I imagine a few of you have seen this show on the bio channel, it deals with stories of people who have clinically died and come back to life. While there stories have some things in common ( bright beautiful light, an overwhelming sense of peace) there are some drastic differences, some see angels, while others see relatives. some are on stairs while others are floating. some are getting life reviews while others are whisked back to there childhood homes. am I alone in thinking that the “hereafter” would be more systematic than that. wouldn’t everyone have the same experience as everyone else. could this be evidence that these are nothing more than a “dream state”?
It is by all the evidence just a dream/hallucination. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and experiences that are indistinguishable from a hallucination that are happening under exactly the sort of conditions you’d expect a hallucination aren’t even remotely believable evidence much less extraordinary evidence.
And besides the differences you mention, keep in mind that you are only going to see on shows like that stories about appropriately mystical sounding experiences; you’ll hear about the guy who floated through a tunnel of light and met his dead grandfather, not the guy who floated through a tunnel of television screens and met a talking gorilla.
You are probably not alone, but it is certainly not a logical conclusion to draw.
The idea that everybody experiences a different fate after death goes back thousands of years. It is probably older than the human species itself. Only a handful of religions believe that everybody experiences the afterlife in a systematic manner.
The vast majority of religions believe that a person’s experience in the afterlife depends on their behaviour in this (or previous) lives. At its most simplistic level a good person goes to heaven, a bad person goes to hell and an average person goes to limbo. And that is terribly simplified for any given theology. In reality different punishments, rewards and penances await every person after death in pretty much all religions.
Can you explain to us how you came to the conclusion that the afterlife would be systematic? Can you even explain how it *could *be systematic while remaining consistent with most religions’ view on justice/karma?
Not really, no.
Or rather, it could be, but it is more compelling as evidence that they are *not *dream states.
The degree of consistency you described is something never experienced in any known dream state. In the examples that you describe the experience is consistent in outline, but varies in detail. For example, there is travel upwards towards a light, a guide from the spirit world and an experience that takes place in the past. Now the upwards travel may take place via flight or via stairs, the spirit guide may be a known resident of heaven or a person known in life now in heaven, the past event may be a single childhood location or an entire spectrum of life experience. But the degree of consistency remains high.
In stark contrast, when people have fever hallucinations, or take hallucinogenic drugs, or suffer from brain damage, the results are never consistent in any way at all. Some people will experience travel upwards towards a light, a guide from the spirit world and an experience that takes place in the past, others will experience terrifying pursuit by ice cream trucks across a desert and still others will experience sexual gratification involving ping-pong balls. There’s no consistency on any level in dream or hallucinatory experiences.
The only way we can invoke this level of consistency in “hallucinations” is by directly simulating certain brain centres. In other words the only way we know that we can have consistent experiences across individuals is when there is a consistent objective stimulus causing the experience.
Since the experiences you describe are all consistent on some level, what conclusion does that allow you to draw about the cause?
Would the cessation of oxygenated blood flow to the brain be considered a “consistent objective stimulus?”
Not for the brain it isn’t, no.
While LSD or oxygen deprivation may be consistent stimuli by some standards, there is no evidence that they actually produce consistent results, nor any plausible mechanism as to how they could do so. The chaotic nature of the brain should , and as far as we can tell does, result in random patterns from these stimuli, with regions interconnecting at random.
While it’s possible that there is something truly consistent and predictable happening with prolonged, near-fatal oxygen deprivation that results in predictable results, I have yet to see any evidence that this is true or even any logical reason why it should be true.
One would expect that the areas that were most active, and therefore most ATP deprived, when the deprivation began would malfunction first, and the areas that were least active would function last. In other hallucinations that sort of amplification.suppression of activity pattern causes random experience, because in some people they are thinking of the past, in others they are struggling to calculate dosages of medication or trying to communicate to the people around them and so forth. Each experience should be utterly unique because the brain activity at the onset should be utterly unique.
When we start seeing consistent experience, it implies a consistent objective stimulus of a kind not seen in any known hallucination resulting from large scale brain malfunction.
You seem to be engaging a syllogism:
Consistent experience always derives from consistent stimulus.
Ingesting LSD is a consistent stimulus.
Therefore all people ingesting LSD should share the same experience.
Err, no. All crows are black birds, that doesn’t allow you to conclude that all black birds are crows.
You mean, other than the commonality of near death experiences?
Which theory explaining this phenomenon does have a plausible mechanic behind it?
Which is boldly begging the question…
…combined with an argument from ignorance.
They would never put me on. I died on the operating table twice, and I have absolutely no experiences of anything … the only reason I know I was mostly dead [heh] was because the doctors told me so.
Same as my UFO experience. I surmise it was a meteorite coming in for a landing, but since I never bothered to report it, or ask any questions about it I will never know what that bright green streak in the sky that looked like it made like a cosmic dirt dart back in the mid 80s near Rochester NU will always be an unidentified object whizzing overhead to me and my mom =)
That’s a rather bold assertion. It seems to me that, for instance, the phenomenology of sleep paralysis is similarly consistent – consistent enough, at least, to be thought to be at least partly responsible for the ‘nightly visitation’ cluster of phenomena, ranging from chest-squatting demons to alien abductions across times and cultures.
Also, as this thread shows, it’s to a certain extent a matter of taste what to call consistent – if you abstract enough, you can find consistency in any set of experiences, without this telling you anything beyond the trivial fact that all of these experiences are human.
An interesting point is the similarity of NDEs with experiences during G-LOC, g-force induced loss of consciousness. Essentially all of the classical NDE features are present – however, the individuals having the experience aren’t anywhere ‘near death’ by any stretch of the definition. Instead, it seems that the experience is a generic feature of a loss of consciousness due to ischemia/loss of adequate oxygen supply.
How do you figure? We have a common situation: the halt of oxygenated blood flow to the brain. We have a common result: so called “near death” experiences. How are near death experiences not a consistent result of an oxygen-starved brain?
Again, I’m not sure how you see that. There is no theory to explain this that has a plausible mechanic behind it. If lack of a plausible mechanic is reason enough to discount one theory, then we must, perforce, discount all theories, and we’re left with nothing to talk about.
Where is you r evidence that they are?
Precisely. It’s an argument from ignorance.
I’m sorry, I don’t think I understand what you’re asking here.
You know, I’ve never been good with all these fancy logic terms, so I looked “argument from ignorance” up on wikipedia, and this is what I got. Now, maybe it’s just me, but I really don’t see how that applies to what I just said. Maybe you can help me out on that?
The only similarity in those phenomena is the paralysis. As you yourself note, the other components may involve travel or staying still, they may involve sexual gratification or physical torment and suffocation, they may involve aliens, witches or demons or fantasies of drowning or being smothered. There is no consistency at all beyond the paralysis.
And the paralysis is not a dream state. The paralysis is a very real, indisputable physiological state.
IOW the example you give is not of a commonality within a dream state. The only commonality stems from the the objectively real state of paralysis, the dream components all differ greatly.
So once again, the evidence suggests that the only way to get consistent experience is consistent, objective stimulus, even within a dream state.
I dispute that.
All human experience will differ of course. That doesn’t mean that no humans have common experiences or that we are unable to objectively categorise experiences. You surely don’t dispute that 99.99% of humans think fire is hot, for example?
The simplest test of commonlaity is the “reasonable man” standard used by courts.
Imagine that an author creates a story where the protagonist dies, ascends towards alight and enters the the spirit world with the assistance of a benevolent spirit guide, and in the spirit world relives past events from childhood. The protagonist is then revived and returns to the waking world. If this author sues another writer because she plagiarised her work, would a jury be likely to find in her favour based on the commonality of the stories presented here? At the very least would the case get a hearing in court without immediate dismissal?
If you agree that it would have a chance of winning such a plagiarism case then you must agree that the similarity is objective, not subjective and simply based on common humanity.
This is something I know nothing about. Do you have a reputable reference showing that such people experience angelic visitations, revisit past life etc?
I am asking for evidence for the claims you make.
A claim that the *lack *of a plausible mechanic is evidence that these experiences *must *be a dream state is a classic argument from ignorance.
See your own reference for details.
There are other common threads – visitations, fear to the point of panic, noises such as static, pops, up to loud bangs, flashes of light etc. Not all of those are present in all episodes of paralysis, but then again, not everybody sees a white light at the end of a tunnel, converses with angelic beings or the deceased, has his life flash before his eyes etc.
No, if I agree that there is a chance of winning such a case, then I am saying that to some (judges), there is sufficient commonality within the cases, while to others, there isn’t – i.e. that the consistency is subjective; only if I said that such a case would always be won would I be saying that there is an objective consistency. And there are certainly NDE stories dissimilar enough not to immediately conjure up associations of a common cause. Of course, there are also strikingly similar stories, just as there are strikingly similar abduction stories from sufferers of sleep paralysis, but this doesn’t detract from my point.
Most of it is work done by James Whinnery - here’s a short outline. Here’s a more comprehensive paper of his, though I haven’t read it in full and don’t know how in depth the phenomenology of the ‘dream episodes’ during G-LOC is discussed (abstract, pdf link). That’s also the paper cited in the classic Lancet study by Pim van Lommel on NDEs (pdf link), which concludes:
That may be the case. I don’t know enough about it.
I am only addressing the examples given in the OP, which do all have similarities. I really don’t know enough to say that all or a majority of NDE stories are consistent ( and I don’t care enough to make a great effort finding out). But the OP certainly can’t deny that the example she has givens how a high degree of consistency.
And thanks for the links. I will peruse them as time permits and get back with my thoughts, an event that I am sure you are awaiting keenly.
I’m sorry, I’m really not trying to be difficult, but I don’t know what claim you’re talking about. I thought I was restating the premises of the discussion:
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People die - their heart stops beating, and their brains become starved for oxygen.
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While in this state, they sometimes experience a certain range sensations and visions.
I don’t need to cite this, right? We both agree that these are things that happen?
Okay, so, postulate: when a brain becomes starved for oxygen and begins to die, it starts to malfunction. And it tends to malfunction in more or less the same way for most people: it produces a certain range of sensations and visions.
So, there. I’m not sure what needs to be cited. I’m not saying this is proven fact, but do you have a better explanation for what’s going on here?
But that’s not what I’m saying.
Okay, we have several competing theories. Each one has a different set of pros and cons. We’re trying to figure out which one is the best theory. One “con” is “Theory has not been proven in a lab.” That’s a pretty big “con.” But, turns out, it’s a “con” all the theories have. So, when we try to decide which of these theories is best, that’s not really a meaningful criteria to judge the theories one way or the other.
Heh, something interesting I just stumbled across is the research by Stephen Thaler, who works on AI and especially on artificial neural networks – apparently, if you simulate such a network’s ‘death’ by step by step disassembling its connections, it relives its previous history – reproducing previously trained outputs to inputs that it was presented with without being actually given the input – and then, towards the end of its ‘dying’, generates apparently novel output (‘experience’). He’s even incorporated this process into a ‘Creativity Machine’, which is allegedly able to come up with novel strategies more efficiently than genetic algorithms… Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find much of relevance on his work online, his website only offers a not very informative summary.
Not true. Our visual resolution is concentrated towards to the center of our visual field. Stimulate the visual cortex all at once and that can plausibly explain why you get a tunnel-into-light effect. As for floating, well that’s often how memory works; we’ll imagine a viewpoint floating somewhat high in the room. As for the rest of the details, they aren’t all that consistent; again, only the experiences that sounds properly mystical and afterlifish tend to be reported.
Like the previously mentioned abduction hallucination, they seem to be at most consistent in pattern but vary a lot in content. People “abducted” think they are carried off and experience paralysis, often sexual assault; but the details change according to culture and location. Different “aliens” are described according to the most popular ones in that particular culture; if they look human, they tend to look blond in nations with lots of blonds, dark skinned in regions full of dark skinned people. And in other times the same scenarios was described, but with angels and clouds, faeries and horses, or djinn and flying carpets instead of aliens and spaceships.
I think what he is challenging is the claim that there is much commonality in the reports of near death experiences. If you read the claims, there is a wide range of experiences, the sum commonality of which is the subjects had some sort of dream or hallucination.