Yes, I know about all the things you list and they are discussed in the FAQs on my web site. I will say again there is no proof that consciousness is biological. While there are hundreds of theories about where consciousness comes from and how it works, there is no hard proof of any of it.
People believe what they want to believe. Near Death Experiencers have visited the spiritual world. There is no way you can know whether these experiences are real or not until you have one. I know of no one, having an experience, who believes anything else.
In a lecture he gave in New York, Karl Janson said he attempted to “convert” a number of NDEers into believing his theory about drugs, but had little or no success.
It was a mistake to post here. If anyone here really wants to learn the truth they must be willing to study opposing views.
I have not found any willingness here.
I, like you, was an atheist before my experience. The experience shattered all my beliefs and left my life in ruins. It was necessary to rebuild from start, my reality. I am at peace with myself and the world. I have no axe to grind. I wish you the best in everything.
We’ve seen your web site, Leroy - all I can say is :rolleyes:
That’s cute. You first say there’s no evidence - then when confronted with abundant evidence, you backpedal by saying there’s no proof, but act pained that you had to “repeat” yourself - then you just cop out and refer us to your website. But then if anyone criticizes your web site, you get insulted and tell us it’s just there as “support” for other NDE’ers. I’m guessing you’re new at the whole “debating” thing.
Well YOU do, anyway.
In other words, you are disappointed that we didn’t all just buy into everything you said without question. You say it was a mistake to post here, yet you continue to argue. What exactly is it you are looking for here, Leroy?
There it is again. I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard “I used to be an atheist just like you” - as if that proves anything.
Actually, you seem to be grinding away pretty good throughout this thread. Once again, if you didn’t want a debate, why did you post a thread in Great Debates, and why do you keep arguing with everyone’s points?
Several of us have said quite a few times now that we have no doubt that you had a wonderful experience, and I for one am geniunely happy for you. But that has NOTHING to do with this debate.
— I will say again there is no proof that consciousness is biological. While there are hundreds of theories about where consciousness comes from and how it works, there is no hard proof of any of it.—
No one was asking for a schematic of how consciousness works: but it is pretty undeniable that consciousness is pretty heavily linked with biology, and you’ve not even bothered, either here or in your FAQ to deal with that issue.
—There is no way you can know whether these experiences are real or not until you have one.—
Why would having one resolve the issue, if the WHOLE ISSUE we are discussing is what they are apart from experiences!!!
—If anyone here really wants to learn the truth they must be willing to study opposing views. I have not found any willingness here. —
That’s pretty lame criticism coming from someone who has refused to discuss any substantive issue related to this phenomenon, and simply takes the position that they have the truth, and damn any debate over it.
Ok, now that lekatt has opened up that he is not interested in the discussion until it gets to the point of whether “God exist because NDEs are real”, I think we should realign this discussion from the OP. Hopefully we can get to a point where lekatt can contribute comfortably.
So, in an attempt to start a more fruitful debate, I ask the following:
Is it possible to create an experiment that would shed some light on the NDE experience? We have already heard about the test where information is hidden from view of the patient in the operating room. This seems pretty straightforward in determining whether the out of body experience is a real event, or one that is pieced together from what a patient already knows. Have there been any reports of NDEs where the person was able to have a physical effect on the world while outside of their body? Would it be valid to try and test this aspect as well? What other tests should be attempted?
What is consciousness? What definition do we use to define whether any test have validated their premise? If we don’t know what consciousness is, do we know what it isn’t? I think we might get mired in semantics if we don’t have a working definition to use as a basis for discussion.
If we follow that the brain may be a receptor for the soul (or consciousness) that we all have, is it fair to say that changing the brain through chemicals, physical alteration, or mental defect could be changing how the soul is transmitted to our “reality”, and not an indication of the health or quality of the soul in question? If I take the rabbit ears off my TV, some channels come through in an extremely altered state. This is a problem with the TV, not the transmission. Would this then, explain how memories and reality can be altered, while not really altering our underlying consciousness?
Can we assume that a separate consciousness is the same as that within a person? By this I mean, are all of our memories and experiences stored in our biological brains and our consciousness is what pulls it altogether into what we call a persona? If this is the case, would that indicate that NDEs are not near death experiences, because they continue to use the brain to store their “memory” of the out of body experience. Would this also invalidate anyone who says they can recall past lives? Which then begs the question, are past lives a product of the same mechanism that underlies NDEs, and thus indicate that the brain plays no role other than “transmitter” ('course you would have to presume the “past lives” are a real phenomenon, and that’s as big a stretch as assuming that NDEs are truly Divine).
Since our biology is so closely tied to the rest of animal kingdom, do we need to consider whether consciousness is a universal condition for all life? If it is just a human phenomenon, why is that? Would that be an argument for Creationism? Would a working definition of consciousness (see point 2.) then need to preclude other life forms? Or, if the definition is equally valid for any life form, does that invalidate any idea of Creation, or that man is made in image of God and that consciousness is that image? Ok, now I’m confusing myself
I know I am all over the board with this post, but I would like to get off of the debate on lekatt and move it onto something that has potential for some progress. My ideas are only meant as a jumping off point. Please feel free to elaborate on anything I have written, or present new ideas that we can mull over. Regardless, I think it is too premature to start with the OP.
I’ve had two experiences that seem to fit very closely to the NDE-style experience. Minus the near-death part, of course.
First one, it was like a tunnel of light, bright in front, quickly fading off to darkness beside me. Though truth be told, I didn’t feel anything like I was going to heaven. Actually, I thought I was in the backseat of my mom’s van, and started having a very blurred and unclear conversation with her. Then it started to clear up, like coming out of a dream, and I was looking up into the faces of a couple other middle-school kids, asking if I was okay (Induced unconciousness; Probably not one of the smarter things I’ve done when I was younger).
Second time, same “tunnel” effect. Don’t remember much about this one, but had the same look as the first time, and I had this odd, dull ache in my back. And I remember something about one of my friends, and/or my brother. Then, I slowly came out of it, looking up into the sky, my back a bit sore from having fallen flat backwards (Accidental unconciousness; Had been riding a merry-go-round with my head out further than the rest of me, got off because I was dizzy, and stood up too fast).
The brain does some really weird things when it shuts down like that.
The definitions of a NDE vary from author to author. But in my opinion a real NDE is a death experience. During the death part there is conversation with a light being, could be a passed friend, relative, Jesus, or just an unknown figure, about coming back to life. Usually the experiencer doesn’t want to, but the light being insists. To me, this conversation makes it a Near Death Experience.
Since you didn’t die, or talk to a light being, your experience was not a NDE.
Wow, doesn’t that question deserve its own thread? There’s a good deal of experimental evidence to show that consciousness is a fabrication. It appears that our brains are constantly “rewriting history” in order to break down reality into digestible chunks. Your brain fills in the gaps to create a sort of narrative of reality. For example, a study was done where subjects sat in a dark room, and were shown two lights set apart from each other, which flashed on and off in sequence, one after the other. The subjects described seeing a light traverse the distance in a continuous motion. In other words, the brain filled in the gap between the two events, as if it were actually one continuous event.
I remember another example from an old episode of Nova, where a “split-brain” patient was asked to draw a picture of a bird, while the word “orange” was whispered in one ear. Since the two sides of his brain were not communicating with each other, and the input came only in one ear, he proceeded to draw an orange. When questioned about what he had done, the patient crudely changed the drawing into something that looked like a bird, and said it was a “Baltimore Orange”. Something in his consciousness made him attempt to integrate, after the fact, the two conflicting things that each half of his brain had done.
There has even been research done which shows that our brains actually play games with time. There appears to be a delay between an event happening, and our perception of what has occurred.
We are starting to realize that the old model of consciousness as a single, continuous thing may be incorrect. It now seems more likely that it consists of fragmented, disjointed pieces, that are somehow integrated into the narrative of our experience that we remember.
It stands to reason that if you have a NDE, and your brain is “shutting down”, you are going to get some peculiar brain activity happening, and in the process of your brain trying to make sense out of it, it’s going to make for an interesting experience.
But like I said before, this “the brain is like a tv antenna” theory is pure conjecture. Where’s the evidence that this is the case? If consciousness resides outside of the brain, then where is it? Why can’t we detect it? Can we use this theory to make predictions, and then test the results? If not, then it’s a pretty useless theory.
First off, they’re not dead. Death is in not a requirement. Their brain is shut down temporarily, and only temporarily. Strictly speaking, for this part, their brain probably doesn’t care much what else is happening, or WHY it’s starved of oxygen, or shutting down, or the like. “Clinical death” (IE, the stopping of the heart) is not really death. If their heart (Or brain) stops, then starts again, they are not resurected from death; They were never completely dead. And if the brain temporarily shutting down a significant portion of its functions is all that’s required do declare a person dead/near-death, how is that significantly different from someone who’s brain partially shuts down due to a temporary sharp reduction in oxygen-carrying blood? I wouldn’t consider someone suffering GLOC to be dead. Though from my understanding of blacking-out and GLOC, the effects before and after would be similar to most NDE “visions,” as the field of view rapidly reduces, sometimes to the point of being like that “tunnel of light” look; I’ve actually gotten it that bad once or twice from standing up too fast.
And second… They have to include a conversation with a “light being” about coming back to life? That’s a requirement for a genuine NDE? Then of course you’re not going to have negative NDEs or contradictory NDEs. It’s like asking if there’s any religious texts that promote any religion other than christianity, and then saying that your definition of religious texts means “one of the versions of the christian bible.” Are all those examples of people supposedly floating over their body and “seeing” stuff around them, hearing the doctors conversations, etc, are no longer NDEs, because they didn’t talk with some “light being?” What if they just talk about favorite foods for a while, or the weather? Even though everything’s pretty much the same, it’s not an NDE because they didn’t talk about the right topic? And I’ll point out that I did talk to a being in at least one; my mom.
At the very least, the fact that an NDE experience could be replicated quite simply by someone passing out seems to cast some doubt on wether NDEs are supernatural encounters instead of the result of a biological condition.
I had an experience pretty damn close to an NDE one time. It had the whole tunnel and I even spoke to someone, though I don’t remember if they were actually a figure or a disembodied voice. I also have no recollection of what we talked about, but I have a general sort of memory of it being nothing too profound. It was induced by a combination of LSD and Ketamine.
That would be an interesting hypothesis, IF you could demonstrate the actual source of the waves.
The problem with all conjecture like this (that is completely unsupported by evidence) is that you could easily substitute anything for the proposition in question, and arrive at just as meaningful a conclusion:
Maybe there are invisible monkeys inside my brain.
Maybe brain waves are made out of fairy dust.
Maybe aliens are beaming thought waves into my brain through a technology that I can’t understand.
—There has even been research done which shows that our brains actually play games with time. There appears to be a delay between an event happening, and our perception of what has occurred.—
It’s worse than that. There have been tests doen that seem to show that we actually decide to take an action milliseconds BEFORE we consciously “feel” that we have decided. That is, the running flow of conscious thought: the thing we normally think of as “myself” seems temporaly disconnected from the actual “deciding” component of us, whatever it is. Consciousness may be, in that case, only an after-effect ofthe real operation of the brain, rather than the “pilot” we normally think of it as being.
You need to read a lot more information on Near Death Experiences. I can tell by your post you only know a minute amount. Near Death Experiences are far more dramatic than skeptical writers describe them.
The American Medical Association defines death for us. Pam Reynolds was dead for approximately two hours, no bodily functions of any kind. She was literally resurrected from the dead.
Conversations with passed relatives, friends are common. This can be positive or negative. In some cases information is transferred that can be documented. Like telling where the passed person left a will and finding it there.
Dying is necessary for a full blown NDE. One has never been replicated by drugs or “passing out”. They are a great deal more dramatic than that. Real NDEs leave a person with a totalled new perspective on life.
Please read the material so you will understand what a NDE consists of.
You give to much credit to the brain and if the research is accurate it actually proves the opposite of your conclusion.
Consciousness detecting and reacting before the physical brain knows about it. You are pure energy. Those who by meditation, spiritual experiences or other methods understand their inner self would know when their consciousness detected it. Similar to the Force in Star Wars.
Nearly all brain research is conjecture, including the assumption the waves are coming from the brain. Energy wave direction is usually determined by the triangulation process which is not possible in brain research. After this point your post becomes nonsense.
Thanks, Apos. That’s exactly the way I remember reading about it - I just didn’t explain it as well. Kind of reminds me of how the office of the President works - The President says something, and then his staff scrambles to explain what he “really” meant.
You fail to distinguish between hypotheses that are supported by evidence, and those that are unsupported by evidence. In fact, you fail to understand the scientific method at all.
Darn, my Irony-o-Meter blew up again. And I just had it serviced…
Wow, you just… Completely skipped over every point I made. Could you at least address some of my points (Or, even better, all of them)?
What if someone “dies” and has an experience just like an NDE, except they don’t feel greatly changed, afterwards. It’s not an NDE, because they don’t think it is?
What if the “light being” and they talk about some other, but important subject, instead of death? Not an NDE because they talk about the wrong topic?
Are the people who have out-of-body experiences, “seeing” themselves down on the table, looking around, listening to doctors talking, not NDEs because they don’t talk with a “light being” about death?
How can you reason that the responce to the NDE is a requirement for it to be an NDE? Imagine if someone were shot right infront of you; You could run away, you could stand frozen in horror, you could drop to the ground and hide, you could do a hundred different things. Does your reaction in any way change the fact that the person was shot? Then how does your reaction to it determin if something is an NDE or not?
I’ll also point out that dramatic changes in behavior tend to be relatively common due to traumatic events. Especially ones involving brain damage, such as when you starve it of oxygen.
How does it make a difference if the temporary reduction in oxygen to the brain is because the body is shutting down due to clinical death, instead of simply being starved of oxygen because of GLOC or other more mundane events, if the effects on the brain are the same?
How do you explain that everything that occurs durring an NDE (Not the later reaction to it) can be duplicated by the more mundane methods of drug use or passing out? And I’m pretty sure some people have had pretty dramatic and new perspective on life after heavy drug use, some may even have it with the same “visions.” Most of us call that brain damage.
