Diesel800

Hi all,

What do you guys think aout this???

<a href="http://www.survivalscience.org/debunk/ww/arg23.shtml" target="_blank">http://www.survivalscience.org/debunk/ww/arg23.shtml</a>

ps418

I personally did not find it very impressive, and it does not adress the positive arguments made in favor of something like a dying brain. I did get a chuckle out of seeing Stan Grof's books quoted though. I read all of his books on LSD psychotherapy, once upon a time, when I was routinely engaging in astral projection . . .

Some of the arguments are illogical, such as the argument that NDEs must be real because some people have NDEs without being ND. Huh? And other arguments are easily explained without invoking survival of a disembodied soul (e.g. accurate description of speech of medical staff), and so on.

The point #1, that NDE subjects have accurately reported on events that occurred at other locations while they were OOB, is the most widely cited evidence. As Augustine's article points out, however, controlled attempts to verify this phenomenon have all been failures. I do not rule them out a priori, though.

[ November 08, 2002: Message edited by: ps418 ]</p>

Seraphim

"I wasn't talking about that. The problem of the logistics of souls stays the same even if you assume reincarnation, for each person born is a new personality. If you say souls transmigrate between bodies, then who did they transmigrate from when the human population was lower? And does it follow that an ape's soul transmigrated into a body of a human? Again, I'm hinting that the thesis of human soul is made quite incredible by the fact of evolution. Do you believe apes have souls? Do the bacteria from which we all ultimately descend have souls too? How far can you stretch the soul lineage?"

My reply : You have wrong description of Soul. I believe you kept picturing it to be same as a living body could be. Here's some basic description of a Soul :

1. souls were created by the same force which created the Universe.
2. Souls are in form of energy, NOT physical.
3. Since Souls are energy, they follow the same principle of Science - Cannot be created (unless its Nuclear) or destroyed but can change from one form to another.
4. Souls do not split itself and give birth to a new one, thus it doesn't have lineage.

"This is the same as the question "why do you need God to be revealed to you". My answer is that it would produce certainty, instead of being a hide-and-seek game. If God and the afterlife exist, I can only conclude that they are well-hidden."

My reply : Well hidden? I persume that you have knowledge on yourself (physical and emotional), people around you (thoughts, emotions etc), people all over the world (everyone's thoughts, emotions etc) and the whole secret of the world and the Universe to make sure assumption. It is hidden to one who do not look at the right place.

"When I was a child I could guess the day of the week that a particular date fell just by looking at the date. I had some calculation method which by now I've forgotten, but I don't attribute this ability to a past-life talent."

My reply : What's a big deal about that? Anyone could see which date is by looking at the calendar.

"Science has found a credible naturalistic explanation for so many things. Why then should I assume that suddenly, in one matter, there should still hold true a supernatural explanation? If I can explain the origin of the species naturally (by evolution), why can't I explain the processes of consciousness naturally (by neurochemical theories)? Seeing how the whole Universe behaves so precisely as if it were totally natural, it seems very unlikely that a supernatural entity like a soul exists. To posit a soul for human survival is very much an assumption of human specialness, and is thus akin to and no more credible than the theory of geocentrism (Earth at centre of the universe). "

My reply : Then by all means, please do explain how a child (or in my case, an adult) could demonstrate a skill with perfection of years of trainings when he or she had never had such training before.

As for earth as centre of the Universe, we cannot push this aside so easily, since we do not know the shape of this universe nor the position of our own galaxy within the Universe. Remember this, OUR knowledge determines what we believe, NOT our belief determining what we should accept as knowledge.

Diesel800

Hi Serahpim,

I'm coming back on that in the weekend, running out of time right now...

Ramen

If the near-death experience is all in the brain, then why is it there?

Seraphim

"Why does this seem lame? The body often reacts in odd ways to unusual conditions. You can generate muscle responses by external electrical stimulation. Do you think the body evolved specifically to be able to responde to external electrical inputs? Do we believe the brain evolved a specific function to make you feel hungry when you smoke marijuana? "

My reply : Why is it lame? It is lame for varies reasons, such as :

1. Assuming that the brain is a product of human evolution, YET it has to resort to odd ways to deal with unusual situations.

2. Such situations as unusual is not so unusual if you study properly. Death for example maybe new to a brain, but there are other situations such as death which makes it usual. Sleep for example is one, meditation another, faint/falling unconscious due to exhaustion is another. All this can be consider of an unusual situation since the brain doesn't cope with all this everyday (except sleeping).

3. lame because besides death, I don't see any other "unusual" situations which the brain need to come out with odd ways to counter. Which makes me wonder if the condition such as death is actually unusual or not.

"The unusual state is that brain cells are dying - they are not receiving the proper levels of oxygen and nutrients, waste products are not being carried away by the blood stream. It may be receiving an overload of signals from other parts of the body experiencing trauma. Are you claiming this is not an unusual state compared to the normal functioning of the brain?"

My reply : All the above is acceptable IF NDE only happens when the Brain undergoes some sort of trauma such as accident or close to brain-death situation. It doesn't contribute to the fact that NDE also happens to a perfectly healthy man/woman who does nothing but lie on his/her lazy chair and relaxed. It doesn't contribute also to those who meditate either. In such context, the whole concept that NDE is a way Brain react to an unusual situations is a bit out, since there is no unusual situation derived from this situations I stated above.

"Furthermore, the brain does not "construct an illusion to fool itself". The brain takes all these unexpected and extraordinary inputs and tries to do something with them. Given that it is not designed to respond to these inputs, it does the best it can, and the result is something unusual."

My reply : In another word, the Brain tries to figure out what going on to its host (the body) by trying to analyze the input given by the host's sensors (which should be the hearing, sight, touch etc). Am I correct?

Ist assumption is that the Brain is not capable of handling such inputs since it is not common to happen everyday. I find this odd since I believe the Brain is a product of millions of years of evolutions and if NDE existed now, then it existed in the past and that the Brain didn't evolved to overcome this problem.

2nd Assumption - Assuming that the dying Brain is trying to analyse something when it is dying in the first place. That's like saying a drowning man enjoying the beauty of the sea as he sink deeper and deeper into the water. Shouldn't the most logical action here is to SAVE oneself?

3rd Assumption - the Brain produce NDE from analyse of its input from the sensors and produce something totally USELESS as a NDE. What is the use of NDE to a dying Brain?

Psycho Economist

The brain is not a monolithic organ. "It" doesn't "know" it's dying. The brain cells that aren't in their death throes keep doing their jobs, and that means interpreting sensory information, including garbage signals spat out by dying brain cells. Any particular brain cell doesn't know anything's wrong until it starts getting glutimate signals from its neighbors, but junk messages can get sent along active pathways the same as real data from the outside.

Heathen Dawn

My reply : You have wrong description of Soul. I believe you kept picturing it to be same as a living body could be. Here's some basic description of a Soul :

1. souls were created by the same force which created the Universe.
2. Souls are in form of energy, NOT physical.
3. Since Souls are energy, they follow the same principle of Science - Cannot be created (unless its Nuclear) or destroyed but can change from one form to another.
4. Souls do not split itself and give birth to a new one, thus it doesn't have lineage.

How does the soul interact with the material body? How is it that drinking too much wine changes personality? How do you explain the <a href="http://www.epub.org.br/cm/n02/historia/phineas.htm" target="_blank">classic case of Phineas Gage</a>, whose personality changed because of an accident?

Also, when a new baby is born, is he not a new personality? When the human population grows from a million personalities to a thousand million personalities, where do all these personalities=souls come from?

And again, do other animals have souls? Did our souls evolve from ape-like souls just as our bodies factually evolved from ape-like bodies?

Well hidden? I persume that you have knowledge on yourself (physical and emotional), people around you (thoughts, emotions etc), people all over the world (everyone's thoughts, emotions etc) and the whole secret of the world and the Universe to make sure assumption. It is hidden to one who do not look at the right place.

People talk about the sovereignty of God over the fates of every creature, but where I look, I see only unsystematic fate and blind pitiless indifference. When I see, on a National Geographic special, a column of ants crushed accidentally by a passing elephant, I know that the concept of divine providence and loving care is nothing more than a myth born of wishful thinking. The "why" of all creatures on Earth is perfectly understandable if one assumes autonomy of all entities; but when one assumes external sovereignty over the entities, many unanswered questions arise. The hypothesis of the sovereign-God raises more questions than it answers.

My reply : What's a big deal about that? Anyone could see which date is by looking at the calendar.

But I did that without looking at the calendar. I'd devised a method of calculation without having been trained in mathematics first!

Then by all means, please do explain how a child (or in my case, an adult) could demonstrate a skill with perfection of years of trainings when he or she had never had such training before.

I assume inborn talent. It happens that most humans are exceptionally good in one area or another without receiving training.

As for earth as centre of the Universe, we cannot push this aside so easily, since we do not know the shape of this universe nor the position of our own galaxy within the Universe. Remember this, OUR knowledge determines what we believe, NOT our belief determining what we should accept as knowledge.

Modern astronomy shows our star to be in a minor spot in one among many galaxies, the Milky Way. Our planet isn't even at the centre of that system: the star is, and our planet is third in proximity to it. The geocentric assumption was that all the stars and galaxies revolved round the earth, but this is clearly not so. Whatever the location of the earth in the Universe, it is evident that it is not the focal point of all revolutions.

What the Copernican revolution did to our planet, the Darwinian revolution did to our species. Instead of assuming this whole planet and all in it was created for the sake of human beings, Darwinian theory means we are just one among many creations happening to populate the planet. Consequently, the only way you can attribute an eternal soul to mankind is by attributing an eternal soul to all living beings. You then have to carry the soul scheme over to the general framework of evolution, and show how souls evolve together with bodies, and how they interact with the bodies. Is there any workable theory for the interaction of the "ghost" with the "machine"?

ps418

What is your description of the soul based upon? Your imagination, your reading of new age books, or what? How do you know that souls were created by the same force which created the Universe?

The very idea of "nonphysical energy"
is incoherent. All forms of energy (kinetic, electromagnetic, etc.) are thoroughly physical, unless you've discovered a new variety. Ever heard of e=mc^2? What is your evidence for the existence of nonphysical energy?

So, soul-energy is nonphysical, yet it obeys conservation laws? And non-physical soul-energy
can somehow be changed to, say, thermal or electromagnetic energy, which is thoroughly physical? Amazing.

beausoleil

The evolution fallacy: every observed property of a species reflects some survival trait. Lots of things in the natural world are absolutely nothing to do with survival. Mind you, I don't find this any less convincing than some accounts given by evolutionary psychologists.