'convoluted' explanations eh ?

Except for that the Biblical soul is just the life, life experiences and blood of any breathing creature. The immortal soul was more Aristotle's concept from ancient Babylonian teachings.