You mean, like implying that an experience was mythology or fiction?
I’m still waiting for an honest answer, and more importantly, an honest analysis as to whether or not my experience contradicts, rebuts, or solidly refutes those that you’ve discussed. Special detail to be paid to the why or why not.
If you cannot or will not do this, you will have proven many things. First and foremost, you will have shown that for all your talk, you, yourself, don’t actually believe in the ‘validity’ of experiences, and only choose to champion those that happen to fit into your worldview. And that’s just the start.
So can you, without evasion, identify whether or not my experience contradicts, rebuts or solidly refutes those you’ve been describing? And especially why or why not?
I honestly think you’re mistaken here. It’s the messenger that is the problem - or rather, the methods chosen by the messenger to try to deliver the message. Much of the scorn is borne out of frustration at your inconsistency (with regard to whether science is or is not on your side, for example), your distortion of fact (perhaps not intentional, this one - but for example your repeated inaccurate descriptions of what science is or does), your evasion or obfuscation of direct questions, and so on.
Why would anyone have a problem with the message, if it were demonstrably true? It’s not as if your views even absolutely demand anything of anyone (unlike some other hellfire-and-damnation religious positions). If it were demonstrably true, I think people would be only too happy to accept it.
They’re not happy because, after all this time, you haven’t demonstrated it to be true. You start off saying it can be rigorously shown, then when that turns out not to be the case, start trying to lower the bar by insisting that rigour isn’t all that good anyway.
It’s frustrating, and that is why people are bashing the messenger, by and large.
I have only seen one style of posting from you since you joined. It comprises nearly equal parts of doctrinaire assertions of what you believe, scorn for those who question your beliefs, false declarations of events you claim to be facts, citations to sites that fail to say what you claim they have said, claims that you have already supported your claims with citations when you have not actually done so, sweeping, broad brush assertions that “science says” or “scientists say” that are clearly rooted in your total misapprehension regarding how science is conducted, and comprising lesser parts of arrogance, condescension, and spite.
And all of that would garner very little hostile reaction on the SDMB if you did not continually interupt other posters’ threads to make false assertions that are rooted in your misunderstandings.
::: shrug :::*
I do not really know anyone who adamantly insists that this is not true. However, as Janson has pointed out, the exact same thing can be said of people who undergo ketamine therapy. So it remains to be seen whether the effect is the result of a spiritual experience “after death” or a chemical reaction to events that occur in the brain in traumatic situations.
Science is not a group, is not an organization, and is not an institution. Your utter failure to recognize that simple fact explains much about how poorly you understand science or the people who engage in it. Science (the process) calls personal experience unreliable in exactly the same way that everyone calls personal experience unreliable. Go watch the movie Rashomon a few times. Go sit through a few trials where sincere witnesses for the plaintiff or prosecutor and for the defendant tell radically different views of events. In trials, a jury is asked to weigh the probability of one story being more true than another, but no one pretends that the witnesses are exactly accurate in their memories. (That is why the lawyers provide exhibits of contracts and bills and phone logs and photographs and all the other physical evidence to see what matches up best against the memories of the witnesses.)
Science does no more than attempt to set guidelines by which evidence will be accepted for review. It asks scientist to provide their own protocols for conducting their experiments and asks them to publish their recorded notes to compare against their memories of the experiments. The process of science then asks that other scientists, both those who agree and those who disagree, attempt to perform the same experiments to see whether they get the same results. NO SCIENTIST HAS DONE THAT FOR NDEs.
All your claims of “proof” are subject to legitimate criticism that there were no controls. Sabom is excited that Reynolds can describe the skull saw. However, no effort was made to hide the saw when she was wheeled into the operating room, awake and alert. Sabom did not interview every member of the surgical team to ensure that no one happened to point out or describe the saw (either before or after the surgery) to Reynolds, but before he finally interviewed her, several days after the surgery. van Lommel is excited that one man knew that a particular nurse had moved his glasses to a particular table. van Lommel, however, did not videotape the procedure, so we cannot KNOW that the nurse never spoke to the patient, saying “I will put your glasses here” or, perhaps, made a general announcement, ignored by the team, but heard by the patient in a semi-conscious state “I am putting Mr. Patient’s glasses on this table.”
Perhaps the two patients “saw” the events while in OBEs or perhaps the patients got their information in other ways that simply did not impinge on anyone’s memory well enough to be recalled.
I already pointed out in this post, earlier in the thread that we KNOW that memory is malleable–that we can forget things that have happened and even remember things that never happened. The point of the scientific method is not to denigrate persons’ memories, but to provide controls to prevent memory lapses and artificial memories from presenting an incorrect portrait of events.
Lekatt, you’ve made many statements about science that indicate you have a personal idea about what “science” is and refuse to accept any other definition. Example:
Therefore, science is, to you a belief system and inherently faulty. Later however, you say this:
Can you, at least acknowledge that according to your own beliefs about science, it’s possible that the “evidence” you present is faulty?
The usual posts, all about me. Nothing about the researchers working in Universities and conducting studies on near death experiences. Nothing about their findings of evidence showing consciousness is non-local. Nothing about the numerous links to those studies and findings. Same ol, same ol. Protocol, splitting words, and saying over and over there is no evidence. But there is evidence, and lots of it. I don’t care what you think of me, that’s unimportant, I am not here to impress anyone. Books, articles, movies, documentaries, specials, etc., etc., have been written on the evidence these studies and not one peep of it on this board.
Now do I think I could be wrong, no, I have had to much experience and to much study of these things to believe consciousness is local. Which none of you can prove either. I have read a lot of science about consciousness and many other subjects in the search for truth. Truth is all that is important, nothing else. In all the years I have posted here I have been attacked for my beliefs, my ignorance of science, my this, and my that. None have even acknowledged that scientists are studying NDEs and finding evidence of non-local consciousness. Every time that is something about me or about the study or about some doctrine, etc. OK, I will never give up until we really discuss the evidence.
You make it about you when you say in one post that scientists are finding evidence to support your beliefs, yet in another post disregard science as just another “belief system.” You can’t have it both ways. If you’re going to trumpet some studies as proof you also have to accept that there are other studies demonstrating that OBEs and NDEs are explainable through neuroscience and that the brain is the center of consciousness. Then the various research has to be analyzed and that which is flawed must be reconsidered. The research you present has been pointed out time after time to be flawed or at best, simple anecdotal reports. You come across as hypocritical when you wave away that criticism while yourself criticizing the WHOLE of scientific research when it disagrees with you.
Either you accept that science is not a belief system or you agree that the possibility exists that your interpretation of the events you experienced is wrong.
Many thoughtful posters have chimed in, acknowledging that your belief is interesting, and that it could even be true. Some even believe, as you do, in persistence of being after death. Others (such as myself) are open to the idea.
But we do all seem to be unanimous in being turned off by your assertions that your beliefs have proven to be the truth, for which you will provide/have already provided evidence.
please start leading by example. It’s hubris for anyone to think their vision of what the truth is couldn’t stand a little tweaking. It may please you to imagine yourself the noble victim but please don’t confuse that with the truth.
If you want your message to be heard and you want to stop being the focus of these threads, then pay attention to what has been explained to you on multiple occasions regarding real science rather than what you imagine science to be. Then address this audience in a manner consistent with actual science (or stop interrupting other threads with bogus claims about science).
People aren’t attacking you because they’re big meanies that hate you. They’re doing it because the way you make your arguments is the biggest single stumbling block to reasonable discussion on the topic.
I will try. The first thing you notice is being out of your body and observing it from above. You can see the whole room just as if you were in your body, but your body is unconscious, maybe dead. Then several events happen, you feel loved and cared for, your consciousness expands, changes, shifts, not sure what word is appropriate. You talk to “light beings” about whether you will remain in the physical or go into the spiritual dimension. You know about these things because you have been there before. You may see a great spiritual being who talks to you about your life. You may see deceased relatives or pets or buildings. When you return to your body you are not the same person anymore.
All of your once cherished beliefs are seen as only thoughts, or ideas clumped together to form belief systems. They are no longer real, just mental constucts that can be changed as easily as you change your pants and shirt.
So you start from scratch building an understanding of physical life, it took me three years to feel comfortable in this world again. This is about the average, although some never feel comfortable and shy away from people the rest of their lives.
Now I have finally figured why I raise so much hatred and scorn from my posts. I have been thinking others share the same perception of life as I do, and that is not true. They see their beliefs as real, and I do not. So I am going to give it a rest for a while as suggested. Maybe I can learn how to communicate better. So accept my apologies for not seeing this sooner.
I suspect that, in situations such as this, lekatt truly does not understand the discrepancies and is simply floundering because he does not understand the questions.
If he is genuinely going to back off for a while, I see no reason for him to be pursued. If he interrupts (not simply posts to) another thread, making bogus claims about science, his posts will be re-routed to this thread, but until that time, if he is truly withdrawing from this particular discussion, I am guessing that this thread should mercifully drop off the radar.
That seems eminently fair. I will continue to remain a one-trick pony in this thread: in the event that he ever claims again that there are studies providing evidence of some sort of nonphysical consciousness demonstrated by folks in an NDE, I will point out the falseness of his claim. I hope he’ll not make that claim again.
