A psychiatrist, Dr. Raymond Moody, wrote about near death experiences over 30 years ago. Ever since that time, proof of life after death, has existed. His last book “The Last Laugh” was an appropriate title.
For over 30 years scientists have been denying NDEs are important proof of life after death. In recent years the evidence and proof has been piling up at a fantastic rate. Controlled research is being done by four universities that I know of. The debate is over, the spiritualists have won.
Be sure to read the latest article in the “Readers Digest” August 2003. You can’t miss it, it’s on the front cover.
A psychiatrist, Dr. Raymond Moody, wrote about near death experiences over 30 years ago. Ever since that time, proof of life after death, has existed. His last book “The Last Laugh” was an appropriate title.
For over 30 years scientists have been denying NDEs are important proof of life after death. In recent years the evidence and proof has been piling up at a fantastic rate. Controlled research is being done by four universities that I know of. The debate is over, the spiritualists have won.
Be sure to read the latest article in the “Readers Digest” August 2003. You can’t miss it, it’s on the front cover.
How do we know any fact? Only by the strength of the evidence for it (thank David Hume). It seems clear to me that the evidence so far is overwhemingly in support of Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor
There was a study, but when the peer-review process got done with it, it was pretty obviously a case of massive incompetance or fraud. The methodology was all screwed up, & cases that contradiced the premise that prayer did work were dropped from the study in the middle of the program, a definite no-no.
In any event, various people have repeated similar studies, without the procedural errors, and the results don’t support the original premise.
Any second now, lekatt will be in here praising various faith healers, crystal channeling, and Laetril-based cancer treatments. :rolleyes:
Sorry what I meant was that if someone is very ill and there family members pray for them, more likely to get better and that shows the power of prayer.
I tried to find a detailed account of the procedure which Pam Reynolds went through from a neutral source. Unfortunately, I was unable to find anything directly related to her case that wasn’t motivated by the desire to prove a belief in “life beyond”.
Here are some articles about inducing hypothermic cardiac arrest for medical purposes:
It seems a bit of a leap to say that the mind is not emergent from “biological functions”. From the sources I have skimmed through, it seems like a minimal level of chemistry must still be sustained in the brain during the procedure to not cause severe post-surgical damage.
Sure, it would seem to me that biological functions slow down to a trickle, below the level previously thought required to maintain consciousness. But that does not “prove” mind and body are distinct systems that can exist entirely independently of one another.
If they were, why is it so difficult to extend the procedure beyond the 3 hour barrier? You can come up with all these complex models of how body and mind are somehow “joined” and that that “junction” is what requires certain physiological characteristics to be sustained. And when the “junction” is ruptured, there’s no way to fix it except through some process of “reincarnation”. But it remains a hypothetical theory.
Lekatt seems to take some experience of his own as personal proof. But one should apply some skepticism even to ones own experiences. Easy to say of course…
But as an example, the experiences of people who were accused of witchery in Medieval Europe may in some instances have been caused by psychotropic drugs. However, without a model of synaptic transmission and serotonin uptake, such experiences must seem like a confirmation of mythological reality. We have no clear concept in the first place of how consciousness arises. Some have hinted at algorithmic models. Yet we have still to demonstrate computational devices can acquire true awareness. But Lekatt’s claim that awareness is not “biological” remains equally unsubstantiated.
In hypothermic cardiac arrest, certain neurotransmitters continue to be produced but the reactions that break them down again cease. This leads to neuronal toxicity and cell death. Doctors previously believed that this damage began only after the body’s temperature returned to normal, but more recent research has shown that the damage is cumulative throughout the procedure. Without special drugs that impede neurotransmitter production, neurological damage occurs in a short period of time.
The procedure cannot be sustained past a few hours because of the larger number of processes that continue without proper control, inevitably leading to severe brain damage.
I just answered that handsomeharold. The answer, in simpler terms :rolleyes: , was “No, they do not get better, faster. The so-called study was garbage.”
The thing is, I was talking about the PART of the story that’s not falsifiable. The part, not NASA related, hypothesising that said day did occur. Which we can’t disprove.
We could carry this on forever. I say consciousness will continue after death. This have been proven by numerous NDEs. This is a true statement.
But several of you will continue to say “no it doesn’t, when you die you die.” You have no proof to offer.
So, I guess you will read it in the news or hear it on TV in the future. If you are teachers, your students will inform you. If you are doctors, your patients will tell you. Sometime in the future you will hear about it in a format understandable to your beliefs.
It might help if we stopped calling these things “physical laws.” I think, and I’m not alone, is that the so called “laws of nature” are really just well supported statements about observed regularities in events. If in the long course of time an event occurs that doesn’t fit the previously observed regularity, scientists grab it and try to find out why.
Is it that our statement of the regularity needs modification? Were the conditions that produced the freak really the same as in the case of the previously documented regularity? Or what?
Our statements about the regularity of physical events are carefully constructed and based on certain assumptions and we shouldn’t be quick to assume the supernatural if something happens that we think doesn’t fit our statements about physical regularities.
Well, I read the article… AGAIN!Nothing in there that would constitute as evidence for the afterlife or even for NDEs in general(regardless of the cause).Just her recounting what she allegely told the doctor(presumably before she would have had a chance to fine tune her story…right?).
Also Lekatt, the article says that the blood was drained from her HEAD but not from her entire body(probably a minor quibble but nonetheless…).Is this the best that you guys have got?Is THIS the standard for credible evidence you guys adhere to?
No wonder you hate science!
**
And yet you can offer no more than this highly suspicious, non-verifiable, 30 year old account?!?
**
I used to work with a guy like you except his thing was ufology.Every week he would sit down at one of the break room tables and make some bold proclamation that “They have finally proven UFOs exist!” or “Anyone see that Inside Edition last night?I guess all of those alien abductees are getting the last laugh at the people who doubted them!I am just glad the matter is settled and the skeptics were wrong!”.
Of course there is no reasoning with such people.If I were to point out that just because Inside Edition(it could have been A Current Affair also) does a fluff piece that hints at UFO visitations or alien abductions and a subsequent cover-up, does not mean it is fact, he would have become violent or at least insulting.People like Lekatt and the UFOlogists and paranormalists have chosen sides and taken a vow of unswerving loyalty to the cause of standing by these claism and ALWAYS denying science when it does not tell them what they would like to hear.In their minds they are fighting a war to establish the validity of spiritualism/supernaturalism/paranormality and to concede any error or fallacy on their part is to surrender to the “enemy”.
*This is my invisible friend.
There are many like it but this one is mine.
It is my BEST friend.It is my life.
I must defend it as I must defend my life.
Without my friend, I am useless.
Without my imagination, my friend is non-existent.*
Yeah and while I am at it I better pick up the latest issue of The Weekly World News because there is proof inside that arthritis can be cured by drinking herbal tea and rubbing crystals!
Lekatt,
It’s a little frustrating to have a discussion with someone when it goes like this:
A: NDE is proof that spiritual world supercedes the material world.
B: How does it prove it?
A: Evidence X has demonstrated it.
B: OK, I reviewed evidence X. Here are some problems I see.
A: Well, that’s irrelevant.
B: How come?
A: Because.
B: Because what?
A: Oh, well, you will see in due time…
I am genuinely interested in what NDE implicates. I’m not doubting there existence. I’m questioning your interpretation of them. And some details regarding your claims. For example, I have questioned whether hypothermic cardiac arrest halts all neural activity. As TVAA points out, there is a theory that the state of consciousness associated with NDE may be a bi-oproduct of cell decay in the brain. This does not diminish its importance! That would be like saying “because thoughs emerge from neural activity, thoughts are irrelevant”. I am not a reductionist. Reduction may help fill in the picture. But it does not suplant the picture, which can only be seen by merging the parts into an undistinguishable whole.
But infortunately, I have to agree with GS. You seem not to care about what people in this forum have to say about the subject.
So why discuss it here? Did you just come to look at the monkeys in the cage?
And I agree that I can’t disprove the contention that God made the sun stand still in the sky, and then put everything back the way it was so that nobody was the wiser. My point was, if there’s no way for us to observe that such is the case, then it’s meaningless to talk about it. If you’re talking about such a hypothetical event for which there is no way to determine if it actually happened or not, then it’s disengenous to bring up the NASA story, because that story does involve observational evidence of the phenomenon. The NASA story is a red herring, because it’s extremely doubtful that it happened.
If there’s no evidence that the sun stood still, then it’s meaningless to discuss it.
I there is evidence that the sun stood still, then that evidence is part of the universe, and by definition not supernatural.
Godless, we went through this whole deal with Leroy a while back. You’re not going to get a straight answer out of him, so I’ll save you some time and tell you what I remember about the Pam Reynolds case he keeps talking about. There was a TV special about it, which is where he got most of his info. I happened to see that TV show, and the evidence they presented hinged in my opinion on two supposed observations made by Pam while the surgery was underway.
The first “observation” was the bone saw they used to open her skull. After she regained consciousness, she described it as looking like an electric toothbrush (supposedly from her vantage point floating above her body). The doctor said that was more or less an accurate description of a bone saw, and that the instrument could not have been visible to her before the operation. Of course it presupposes that she had never seen a bone saw in her life, and subconsciously incorporated that into a hallucination, or that it wasn’t just coincidence that she imagined something close to the real thing.
The second “observation” was supposedly a snippet of conversation about taking an artery from her leg or something of that nature, which she recalled after the surgery.
IIRC, it was the anestesiologist who is touting the NDE angle. He has some wild theory about consciousness residing somewhere in the molecular structure of the brain or some such thing; basically saying that our “soul” exists independently of the observable functioning of the brain. I forget exactly how his theory went, but there was basically zero evidence for it.
Now the obvious answer to Pam’s NDE was that she experienced a very vivid hallucination as they drained the blood out of her brain, which is a common phenomemon as the brain loses oxygen. The only evidence that it happened during the surgery, and not before or after, is those two “observations” that she reported afterwards. The other possibility, of course, is that the doctor is wrong, and that some mental functioning still exists even when the blood is drained from the brain. If you think about it, if it happened the way she claims, and she saw & heard things while her brain was dead, how would she have remembered them after waking up? If the brain was dead at the time, she couldn’t have stored those memories.
I leave it up to you to evaluate the evidence. I just thought I’d save you some time, because Leroy will just talk in circles about it.
In short, what they’re claiming is that before she underwent the surgery, she had no idea what they were going to use on her or what they were going to do. That no-one had discussed the procedure at all with her. Right?
Hell, I wouldn’t want a doctor that’d do that to me.
You will find a controlled scientific study of near death experiences.
“Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands by Doctors Pim van Lommel, Ruud van Wees, Vincent Meyers, Ingrid Elfferich.”
In the above study you will find a near death experience that surprised the doctor (P. van Lommel) very much, it was the one about false teeth. It confirmed the “information while dead,” part of NDEs.
P. van Lommel went on to say: “Several theories have been proposed to explain NDE. We did not show that psychological, neurophysiological, or physiological factors caused these experiences after cardiac arrest.”
If not any of these then what?
The Doctor also talked about the Pam Reynolds surgery. http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence01.html
She was “dead” for approximately two hours, the blood drained from her head, and when she was brought back to life, she described the details of her surgery.
Since this study, funding and permission has been made available for a much larger study, and it is now in progress. It is due in about two years.
Science will only be able to eliminate the physical factor. Then if NDES are not caused by anything physical (the body) they must be considered spiritual. That’s the way I see it.
There is also the “Readers Digest” Aug 2003 article about this same subject using the same material as presented here. This article is very important because it is the first time, to my knowledge, that such accurate information about NDEs was published in the media. (The RD has millions of readers.) In the past only skeptical information was transmitted.
All the research shows evidence that NDEs are not, repeat not, caused by biological sources. Consciousness lives after death. Man will survive death, but not in his body.
What happens after that? Read the near death experiences, 100s of them.
The only way we can deal with life is through personal experience. We can tell others about our experiences, but we can’t prove them. We can’t even prove we had toast for breakfast. Thousands of individuals have recorded their NDEs, while they are all unique in some aspects, other aspects are the same.
In order to understand NDEs, I believe it is necessary to read several hundred of them. After that, you will see the thread of logic and truth all contain. http://www.ndeweb.com/board00.htm
NDEers welcome scientific research into the experiences, I have never known a researcher to come away not believing in the reality of the experience.
Remember that some followers of science and/or religion have vested interests, and depend on their beliefs to earn their living. Many will never accept NDEs, but that is ok, the information I write is for those still seeking and learning.
