Heaven is real, says neurosurgeon

Not really, I understood your point quite well enough. :eek:

What I do not understand is why such religious hooey is in this "General Science and Technology" forum. :confused: I think there are more appropriate places for such topics here, like the "Comparative Religion" forum....unless the point of the OP is trolling for emotional response. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.) ;)

When a religious person starts out their defensive counter - argument with ad homs and personal opinion instead of facts within the (ostensible) context of a rational/logical debate they immediately forfeit all credibility.

But then, religious belief is just that, and as such is not based on fact or rational thought, nor should we expect it to be. :)
 
Not really, I understood your point quite well enough. :eek:

Well, I can see how it could have been misunderstood, is all.

What I do not understand is why such religious hooey is in this "General Science and Technology" forum. :confused: I think there are more appropriate places for such topics here, like the "Comparative Religion" forum....unless the point of the OP is trolling for emotional response. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.) ;)

Good point. I now surf the forums via the "What's New" tab, so I barely ever know what forum a given thread is in anymore. That said, I'm guessing the whole "a neurosurgeon said this" was the impetus for posting here. I don't agree with that logic, but that seems to be why.

When a religious person starts out their defensive counter - argument with ad homs and personal opinion instead of facts within the (ostensible) context of a rational/logical debate they immediately forfeit all credibility.

Agreed.

But then, religious belief is just that, and as such is not based on fact or rational thought, nor should we expect it to be. :)

True enough. But when a person makes a factual claim--as in, they say that heaven is real because there's no other possible explanation for what he experienced--then it's open to rational criticism.
 
Hey I been to heaven before, it was the time I mixed 'shrooms, dramamine and two blotters of acids. Someone quick get me newsweek interview!

Meningitis can be like that. Minus the euphoria. I was going to say minus the sense of crashing back to "the simulation". But he appears to be confused about which is simulated.

He must be a smart guy, being a doc and all. Notice the emphasis is on being a neurosurgeon - plain ole pseudoscience trying to appeal to authority.

Even a genius is no authority on the reality of a coma-induced dream or hallucination, any more than Timothy Leary was an authority on neuroscience and the causal connection between synapse and experience.
 
Not really, I understood your point quite well enough. :eek:

What I do not understand is why such religious hooey is in this "General Science and Technology" forum. :confused: I think there are more appropriate places for such topics here, like the "Comparative Religion" forum....unless the point of the OP is trolling for emotional response. (Not that there is anything wrong with that.) ;)

When a religious person starts out their defensive counter - argument with ad homs and personal opinion instead of facts within the (ostensible) context of a rational/logical debate they immediately forfeit all credibility.

But then, religious belief is just that, and as such is not based on fact or rational thought, nor should we expect it to be. :)



Oh you wise man . your opinion is very unimportant, I intended to put this post in comparative religion , but you tell me to which religion would I compare it . The man that describe his experience probable knows more about science then you and have more education in science then you , If you would come out with such experience , then I would put it religion and say that you are promoting Buddhism. .
 
Meningitis can be like that. Minus the euphoria. I was going to say minus the sense of crashing back to "the simulation". But he appears to be confused about which is simulated.

He must be a smart guy, being a doc and all. Notice the emphasis is on being a neurosurgeon - plain ole pseudoscience trying to appeal to authority.

Even a genius is no authority on the reality of a coma-induced dream or hallucination, any more than Timothy Leary was an authority on neuroscience and the causal connection between synapse and experience.

Tim O'leary was a plain psychologist, I think to be a neurosurgeon it take a little more schooling then you have in the medical school there is a lot of biology cources and going into specialization on brain it takes some bore of anatomy and biology. So were do you fit ?
 
Oh you wise man . your opinion is very unimportant, I intended to put this post in comparative religion , but you tell me to which religion would I compare it . The man that describe his experience probable knows more about science then you and have more education in science then you , If you would come out with such experience , then I would put it religion and say that you are promoting Buddhism. .

Aaah the Appeal to Authority, what a delicious fallacy! Let me try it "I'm a biochemist, I say that there is a life force and its controlled by tiny organisms called "midichlorians" that live inside all living beings, except robots like R2D2, they aren't alive, oh waits you doubt me? well are you a biochemist? If not then shut your mouth and respect my superior knowledge and multiple degrees on the subject. I must be right because I'm an authority on this, by the way Mark Hamill is still hot, don't doubt me I'm a biochemist!"

Now Dr. Eben being an authority should be able to provide evidence for his claims, because scientific authorities generally don't listen to each other directly but review each others evidence, science would still be several hundred years behind if we just took everyone fell for lysenkoism an took opinion as fact simply because an authority said so!
 
Mazulu said:
This has got to be the most profoundly stupidest thing I've heard in years. Do you honestly think that somebody would do this for money? If you had any sort of common sense, you would realize that he's saying this because it supports his religious belief system. I guess those people who don't believe in a Higher Power, those people worship money.

Well, the “Immortality Project” did provide $5 million to explore the afterlife. Maybe he’s not affiliated with the Templeton Foundation but he’s definitely involved with the Monroe Institute.

I may not be all that smart but cerebral vasculitis does lead to decreased blow flow, consequently brain cells are deprived of oxygen. Hmm…blood loss to the brain. Reminds me of the centrifuge test, and they too, experience NDE’s.

[video=youtube;l7E6sihLgdU#t=2m40s]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7E6sihLgdU&feature=youtu.be#t=2m40s[/video]

“It is only by letting go of that reductive materialism and opening up to what is a far more profound understanding of consciousness. This is where I think for me as a scientist, I look at quantum mechanics and I go into this in great detail in my book, is a huge part of the smoking gun.”

“A spec on a butterfly wing”

“The whole multi-verse being out in front of him”

Please…:rolleyes:
 
Aaah the Appeal to Authority, what a delicious fallacy! Let me try it "I'm a biochemist, I say that there is a life force and its controlled by tiny organisms called "midichlorians" that live inside all living beings, except robots like R2D2, they aren't alive, oh waits you doubt me? well are you a biochemist? If not then shut your mouth and respect my superior knowledge and multiple degrees on the subject. I must be right because I'm an authority on this, by the way Mark Hamill is still hot, don't doubt me I'm a biochemist!"

Now Dr. Eben being an authority should be able to provide evidence for his claims, because scientific authorities generally don't listen to each other directly but review each others evidence, science would still be several hundred years behind if we just took everyone fell for lysenkoism an took opinion as fact simply because an authority said so!



Here is something of no authority to influence me
:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRSjzY0s0SM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6va_5Wf2Pc&feature=related
 
"According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent," Alexander writes in the cover story of this week's edition of Newsweek.
Apparently Alexander does not keep up with the latest developments in his own profession. Just last year there was an article explaining how neuroscientists hooked up a scanner to the brain of a man who had been comatose for a long time. They began to notice odd patterns in the waves. After more investigation, they realized that the patient's brain waves were synchronized with their own conversations. He seemed to be hearing their voices and reacting to them!

They wondered if this was just passive stimulus reception or if he actually had a degree of consciousness. The brain has been mapped in sufficient detail that we know the general region that's activated by pleasant thoughts, and the one that holds unpleasant thoughts. So they asked him to think of a nice summer day in the woods, and sure enough, a blip showed up right in the area where they expected it. Then they asked him to think of a traffic jam in hot weather, and sure enough there was a blip in the opposite corner.

So they told him to think of a summer day in order to express "Yes," and a traffic jam to express "No." [I may not have these exactly right, especially the traffic jam.] Before long they had conducted enough calibration tests to be sure that he really was hearing them and understanding them, and he really was "talking back."

So here we have a man who was in what the medical profession calls "a persistent vegetative state," which is defined as four weeks in a coma. And he is experiencing much more than a "dim and limited consciousness." (After one year it becomes a "permanent vegetative state.")

The article didn't go into any more detail about further conversations. Imagine lying there for a month, immobile, conscious, able to think and hear, but nobody knows you're there. The first thing I would have tried to say is, "Turn on some music!"

If that fellow were a friend or a family member, I would hound these doctors day and night until I got them to ask him one really important question:

"Do you want us to pull the plug?"

Aside from the music, that's what I would want to "talk" about. Immediately. This sounds like the world's worst nightmare.
 
If you are all so sure that no afterlife exists in spite of all of the evidence and messages, then I ask you this: why the need for wave-functions? The concept of an aether plane has been around for many decades. Yet science has failed to describe particles as logical discrete objects. Instead science needs wave-functions. Wave functions of atoms look like this. The hydrogen atom wave function looks aetheric to me. Why doesn't it look more discrete like a planetary system? Why does science have to describe quantum physics with fuzzy looking mathematics? Fuzzy looks like aether. If it's aether, then aether goes with aetheric planes, astral planes and occult phenomena. For all science knows, heaven and the afterlife are made entirely of aether-like planes of existence. Please justify the use of fuzzy looking wave-functions that look like aether.
 
If you are all so sure that no afterlife exists in spite of all of the evidence and messages, then I ask you this: why the need for wave-functions?

What do the Alien voices in your head tell you about the afterlife?
 
"Do you want us to pull the plug?"

Aside from the music, that's what I would want to "talk" about. Immediately. This sounds like the world's worst nightmare.



I know you have your agenda , and you will do what you want . But I thought it was an interesting article , and there are many incidents of death experiences were you can find them on you tube " experiences of atheist homosexuals and like your kind and is nothing wrong to have a discussion , but perhaps you are afraid of death so you don't want to talk about it , but surely YOU ARE GOING TO DIE ALSO .
 
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