Near Death Studies - Consciousness After Death

AI Thread Summary
The discussion centers on the validity of research into consciousness after death, with participants expressing differing views on near-death experiences (NDEs). Some believe NDEs provide evidence of a soul or consciousness existing beyond the body, while others argue that these experiences can be explained by physiological responses, such as brain activity during trauma or the effects of drugs like ketamine. The role of endogenous DMT in NDEs is also mentioned, suggesting a potential biochemical basis for these experiences. Participants highlight the need for further scientific investigation into consciousness and its mysteries. Overall, the conversation reflects a blend of personal anecdotes and scientific speculation regarding the nature of consciousness and the afterlife.
  • #51
Evo said:
"medically dead" is the catch here. ...Like I said previously, as technology and our understanding increases, the definition of death changes.

the Uniform Determination of Death Act. It states that: "An individual who has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem is dead.

Under laboratory conditions at normal body temperature, the longest period of clinical death (complete circulatory arrest) survived with eventual return of brain function is one hour.[18][19]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinical_death

Because brain death is the final call on death, and animal heads have been successfully transplanted from one animal to another I would have to agree with you. Perhaps in the future, there will be no real determination of death as long as the brain can survive.

I guess the real question we are all looking to be answered is:
Is life merely an algorithm? or some sort of signal receiver or a combination of both?. By receiver I mean is the brain controlled by a signal sent to it.

The only actual NDE I have been witness to other than my own, involved a woman who was dying from sclerosis of the liver. She was an alcoholic and over 50 years old. She had a dream/vision/NDE while she lay on the death watch in the hospital. She claimed that Jesus told her it was not her time and she needed to help her family who were all alcoholics. {shortened story} she recovered, had a completely healed liver and live for another 15 years.

I'm not a Christian but I was impressed.

Those who did not sit down with Columbus and notice the sails disappearing over the horizon, had no reason to doubt the world was flat. It mattered little to their day to day lives, one way or the other.

I've seen too many peculiar things in life to close off my mind to a narrow minded way of thinking, be it religious or scientific. I will die on day and solve the riddle for myself as will we all. Until then, I remain open minded to any speculation. For the curious minded it is all food for thoughtful fun anyway.
 
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  • #52
W3pcq said:
I don't think that rules out the idea that the consciences is just attached to the brain.

Attached in what way?
 
  • #53
moonstroller said:
Attached in what way?

Like if we do have souls that can leave the body, they could be attached to our minds, but when we die, our souls are released from the grip of the mind.
 
  • #54
Kinda like the hand and glove thing. The body, including the brain is the glove and the hand is the soul.

I notice in most of these types of conversations, that one point that limits discussion is the possibility of eternity, which is itself hard to define. Given that all reality is immersed in a fabric of eternity, then all possible outcomes of any event can actually happen. I recently saw the video "Next" with Nicolas Cage and it was a breath of fresh air for the real SF fan.

I wonder sometimes about dreams. What if: you died in this life and awoke in another life thinking that the former life was nothing more than a dream. In essence, you would live forever. This could be possible, if every decision you make takes you along a separate path within eternity and every possible decision you could have taken would take you along a different path. All these paths could co-exist in eternity. It is a form of multiple existence, which eternity could contain with no problem at all.

Weird huh?
 
  • #55
If a person has a near death Exp De-bunked

If someone has a near death exp they think they do but they don't mainly because there not dead there brain is still alive but has cut off the normal functions of the eyes and the perception of light so there for without light coming into your brain, you can no longer feel time hence you would be un-conscious but not dead so people that say that they seen somthing while having a near death exp just had a dream made up by there mind when they were no longer taking in light from there eyes hence, we see with our minds and are eyes just take in the light our brain makes the image's we see from that light so if people had a near death exp it is completely de-bunked here and now that if they seen somthing that would mean there brain was still alive so therefor they would be still alive they would just think that they had died and came back... its a matter of perception from the beholder of the memory but my perception of the matter is true and is not a miss-conception that is deluted by the lack of understanding or a false judgement on the matter. your welcome for DE-BUNKING this crazy wacked out theory of peoples near death exp's and the thought about what's after death. for what's after death we cannot prove nor dis-prove so it doesn't matter for those that are living just do onto others as you want done onto your self, get food, water air, shelter , entertainment and someone for you to love and live while you can and stop thinking about things that can be dis-proven by other proven information. This is a statement from Noone aka No.One
 
  • #56
without the brain your not abale to take make images from the light from your eyes and process information of any other kind so consciencs is the brain and you are your brain there isn't any other you. your flesh makes the thoughts that you think even if they are not true. you just think your thoughts are true due to the fact that you have made your own judgement by using your understanding of the concept your talking about. please don't post such fruitless things there not needed and I am sure that it didnt make you happy or passed the time or got you food or money so if it didnt do any of these things for you why do you do such? is it that you don't know? if so that would be the part of your dna that knows..
 
  • #57
Physics needs logical and reasonal pruff and your theory about enterneity or anything of the matter isn't proven or will be so please once again see post number 2

-.-'
 
  • #58
I have to say, I disagree with some of what you said and agree with some of it but I'm not sure what you said. Could you condense it a bit?
Nonoe wrote: "...stop thinking about things that can be dis-proven by other proven information."

Also, could you direct me to the "dis-proven" information?
 
  • #59
Noone said:
Physics needs logical and reasonal pruff and your theory about enterneity or anything of the matter isn't proven or will be so please once again see post number 2

-.-'

No. I'm not going to look at post number 2. Thank you anyway.
 
  • #60
Noone said:
Physics needs logical and reasonal pruff and your theory about enterneity or anything of the matter isn't proven or will be so...2
-.-'

So could you tell me, using scientific evidence; and not so many words, where the end of the universe/reality is; and, where is begins?
 
  • #61
Ms Music said:
Just out of curiosity, do you guys believe quantum mechanics? That matter has particle and wave properties?

my understanding is:

QM doesn't really say that. Physicists describe it that way qualitatively, but particles behave like particles. The only reasons terms like 'particle' and 'wave' came in is because a) people were surprised that light can knock electrons around and b) the wave equation is used to express the motion of particles.

One could argue that matter is just wave-like, and there's no such thing as 'particles' (i.e. hard pellets) on the quantum level.
 
  • #62
W3pcq said:
I don't think that rules out the idea that the consciences is just attached to the brain.

Consciousness effects the brain and vice-versa. Though some people believe that consciousness is separate from the brain, but this cannot be the truth. Consciousness does depend on the brain, but the brain doesn't seem to depend on consciousness to function. So in other words, the brain is a necessary condition for the mind (or 'consciousness') to exist, but not a sufficient condition. You don't 'only' need the brain for consciousness to exist. It seems to be interconnected but at the same time seperate. I don't know if we will ever know.

Also, the bit about DMT naturally occurring in the brain is interesting too. For all we know, that could be the source of our NDE. It could all be a hallucination/illusion.

There are a lot of theories out there, but there aren't many concrete answers.
 
  • #63
Ivan Seeking said:
Conclusion: It ain't heaven if you can't see grandma naked? :biggrin:

Why would you even see bodies? Why would you see? Even if we assume that the mind somehow exists beyond the brain and after death, anything that you experience would by definition all be in your mind.




i agree. it would all be in your head.../
 
  • #64
but either way, its pretty fascinating...
 
  • #65
Hello,

Time to get this thread going again...I am not sure how relevant what I'm about to say is, but here are my two cents

A couple of years ago I got very interested in astral projection (also known as astral travel.) First I was obviously skeptical, but I did a bunch of research and decided to try it. I followed some techniques and excercises that are to be done as you're falling asleep. To make a long story short, I was able to experience some really bizarre phenomena and on multiple occasions, I was able to "leave my body". My experiences were brief and I didn't meet any "beings" or anything of that sort. I also tried lucid dreaming, which basically training your mind to be conscious while dreaming. That was no easy task. Anyways, I truly think that there exists some kind of energy, call it soul, and that there is more to existence than the four-dimensional universe that we know of. At this point, I can't really concoct a theory or explanation for all of this, but I feel there is so much more that we don't understand or can't understand. I am an atheist by definition, but I think existence is much more complicated than we know so far. A good book I read about out of body experiences is Adventures Beyond the Body: How to Experience Out-of-Body Travel by William Buhlman. That book actually has a good amount of physics in it, but I'll let you judge if the author's reference to physics theories is bogus or not.
 
  • #66
moonstroller said:
There was a medical operation where they transplanted a monkeys head( including the brain) to another monkey's body. The operation was a success and the monkey appeared to have the "consciences" transplanted as well (Seen on the discovery channel). Such operations have since been declared as illegal.

I think this is a good argument that the consciences and brain are one and the same. It still does not answer the question of what is the force of consciences. It could rule out the heart as the seat of emotion :)

I suspect that the brain ( I am an amateur radio operator) may be nothing more than a receiver of sorts; if we suspect that there is a force present that can transmit to it. Then again, perhaps it is nothing more that a computer with a predefined algorithm embedded within. Who knows these things?
:)

Sounds like someone has been watching the new x-files movie...
 
  • #67
I think that while we cannot easily prove that NDE "symptoms" are caused by the dieing brain and it's "last attempts", it's pretty logical however. (the problem is, we can't force NDE on humans safely, and doing it by safe drugs cannot be considered 100% the same thing for the sake of finding out how it works, because then it might not be NDE we're looking at, at least if my understanding of scientific experimentation is right).

I'll put the question in another, inverted, way:

Apologies up front for this analogy, but I'm an IT student :)

If the body (including the brain of course, all the physical parts) is the hardware, and the mind (that is the current state, memory etc.) is the software then I think it's pretty clear that if you destroy the processor, RAM etc. (brain) or the power lines (heart etc.) you "stop being".

Our consciousness is just like a software program which is running all the time.

A software program "is" only as long as it runs. With the exception of backups to non-active media (hard disk etc., by non-active I mean media not requiring power to remember data), the program ceases to exist if:

a) it's removed from execution (in our usual case the process is killed and it's memory is wiped from RAM).

b) we destroy the computer and hard-disk with it, and there's no other copy

Now, as far as I know, living beings cannot be "stored to disk and shut down" per-se, except perhaps arguably deep coma and hybernation kind of thing.

Now the question: is there anything to contradict this view on "consciousness"? Anything to suggest that our "consciousness" is more than a "software program" running on a computer called "the body"?

So basically I'm asking for a contradiction for this hypothesis.

P.S.: I guess in the end it's a bit OT, if you feel strongly about it I can post a new thread instead...
 
  • #68
this is more of an 'artificial intelligence' question really.

If a computer can not replicate a real living organism in it's entirety then no comparisons or analogies can be made by replacing humans as machines.

Sure if we had the technology we could make a robot that looks and acts just like us, but everything it does we have told it to do in some discrete way.

Would these robots have NDE's?

I doubt it.
 
  • #69
gareth said:
this is more of an 'artificial intelligence' question really.

If a computer can not replicate a real living organism in it's entirety then no comparisons or analogies can be made by replacing humans as machines.

Sure if we had the technology we could make a robot that looks and acts just like us, but everything it does we have told it to do in some discrete way.

Would these robots have NDE's?

I doubt it.

Well not really. What I meant to ask was whether there's any evidence contradicting the hypothesis that human consciousness (or soul if you wish) is just a "software program" running in the brain. I probably over-complicated the question tho :)

Yes, the computer has differences in HW which make it harder to compare (like hard disk and no need for stable power income) but that'd be another discussion. And I also doubt that robots would have NDE even if they had consciousness, but not for the lack of soul, but rather the lack of certain chemicals and their effects :)

Btw. so was the monkey head swap experiment done or is it bogus? I'd be very interested in the results...
 
  • #70
Ms Music said:
I do remember back in college, in psych we talked about being able to electrically stimulate a part of the brain to create the "light at the end of the tunnel" syndrome. But I think there is much more to be learned than that experiment alone.

I don't mean to be harsh, but are you choosing to dismiss actual evidence because you personally want to think there's more to it than that?
 
  • #71
First, let me say that I believe that my experience was because of a lack of oxygen to my brain, not a confrontation with ultimate reality.
I was 12 and in band during try outs. Most of the band had nothing to do. So, my friends and I fainted each other. When I fell...well pardon the cliche but I cannot describe what happened literally so I will resort to poetry. Imagine walking near the rim of the Grand Canyon. The immensity was breath taking. I looked at an ant and desperately tried to stop concentrating on it. Unfortunately, the ant became the center of my focus. That ant was my life on Earth and the Grand Canyon was what I really am. Anyway, as I said, I am only telling you what I experienced. I have been too well trained in logic to believe that it was real.
 
  • #72
Consciousness after death is the same as consciousness before procreation.
 
  • #73
what if consciousness is part of energy and when the body dies, energy leaves the body which means consciousness also leaves.

Just a thought :)
 
  • #74
levon105 said:
what if consciousness is part of energy and when the body dies, energy leaves the body which means consciousness also leaves.

Just a thought :)

I can detect when energy is being transferred from one location to another. That is how we are able to quantify such transfer. Would you like to let us know what energy this is so that we can make such detection? Or have you found papers that have made such detection?

Zz.
 
  • #75
There have always been reports of life after death experiences, but never so many as today, for medical practice has advanced to the point today where resuscitation of patents can be successfully preformed fairly frequently, so these instances are far more common than they used to be—and generally speaking, they are far better documented. Pollster George Gallop Jr. in 1982 (see Closer to the Light, pg 9) found that eight million adults in the United States had had near death experiences, so the experience is more common than originally thought. And it is not just a western or “cultural” phenomenon, peoples from around the world, and from every religious persuasion, have had the experience.

There have been at least half a dozen books published in recent times that document life after death experiences. One very well documented case that particularly sticks in my mind was a case in which a woman died in a hospital on the operating table. She was clinically dead: no heartbeat, no respiration, no brain waves, no signs of life at all, nothing. As the code went out, the room filled with doctors and nurses scurrying around trying to resuscitate her. She says that she floated out of her body and hovered just under the ceiling, watching everything that was happening in the room, and listening to everything that was said. And when they finally got her resuscitated, she reported to them that she had watched them from outside her body, and she reported to them everything that they had said and done. Note that the eyes of her body as she lay dead on the operating table had been closed, she could not have seen anything with her physical eyes.

This is poof, absolute proof, that she had been outside her body as she lay dead on the table, and that she had heard and seen everything from the perspective of someone outside their body, of someone just under the ceiling. (There have even been cases where blind patients have seen everything).

There is another case that particularly sticks in my mind. Not every one goes to Heaven or hangs around the Earth or whatever, some come back from the dead with stories of having been in Hell (although most who have that experience do not want to talk about it). There was a man on the operating table undergoing a heart catheterization that died during the procedure. They worked on him and got him back, but he started slipping back again. And he cried out to the doctors, I’m in Hell, I’m in Hell, get me back! And he was deadly serious. At first the doctors did not take him seriously, but when they saw the sheer terror in his eyes and in his voice, they worked feverishly to get him back. They brought him back three times, before they finally got him back for good. You will never convince anybody who has seen Hell that there is no Hell.

These documented cases and many others can be found in the following books (a couple of which were written by medical doctors who interviewed life-after-death patients), along with details about what happens at death, many of these were best sellers, and they make for fascinating reading:

Beyond and Back: those who died and lived to tell it, by Ralph Wilkerson, 1977 Bantam Books.
Beyond Death’s Door, by Maurice Rawlings, M.D., 1978, Bantam Books.
Life After Life, by Raymond A. Moody Jr. M.D., 1975, Bantam Books. Pg 83
Reflections on Life After Life, by Raymond A. Moody Jr, M.D. 1977 Bantam Books.

See also:
The Light Beyond: New explorations by the author of Life After Life, by Raymond A. Moody Jr, M.D. 1988, Bantam Books.
Closer to the Light: Learning from the Near Death Experiences of Children, by Melvin Morse, M.D. with Paul Perry, 1990, An Ivy Book, Published by Random House Publishing Company.
Lessons from the Light: What we can Learn from the Near-death Experience, by Kenneth Ring and Elsaesser Valarino.1998, Published by First Moment Point Press.

There are thousands of documented cases of people who died and came back to tell about it--eye witness accounts of life after death. And these include people of all walks of life who did not know one another, some of them having never even heard of life after death experiences, and yet their experiences were similar. They bring back stories of having seen God, the Being of Light, the personal judgment, and all that.

And those who have had these experiences are absolutely certain, without any shadow of any doubt whatsoever, that it was real, that they were not hallucinating, that they were not dreaming, it was too vivid—far, far too vivid. They have heightened senses, and they describe it as the most real thing to ever happen to them. And you will never convince any of them that they did not experience what they experienced. As they say, seeing is believing.

Those who laugh it off in the face of such evidence, or who just categorically dismiss it, need to think twice about that, because, you know, you are not getting any younger. Those who categorically dismiss such documented accounts are being presumptuous, and there is no accounting for presumption. And presumption certainly has no place in science.

Those who refuse to accept such documented eye witness accounts of life after death experiences as evidence (some sworn to under oath)are not going to believe short of them experiencing it themselves. Some years ago I read that there were people in Europe who were paying good money to have a doctor put them to death so that they could personally experience life after death experiences. But I do not recommend that. It’s dangerous--they might not be able to resuscitate you.

There have been mentions in these replies about the soul and the brain. There is a connection. When the soul leaves the body it comes out through the top of the head according to those who have had the experience. And there is reason to believe that the soul is connected to the brain. Old timers sometimes say that when someone dies, their souls leaving their bodies sometimes make a sound something like wings flapping, they call it “angel wings”. That would be, I assume, the sound of the soul disconnecting from its attachment to the brain.

Another set of evidence of life after death is found in eyewitness accounts of human ghosts seen in haunted houses and such. There are essentially two categories of spirits, which include the spirits of deceased human beings, namely light spirits (meaning spirits that give off light) spirits dark spirits (spirits that do not). Light spirits are visible to the naked eye, especially in the dark, because they give off light, usually faint, and can be photographed by cameras with regular film. We have many eyewitness accounts and many pictures of them, which is photographic evidence. Dark spirits are lost human spirits. These cannot normally be seen with the naked eye (some people claim to be able to see them, but that is rare, most cannot, and some animals can see them), and they do not show up on regular photographic film, but they do show up on infrared film as a dark shadow of a human being. (Some digital cameras can see them, but some cannot, depending on the light sensors in them). Dark spirits make the room feel cold, like you are sitting next to a block of ice, although a thermometer may not show that the room is cold. These effects of dark spirits are accounted for if dark spirits absorb inferred light (radiant heat). Spirits can pass through solid objects like walls. Human spirits often appear as humans (so if your deceased grandfather appears to you, you will recognize him right away, for he will look like your grandfather) while demons (damned angels) appear as unknown humanoids, half human, half animal. If you want to prove the existence of spirits to yourself, you can go to haunted houses known to be frequented by spirits, and spend the night there, or a whole week--if you dare. But I don’t recommend it, especially if there are demons there. In my younger day, I made the offer to a number of people who claimed there were no such thing as ghosts, to go with them to spend the night in a haunted house in which spirits were known to frequent. Their eyes got big as saucers. Oh no! No! No! They were not going to do that! Absolutely not! So when it came right down to it, they were not so sure. They were not willing to put their stated beliefs to the test.

Here are some collections of ghost pictures:

http://paranormal.about.com/od/ghostphotos/ig/Best-Ghost-Photos/

http://www.angelsghosts.com/famous_real_ghost_pictures

There have also been a half dozen experiments done around the world, in which a dying person is weighted on a scale, and at the moment of death, they lost a slight weight. Showing that at the moment of death something with a slight weight left their body. Which is physical proof that there is a human soul. But those who do not want to believe are not going to accept any of this evidence.

Weight anomaly references:

See the paper: The soul: hypothesis concerning soul substance together with experimental evidence of the existence of such substance, by Duncan MacDougall, M.D., March 1907, the journal American Medicine.
The full text of Dr. MacDougall's soul mass experiment with dying human patients can be found at: [PLAIN]http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_15_4_hollander.pdf

See the report: Weighing the Human Soul, by Ragan Dunn in the Weekly World News, Nov 8, 1988, a copy of which may be found at:
http://lilt.ilstu.edu/kfmachin/FOI/Weight%20of%20human%20soul.htm
East German researchers weigh over 200 terminally ill patients at death, detect the same weight loss for each, Dr. Becker Mertens of Dresden said in a letter printed in the German science journal Horizon.

Unexplained weight gain transients at the moment of death, by Lewis E. Hollander, Jr., Journal of scientific exploration, Vol 15 #4, pg 495, 2001.
The full text of Hollander’s paper can be found at:
[PLAIN]http://www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_15_4_hollander.pdf
Anomalous Weight transients occurring at the moment of death of twelve animals.
 
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  • #76
You have offered no links to support your claims. The only acceptable links are those providing documented information about the claims themselves. No theories. Also acceptable are papers published in appropriate scientific journals.

If no links are provided within a day, and your post will be deleted until supporting information is provided.
 
  • #77
Do you seriously believe that a drugged and demented brain that's on the very verge of death can be trusted to produce reliable observations? Even normal brains often hallucinate. Most people don't realize, during dreams, that they're dreaming because dreams seem so real and vivid. A person near death can easily assume that his dream was real, especially if it conforms to his religious beliefs, whereas the same dream would have been dismissed as a dream if it happened on a regular night.
 
  • #78
ideasrule said:
Do you seriously believe that a drugged and demented brain that's on the very verge of death can be trusted to produce reliable observations? Even normal brains often hallucinate. Most people don't realize, during dreams, that they're dreaming because dreams seem so real and vivid. A person near death can easily assume that his dream was real, especially if it conforms to his religious beliefs, whereas the same dream would have been dismissed as a dream if it happened on a regular night.

To be fair, I know that there are some cases of people allegedly describing the ER or operating room, the people in the room, the operating instruments, etc, when they shouldn't have been able to do so; and even events that occurred when they were technically brain dead. But proper references are still required. I don't know if any of these claims are published in a proper paper. In the event that these are only stories coming from medical workers, or claims made in unpublished papers, the claims would be purely anecdotal.
 
  • #79
Ivan Seeking said:
To be fair, I know that there are some cases of people allegedly describing the ER or operating room, the people in the room, the operating instruments, etc, when they shouldn't have been able to do so; and even events that occurred when they were technically brain dead.

I'm aware of that, but I was responding to LouieHussey, who seems to have 100% trust in the patients' words. Cases where dying people accurately describe details in the operating room are harder to explain.
 
  • #80
ideasrule said:
Even normal brains often hallucinate. Most people don't realize, during dreams, that they're dreaming because dreams seem so real and vivid. A person near death can easily assume that his dream was real, especially if it conforms to his religious beliefs, whereas the same dream would have been dismissed as a dream if it happened on a regular night.

It is interesting that they HAVE done studies to mimic and "out of body" experience to "normal" brain. See:

[1] H. Henrik Ehrsson Science v.317, p.104824 (2007).
[2] Bigna Lenggenhager et al. Science v.317, p. 1096 (2007).

.. and a review of these can be found (with suitable subscription access) at http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070820/full/news070820-9.html.

From what I gather, the brain that is under "stress", such as near death, will undergo even more trauma and "random" activity, almost like the sleep state when dreams occurs. That's why some time you get reports of incoherent "vision", while others the person can also hear and think they "see" what's going on around them even when they are unconscious. In other words, it is HARDER to trick normal, healthy brains into doing this trick, such as an "out of body" experience, than a "sick, stressed" brain.

So, like you, I certainly won't buy purely anecdotal "evidence" that was brought up here by LouieHussey. There have been way too many of those, and people should know better than try to use those has convincing evidence.

Zz.
 
  • #83
I suppose its only anecdotal if you take out the fact that the guy who went to heaven was depressed for the rest of his life because heaven was so amazing, and the guy who went to hell changed his entire life completely.
 
  • #84
mxcryno said:
I suppose its only anecdotal if you take out the fact that the guy who went to heaven was depressed for the rest of his life because heaven was so amazing, and the guy who went to hell changed his entire life completely.
They're stories, there are no facts.
 
  • #85
True no facts. Only the human experience. Only self-realization, which is only relevant to those who experience it. And self-realization and raw human emotion, they passed lie detector tests btw, is far more convincing. Unfortunately perhaps none of us will experience what they did in our lifetimes. But maybe in our death times.
 
  • #86
mxcryno said:
True no facts. Only the human experience. Only self-realization, which is only relevant to those who experience it. And self-realization and raw human emotion, they passed lie detector tests btw, is far more convincing. Unfortunately perhaps none of us will experience what they did in our lifetimes. But maybe in our death times.

But the problem is that "human experience" has been known to be highly unreliable. I can show you many studies in which people will swear that so-and-so happened when it never did!

Still, there's a missing point here that is being overlooked. The problem isn't that these are anecdotal evidence. The problem here is (i) that people do not know the difference between anecdotal evidence and scientific evidence and (ii) the perception that anecdotal evidence is "good enough" to be accepted as valid evidence.

This IS still a science forum, and in fact, populated by many people who are expert scientists. One shouldn't argue for something to be valid based on anecdotal evidence, and then act surprised when challenged or confronted with the validity of such evidence. Is such a challenge from people who are used to examining the nature and validity of evidence such an unexpected surprise? I will, in fact, say that if all one can come up with are such weak examples, then it only serve to further weaken the evidence. That is certainly true in my book, where not only am I not impressed by such evidence, it merely confirms my assertion that these are pseudosicentific imagination in which, after so many years of proclamation, it still can't get out of first base to show that it exists.

Zz.
 
  • #87
True enough, but how is one to say that the subconscious thoughts of the human mind, which is largely not understood, cannot express or show our science obsessed lives that there are other ways of processing thought and thinking through either dreams or other trance-like forms of communication which have been used for thousands of years. That is also to say that ancient technology very well may have been lost in the development of man where we are today. Remember science is about the physical world not the spiritual or subconscious, whether or not heaven or hell are tangible actual places, perhaps this is where our conscious goes afterwards, since our brains can have these near death experiences whos to say that those places we see are not where our minds go to if we were to stay dead. If the person who was supposed to be dead wakes up again, if they stayed dead, it is very possible that they would have stayed right where their minds just were. Perhaps science will never explain this phenomenon, I know, I know, lack of oxygen to the brain etc., but many different people all seeing the same processes in their minds, couldn't one conclude that if they had gone towards the "light at the end of the tunnel" that's where one's mind would stay? Perhaps a science forum should not be discussing this issue of the consciousness if it cannot explore most of the human brain.
 
  • #88
mxcryno said:
True enough, but how is one to say that the subconscious thoughts of the human mind, which is largely not understood, cannot express or show our science obsessed lives that there are other ways of processing thought and thinking through either dreams or other trance-like forms of communication which have been used for thousands of years.

Come again? Where are valid evidence for such a thing?

Furthermore, you are making speculations on what we don't know and haven't been proven to be valid. If we are playing games about what is possible in the future, I can also speculate that what you say could be possible will also not come true! You have zero evidence to prove that I'm wrong.

Remember science is about the physical world not the spiritual or subconscious, whether or not heaven or hell are tangible actual places, perhaps this is where our conscious goes afterwards, since our brains can have these near death experiences whos to say that those places we see are not where our minds go to if we were to stay dead. If the person who was supposed to be dead wakes up again, if they stayed dead, it is very possible that they would have stayed right where their minds just were. Perhaps science will never explain this phenomenon, I know, I know, lack of oxygen to the brain etc., but many different people all seeing the same processes in their minds, couldn't one conclude that if they had gone towards the "light at the end of the tunnel" that's where one's mind would stay? Perhaps a science forum should not be discussing this issue of the consciousness if it cannot explore most of the human brain.

If you accept something that hasn't been shown to be scientifically valid as a fact, then that's your problem. I can only hope that you do not depend your life on it, and subject the lives on your loved ones on it as well.

Zz.
 
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