Nailed it in one: thousands of people (including myself) are not capable of knowing what happened to them.
Many times (maybe even all of the time) people will know what happened to them. But very, very often first perceptions are either wrong or are interpreted the wrong way.
(BTW, nice little insult you added with that last sentence).
Everybody loves QED.
Precisely. Do you have an answer lekatt? Remember, in this scenario the experience of seeing the lady sawn in two is completely convincing. Does that make it true?
I’m quoting this to get a response to it. You’ve said repeatedly that you don’t have response to the actual study, and you’ve said once that you’d like to quote from the study. Why do you not quote from the study, given the opportunity to do so? Why do you choose to quote from an editorial about the study instead of the study?
Daniel
Even lekatt?
In this quote medical factors were ruled out as a cause:
In this quote the changed-life of the experiencer is noted:
Both of these are common factors of the near death experience.
.
Hooray, the brain sometimes does cool things in extremis!
Where’s the supernatural?
.
Not an insult, just an observation.
Now, I realize what science says about personal experiences, and it is wrong to the core. Each person is a unique individual, all with different beliefs, perceptions, cultures and such. I think this is the largest myth of science. Science has no way of knowing how accurate or what such diverse individuals are experiencing or how well they can interpret it.
It is the ridiculous to think thousands of people from all occupations, religions, non-religions, cultures, races, and countries can misinterpret their personal experiences. That is how diverse near death experiencers are and their experiences are very similar in events and how it changes their lives. Science is basically saying only science can determine whether these experiences are real or not, and that is the ultimate arrogance and ignorance. I see this as at attempt by science to control what is truth and what isn’t. Try telling the average man or woman on the street that they can’t interpret their own experiences and see what kind of reaction you get. If science has convince their devotee only science is real then science is on the way down of their own making.
And finally, we get to the core of your misunderstanding of science.
It’s not so much that science won’t believe the folk sayings, or that it doesn’t want to be democratic, but that it has structured itself to give the best results it possibly can.
It would be beautiful if science could simply have a poll and ask around whether everyone believes the laws of gravity are right or if they should be tweaked around a bit to account for certain deviations. It would be nice if cancer could be cured by going around and asking people what ingredients should go into its cure.
But, sadly for cancer patients, that’s not how it works. It doesn’t matter how many people in a remote region in Nicaragua trust the root of some exotic plant to be the cure-all for all their ailments. Science is hard work.
The scientists who want to tests the plant for its curative properties have to devise ways to find out if it actually works better than a placebo, whether it has secondary effects, what part of the plant actually works, if it works at all, etc. etc. And they have to do this, not because they distrust the people in that remote village, but because it has been proven that there are such things as placebos, false positives, and what-not that fool people, however well meaning they might be.
It’s not malice aforethought that has made science what it is today. There is no conspiracy to exclude “deeper wisdom” by a cabal of bright, albeit sinister, people.
It’s simply the pragmatic way that has shown it can bring results.
And if you can’t understand that, I’d advise you to leave the “scientific” part of your credo be.
I want to go back to post 286:
You answered these questions thus:
So your claim appears to be that you can show links to studies that show that “people who are … near death … do still know what is happening in the room.” My posts since then have consisted almost exclusively of trying to get you to follow through on this claim.
At long last you have quoted from the study that I Qadgop had to dig up for you. Are you quoting in order to demonstrate what you said you could demonstrate?
Absolutely not. You are quoting to show that medical causes for NDEs are ruled out by the study and that the “changed-life of the experiencer is noted.”
It’s unclear to me what the first bit means, but it is clear that it means nothing resembling that “people who are … near death … do still know what is happening in the room.” It’s perfectly clear to me that people who experience NDEs generally consider it a transformative experience; I find that remarkable and fascinating and worthy of study, even though it has nothing to do with a separation of consciousness and body (many people also find a divorce to be a transformative experience, and my sister got her doctorate in studying an aspect of that experience; it’s also remarkable, worthy of study, and not supernatural in origin). That has nothing to do with the idea that “people who are … near death … do still know what is happening in the room.”
So we return to that point, your claim, the one that you agreed would signficantly weaken your argument if you could not produce:
Can you produce a link to peer-reviewed scientific research that supports your allegation that “people who are … near death … do still know what is happening in the room” in a sense that cannot be explained through naturalistic means?
I’ll repeat what I said in another post:
Combine that with this caveat:
I apologize for quoting myself at such length; I like to see myself type ;). More than that, I want to be sure that we consider this conversation an aggregate, that we do not lose sight of our original goals and structures.
If you think that you cannot satisfy my request for research within the parameters listed, I’d appreciate either an explanation of why not, or an admission that there may be no scientific consensus about the nonphysical nature of consciousness.
Meanwhile, may I recommend a video to you? Stephen Pinker discussing the “Ghost in the Machine” theory of the mind. This is a well-known scientist discussing a viewpoint generally accepted by scientists who study consciousness. It’s less than seven minutes, and is fascinating. Let’s not argue about it, though, until we satisfy the above questions :).
Daniel
Daniel
On a side note, that was a much better movie than that Will Smith one.
Heh. The post does show the signs of sloppy editing, doesn’t it? Originally it said “I provided you,” but then I remembered who’d provided it to him first. (I know someone else provided it even earlier, but I was too lazy to go back and find out who).
Daniel
No, it’s not. Some people claim that the CIA is secretly monitoring them through their tvs. They will give you various incidents that somehow prove this. Some people hear voices. We had one poster, that I can recall, who claimed he heard Satan telling him to commit murder, and then that God spoke to him, and appeared before him. Most of what he was telling us just SCREAMED “schizophrenia” or some such illness.
People hallucinate all the time. There are many, many times that one “can misinterpret their personal experiences.” lekatt, tell me, do you not believe in mental illness? Because often, the mentally ill WILL misinterpret things that happen to them.
Look, I’m not saying that you are lying. Hell, maybe you really DID have a NDE. However, “personal experience” alone cannot, and does not prove a damned thing.
I’ve had hallucinations when I’ve had seizures. Doesn’t mean they really happened. Before my grandmother died, she was telling us how my aunts and their friends kept her up at night having a slumber party. My aunts are almost all in their forties-fifties, and haven’t lived at home for a good twenty-thirty years. When we went to visit her in the hospital, her hair was an absolute mess. And yet she patted at it, and told me she had it done, and how did it look? (I told her it looked great, btw). It was heart breaking to witness, and I left the home in tears.
What does that say about "personal experience, lekatt? Or personal beliefs that such and such happened?
Lekatt, There are many many people who claim to have seen UFO"s because they didn’t understand what they were, they were unidentified objects, but not from other worlds, and that is how your experience is coming across. You believe you had a NDE as have others, but it is not necessarily your consiousness living after death. People change their lives for many reasons and if it is a change for the better that they believe a certian thing that is their privilege, but it doesn’t make it a fact, nor is it evidence of conscience surviving the body or mind.
There are other explainations.
Monavis
There are other explanations to every event in the world, so what. I don’t have time now but will be back with evidence.
Me! Pick me!
(in terms of relevance? I’d have to say it was Qagdop post which really brought fruits)
Well… since lekatt hasn’t exactly proven himself to be adept at understanding what’s been asked of him, I’ll briefly play devils advocate: Here 's a site which at least tries to investigate NDE’s honestly. They even refer to Pam Reynold’s case as “anecdotal veridical evidence”! (Page 3 of the “Key Facts About NDE’s”)
And THIS time, folks, he REALLY REALLY means it.
Sadly, the film strayed far from Sybly Whyte’s original outline (the novel never got written).
Also it didn’t have enough neutronium-eating in it.
But the decision to use Charlize Theron as Cynthia was inspired.
You get tripped up on the word anecdotal which does not mean false, but then veridical does mean verified, so the evidence has been verified.
The dictionary defines anecdote as meaning "a short account of an incident, or a report. Nothing in the meaning that says the word anecdote is used for something not true. It is a personal experience, first-hand account of an event. It is permitted as evidence in a court of law, it has been used to send people to their death by execution. It is only science that says personal experiences are not valid, something not agreed to by the general population of the world. It is only science doctrine and nothing else. In other words science is wrong, but right if it wants to keep all its theories in place. Real life shows those theories to be wrong.