I’m not sure you can say that i.e. one doesn’t know if a purposeful world can be entirely identical barring the presence of purpose.
It doesn’t even do that. It’s just advice for shortlisting.
True. Except, unlike acid/shrooms, someone interested in DMT need not actually deal with a pusher.
I think the fact that lekatt can be silent for months, but then immediately appears in any thread about NDEs or life after death, is solid proof of ESP.
Actually I started this thread because I noticed the return of LeKatt.
I asked him the same question last time, but he didn’t answer.
He did answer this time but only to undermine his own credibility.
If they are not hardwired to the brain, how is it possible that everyone has the same experience and that it can be repeated by electro-magnetic stimulation of certain parts of the brain?
And don’t give me that “you don’t understand NDE”-crap, because I have actually had one.
At first it made me think that it was spiritual in nature as well, but using my brain I eventually realised that it is a part of my brain that made me experience it in this way.
Now my question to you, LeKatt, still remains : why should it diminish your spiritual claims if the brain is hardwired?
Why does it make you defensive when this (scientifically repeatable) phenomenon is explained scientifically?
This is true. However, to validate the addition of multiple causes, there must be some evidence, or else the number of possible causes becomes infinite.
It’s like those YEC’s that claim that the earth is only 10,000 years old, and was created with the appearance of age. Well, if you accept that as an explanation, why isn’t is just as likely that we were created 2 minutes ago with age, memories, the works?
Now, the only evidence we’ve seen (and I’m open to be corrected on this) is that these visions are biochemical in nature, and can be recreated under laboratory conditions. If you are willing to posit a non-falsifiable alternate theory that explains this, even if it can co-exist with the medical evidence, are you just as sanguine about accepting others?
Talking about credibility, only the truth has credibility.
The brain is not hardwired, even neurosurgeons recognize that facit. If the brain were hardwired no one would ever recover from a brain injury. The brain does not heal itself, therefor no recovery. But people do recover from brain injuries, they regain control of their limbs and other functions. Another area in the brain takes over for the injured area. This would not happen unless we were spiritual and the spirit directs the change in areas, or the brain had a brain of its own.
I have never talked to any NDEer who felt his experience was caused by his brain. I would loved to have a copy of your NDE so we can discuss it, privately, of course.
Now as for scientists duplicating NDEs through various methods – drugs, electro-magnetic stimulation, stressing the body, etc. The real near death experience is caused by clinical death. If a scientist took his subject into clinical death, and that has happened in the case of Pam Reynolds, then his subject would have a near death experience. However, most claims by scientists of duplicating NDEs are patently false. I have some of them on my site linked to a real NDE, and it don’t take a rocket scientist to tell the difference.
I think this covers most of your questions, I am leaving a link for you to read, and you could go back in the posts and read more links I have posted. This link covers scientific duplication, or the lack of it. Please read the link, and follow the links inside of it. This will fully explain some of my research. Then if you wish, we can discuss it further on this board.
Not necessarily. Would you call a river spiritual because, if dammed, the water will find other outlets?
I will be the first to admit that the human brain is complex beyond our current comprehension, but using ‘God’ as a placeholder for our ignorance makes us no better than primitive man that worshiped the sun, moon, seasons, etc.
The brain is not like flowing water, it is more like a computer, and I have never seen a computer work without a programmer.
I did not say God, I said your spiritual self, totally different.
LeKatt, I have followed your link, but it doesn’t really prove that NDE is not hardcoded.
It shows that certain elements of an NDE can be simulated, but not the complete NDE.
I agree with this, but don’t see this as proof.
It just means that we can’t simulate all of it at once.
I think this is quite logical as normally during an NDE you are aware of the fact that you are dying, so your brain/ratio takes certain actions.
This however is all a moot point, because that wasn’t the question.
I now know I can’t change your mind so let’s make it a hypothetical situation.
If we could proof that it is hardcoded, why would it diminish the phenomenon?
When people use the hardcoded argument, wouldn’t it be easily countered by a sort of “intelligent design”-principal?
I am not trying to insult you or question your judgement, I am just really interested in your ideas about this.
Meaningless. Saying that the brain is “more like a computer” doesn’t make it a computer that must be programmed from outside itself.
First- I used the river comparison because the stream of sensory data does not stop coming in, despite the inability of a designates part of the brain to interpret it. It seems reasonable to me that it would get routed somewhere else. Now, the same reasoning you are using (there just be a programmer) is used to support Intelligent Design. Are you a proponent of this as well? If not, why not?
Second- I am not understanding the distinction between God and ‘your spiritual self’ in the context of your argument. What evidence do you have for the existence of a ‘spiritual self’? How does it interact with the physical world, if at all? Is there any way to measure this?
Please define ‘spiritual self.’ then please tell me how attributing NDEs to this differs at all from using God in its place. And then, please tell me how it’s different than pulling an arbitrary placeholder to explain your ignorance rather than just leaving it at ‘We don’t know?’
That’s why I love science. The honesty, and humility, to take ‘We just don’t know’ as a position is refreshing.
And, computers and rivers aside, please excuse the atrocious spelling in my last post. Thick fingers this morning.
Not my intention, I was merely answering a post. Actually, I believe the brain to be an interface between the body and spirit. The spirit is you, we are spiritual beings living in physical bodies for the purposes of learning about ourselves.
I got that from my own and numerous other near death experiences.
You should have read in Pam Reynolds case she was clinically dead, including the brain stem, for somewhere between one hour and two hours. When she was revived she accurately described the operation, among other things. She was out of her body, not using her brain in any manner, and she was still herself, with all her memory and knowledge and emotions. That would have shown to you NDEs have nothing to due with the brain. NDEs happen when the individual is clinically dead. If that doesn’t convince you there are hundreds more of NDEs that show the same thing. Now that also shows that NDEs are not wired to the brain in any way.
If you would read all of the link you would understand better.
I don’t do hypothetical questions, there is enough real ones.
I believe completely in Intelligent Design, but I apply it more to the creation of the universe and mankind, not to the brain. As in all order that is a hierarchy.
First: The stream of data would just keep on coming, yes, but if the wire is broken it will not reach its destination unless some directing force reroutes the wire. I believe in Intelligent Design not because I can proof it, but because it is logical. I will leave a link to my intelligent design page at the end of this post for those who wish to read it.
Second: God created you, you are spirit, that is your spiritual self. There is strong evidence for the spiritual self in near death experiences. Read the above links. Your spiritual self–you-- reacts to the world through a physical body. There are many ways to measure this, but none are physical.
Third: You are a/your spiritual self, you are not God. From the beginning of mankind, humans have known they were spiritual. It is only in the last 50 years or so science has brought this into doubt. Spiritual teaching has declined because science is trying to eradicate it, saying it is ignorant and superstitous. They will lose in the end. But right now many who believe this no longer know how to make contact with their spiritual self. This is sad, however, near death experiences are causing people to take another look at the issue.
The honesty, and humility of science, I find, depends on the scientist.
Intelligent Design Link
http://www.aleroy.com/FAQz25.htm
Not a very good comparison, since the flow of information through the brain is nothing like the flow of electricity through a wire. It’s not a single-point-in single-point-out affair. The brain is a densely interconnected network of neurons. Removing one, or ten, or ten-thousand potential paths from point A to point B doesn’t remove the connection between the two points. The brain simply starts strengthening other connections and other paths, since they’re now receiving much more stimulus than they did when the “primary” paths were active.
You really should read up on neural networks sometime. Artificial neural nets are fully capable of self-modification, including “reprogramming” themselves if some of the neurons are damaged, and artificial networks don’t even begin to approach the complexity of the human brain. Based on that, I’d be surprised if the brain couldn’t modify itself when damaged.
Why not? If the spirit can react through a physical body, then there must be a physical way to detect this spirit.
Science is doing nothing of the sort. It’s simply presenting consistent frameworks that explain observations much better than the alternative.
Why hast thou summoned him, to cite his nonfactual facts?
How?
To interact with the physical world, it has to interact with the physical world. Whatever mean it uses to interact with the physical world has effects in the physical world. So, all you have to do is find the mechanism by which it interacts and then it can be measured.
Pretty straightforward, by-definition sort of stuff.
You’re conflating the end effects with the means. For argument’s sake, let’s say there’s a supernatural force controlling a levitating ball. All you can see is the ball hanging there with no apparent coherence in its behaviour. The mechanism need not be empirically available, and hence not open to examination. Only the end effect (levitation).
Thanks.