Hey lekatt, check this out. Tell us, in your own words, your thoughts on this particular website.
It’s the first time I’ve been on this merry-go-round.
Still, thanks for the warning.
All the arguments about semi-consciousness fail, because the patient could describe and name the personnel. One would have to “SEE” in order to do that, and the patient did SEE while out of body. This is a common thing in near death experiences. I notice everyone just happen not to notice that fact.
Well, I always thought they people would respond to these with at least an interest enough to do some real study of their own. But I guess not.
The patients can see as well as hear and blind at birth patients could see also. This is what really happens, it is truth. As everyone else will find out when it comes time for them to crossover. Really nothing scary about it.
Please supply the name of a blind-from-birth patient that could see then accurately describe their surroundings and/or medical personnel, please.
Well, that’s actually interesting.
Let’s see:
While I read the account, I noticed that the details are rather vague. Like you said,
(concerning accounts of NDE’s). I’m pretty sure this account wouldn’t be permitted, since it:
- Lacks details of place and time of what happened
- Doesn’t tell us precise things, like, for instance, how many people the patient described nor how many names that patient named nor how good those descriptions actually were
Can you provide us with these details, lekatt?
Because, otherwise, I think we will have to dismiss your evidence, since it doesn’t even stand up to the standards of common law which, like you yourself said, are a bit more relaxed than those of science.
(I am NOT a lawyer)
This is nonsense.
The patient named some (not all) persons from the ER team to come visit him in his room and then associated names with persons he had already asked to see. Since most people have distinctive voices and people working as a team are liable to have to call each other by name in order to avoid confusion regarding who was to carry out what task, the fact that he could talk to a subset of the people who worked on him (those whose names had been used during the procedure, for example) and identify them when they talked with him, says not one word about “seeing” anyone.
You continue to project your beliefs onto events even when you do not have the evidence to support your claims. This is why we note that there has been no scientific evidence provided by you–it is all wishful thinking.
As for me, I can give a precise number for how many more I want: zero. I regard them with less interest than i would regard a limerick presented as evidence for NDEs (at least the latter would be entertaining). You originally said:
Are you backing off of the claim that you can show links to studies that support your claim? I have been asking you to quote from such links for days now, with specific guidelines for what such links might look like. I’ll repeat those guidelines here:
If you’d like to claim that science is an inferior tool for understanding the universe, have at it: that’s a claim that is not patently false, depending on your starting assumptions. But your current claim, which you agreed to above, is that you could provide evidence of folks perceiving things in nonphysical fashion during an NDE. You’ve claimed you could link to peer-reviewed studies to support this claim. Please do so, or else retract the claim and refrain from making it again.
I believe I have been patient waiting for you to make good on your statement that you’d provide such links. At this point, I’m wondering whether you intend to keep your word.
Daniel
I listened to Stephen Pinker discussing the “Ghost in the Machine” theory of the mind. I was stuck with the sameness of it as when I was a kid in school. He uses different words but the concepts are the same. The only thing to study is the activity and try to figure out what it means. He does say there is no proof of local consciousness. There never can be any proof since it doesn’t exist. I thought you might be different. As least you acknowledged a science study when you saw it. Really does not make any difference does it. What we think or say. Reality is what it is, no one can change that any. We can only observe it.
I will stick with what I know to the true, and you can do the same. I had hoped it would be possible to at least discuss the events here. Too many people to do that. Too much negativity. We will find out in the end.
You got it all wrong again. He described the people he wanted to see before he saw them. Why is it so hard to comprehend what it says.
You can’t tell how someone looks by the sound of his voice. I think we can prove that easy enough.
If that were taken to a court of law, the physicians could provide all you ask. Why is it so hard to comprehend. We are spiritual people, always have been. Nothing wrong with that, actually it is a good thing. Don’t have to reach, and reach to find something wrong. The fault lies in believing we are created by our brains. The evidence lies in the opposite direction and that is true whether you accept it or not.
Actually, since this was NOT a scientific investigation, we really do not know how he “described” them. There is nothing in the anecdote that indicates that he did not say Could Jane the older nurse, Sue the younger nurse, and Joe the anaesthetist come see me?
Again: I am not saying that he had no OBE and I am not saying he could not have had one.
I am pointing out that your threshhold of acceptance is so low as to be meaningless for the purposes of demonstrating that OBEs occur.
I notice that you continue to ignore the salient points that other members of the ER team though he might have had periods where he was not unconscious and that some members of the ER team disagree with the conclusions of your author. So even among your “witnesses” there is disagreement and, as I have noted, we do not have a minute-by-minute recording that shows who did what at what time and how his body responded to the actions the team took–we only have a vague memory from one participant who could not possibly have known everything she claims unless she was ignoring her job in order to take notes.
And you contrinue to pretend that faulty memories are actual evidence of anything you want them to mean (but never of anything you do not want them to mean–funny, that).You claim the “doctors” could have provided sufficient evidence in a court of law, but you have given us no reason to believe that is true. If it were true, why has not the author of the piece actually gotten statements from the staff instead of simply saying some of us were surprised by what the patient remembered and some of us figured that the patient was not as lacking in consciousness as we thought he might have been?
OK, lekatt, I am going to try to show you how science works with concrete examples.
Example 1: Continental Drift.
Ever since the sixteenth century, when the first world maps were published indicating the shape of the Atlantic Ocean, people speculated that Africa and South America might have once been a single land mass. In the nineteenth century, more people began speculating on whether that was true. Finally, in 1912, Alfred Wegener formally proposed the idea of Continental Drift in a science paper. Unfortunately, at that time, there were no known means for large land masses to wander around the Earth, and his proposal was argued in papers and conferences for years. There was evidence for such a drift, and there was evidence against a drift, but there was no mechanism that could explain the drift. (Wegener’s own idea that the rotation of the Earth imparted forces to cause the continents to drag themselves through solid rock was clearly insufficient when he proposed it and has long since been disproven).
Finally, as geologists learned more about the Earth’s molten core, the concept of Plate Tectonics was put forth to explain how the continents could move and the evidence that they had moved was accepted.
Example 2: Æther.
Throughout the nineteenth century, people studying light kept discovering more and more evidence that light traveled in waves. Since waves were always considered to be the action of a medium through which physical objects passed, the early assumption was that there had to be some (as yet undetected) matter that infused the entire universe that provided a medium through which light would pass in waves. However, When Albert Michelson and Edward Morley designed an experiment, in 1887, to discover the speed of the æther flowing across the Earth as it rotated about the sun, their experiment actually demonstrated that there was no æther through which light might pass. Following their “failed” experiment, scientists spent the next 30 years, or so, verifying that their experiment had demonstrated what they found and that light actually needs no medium through which to pass in wave form.
Explanation of role of science:
In the second case, we have an idea that is presumed to be true (e.g. sound only forms waves in a medium), and when it is shown to have no basis, scientists first test that the experiment was not flawed and then look for other explanations.
In the first case, there was an idea (some continents seem to fit into each other) that people observed for over 300 years without actually doing more than noting the observation. Finally, at the end of 308 years, a scientist put forth a hypothesis to explain the observation. That hypothesis was argued over and tested for another forty years before sufficient evidence was collected and tested to come up with a valid explanation. Note that Wegener was both right and wrong. He was right that the continents do drift and have drifted; he was wrong that the rotation of the Earth was sufficient to cause such drifting.
Your various anecdotes regarding OBEs currently correspond to the period of observing drifting continents or light moving in waves. We do not know whether such OBEs are unreal (light needs a medium to form waves) or whether they are real but we do not yet have an adequate explanation (continental drift). You keep posting links to stories about people and claiming they are science, but you have never posted a single reference to anyone who has actually tried to demonstrate that they are real. No one, not Sabom, not van Lommel, not your nurses in ER, or anyone else has taken a simple step to try to capture an actual OBE in an environment where all the facts could be corroborated. All your stories require that we accept fallible human memories.
Note, again, that i am not saying OBEs cannot occur. I am pointing out that none have (yet) had anyone actually set up a protocol to verify them. By insisting that people who are skeptical must simply rely on the memories (of people who have suffered brain traumas) and then labeling those stories as “science,” (when you routinely denigrate both science and scientists when they do not share your beliefs), then you are not even making a half-hearted attempt to make your case. You only want to accept “science” when it supports your beliefs and reject science when it challenges your beliefs. Your approach is inconsistent and petulant.
You are very much like a soapbox fundy preacher, hurling insults at people for not believing what he believes, then laughing at how stupid they are for not “accepting” evidence that he has resolutely refused to provide.
Does anyone want to help me point out to lekatt how “personal experiences” can be a result of mental illness? I’ve asked I don’t know how many times.
For example, I told about my grandmother being confused and thinking my aunts were still living at home, as was SHE, when she was in a nursing home.
What about:
One example would be William Tager, the man who assaulted Dan Rather, claiming that he was being monitored by television, that they were beaming messages into his head.
Note: I am NOT saying you’re crazy. Again, I’m sure you DID have such an experience-although I don’t necessarily believe it was supernatural in origin. I’m simply pointing out that we cannot always trust our own experiences.
This is the experience of a hard core scientist who is not so hard core anymore. This is the way he felt about it.
I note that he’s not claiming that he knows the truth about his experience. Only that he’s “more open to what is part of this world or not”. Heck, I agree with most, if not all, of what he wrote.
Particularly this statement of his: “though I think there is no life after death, there might still be being after death. But from there to reincarnation, soul wandering and all that stuff there is quite a way to go.”
I assume you strongly disagree with his statement above, given what you’ve posted here before. Since he sees ‘continuation of being’ as a possibility, not as a definite proven fact, as you see it.
I was rereading Gerold Frank’s The Boston Strangler the other day. There was a reference to a Boston police detective who’d been given morphine following a medical procedure.
He related a fantastic dream in which he was with Napoleon at Versailles, reviewing the entire French army in Technicolor. It was extraordinarily real to him, as if he was actually there and not dreaming.*
How many “near-death” experiences are created and amplified by drugs and temporary reduction of oxygen to the brain?
And if the common features of such dreams are taken to be strong evidence of their reality, what are we to make of the numerous similar reports of space aliens with bulging humanoid heads and big eyes? Does this prove all those alien landing/abduction stories?
*Morphine is fabulous stuff, except for the vomiting afterward and the addiction problem.
A mere detail, Sir. Nothing more than that! 
BTW, could we have a cite for that? I would like to know where that quote came from.
Seconded.