I recently came across a question regarding N.D.E’s (near death experiences).
“There have been people who die but then get their heart beat shocked back with shock paddles right? Well do these people know what happens when you die or is the mind still temporarily going and it turns out to be like sleep?” – Monko
My response:
“It is highly improbable that what these individuals claim to have experienced i.e. “seeing the bright light” or “seeing dead family members” is actually realistic. When a physical body dies, the heart ceases to pump blood to the brain hence the brain ceases to receive oxygen and then literally begins to suffocate. The brain under such duress will function for a while before it completely “dies”; this is one of the reasons that people can be brought back to life by having their heart electrically pumped back into action. While the brain is still “alive” it is under immense duress from the lack of oxygen and is subject to fairly bizarre phenomena; it is known that a lack of oxygen to the brain produces a sense of “transcendence” and that one will see a world of explicit bright light, ask anyone that has been on one of those space shuttle force simulators. After death there is ample evidence to believe that existence of self ceases to be. Consciousness seems to be intrinsically bound to the physical realm through the functioning of the brain, after death the brain will cease functioning and will decay altogether consciousness following suit. There can be no afterlife with out a physical body based on the current evidence and research produced by modern science through fields of psychology, physiology, and neuroscience. In short the brain will continue to run for a while after the heart has ceased pumping blood through the body; much like when you cut off a large electronic item quickly and the electric charge remaining within the component runs the item for a short time before finally running out of electricity and shutting down completely. So the mind still runs for a time after immediate death, however, any claim made by the individual after such an occurrence that they saw the bright lights of heaven or their dead loved ones should be considered the delirious superstition being ascribed to the trauma of a suffocating and dying brain.”
12 comments:
I once ran in to a fellow orthodox jew on the bloggosphere, who proceeded to attempt to re-establish my faith by saying something along the lines of, "how do you explain NDE's, there must be a god."
When I reminded him that many who report seeing NDE's report seeing Jesus as well...well that quieted him down a touch.
I personaly have never felt this phenominon gave credence to the divine any more than someone experincing God on an LSD trip does.
The brain is capable of providing very weird experiences in any state that alteres it's usual metabolism. Just think back to college......
“When I reminded him that many who report seeing NDE's report seeing Jesus as well...well that quieted him down a touch.”
Lol! – Good point.
“I personaly have never felt this phenominon gave credence to the divine any more than someone experincing God on an LSD trip does.”
That is so true, I try to explain this to evangical Christians that claim to have “experienced” Jesus (whatever that means). Unfortunately the unknowledgeable seem to always do what Hippocrates observed in a good quote - “Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. But if they called everything divine which they do not understand, why, there would be no end of divine things.”
“The brain is capable of providing very weird experiences in any state that alteres it's usual metabolism. Just think back to college......”
Lol! I know what you mean. Hey, thanks for stopping by and leaving comments, I enjoyed them.
Its like UFO sightings. People think that what they see can have only one explanation. - JF
Yeah, and for some reason it is generally the more preposterous explanation. Was it a comet? Light refraction? No it was extraterrestrial life swooping by in a UFO!!
This is old news, the attributing NDE's to physical elements involved in the dying process. Research does not support these suppositions. Research cannot explain many elements of the near death experience.
The dying person is, according to some NDE'ers, just a feedback loop so that the death experience is not so frightening. A christian sees Jesus, but after those with no preconceptions are told that religion is unimportant. Only love matters.
How do you explain the gifts some NDE'ers bring back with them? Miraculous healings, ability to see into the future, a knowledge of the future, etc.
Just because you can't smell it, feel it or see it, like oxygen, does not mean it is not there!
You mention that there is ample evidence that the self ceases to exist after death. As a scientist one must realize what they can determine and what they cannot determine. The existence of life after death cannot be refuted by science, simply because of the fact that it would be supernatural while the science is the study of nature. Nonetheless is boils down to your own beliefs as to what is true. I know my mother, I know she would never lie to me. When she tells me she died and could see the top of the peoples head who were working on her, I believe her. In my experiences it is more advisable to believe her then psuedo-scientists who claim to have knowledge they don't have.
"You mention that there is ample evidence that the self ceases to exist after death. As a scientist one must realize what they can determine and what they cannot determine. The existence of life after death cannot be refuted by science, simply because of the fact that it would be supernatural while the science is the study of nature. Nonetheless is boils down to your own beliefs as to what is true. I know my mother, I know she would never lie to me. When she tells me she died and could see the top of the peoples head who were working on her, I believe her. In my experiences it is more advisable to believe her then psuedo-scientists who claim to have knowledge they don't have."
Good point! You are the wisest person here!
Anonymous said:
”You mention that there is ample evidence that the self ceases to exist after death.”
Correct. There is ample evidence suggestive of the fact that the self ceases to exist after death. A large bulk of scientific investigation and theory is, after all, based upon logical conjectures and inferences which are then either supported by evidentiary abutment or not.
”As a scientist one must realize what they can determine and what they cannot determine.”
A general principle which in this case simply serves the role of a vacuous platitude.
”The existence of life after death cannot be refuted by science, simply because of the fact that it would be supernatural while the science is the study of nature.”
What can be studied, obviously, is life. The way in which life functions, comes into being, exists and deteriorates. It is clear from the scholarship that life, sentient awareness, is the product of the physical brain and, therefore, with the deterioration and dissolution of the brain also comes the deterioration and dissolution of sentient awareness and conscious life.
”Nonetheless is boils down to your own beliefs as to what is true. I know my mother, I know she would never lie to me. When she tells me she died and could see the top of the peoples head who were working on her, I believe her. In my experiences it is more advisable to believe her then psuedo-scientists who claim to have knowledge they don't have.”
Nonsense. It boils down to objective reality and that which can be verified and corroborated by the evidence. Personal testimony is for all intents and purposes completely worthless. I know of personal testimony which posits that one has been abducted by aliens, that one has practiced voodoo and been able to fly around in the sky, that one has been able to subconsciously communicate with plant life, etcetera. Your mothers testimony is no different. She no doubt may have had a NDE, but to claim that it was real - rather than the anticipated consequences of her main bodily organ, her brain, suffocating and thus behaving erratically, as brains do when they suffocate - is as serious as claiming that the experiences one has through the ingestion of LSD are all real.
Alexandria:
You have no idea what you’re talking about. You simply praise the first charlatan around when you perceive that he/she has supported your own irrational and biased perspectives.
Thank you both for stopping by and commenting.
Well NDE cant all be proven, exspecially if your a person who has a scientific explanation for everything, so here I have a scientific explanation for you. The human body has electrical circuits that run through the brain and the rest of the body...electrical currents are what...energy. Energy cannot be created nor destroyed, it can only move or change form. So when the physical body dies, where does that energy go if it cannot die with the body? I do not know about Christianity or other religions, but I do believe the science has alot more to offer about spirituality than faith alone, I also believe that we dont know as much about science, positive ions and negative ions, energy, atoms and we think. I also have been reading books by doctors and scientists who were hard core athiests at one time, who are now writing books about God or the ultimate light, energy, ect, who firmly believe there is scientific proof of the afterlife now.
anonymous:
If in your view all that constitutes a "soul" is electrical current you will now have to laughably accept that my laptop into which I am typing these words has a soul that, when forever shut off, leaves the laptop and enters into, apparently, the supernatural realm of heaven (that's a bit ridiculous no? surely there is more to your conception of the soul than mere electrical current?)
In any case, electrical current can in no way be correlated with consciousness, self-awareness and personhood (all the attributes which are regularly used to define the "self," mistakenly as the "soul"). These attributes of course require that there be electrical current, in order for the heart to continue pumping blood and oxygen throughout the biological system to the brain and other organs, most importantly the brain; what with the brain being responsible for the above mentioned attributes.
It does not go unnoticed by the well learned that before sufficient development of the cognitive web there does not yet exist full consciousness, self-awareness, personhood and so on; that only with such higher cognitive development are these attributes attainable and that, inversely, with the dissolution of the cognitive system and the brain, these attributes forever dissolve with the organic tissue which gave rise to them in the first place - the "soul" is neither here nor there.
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