NDE, I had one, has anyone else?

Great Debates
141

Check it out.
http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/trouble_with_atheism.php

Big Al E.
Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated. The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that is there. 5

142

From the perspective of an EMT, let me tell you just how lucky you were (although I’m sure you’ve probably heard most of it before). Being ejected from a vehicle in a high speed accident means certain death. Even EMTs that work in an ambulance for 40 years can’t say they’ve seen someone survive vehicle ejection, with almost zero exceptions. I’ve never met one who claimed to see someone survive this (although admittedly I’ve been an EMT for less than year). I have never met an EMT who even claimed to KNOW SOMEONE ELSE who witnessed someone survive vehicle ejection. For both you and your son to survive that accident after being ejected from the vehicle was the rarest of the rare, once-in-a-million-lifetimes occurrence. I have actually HEARD of this happening in reports though, so statistically I guess it is a greater than zero chance.

The real head scratcher for me is that you were shocked at least twice, with no results, had no pulse or electrical activity in your heart at all (which is the only way the EMTs would have considered discontinuing CPR, assuming they connected and read the heart monitor correctly), and spontaneously regained a normal rhythm without CPR or any other intervention. That’s seriously something worth writing a book about, and I can understand how it could make someone religious.

143

I’m not going to watch your video. It’s much too long. Feel free to summarize it, specifically where it proves your claim.

But until atheists have ten channels on cable TV, a church on every street corner, constant praise from sports figures, politicians, celebrities, and journalists, a place in the national anthem of the U.S., paid days off for their holidays, etc. etc. etc., it is ridiculous to state that their voices are as loud as those of the religious.

144

Yes, let’s throw out the word spirit. As for life, that’s actually not as clearly defined as you might think. Is a virus alive? How about that Furby? How about in six hundred years, when the Furbys finally earn their voting rights?

A dream is any experience which seems like a real experience to the person (or Furby) experiencing it, which is in fact entirely contained in their heads and a product of their own brain. Depending on circumstance or type, they can be called daydreams or nightmares; they can have any of an entire range of realisms, to totally dreamlike and unreal, to completely lucid and realistic. Sometimes elements of dreams are in the conscious control of the dreamer; sometimes not.

The definition of “dream” is wide; necessarily, if your experience was entirely in your head, it fits the definition.

And yes, I know you keep insisting it wasn’t just a dream, that you actually left your body and brain and tiptoed through the tulips or whatever. You can also, if you like, insist that you are the king of America. Neither insistence effects the actual reality of the situation, and neither insistence alone is even slightly compelling towards encouraging belief in it.

I don’t suppose your ‘NDE’ happened to mention tomorrow’s lotto numbers, or anything else verifiable, did it?

What isn’t? It’s entirely rational and objective of me not to care what silly things you may believe. And it’s entirely rational and objective to only care about what actually happened.

It’s also a fact that if your mind wasn’t a product of your brain, then we couldn’t shut off your mind by doing things to your head. Do you disbelieve that when people are clocked on the head, sometimes they lose not only the connection to their senses, but also their sense of time passing? If you were actually a soul merely listening to your brain, you might be blinded by the loss of connection to your senses, but nothing could stop you from noticing each moment of senselessness passing.

That proves you are not a soul living in your body.

No, I’m saying that there is not an absence of proof. There is proof of absence.

As noted above, we know more than that. Those of us not dedicated to ignoring facts in favor of perpetuating ancient beliefs, that is.

(And I can prove there’s no christian god, if you like. Assuming that you assume that God is both omnipotent and perfectly honest. Or that it’s both omnipotent and omnitient and benevolent. Or that it’s omnitient and granted us libertarian free will…)

And I’m not in a position to watch some movie - if you have some point to make by linking it, summarize it and present it.

145

What do you mean by “publicized”? These reports have been published as peer reviewed studies and included in books sold to the mass market. Just because you missed them doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

You dismiss everything I said out of hand, offering no evidence or rationale for doing so other than your deeply ingrained belief that it’s all “superstitions”. ( and you talk about “believers”)

Sorry to step on YOUR “pet fantasy” by demanding a bit more in the way of intelligent debate before taking you seriously.

146

Yeah, suuure. And of course actual scientists are ignoring these supposed studies because . . . why ? The Illuminati doesn’t want the Truth published ?

And you can get ANY sort of nonsense published in the mass market. That’s hardly evidence of truthfulness.

147

Which peer reviewed studies are you referring to? The mass market books don’t matter-how many times have the Garfield books hit the bestseller lists?

148

Tell you what, you and Czarcasm, feel free to cite studies proving those I mentioned wrong, huh? It’s obvious that you are ignorant of them (yes, they DO exist) . Easy enough to cry BS and sit on your ass and offer nothing to support your pov other than “it’s science as we know it to date, therefore I am right!” :dubious: Catch up already. Science as we know it is changing constantly.

A few cites just for fun/to temp you into doing a bit of research:

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~sai/neardeth.htm
Study into near-death experiences supports theory of a ‘sixth sense’ Thu 11 Sep 2003
RICHARD SADLER
BRITISH scientists say there is convincing evidence that a significant proportion of the population possess psychic powers. The British Association for the Advancement of Science was told an increasing number of experiments support the theory of a human “sixth sense” - an ability which may have its roots in our past, when the ability to sense the presence of a predator was a matter of life or death.
The view that people are capable of paranormal feats, such as premonitions, telepathy, and out-of-body experiences, is supported by new research by the Institute of Psychiatry, which suggests the human mind may exist outside the body like an invisible magnetic field. The research is being led by Dr Peter Fenwick, a neuro-psychiatrist at London University, who has just completed a survey of heart patients claiming to have had “near-death experiences” after their hearts had stopped beating.
“There is now convincing evidence to challenge the current theory that consciousness can only exist inside the brain - and if you can have consciousness without associated brain function, that is enormously important for our understanding of the mind,” he said.
For his latest research, 60 patients at Southampton General Hospital’s coronary care unit were interviewed after heart attacks had left them temporarily brain-dead. Seven reported near-death experiences - defined by characteristic features such as a feeling of leaving your body, going through a tunnel and entering an area of “love, bliss and consciousness”.
“The significance of this is that after a cardiac arrest you lose consciousness within eight seconds; within 11 seconds the brain’s rhythms become flat, and within 18 seconds there is no possibility of the brain creating a model of the world - so the brain is down,” said Dr Fenwick.
“Yet whenever we asked people when their near-death experiences occurred, they said it was during unconsciousness. If that’s true, their experience was occurring when there was no blood flowing through the brain - and consciousness would appear to exist outside the brain.”
It could be argued that their experiences occurred in the few seconds between brain functions being restored and the return of consciousness. But recent research on a patient in the United States, where traces of electrical activity in the brain were closely monitored, suggested this was not the case.
“That study and other evidence points to the mind and brain not being identical, and it seems that the mind may operate in part outside the brain as a sort of field which works in the same way as a TV receiver receives programmes through the airwaves,” said Dr Fenwick.
“The main question we are trying to answer is does the brain-identity theory really hold - and the next step is to find more people who experience leaving their bodies and put symbols on the ceiling or walls of the ward to see if they are able to detect them.”
Dr Fenwick said the idea of the mind existing outside the body helped to explain the growing weight of scientific evidence pointing to genuine psychic powers.
For example, US trials showed women trying to become pregnant by in-vitro fertilisation were twice as likely to conceive if they were “prayed for” by a group of people hundreds of miles away who had never met them.

Wednesday, 1st October 2003
©2003 Scotsman.com

World’s Largest-ever Study Of Near-Death Experiences
ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2008) — The University of Southampton is launching the world’s largest-ever study of near-death experiences this week.

(gee, guess it’s still a going concern, not “doa” as some assert :rolleyes:)

As for claiming “well, that just never happened” when confronted with documented cases (re Raymond Moody MD, buy the book, it’s in there), you are essentially accusing everyone involved, the Drs, the nurses, the survivor, the family, of being big fat liars. Where is your evidence in support of this slanderous allegation?

If I had any indication you (either of you) had ever read anything related to NDEs (studies, books, anything other than pop culture reports…ever even HEARD of Moody or Kubler-Ross? I thought not.) I might be able to take your comments seriously. As yet, I’ve nothing to go on but knee-jerk debunking.

Hardly worth my time.

149

InterestedObserver, your first link is to a highly biased article about non-named studies and a bunch of anonymous anecdotes, and your second link is to a proposed study-fail on both counts.
Can you provide us links to peer-reviewed studies that support your position?

150

Excellent post, nice to see some truth coming into this board.
Really good work. Nice to see experiencers on the offense.

151

Finally, something we can agree on.

152

  1. I forgot to have the doctor bring in neurological experts and have a boichemical/brain wave mapping device attached to me. You are making assumptions about my situation to fit your already preconceived notions.

  2. Who said there were billions who believe in NDE. There are billions who believe that life, the universe and everything has a metaphysical component to it. More to the point, most religious, spiritual, metaphysical, etc. cosmological viewpoints think that our existence is but a part of that.

First off, it’s not the word “afterlife” that was invented, it is the concept of afterlife, regardless of whatever word is used to describe that concept by any particular group, that was percieved/concieved of. And I truly believe that there are more things in life, the universe than ever dreamt of in your pseudo skeptic’s philosophy.

http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/trouble_with_atheism.php
This guy believes that there are more things in life, the universe and everything than you pseudo skeptic’s philosophy can conceive of.

ALBERT EINSTEIN:
Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated. The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that is there. 5
AS DOES THIS GUY: (any true skeptic worth his salt would know this guy)

Marcello Truzzi - founding co-chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), a founder of the Society for Scientific Exploration, and director for the Center for Scientific Anomalies Research.

“There are some members of the skeptics’ groups who clearly believe they know the right answer prior to inquiry. They appear not to be interested in weighing alternatives, investigating strange claims, or trying out psychic experiences or altered states for themselves (heaven forbid!), but only in promoting their own particular belief structure and cohesion . . . I have to say it—most of these people are men. Indeed, I have not met a single woman of this type.”[10]

153

And none of them have any evidence. And they wildly contradict each other. They have no clue what they are babbling about.

154

THE TROUBLE WITH ATHEISM:
The documentary focuses on atheism, and science in general, for its perceived similarities to religion, as well as arrogance and intolerance. The programme includes interviews with a number of prominent scientists, including atheists Richard Dawkins and Peter Atkins and Anglican priest John Polkinghorne. It also includes an interview with Ellen Johnson, the president of American Atheists.
ALBERT EINSTEIN:
Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated. The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that is there. 5

Marcello Truzzi (September 6, 1935 — February 2, 2003) was a professor of sociology at New College of Florida and later at Eastern Michigan University, founding co-chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), a founder of the Society for Scientific Exploration, and director for the Center for Scientific Anomalies Research.[1]
Marcello Truzzi (September 6, 1935 — February 2, 2003) was a professor of sociology at New College of Florida and later at Eastern Michigan University, founding co-chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), a founder of the Society for Scientific Exploration, and director for the Center for Scientific Anomalies Research.[1]

Truzzi was an investigator of various protosciences and pseudosciences and, as fellow CSICOP cofounder Paul Kurtz dubbed him, “the skeptic’s skeptic.”

he coined the term pseudoskepticism. Truzzi stated,

"They tend to block honest inquiry, in my opinion. Most of them are not agnostic toward claims of the paranormal; they are out to knock them. [...] When an experiment of the paranormal meets their requirements, then they move the goal posts. Then, if the experiment is reputable, they say it's a mere anomaly." 

In science, the burden of proof falls upon the claimant; and the more extraordinary a claim, the heavier is the burden of proof demanded. The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved. He asserts that the claimant has not borne the burden of proof and that science must continue to build its cognitive map of reality without incorporating the extraordinary claim as a new "fact." Since the true skeptic does not assert a claim, he has no burden to prove anything. He just goes on using the established theories of "conventional science" as usual. But if a critic asserts that there is evidence for disproof, that he has a negative hypothesis --saying, for instance, that a seeming psi result was actually due to an artifact--he is making a claim and therefore also has to bear a burden of proof.

– Marcello Truzzi, On Pseudo-Skepticism, Zetetic Scholar, 12/13, pp3-4, 1987
155

It would be interesting to know if there was any difference in the psychiatric make up of the differing camps of NDE experiencers. I wonder if it could be proved that those with a more negative outlook on life tended to have the ‘dark’, frightening trips to the other side?

156

p.s. Excuse the extra “experiencers”.

157

There is no such thing as the “supernatural”. There ARE things that we don’t yet understand (and some things that we will never understand) but these things are still natural. They do *not *exist outside of nature simply because we don’t understand them. There is nothing “outside” of nature.

That which exists is part of nature.

158

Wow, my last post was FIVE years ago. That’s because I’m usually happy with just lurking around. Eventually, someone says exactly what I would have said had I posted. But it hasn’t happened yet in this thread, so…

I had something very similar to a NDE while playing a “hold your breath” contest in a pool with some friends. I won. :dubious: I also got to stop existing for a while, became one with the universe, saw a pinprick of light and felt very peaceful. Despite this experience, I don’t believe in life after death. That being said, I have some comments on things other posters have said in this thread!

[QUOTE=begbert]
A dream is any experience which seems like a real experience to the person (or Furby) experiencing it, which is in fact entirely contained in their heads and a product of their own brain. Depending on circumstance or type, they can be called daydreams or nightmares; they can have any of an entire range of realisms, to totally dreamlike and unreal, to completely lucid and realistic. Sometimes elements of dreams are in the conscious control of the dreamer; sometimes not.
[/QUOTE]

I agree that a NDE seems to fit the definition of a dream. I guess you’ll just have to believe me when I say that in my case, it felt very different from a dream. I think, when you’re having a NDE, your brain sort of blasts you with the feeling that your experiencing something extremely meaningful which is why so many people that have had a NDE think that it HAS to mean something more. (Remember, I don’t!)

The best analogy I can come up with would be explaining the difference between a drawing of a cube and a magic eye picture that makes a cube once you cross your eyes properly. It’s really hard explaining the difference to someone that has never been able to see a magic eye picture. Yes, they’re both 3D and they’re both cubes, but the magic eye picture is different! It has something extra, it has depth! When you’ve seen examples of both, you don’t have any trouble differencing one from the other. To me and I suspect to others, a NDE isn’t a dream, it’s something very different.

That being said, just because a NDE feels meaningful and happens when you’re near death, it doesn’t mean you have any special insights on death. You just can’t use a NDE as an argument that there’s life after death because, as others have pointed out, you haven’t actually died! Let’s try another analogy : water near the freezing point. You put your hands in almost frozen water and it’s really cold. You could feel tempted to tell people, “look, when water freezes, you can put you hand in it and it feels really cold! I know because I’ve done it!” But you’d be wrong to say that as when water actually freezes, it becomes solid.

For those of you that say “we’re just a biochemical process.” Well, sure. But other posters in this thread have experienced that particular biochemical process as something that has a special meaning for them. I feel that just dismissing it like that, even if it’s true, sort of comes across like saying “well, you’re not really in love, it’s just a biochemical process” to someone that falls in love.

That would be really interesting. It’s kind of hard to find actual scientific studies on NDE.

Personally, I’ve always wondered why the brain bothers sending you on a nice peaceful NDE at all? Shouldn’t it be doing everything it can to make sure you survive, rather than just letting you feel all peaceful? I find it weird that everyone doesn’t get the ‘dark’ trips as a sort of last ditch attempt by the brain to make your body react in any possible way that might help you survive.

159

A pity that there never are any, just people expecting us to swallow their bullshit.

160

Not really. It’s more like telling someone who claims to have a psychic connection to someone because they are in love that love is just an emotion.

In other words, garbage. It’s “perceived similarities” are just attempts to drag it down to the level of religion by believers, so they can pretend that their foolishness is the equal of science. Science and religion are pretty much pure opposites, not similar. And the “arrogance” of atheism is what any unbeliever who fails to suck up enough gets accused of, and the “intolerance” of atheism is what atheists get accused of when they ask for actual evidence.

And would you stop with the Einstein and Truzzi quotes ? We’ve seen them a dozen times. You are also misrepresenting Einstein - a common tactic of believers.