Yellum Notnef

I suggest we start a brand new thread each time we encounter what I like to refer to as a "Rad incident". Just like this current issue with the resurrected guy in the morgue. He brought it up in this thread knowing it was off topic,but he didn't care about that until we got on his case for evidence and then suddenly being off topic and knowing how it bothers some other posters is a great excuse for him to bail out.

With a dedicated thread about the morgue guy,being off topic is no longer an excuse to stop the "witch hunt" and it also takes this junk out of more productive threads and drags it out into the alley where it belongs.

Radorth

Oh please. I brought it up in response to a skeptic's pointed question. What a bunch of bull. You are the king of all thread de-railers and anybody who can't see the Rad Police as self-appointed moderators has an oar out of the water.

Besides that, what I said about "the guy in the morgue" was accurate anyway.

My offer to the Gang to ignore each other is permanent, but then their crusade has nothing to gain, so they will continue to refuse.

Rad

hezekiah jones

[emphasis added]

Yellum Notnef

Sure. The little tid bit you gave us about him being in the morgue for 3 days and then waking up or as you referred to him as "risen" did indeed match the story. But theres still no proof at all that the story is real.

The day you finally go away you'll see us ignore you like ignoring you was an olympic event. Thats a promise.

Radorth

Yes, apologies to HJ for attributing this post to him. It was from Fenton.

Muad'Dib, I haven't forgotten your request, but I'm way behind as you can see. Did you read the site I gave above BTW? Later tonite I will pot some more sites and try to find Janssen's work and conclusions. I haven't read the latest "science" myself.

Rad

Muad'Dib

Hi Radorth,

No worries about delay, I need to respond to Christian myself. I'll take a look at the site within the next couple hours.

Thanks,
Muad'Dib

Muad'Dib

Okay, here are my first thoughts...

From the link:

I have nothing against anecdotal accounts per se, but since urban legends and gross inflations of fact do demonstrably occur (see Snopes, for instance), I believe that it's prudent to have a few more details before taking testimony at face value. Some things I would be interested in finding out are: (1) Where these events happened, and (2) why Dr. Rodonaia, a man with multiple graduate degrees, chooses to use a Yahoo e-mail address (his name is a mailto: link in the page). Number 1 may be difficult since, as best I can gather, it happened in the middle of Cold War Russia.

I'd also like to find out where his graduate degrees are from--this is IMO not really private information, as it should be on his resume.

It's odd for an ordained Eastern Orthodox priest to serve in a Protestant church, and stranger still that he serves in a church that, according to the United Methodist Church WWW Directory, does not exist. It's possible that it just doesn't have a webpage, but it's odd the other two United Methodist Churches in Nederland do have webpages. This is something that can be solved for sure with a phone call, though, and I might do that later this week.

I mentioned before that I'd like to know where his degrees are from.

Thing is, the UN archives its recent keynote addresses, and neither "Emerging Global Spirituality" nor "Rodonaia" registers any hits on their site, or any sites besides NDE-related stuff for that matter. How recent was this?

Anyway, I'll try to get around to the testimony, but I'll wait until I've satisfied my questions about Dr. Rodonaia's credentials, just to be safe.

Thanks,
Muad'Dib

Fiach

Okay, here are my first thoughts...

quote:
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Dr. George Rodonaia underwent one of the most extended cases of a near-death experience ever recorded. Pronounced dead immediately after he was hit by a car in 1976, he was left for three days in the morgue. He did not "return to life" until a doctor began to make an incision in his abdomen as part of an autopsy procedure.

People can be in a deep cardiogenic shock. The Brain shuts down from a combination of hypoxia and acidosis, hypercarbia but the cells are not apoptotic yet (not necrosed). I am called to see such cases rather often, especially after cardiac arrest. With restoration of circulation and O2, it still takes a while for the neurons to re-activate. And some of the cells, especially in the mesial temporal lobe (emotional, religious) and calcarine (central visual acuity), and cerebellar (ataxia, or residual incoordination) in varying degrees. Many such people who survive do often have changes in mental functions (when studied, they have problems with short term memory, affective-emotional changes, emotional lability, and some loss of inhibition from frontal inhibitory areas. This is an anatomical combination that could lead to either religiosity or a religiosity substitute such as spirituality, UFO abductions delusions, and beliefs in various paranormal phenomena.
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I have nothing against anecdotal accounts per se, but since urban legends and gross inflations of fact do demonstrably occur (see Snopes, for instance), I believe that it's prudent to have a few more details before taking testimony at face value. Some things I would be interested in finding out are: (1) Where these events happened, and (2) why Dr. Rodonaia, a man with multiple graduate degrees, chooses to use a Yahoo e-mail address (his name is a mailto: link in the page). Number 1 may be difficult since, as best I can gather, it happened in the middle of Cold War Russia.

I think I covered this in my paragraph above.


quote:
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Another notable feature of Dr. Rodonaia's NDE - and this one is common to many - is that he was radically transformed by it. Prior to his NDE he worked as a neuropathologist. He was also an avowed atheist. Yet after the experience, he devoted himself exclusively to the study of spirituality, taking a second doctorate in the psychology of religion.

Near Death Experiences

In my experience, treating epilepsy and also seeing post-cardiac resuscitation patients in my daily job, as a Neurologist, I have interviewed and studied NDEs. The background is three possible precipitants, blunt or penetrating head trauma, decreased blood flow and O2 in the brain (Hypoxemia), and temporal lobe epilepsy (partial complex seizures.)

NDE experiences are stereotyped no matter with of the above was the cause. The person is observationally unconscious. The remembered experience often perceives an out of body experience (OBE) which has two forms. One is standing next to one’s own body or more often floating above their body, seeming to see people around the bedside such as nurses and doctors. The other is a feeling of limitlessness, expanding and merging with the universe. The OBE is followed by going through a bright tunnel in a dark background. In this phase there are the seeing images of dead relatives, angels, Jesus, or Brahma, or saints, then a smaller but brighter light. Usually at that point they either come out of it or come out of it in reverse. During the tunnel phase they may hear the voice of a dead parent or God/Jesus/Virgin Mary/Muhammad/Brahma.

On recovery, the patients often feel disappointed, cheated out of Heaven or bliss. They do have other neurobehavioural changes mainly in short term memory, attention span, and emotional regulation with loss of some inhibition, loss of rational skills, loss of some problem solving efficiency, and changes in efficiency of task specific shifts. I know of a neurologist whom I may not mention. He was a skilled, rational expert in electroencephalography and neurophysiology, author of some excellent protocols. He recovered from a cardiopulmonary arrest but his career disintegrated. His papers were incoherent, his protocols badly designed, and his papers elicited ridicule and pity. Incidentally he was also transformed from a sceptic to religious believer. The frontal religious bollocks filter obviously ceased to work or was disconnected. I was personally saddened by his deterioration and end of career.

The mechanisms of NDE’s are only near death in that they sometimes are cardiac arrests which indeed are life threatening. In such cased there is a marked drop or stop in blood flow to the brain temporarily. This reduced perfusion affects the border zone between the territories of two arteries. Arteries branch into more and smaller arteries and arterioles. At the peripheral end of an arterial “tree” the capillaries merge with those of the neighbouring artery in what is called the Watershed Area. When blood flow decreases, the area getting the worst of it is this watershed area. It is the area also suffering any neuronal loss (there is likely always some neuronal loss, varying with the severity of hypoxemia). Watershed areas are in the inferior medial temporal lobe (arteries are posterior cerebral and middle cerebral), sudden hypoxemia can precipitate temporal lobe like seizures. Other watershed areas are in the upper parasagittal areas of frontal lobe (rational, inhibitory, analytical), calcarine occipital lobe (visual), and cerebellar (balance, coordination (arteries are Superior Cerebellar, Anterior Inferior Cerebellar, and Posterior Inferior Cerebellar.)

Temporal lobe seizures are epileptic discharges that begin in the mesial inferior temporal lobe to amygdala in known epileptics. They can also occur in brain hypoxia, as described above. In Epileptics they are due to temporal sclerosis (scarring), head trauma, brain tumours, arterio-venous malformations, small haemorrhages, small infarcts/strokes, and possibly by drugs such as cocaine. The electrical discharge begins in the neurons in the region of Ammon’s Horn. The discharge is transmitted to memory association areas of the nearby temporal lobe for visual and auditory memories and odd smell memories. Some go to the superior parietal lobe (body orientation/localization areas) to give the primary OBE phase. In this situation they have an inhibitory effect. Some go to cingulated gyrus as well for the affective component. In some cases frontal lobe discharges are recorded. This causes the symptoms I described in the second paragraph.

The third major cause is head trauma. Sudden trauma precipitates seizures. Americans usually remember the televised generalised seizure of Roger Staubach of the Dallas Cowboys in the end zone of a Saturday televised game seen by millions of fans. His career soon ended. But he didn’t have epilepsy. It was just a post-traumatic seizure. Many who have these have partial seizures instead of generalised. These often manifest as Temporal Lobe seizures or focal motor seizures. The Temporal Lobe Seizure may be simple hallucinations auditory or visual or go into the full NDE described in the second paragraph.

The most important thing is that these people are not clinically DEAD. They are unconscious, and in some cases at risk of death. Those who actually die may experience NDEs before they die but cannot tell us about them. The DEAD brain cannot seize. We have no evidence of sentience in a dead brain. That is for you to speculate as you wish.

Fiach

Radorth

It seems he began as a priest overseas after his conversion then came here and became a Protestant. I find nothing strange at all about that given the choices he began with. Also, when people choose to read the Bible regularly and ask questions, they become Protestants rather rapidly.

Well I don't blame you for questioning that. It does sound fish. I suspect "keynote address" was an exaggeration. Yes, I'd call the church itself and ask some of your questions if this testimony is of particular interest.

I must admit this one is hard to verify because it happened in a foreign country and it's not like we can check check even public records.

Rad

Fiach

Actually, I am interested in hearing from people who had a NDE or OBE and the circumstances. They can use pseudonyms for privacy purposes. I am not interested in names to ridicule people. NDEs happen, and I am studying them. They can email me at
<saoiseoras@yahoo.co.uk>

In the paper I may try to publish later, I guarantee that I will not make this a religious or anti-religious issue. I will focus only on the neurological basis without commenting on soul or God either negatively or positively. I will leave that up to the reader.

Fiach