Sojourner553

From Michael Shermer, President of the Skeptics:

Demon Haunted Brain

If the brain mediates all experience then paranormal phenomena are nothing more than neuronal events.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?art...mber=1&catID=2



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Wounded King

Actually by the logic you represent in your post no observable phenomenon or experience would be anything more than neuronal events.

emotional

Ah. I get it. Science is not, as I once used to believe, a search for truth, a quest for explanation. It is a tool for banishing the supernatural and shoehorning everything into a naturalistic worldview. Science is the handmaiden of philosophical materialism. Yes, I do now get it.

"We cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door" -- Richard Lewontin. (or anything non-material, for that matter)

Jesse

Hi emotional, you might want to look at this thread for some comments on the distinction between methodological and philosophical naturalism, along with the context of that Lewontin quote.

Anyway, in this case I agree with Wounded King that showing that mystical experiences are "neuronal events" is not a very good argument against their being real or meaningful.

emotional

Is there any chance in the world that scientists could accept NDEs and mystical experiences as pointers to an objective reality (ie a real afterlife or non-material plane) instead of crassly attributing them to the workings of the brain?

It's no big feat to take all the evidence (for example here) and give it naturalistic, materialistic explanations. The question is, must that be done? Is "afterlife" a swear-word that scientists so want to avoid using? Would such an admission necessarily bring us back to the medieval days of "disease is caused by demon possession"?

My view of all these things isn't necessarily anti-scientific as you could be led to believe. My view is partly naturalistic, that is, I totally concur with the evidence of perspicuous natural law, biological evolution and the rest, but also partly animistic, that is, I theorise that there is a further dimension operating behind the scenes. I do not deny the power of atoms to combine and create DNA molecules and complex organisms by a process of evolution; I just theorise that behind the power of matter to combine and create is a supernatural driver -- soul, or anima. I think it's plausible, and it doesn't require the tearing-up of the whole methodologically naturalistic scheme from end to end.

I just hope that, in the near future, naturalistic science will make peace with this animistic theory and the ages-long warfare between naturalism and supernaturalism will be brought to a close. My view is quite optimistic, despite the obstacles.

eh

I'm sure NDE's would gain some more acceptance if they were supported by evidence. As it stands now, no such evidence actually exists. All we have are contradictory anecdotes about the afterlife, and that just does not cut it. Perhaps if someone could make some testible predictions about the afterlife hypothesis, opinions could be changed.

Until then, NDE's will have the same status as UFO abductions, ghosts and demons.

Gurdur

Actually, there are a couple of scientists working in this field who do exactly that; they se these phenomena as partial evidence for suchlike.

However, the broad consensus between scientists and theologians alike is that the neurological evidence does not move the debate between supernatural metaphysics and naturalist metaphysics one whit; the "evidence" does not point to the supernatural, but you can always fit it in with a halfway intellgent supernatural view.

But none of this is where the real debate lies, and the real debate can be summed up as follows:

1) What am I living for ?

2) How (morally) should I live ?

emotional

NDEs are widely documented. Among scientists who did research on NDEs are Moody (who pioneered the research in his 1975 book Life After Life), Ring, Rawlings, Sabom and Kübler-Ross.



No, we have thousands accounts of the near-death experience, which all show common features. We also have cases of people, blind from birth, who could see the doctors operating on their bodies during the NDE. I think this calls for a new theory. Without, I repeat, throwing all the naturalistic edifice out. A theory of an afterlife does not negate biological evolution, gravity, heliocentrism, quantum mechanics or anything else. Unfortunately most are trapped in an all-or-nothing view and can't see that there lies a middle road between total materialism and mediaeval demon theory.

emotional

Glad to hear it.



Science shouldn't have a bearing on metaphysics; to do science is, properly, to go where the evidence leads.

Actually this debate is outside the realm of science. Scientists shouldn't be talking about purpose or morality.

Jesse

emotional:
We also have cases of people, blind from birth, who could see the doctors operating on their bodies during the NDE.

It's hard for me to believe that a person blind from birth would be able to comprehend a visual experience even if they had one--do you have a source on this?

If there were evidence that people having out-of-body experiences were able to see things that they shouldn't have been able to from where their bodies were, this could indicate that they really did "leave their bodies" in some sense. But according to Susan Blackmore there is no good evidence that this is true:

If we had repeatable tests where people having out-of-body experiences were able to read hidden numbers, this would be a potential way in which the scientific method could validate that it's not just something happening in the brain. But I don't think there's been much success in this regard.