Mr. short. big man this one is for you this is more science then you can take; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuf-xct2sHk&feature=related
Heaven is real, says neurosurgeon
- Thread starter arauca
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Mr. short. big man this one is for you this is more science then you can take; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuf-xct2sHk&feature=related
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
They're called "near-death experiences." In an actual "death experience" you die and don't come back to talk about it.
As the oxygen level in the brain drops, the brain begins to act in unusual and erratic ways. People who are revived from this condition report many bizarre experiences, some of which seem very realistic. It's not too much different from being stoned on a drug. There's nothing supernatural about it. You're still alive and the Laws of Nature are still in force.
I may be an atheist but I'm not homosexual. You can ask my wife.
Huh? I have posted extensively in the discussions about death on this website. At age 69, I have very strong opinions about end-of-life issues. I do not want to be kept alive in a warehouse... oops I meant to say "nursing home," so some corporation can suck away my estate and leave nothing to my heirs. I am in favor of DNR orders being honored, assisted suicide being legalized, and unassisted suicide made easier.
Gosh. You and I finally agree about something.
I don't know if there is an afterlife or not, I juste have not seen proof that there is, then again there is no evidence that there is not, I leave the question open, I figure I will find out eventually anyways. Yes sure people have had near-death experiences but that is not proof, it could very well be disillusions, hallucinations or down right lies. The good doctor claims he was brain dead during that time, but there no evidence that he was completely without neural activity at every instant from the very beginning to end of his coma. At the very least we can surmise that at the very end of life (or the beginning of death) many people, but not all, experience peace and tranquillity, be this real or physiological is irrelvent, they experience it none the less. It goes back to the old philosophical question of what is "real": it does not matter as pain and pleasure are real enough.
I'm still waiting for one of you scholarly scientific intellectuals to justify the use of "fuzzy" wave-functions in quantum mechanics. If nature behaves that way, then nature deviates from logical behaviour at the quantum level. At the quantum level, objects are no longer discrete, therefore, nature deviates from logic. Therefore, an afterlife is plausible (in spite of the lies and deception of atheists).
And when you rise again in spirit form, as some quantum etheric entity, what then? Nobody will take notice of you (at least nobody living). You will have only the other quantum etheric entities to talk to.
Asking for evidence outside of anecdotes is deception? Personal stories that can be replicated by other means. If you want to believe there's something more beyond death to help you get past the idea of dying, then fine. But don't get so defensive if someone points out there's nothing scientific to support that belief. Just make the most of this life, and if you're right, great.
Timothy Leary was not only not plain, he was on another plane, advocating for the anti-plain.
In any case, the doc you picked here ought to know better than to perpetrate pseudoscience. Now the question is: was he having personality problems before the meningitis or did this nonsense start with some substantial brain damage done as a result of the infection?
We could turn this into a science thread by investigating the number of people who report alteration in behavior and personality of someone they know, which has its onset after recovering from coma.
My guess is that the average neurologist would recognize his own dreams and hallucinations as predictable consequences of his seriously compromised brain. Unless he was weird to begin with, or unless he lost his objectivity with the infection, it's not clear from the information presented why he's making this venture into absurdity after recovery.
The things we can say with certainty are (1) there is no scientific basis to attribute his reports to anything else but normal dreams that accompany fever and coma, and (2) any attempt to try to make the report seem credible by virtue of his unusual qualifications are a disingenuous exploit of the appeal to authority.
People dream. People coming out of comas may recall dreams or hallucinations. But there is no credible connection between dreams/hallucinations and reality.
I know you're a chemist, Arauca. You know reality covers a lot of predictable and repeatable processes. Having a dream that the thousands of things you've learned aren't true is one thing. But what would you call a person who chooses to advance such a dream scenario as something that actually modifies reality. That's where we let the nut off the bus in front of the psyche ward. Today he may believe he conversed with angels. Tomorrow he may hurt himself or others, believing he is battling demons.
He's nuts. He sounds like he needs an intervention. Other than that, he's yet another nut pandering to gullibility. If you notice, they seem to gravitate towards the path of least resistance: religion.
I only got to watch part of the video before I had to go to work. However, I have made some observations from watching the video and reading the posts here. Atheists very clearly have contempt for religion, for faith, for anything that might be described as a spiritual experience. I don't see any athiests here who are qualified to use the word insane. Yet they throw it around like confetti. Atheists are some of the most dogmatic and hateful people I have ever encountered.
As for "scientific basis", I'm still waiting for someone to explain why these fuzzy wave functions have to be used to explain quantum systems. Wave-functions look so aetheric. Just look at the hydrogen atom wave-function. This is three times now that aethist scientists have backed off from my question. I'm beginning to think that aetheists are deliberately trying to suppress evidence that life after death is true, that God exists, etc.
Aetheists have their own agenda and are now interested in the truth or the facts.
As for "scientific basis", I'm still waiting for someone to explain why these fuzzy wave functions have to be used to explain quantum systems. Wave-functions look so aetheric. Just look at the hydrogen atom wave-function. This is three times now that aethist scientists have backed off from my question. I'm beginning to think that aetheists are deliberately trying to suppress evidence that life after death is true, that God exists, etc.
Aetheists have their own agenda and are now interested in the truth or the facts.
I don't know to whom you are referring and using the word scientific watch this you tube
: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuf-x...eature=related..... and then talk, there are people evaluating what ever the returnee experience
I invite you to check out this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuf-x...eature=related and there are many more , go on you-tube and type ' Near Death Experience" and this is not the only weirdo. . I believe if one person say something is a here say so. when two person say then there is not much , when tree person say then there is some curiosity when more it is worted to explore
You're saying that if hundreds, thousands or even millions of people began reporting their dreams and hallucinations as real experiences then you would believe them to be real?
For them is real, for us who did not go trough such experience, it is not real , But what is the explanation ? do we know the truth When did we got to know about sub atomic particles ? Did people in the thirty or forty knew about them ? There are people working to understand the subconsciousness , should we stop them because it does not fit well with materialism ? ?
The more I think about it, the more I think that there are patterns in the wave-function aether that science is helplessly unable to measure or account for. Just to remind you all, or perhaps inform you, science cannot predict everything with perfect accuracy. It's called the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It's not a measurement limitation. It's a fact of nature. At the quantum scale, nothing is discrete or isolated. Everything has a wave nature. They're called DeBroglie waves. Quantum physicists model quantum systems with wave-functions; then they calculate eigenstates. When they perform measurements, they can't predict which eigenstate the particle (or whatever characteristic of the system they're measuring) will be in. They can only assign probabilities. Why is this important?
Because it tells you that physicists, as smart and skilled as they are, are not allowed to predict everything with perfect accuracy. It means that physicists cannot account for all of reality. Physicists can only acccount for part of reality, not all of it.
Given that so many people have Near Death Experiences, it's more likely that those people are really experiencing the afterlife. It is also very likely that atheists are halucinating and are delusional.
Because it tells you that physicists, as smart and skilled as they are, are not allowed to predict everything with perfect accuracy. It means that physicists cannot account for all of reality. Physicists can only acccount for part of reality, not all of it.
Given that so many people have Near Death Experiences, it's more likely that those people are really experiencing the afterlife. It is also very likely that atheists are halucinating and are delusional.
Mazulu, part of your problem is your flawed understanding of what wave functions represent.
Plus your whole "aether" thing of which you totally made up and cannot support in any way- yet you'll use that as "proof" that scientists don't know anything because they cannot see that thing you made up.
It's invisible.
Physics models reality- It does not account for reality.
It models reality so that we can understand it. It's not a pie that you can slice up.
Consider the ten percent myth: "You only use ten percent of your brain." This implies that you only use a small portion of the brain and 90% of it goes unused - allowing potential for what if you used more than 10%... such as psychic ability.
But the truth is...
You use 100% of your brain. Every last bit of it.
But you only use about ten percent of that whole brain in any given moment. Use one portion, then another portion, then a different portion. You also only use about 4% to 20% of your muscles.
At any given moment.
The models of reality are like that. All of reality is there. 100%. We only model portions of it as we study those portions.
Ok, and what exactly are we hallucinating here? Are we hallucinating a Non-God or something?
And I agree that to them it's a real experience. We're just differ in how eager we are to jump to a conclusion without further evidence to support their experience. That's the scientific part I alluded to. Argument by authority, argument by popularity, doesn't matter if that's all their is. Should it be researched, yes, by all means. But it's a big jump from saying they saw something odd while incapacitated to stating that there is an afterlife that they got a glimpse. A very large one.
The Eben Alexander case is very interesting. It is pretty much the perfect case, as to the actual nature of his condition and experience, to shoot holes in the normal go to rationalizations and 'explanations' brought up and presented as 'medical' and 'scientific' explanations of experience after death like 'brain cells losing oxygen' and the like. Such things fall apart under even casual scrutiny, but they are parroted in rote unison most any time the topic of NDE comes up.
The silly 'heaven is real' stuff, to 'sell' and article is rather ridiculous. But the case itself is fascinating, and adds some more actual data and knowledge about an experience humans have been having for thousands of years, when they died and then came back, or were near the threshold of death.
Interesting stuff. There are of course many other cases that are well documented in a medical setting, but Eben's experience is rather unique considering his credentials and field.
Cool stuff.
The silly 'heaven is real' stuff, to 'sell' and article is rather ridiculous. But the case itself is fascinating, and adds some more actual data and knowledge about an experience humans have been having for thousands of years, when they died and then came back, or were near the threshold of death.
Interesting stuff. There are of course many other cases that are well documented in a medical setting, but Eben's experience is rather unique considering his credentials and field.
Cool stuff.
Please explain how the rational explanations 'fall apart under even casual scrutiny.'
Really- elucidate. Please make that make sense.
What possible casual evidence do you have to present that makes well established and independently verified biology 'fall apart?'
Yes, people don't care about money! sheesh. Silly gooses.
What actual data has been presented?
Specify it.
That does make it unique. Which is why I pointed out the most demeaning part of it all...
With his education, doctorate and degrees, he still insults the intelligence of those of us that are well aware of the science he seems to have forgotten or is discounting.
I'm afraid the "current medical understanding of the brain and mind" is close to zero.
There's mostly pseudoscience in the fields related to brain study.
How close to "Zero?"
While I'd agree that the human brain is still (and will be for a long while) the least understood organ in the body (Well... appendix? Some say it absorbs radiation...), there is still quite a hell of a lot that is known about it.
How much we know about it compared to how much we have yet to learn, I couldn't tell ya.
But I know it ain't "nuthin.'"
What passes for 'discussion' on this forum is far too often merely rather inane quibbling. That doesn't interest me. Looking at your earlier posts in this thread... well, there's not going to be a worthwhile discussion possible most likely. Too often discussions that should be approached intellectually and critically, particularly in areas of science, are unfortunately religiously dogmatic arguments/shooting matches. Your previous posts in this thread are more in the realm of the latter. Again, that doesn't interest me.
I'll mention the outline, and if you care to do some investigation and critical thinking of your own about the topic you can pursue it. You might look in to a book often mentioned on this topic since it was published, mentioned by Eben himself in interviews: 'Irreducible Mind'. It's a good starting place.
Memory formation, that process, is a high level function of the brain. In a purely brain-based explanation of consciousness, memory formation is a key consideration in this NDE matter. Even relatively minor insult to the brain stops that brain-based memory process. Hence a boxer who is knocked out, an easy example, doesn't remember what happened, in fact the moments even before being struck are not stored. They awake unsure of where they even are, wondering how they went down, not even remembering being hit. They do not awaken creating vivid hallucinatory recollections as they awaken. Trauma victims in car wrecks, etc, memory is lost, they often don't remember the accident or a time span before it happened. By the time the brain is running out of oxygen, severe insult to the brain - the cells are starving, there is no memory formation occurring. If the 'go to' stuff of 'cells starved for oxygen randomly firing and creating hallucinations' were happening, you wouldn't remember it. It would not be stored as retrievable memory in the brain. Even wrestlers and MMA fighters, for another easy example of many possibilities, who are 'choked out' by restricting blood flow and thus oxygen to the brain, often come to not remembering ever being placed in a choke hold. That supposed 'scientific explanation', widely parroted as I mentioned, simply doesn't hold up under even casual scrutiny. In fact if you look into it you find there is no real, actual, scientific basis for such assertions. It's more dogma than it is actual critically scrutinized and researched scientific deduction. The model and 'explanations' simply don't hold up.
In the case of Eben... his brain had no function in it, attached to a brain activity monitor, for 9 or 10 days. There was no brain activity. I assume you understand at least enough to know that memory formation requires electrochemical activity in the brain. Memories are not being formed in that situation. Some fantasy that all he and countless others recall about a NDE were some creation of the waking mind, is also unable to hold up to even casual scrutiny. When he returned he set about trying to account for his experience, and found that the existing 'explanations' that he too had subscribed to and parroted did not hold up. In fact it was quite easy to dismiss them in a strictly scientific fashion. This was something that was known before his experience, but he added some more data and understanding to it.
It's a fascinating and complicated issue, this whole NDE thing. We understand very, very little about consciousness.