Agnostic.com

33 5

What about NDE's (Near Death Experiences)?

There are just too many verified examples of accurate cognition mixed with stories of an afterlife. Do you just explain them all away by physical phenomenon? What about that Harvard neurologist who was brain dead for 6 days? or the surgeon ho had the massive stroke disabling the left side of her brain (Dr. Jill Bolte-Reynolds or somesuch)? I'm not sure you can just explain them all away as lies or brain farts.

JeffMesser 8 Aug 16
Share

Enjoy being online again!

Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.

Create your free account

33 comments

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

10

How bout near casino slot wins?? I’ve had a few of those!

you were near the casino, or you nearly won? XD

@AtheistInNC both!

8

Why is it that people with NDEs always see an afterlife as it's defined by their culture?
The brain is an amazing organ which is quite capable of constructing fantasies (for lack of a better word) under certain conditions.

If you're really serious about this, read some books which deal with it from a psychological viewpoint. There are explanations.

nope. read and seen too many that bring up specific points that could not have been known. it and past life memories are phenomenon that have been happening for man's entire history. it's more than what you say.

@JeffMesser the brain is quite imaginative and very capable of hiding forgotten information from our past or things we have heard along the way. Don't fall into the ancients weren't smart enough to build the pyramids logic; the brain is an amazing organ.

@Beowulfsfriend I understand what you're saying, but no. I have actually listened to small children in India who in their youth recalled details about past lives that were verifiable. It's more than just a stretch to deny it or call it all simple brain activity.

@JeffMesser

"man's entire history."
Really?
You have evidence from 200,000 years ago or so?
OK. That was a little unfair.
However, what's your criteria for evaluating all these claims?

@JeffMesser Why would YOUR words alone (filled with the sound of certainty and no actual evidence) persuade/convince anyone ?

@HumanistJohn I have it from thousands of years ago yes.

@FearlessFly - why don't you give me your elaborate epistemological scheme then ... but make sure it is able to measure dynamic processes vice trying to capture a moment in time. we went thru this before and you're just very close-minded about anything that doesnt meet your personal intellectual criteria - but your criteria are incomplete and myopic. you live with the conditioning that reality is a string of isolated events when it's all a big, rolling process still going on from the "big bang" or whatever origination you believe. have you advanced from this yet or are you still stuck in that mode? that will determine how I answer whatever you have to say.

@JeffMesser . . . nothing but assertions, insults, and accusations -- where is the evidence ?

@FearlessFly I'm not listing links and making arguments to deaf ears. goodbye.

@JeffMesser Please provide specifics. Just saying " read and seen too many that bring up specific points that could not have been known." isn't proof.
Here is information that contra-indicates what you are saying.
[independent.co.uk]

@AtheistInNC again, I will say to you as well. you tell me first what kind of proof you will need to convince you.

@JeffMesser

Well, these verifiable, factual details you claim to have about this stories would be a good start.

5

NDEs? Down here in Texas we call that "riding a bicycle".

I've ridden bicycles in Texas (Huntsville). I'm surprised I'm still around.

@kiramea me too, in Austin!

4

The problem is how do you design a study to study and confirm the stories?

There are a lot more people who experience nothing under neat death experiences. Those who are revived with stories to tell are the exceptions to the rule. So, if there was an afterlife, why do so few people who come out of near death experiences have such experiences?

If it were real, I'd think it would be far more common as medical knowledge has advanced and mroe peopel come back from near death experiences. It is still a very rare phenomena.

4

It’s all subjective. Not a shred of empirical, actionable data.
It might be personally powerful and convincing but outside of the individuals brain bubble it’s does not mean shit without the Empiricism to back it up.

4

Why not? The person was not dead, they were near death. Your brain gets all confused at this state. The body laying wherever it is at this point does not go anywhere. It has what we call an NDE that some use to explain their "after death" experiences. To even go this far you have to invent a "soul" that many think you are given at birth. (The breath of life.) Others use the soul idea to immediately claim they are immortal. This looks like a setup to explain what you want to believe. This is all done without involving ectoplasm like they did years ago. I'm not impressed.

Wurd

4

NDE's as reported are all anecdotal. Show me scientifically verifiable information and I will pay attention. There is no "soul", "spirit," or other agent that is apart from our body.

then why don't you tell me how to measure consciousness einstein. why do you assume we know everything about the universe? our understanding of how things work is still in primal stages. we were still using leeches to cure a variety of ailments (other than restricted blood flow) as little as 150 years ago.

There have actually been quite a lot of studies performed on the subject.

3

Look up Hindu NDE. Then realize that they both can’t be true. Then conclude the one thing in common with both is the human brain.

3

Brain farts and oxygen deprivation. With oxygen deprivation, brain cells start to die. If all the brain cells die, including the brain stem then you have brain death which is irreversible. The loss of cognitive functioning is not brain death. If you've gotten really really drunk, you've deprived brain cells of oxygen and killed a few.

I had a non clinical sudden cardiac arrest, complete disruption of breathing and heart function. luckily they were able to get an AED on me within 4 minutes so I had minimal oxygen deprivation. I also had a secondary clinical cardiac arrest prior to getting my ICD installed, but that was only about about a minute.

After both incidents, my cardiologist asked if I had an NDE. Both, the answer was no. After the second he explained that people who tend to have NDE's tend to be people who have faith/belief. He was relieved because people who have NDE's typically will have PTSD afterward due to the conflict of reality and belief.

3

" Was brain dead for 6 days," medically speaking, once the brain becomes starved of oxygen it begins dying immediately and it cannot regenerate itself unlike the liver, ergo, it is 100% Kaput.
When the brain and body are so badly damaged and oxygen deprivation sets in the brain begins to mis-fire creating entirely false images, etc, etc, thus giving the false impression/s of N.D.E.
Without a regular oxygen supply to it the brain will begin to die within a period of approx. 8-10 minutes and from there there usually is NO coming back.
The 'white light at the end of the tunnel' IS just as much a myth as is God, Jesus, Heaven or Hell.

3

So what? You're not sure they can be just explained away as lies or brain farts. What does that mean, that there's some supernatural event happening? How do you figure that? Why isn't it just someone almost died? Why is it more than just that?

3

Just because these incidents cannot be explained in scientific terms at this present time, does not mean that there is not a logical explanation. All it means is that at present the human brain has not been able to work out how and why they happened. Our understanding of inexplicable phenomenon is often attributed to the supernatural, but as future generations become more mentally advanced I believe these seemingly impossible conundrums will be answered scientifically.

who said anything about supernatural? why do you guys immediately assume someone is talking about that? have you ever considered that our knowledge of the physical world is still limited and in its' infancy?

@JeffMesser I didn’t say I thought you thought it was supernatural...I said these phenomena are often attributed to the supernatural...which is what they quite often are ...if not by you, they most definitely are by others. Did you read what I wrote or were you just too angry when you saw the word “supernatural “ and didn’t bother reading the rest? If you did read it properly you’d probably realise that in fact you and I are more or less on the same page on this issue!

@Marionville oh I was most definitely turned off when you said supernatural. that is true. I am so tired of the close-mindedness of people here. It's like a disease. They assume we know everything about the physical world and nothing like awareness or consciousness could exist because we, in our infantile understanding, cannot explain it.

3

If you are asking a question about specific events, please include a link to ensure that we are talking about the same event. That will help everyone involved. 🙂

My short answer? Yes, I explain away all NDEs as physical phenomenon of the brain that is oxygen starved or injured.

about your specifics:
The neurologist was not "brain-dead'. From the ABC news article: "Deep in coma, his brain infected so badly only the most primitive parts were working." So it appears he was near death, but not quite there.
[abcnews.go.com]

Just because the man stated he saw / felt something doesn't mean it exists. One can hallucinate, see mirages, and even can see a "white light at the end of a tunnel" when subjected to high-g forces (the Air Force didn't publish all info from some of their G-force studies in the 60s because it seemed to show that seeing a white light at the end of a tunnel, when your brain was starved of oxygen, was a common event. That contra-indicated heavenly events like NDE, and they didn't want to spoil it for the xtians.).

Hell, I have eye floaters and occasionally I'll see "something" or what appears to be a shadow moving - but it is internal to my eye, not in the physical world around me. If people don't know about eye floaters, they could attribute seeing them as ghosts / spirits / sprites, etc.

Here is a study that seems to indicate that NDEs are just your brain "hyperventilating" (my word) just before lights out for good. I hope this is proof enough for you. If not, let's talk.

[independent.co.uk]

Concerning Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor - I don't know what you are asking. She had a stroke, part of her brain died, and she recovered. Not really a NDE.

[oprah.com]

  1. there is a huge difference between a "white light and tunnel" and the elaborate stories told by many such as Dr. Eben Alexander. I especially object to using that analysis on his precisely because his cerebral function was gone. You would still need some activity in the cerebellum or PFC in order to "spark" anything much less occipital lobe activity. Proclaiming his base functioning would possibly still be active would just be pointing to the amygdala and hippocampus which would stimulate adrenal gland activity etc... and parsing. But nothing there would create any thoughts on their own.
  2. the "shooting stars" and floaters and all the other phenomenon you suggest are likewise a far cry from visions like a dreaming state. It's not like a mirage where you think you see water and your mind fills in some details. These are elaborate stories often accompanied by verifiable, factual details.
  3. Jill bolte-whatsherface was offered precisely because of the type of damage she suffered. We know a generalized, half-ass description of the brain's composition without any clue how the hemispheres work together. The only organic evidence useful in biology, psych, and medicine comes from cases of brain damage and taking note of observational differences - such as cases where the corpus callosum is severed for grand mal seizures. Her case offers another perspective and suggests that consciousness may reside in the right brain with rules, limits, memories etc... imposed by the left. I don't personally believe in heaven or any of that - but I do believe awareness is independent of the brain.
  4. why do you guys act like we know everything about reality and the nature of the universe? the things we have yet to comprehend are numerous. closing your mind off to possibilities is exactly the same problem imposed on Copernicus, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Einstein and all the others who tried to expand our knowledge. I'm not advocating any god or deity. I am suggesting there's more to it than we know.

@JeffMesser

"You would still need some activity in the cerebellum or PFC in order to "spark" anything much less occipital lobe activity. "
-- You make this claim with no proof. I would surmise from all stories so far that even though the brain seems to be segmented, other parts still can do things they are are not "built for" under adverse conditions. A wrench isn't a hammer, but it can be in an emergency.

"visions like a dreaming state" are hallucinations.
-- Acid trips are an example of brain function "seeing" things that are not real. You say "These are elaborate stories often accompanied by verifiable, factual details", but never give the verifiable details (which, IMHO, don't exist).

"I do believe awareness is independent of the brain."
-- If this is true, how is it done? To me it is like saying "I drove to work in my car, but I didn't use my car." The only examples of awareness we have come from brains. So far in every case no brain = no awareness.

"why do you guys act like we know everything about reality and the nature of the universe? "
I never said scientists know everything. But I never claim things are supernatural without proof. Supernatural claims require supernatural proofs, and so far, there are none. Your claim that awareness is outside of the brain is a supernatural claim, and you have no proof. I don't believe it and you don't like me for saying so. Sorry.

@JeffMesser
Oh my. And concerning Dr. Eben Alexander, one of HIS FRIENDS investigated his "I went to heaven" claims, and it appears he was just turning a quick buck on a book he could sell to christians.

"My reporting was beginning to make it pretty clear that Alexander’s bestselling book, Proof of Heaven, was a stew of factual inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and omissions." [medium.com]

And here are some more tidbits that show what he SAID and what ACTUALLY happened are two different accounts. [news.yahoo.com]

.............................................
"In Proof of Heaven, Alexander writes that he spent seven days in "a coma caused by a rare case of E. coli bacterial meningitis." There is no indication in the book that it was Laura Potter, and not bacterial meningitis, that induced his coma, or that the physicians in the ICU maintained his coma in the days that followed through the use of anesthetics. Alexander also writes that during his week in the ICU he was present "in body alone," that the bacterial assault had left him with an "all-but-destroyed brain." He notes that by conventional scientific understanding, "if you don't have a working brain, you can't be conscious," and a key point of his argument for the reality of the realms he claims to have visited is that his memories could not have been hallucinations, since he didn't possess a brain capable of creating even a hallucinatory conscious experience.

I ask Potter whether the manic, agitated state that Alexander exhibited whenever they weaned him off his anesthetics during his first days of coma would meet her definition of conscious.

"Yes," she says. "Conscious but delirious."
.............................................

So ... looks like when money is involved, you can't even trust doctors sometimes. Who would have known?

3

We don't know, therefore god.

and what is god? perhaps "god" is nothing more than a personification of all the various processes etc.. evident in the universe.

2

I had to think on this a while, and I remembered something that Sam Harris once said somewhat about this. Took me a bit to find it. I only give this clip as a response because he puts it much better than My thoughts. I don't think this is the 'end all' conclusion, since we are always learning more, and more about the brain. But Sam has a Doctorate in Neuro Science, so I'll give him some on this. any way.

2

There's a region of the brain that if impaired causes people to have out of body experiences. Its function seems to be to help place "you" correctly in space. Doctors can induce OBEs at will by messing with that region. See: [psychologytoday.com]

After an accident when I hit my head and had significant trauma to the rest of me I remember having a mild form of "out of body" experience. I was laying in the hospital and remember looking at my body but just felt disconnected from it. No I wasn't floating on the ceiling or elsewhere but I just had this feeling of being what I can only describe as outside myself. The body I was looking at just did not feel like it was mine. And I was not unconscious, I could have had a conversation if anyone else was around.

I think it was just an extreme form of what you get when you sleep on an arm and wake up and it feels like it could be someone else's. You move it and have no feeling that it is connected to you. Now imagine that for 100% of your body, even your head. While your point of vision is clearly where your head is it doesn't feel like it is your head. It was just weird.

Also after that accident I was rescued by friends who saw what happened and said I was "out" for 40 minutes but for most of that I appeared to be "rebooting". I was answering questions from them but not very lucid. All I remember was a dream-like experience of hearing voices, people looking down at me, no feeling, thinking about stuff - I don't recall what. Then I 'woke' like waking from sleep and was fully aware I was alive and being cut out of my clothes and prepped for a helicopter ride.

It was a truly weird experience but I wouldn't attribute it to anything extraordinary.

Edit: just remembered that up until my early twenties I was hypoglycemic a lot of the time and would frequently pass out. Before actually keeling over I experienced tunnel vision all the way to complete loss of vision, stars, auditory hallucinations, and then often similar "rebooting" phenomena to my accident above. It even happened to me once at a hairdressers in the middle of a haircut. I thought nothing of it but I'm aware that some people have never passed out in their life and those kinds of experiences freak them out or may seem magical or supernatural in some way. No, it's just your brain running low on gas - in this case sugar and oxygen.

2

I had read (I believe in something Michael Shermer wrote) that aliens and not God or angels were showing up in NDE experiences as aliens became more prominent in our collective psyche.

As for NDE's generally, I'm more inclined to look for alternate explanations than to simply take the accounts as 100% valid as told be the experiencer. For example, the article from Frontiers in Psychiatry. "Fantasy Proneness Correlates With the Intensity of Near-Death Experience".
[ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

2

I have them constantly. It's called "living".

The accounts of seeing dead relatives, seeing what's happening in the world while one is "dead", and so on, are all retrospective (naturally) and thus highly colored by the imagination. Enthusiastic exchanges with fellow believers no doubt feed the confabulated "memories" (as in, "We were all praying at your bedside." "Yes! I saw you!!" turns into "something the person could not have known except through the NDE" ).

What I'm suggesting is that these are basically "false memories", initiated by the brain's chemical imbalance in the near-death state (especially lack of oxygen, possibly also a state of nitrogen narcosis which leads to hallucinations in some cases) and the interpretation of the resulting hallucinatory phenomena into the storylines that the victim subconsciously feels pressured to produce; or in some cases, is explicitly pressured to produce. For example, [en.wikipedia.org] Alex Malarkey publicly retracted his alleged NDE; in fact, he confessed, he never really died.

and how does that account for past life regression with verifiable details? are they all just liars? also, why do you guys assume we know everything about the physical world? we havent explored our entire planet yet. the things we have yet to understand about the universe and reality are numerous.

@JeffMesser
you keep saying "verifiable details". However, you never include them. Maybe people would take you more seriously if you included these "verifiable details". Without them, you are just speaking nonsense.

@AtheistInNC I'm not formulating a bill of particulars for a group of people who are just going to poo poo it away. I'm sorry. 30 years of criminal law taught me a few things.

@JeffMesser Apparently those years didn't teach you that making a case requires evidence. Since you refuse to do that, we're bound to fill in the blanks ourselves.
Past life regression has been debunked by people much smarter than me, in all cases which I have ever heard of the "verifiable details" turned out to come from sources that the person had read or viewed before their "experience". In other words, they're making it up as they go along.

2

. . . Fragile isn't it? those small moments that irrevocably alter our life pathway? even stranger is when we try to relate our stories to those around us

2

. . . ask Michael Shermer :

[michaelshermer.com]

that doesnt negate it at all. it just offers another way to accomplish altering thoughts.

2

I don't suggest anyone "explain away" things with easy catch-all answers (like 'God did it' ) on either side of the coin. Do a little research and learn about how the brain receives and processes information. There may be a lot of info that you learn that makes those "lies and brain farts" morph into reasonable/plausible explanations. Even then, however, you don't need to close up shop. The object is to avoid ending inquiry with unsupported conclusions - that's what religion does.

at least I agree with your approach. normally if I ask a question like that here instead of open-mindedness I get complete close-mindedness.

@JeffMesser What you get here are other people's opinions. What did you expect ?

2

Sure you can, researchers put notes around ER rooms that you should be able to see if having an out of body experience. No one ever noticed a single note.

You know how when you nod off and find yourself in a setting with a full cast of characters, each with their own back story and there's an on going dramatic situation that's been going on for awhile and you snap awake and realize you were only out a second or two, that's what an NDE is.

1

No one, repeat no one can be dead for 6 days and "come back" By dead, I mean no oxygen to the brain.

1

Could it be a matter of how badly you want to believe? Stories told by those who have had NDE are just stories.

1

Two comments, this after seventeen that have been put up already:
-We can't explain everything yet. That's how science works. "Verified examples" and other incidences are just things waiting to be explained. We only know a tiny amount about most things. So what?

-When pushed back on, you seem like an awfully angry guy. We don't know certain answers yet, and the comments from the participants represent their views. Calm down and get over it.

I am angry and telling people to "get over it" isn't helpful. it's baiting.

Write Comment
You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:525246
Agnostic does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.