[mocking]I’m glad you asked that question, CurtC. You see, the spiritual life of the unenlightened (aka non-believers-in-NDE) is like a merry-go-round, because by denying that NDE’s exist they deny love and force their spiritual entities to undergo another round of physical existence until they finally embrace love. [/mocking]
Isn’t constantly citing your own website basically saying, “My post is my cite?”
:dubious:
I rarely quote my own site. The link I last quoted was from a site I don’t own. There are several NDE sites on the web larger and better than mine that I frequently quote. Even when I do quote my site it does not mean I wrote what I am quoting, I have over 300 experiences on my site I didn’t write. So the answer to your question is no.
lekatt, I’m afraid you have the advantage of everyone in this argument. Whereas nearly everyone else has some criteria by which they acknowledge they would be proven wrong, you do not. So, please take a moment, think about it, and answer this question as honestly and as fully as you can: hypothetically, what would it would it take for you to change your mind in this argument? How about for different gradations or certainty: What criteria would have to be met in order for you to admit that you might be wrong about consciousness outside? What evidence would have to be presented in order for you to believe that consciousness outside the body probably does not exist? How about for you to believe that it almost certainly does not? Hypothetically, suppose someone went through every single one of the NDEs you’ve “cited” and provided a physiological explanation for each one. Would that dissuade you? What if explanations were only provided for all but one, how about then?
If there are no circumstances under which you could acknowledge weakness in your beliefs, then there is no point in discussing the matter with you.
On a side note, though I disagree with everything you say and believe you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of reason, I find you to be a fascinating person.
Maybe, maybe not. He’s still going to die.
You have claimed that you have scientific evidence that supports your position. What I would like is direct links to peer-reviewed research in mainstream scientific journals that you claim supports your position.
Note that in the underlined passage, the only words that needn’t be satisfied are “to” and “in”. Every other word is critical to what I’d like to see. Indirect links will not suffice. Direct quotes will not suffice. Direct links to non-peer-reviewed research will not suffice. Direct links to peer-reviewed opinion pieces will not suffice. Direct links to peer-reviewed research in non-mainstream scientific journals will not suffice. Direct links to peer-reviewed research in mainstream spiritual journals will not suffice.
This may seem like an impossibly high standard. It is, however, exactly the standard that everyone uses in the scientific world, even in a field as soft as undergraduate education. When I was studying teaching literacy to emergent readers, I had to provide my professor with direct links to peer-reviewed research in mainstream scientific (in this case, linguistic) journals to support my arguments. That’s just the way things go when you’re making a scientific argument. The standard is perfectly possible to achieve if your claim about increasing scientific acceptance of your position is accurate.
Your previous post to me contained plenty of direct links; unfortunately, they did not satisfy any of my other criteria. I had not, of course, stated them at that point. Now I have; please include such links to buttress any future point you make to me.
I’ll also gently remind you of your professed desire to quote from the Lancet article. Are you planning on doing that?
Daniel
Since I have experienced being out of body on a number of occasions it would be hard for me to rule against what I have experienced. Maybe if you could provide a physical explanation for my experiences and other NDEs I might weaken some. I would be willing to try. The explanation would have to take into account the bodily condition of the one having the experience. The overall problem is the research into NDEs have tried to come up with other explanations but failed, so if you think my beliefs are too strong then maybe your beliefs are too strong also that there is such an explanation.
Well, it may be that the research on NDEs will never meet the criteria that you list above. But that doesn’t mean they are not valid events. Science was designed to test physical phenomenon and may not be appropriate for studying consciousness which is not physical. I can only show what has happened in the research and you will need to take it from there.
So. I will quote from the study that appeared in Lancet which I said I would do.
http://www.nderf.org/vonlommel_skeptic_response.htm
The above is from the study.
Maybe you daydreamed or dreamed the lot of them. No, seriously. It accounts for everything, perfectly and completely and without fail. You could have even dreamed accurate details about things you couldn’t have known, since it’s always possible you just dreamed stuff and randomly got lucky. (Or perhaps more likely, dreamed stuff and randomly got a lot of things wrong and a few things sort of right, and only remember the vague hits as being real hits, and not remembering the misses at all.)
The overall problem is that believers in NDEs think that they’ve reasonably discounted all other other explanations but have failed to actually do so. So if you think my beliefs are too strong then maybe your beliefs are too strong also that there isn’t such an explanation.
The main problem with what you say is that I was wide awake during the experience interacting with the elements of it.
Maybe you daydreamed being awake.
Daydreamed. Third word of the post.
Seriously, this accounts for everything. It may not be what happened, but there’s no way to completely rule out the possibility. And frankly, so far I haven’t myself seen much to make me think it’s even improbable - but that’s just me.
I don’t mean to be snide, but think about this for a moment. You’ve basically said that the only way others will be able to dissuade you of your viewpoint is by analyzing your personal experience. However, you have steadfastly refused to divulge the specifics of that ordeal. Surely you must see how it is unfair for you to refuse your opponents the one piece of information that may prove their case to you.
Think about it this way, if I were the Chinese government and I said “None of our policies are causing environmental damage. We have scientific reports to prove it, but we’re not going to release them to you. Take our word on it.” You would probably be a bit skeptical.
I don’t mean to be too forward, but you have made your personal experiences central to your argument, and therefor the discussion cannot productively continue until you elaborate on them. If they are too personal, I am sure everyone would understand if you choose to bow out, but barring that I must side with everyone who is demanding that you talk about them.
Wait, lekatt, are you saying you brought yourself to the brink of death, just to experience another NDE? 'Cuz if so, dude, that’s messed up.
And again, I offer that it could have been some type of seizure. Perhaps an EEG, or an MRI would be in order?
(As for the heart attack, I’m guessing he came up with that because he had had one previously, and had a VERY bad heart, his doctors were telling him he was ripe for another one, etc)
“I feel so alone, gonna end up a big ole’ pile of dem bones…”
-Alice in Chains
lekatt, the sentences above are incontrovertibly false. To make sure, I went to the actual Lancet study and searched for one snippet of text from the quote–“VF on the ECG”. That text appears nowhere in the Lancet study.
You claimed to be quoting from the study, but you quoted from another source entirely. What conclusion should I draw from this?
Daniel
Are you saying that science needs to find a single explanation to fit all cases, and has failed to do so?
The quoted article is not the Lancet study. It is an opinion piece that is claimed to be a response by the author of the Lancet article (Pin van Lommel) to a criticism of it published by Michael Shermer in Scientific American. The web site doesn’t give us a cite or any way to verify that van Lommel actually wrote the piece. Even if we had that, it still isn’t the actual objective study, it’s a subjective interpretation by one of the research team as to the meanings of the study. It started losing credibility with me when it started hand-waving about “virtual photons”.
I’ll also offer my own take on the Lancet study… there are the findings, and then there is the interpretation. The findings describe the frequency with which people report NDE’s, the conditions under which they were reported, and the factors that accept their frequency. Fair enough. The interpretation, however, is problematic.
Given that the study’s own findings find that NDE incidence is highly divergent according to factors that have physiological implications (age, sex, medical history), on what grounds can one expect that there should be a higher (or lower) correlation? Could it be, for example, that 100% of the patients did experience an NDE but had no recall of it (like many dreams)? That would tend to undermine the interpretation, but enigmatically it doesn’t explore any such alternate possibilities.
The study contains one anecdote of a man who was brought in comatose, who correctly identified that a certain nurse had removed his dentures and put them on a crash cart. This particular man did not have the blood “drained from his head”, he was not “brain-dead”, he simply had cardiac arrest. Since this was an anecdote and not a study, we have no way to know whether he actually remembered the specific nurse, or whether he just deduced that a nurse removed his dentures and happened by chance to identify the correct nurse (out of how many, who knows… we don’t have a full record of whether he first misidentified any other nurses, or whether he just happened to guess 1 out of 2 successfully).
If the rebuttal paper is authentic, it shows that the researcher has a strong bias against non-physical causes of NDE, and apparently this bias influences his interpretation of the more objective findings (which do not support any non-physical NDE basis).
I don’t have access to the actual Lancet study, but what I quoted was posted by the author of that study, Dr. Pim van Lommel. Now it may be true that procedures in science will keep us from ever talking about near death experiences, that science is not flexible enough to deal with life experiences, I don’t know, but at least I tried to break throught the wall of resistence.
I am by nature a positive person, not all my life, just after my near death experience. I trust others, have faith in the order of things, and look for the best in everyone and everything. I do know the difference between dreams and what I experienced. My experience was more real than anything I experienced before or since. It totally changed my life, expanded my understanding of all things, gave me a different perspective on life. I can now see patterns in beliefs and thoughts, and how they effect me in life. I understand that humans love to build institutions and imbue them with great reverence and power forgetting they are only as good as human thought at the time they were created. Religion, science, government, justice, education and health institutions are as fallible as the humans that designed them and in time will crumble into the dust as those before them. While life is every-changing, evolving into better ideas and more intelligent thoughts, institutions lag far behind, the main reason they fail. It is normal for skeptics and scientists to doubt, mistrust, and find they need to test everything, for that is their nature, as mine is to trust. We can look upon the millions of near death experiences as something negative that really isn’t happening at all, or we can look upon them as an evolution of consciousness, a consciousness that no longer fears, holds anger or hate. One that believes in love and respect and compassion, and can build a world of peace and cooperativeness between all nations, because there is no other option for it. What a wonderful thing, What a beautiful thought.
Ok, negatives time.