Translation: I am unable to counter any of the arguments you have put up, or to undermine your logic in any way. I am also unable to provide substantive evidence for any of my claims. Therefore, rather than face the possibility I may be mistaken, I shall just change the subject.
I have realised that we cannot come to a mutual understanding of OBE or NDE, because our beliefs are so different. I believe that both are real, but your belief in materialism does not allow this. Reincarnation belongs to the same topic. If there is reincarnation, there will be also a soul and afterlife. If that is the case, than also OBE and NDE could be real. Now I would like to see, if you will also deny reincarnation in spite of its evidence.
Your first sentence is completely accurate. The second part of your second sentence is completely wrong. I am not sure how you define materialism, but I do not consider myself to be a materialist. Perhaps I am in terms of your definition, but I consider it irrelevant to my "beliefs". What I believe, although conditioned by my biology and my environment, I run through the filter of objectivity. For me to believe something I have to see substantial evidence for that thing. I should like - no! Not like. I crave the possibility that UFOs are real, that alien visitations are commonplace, that the Bermuda Triangle genuinely connects to another "dimension". That would add so much of interest to an already interesting world. Alas, I see no significant evidence for any of that. But please don't accuse me of materialism and imply thereby that my rejection of your beliefs is a knee jerk reaction and an application of dogma. Not necessarily. By afterlife you seem to suggest that there will be some awareness and passage of time between incarnations. You have no reason to expect that as a necessity. Again, you are locked into a perception of how I arrive at my viewpoint. Your supposed evidence for reincarnation is more readily explained by simpler, more mundane mechanisms. So, I find the concept of reincarnation an interesting one. I see many compelling reasons for why it would be "a good idea". However, I see no substantial evidence to suggest that the idea should be taken seriously. Therefore, until such times as meaningful evidence is presented I shall strongly suspect that reincarnation does not occur.
But the corollary is not necessarily true. If there is after-life, it does not follow that there is reincarnation. Regardless, there is no useful evidence for either.
Not even that. You seem to be totally ignorant of the nature of reliable evidence. If I had an NDE, I would think it was all in my head UNLESS I came back with information or an observation that would have been impossible to know (or guess) unless I truly were a disembodied soul. Just thinking or experiencing such a feeling is irrelevant!
Books aren't evidence. Unfortunately, reincarnation research is full of biased people who make the facts fit their predetermined beliefs. Children often don't know the difference between fantasy and reality.
Spidergoat, what about people who are completely blind from birth, who claim to be able to see in their NDE's? http://www.near-death.com/science/evidence/people-born-blind-can-see-during-nde.html jan.
There is a form of blindness that doesn't involve dysfunction of the eye itself, but rather the visual centers of the brain. (In fact your article mentions this.) So, yeah, it's a weird thing the brain does, but it's not supernatural. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindsight
You keep using that word, 'evidence'. I do not think we are using it the same way. In order for evidence to support a scientific hypothesis, that evidence ought to be at the very least unexplainable through any other mechanism. Preferably, it would be related to what one famous dead white guy called a "risky prediction". Meaning that your hypothesis would predict such evidence and that it's failure to happen would be evidence that the hypothesis is wrong. But all you really seem to be saying is that you believe some people who've said some stuff and what they said agrees with your preconceptions. You might want to look up 'confirmation bias'.
BWE1 is on-point. People making statements about what they believe is 1] not falsifiable. Therefore useless ofr the purpose of objective analysis, 2] not a reliable indicator of what the actual circumstances were*. *Of all accounts told about events, ever, I would suggest the least reliable ones are those told by people who were dead during the event. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I agree that there is no direct correlation between reincarnation, soul and afterlife. Buddha himself did not believe in souls. He regarded soul and self as illusions. But he believed in reincarnation, which is also some kind of afterlife, meaning there is another life after this one and death is not the end. Ajahn Brahm is Abbot of a large monastery in Perth. Before he became a monk he has successfully studied Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University. Please take the time and watch his very interesting one hour talk about "What happens when we die": Here he made the clear statement, that the mind is fully functioning without body and brain. Recently I have asked him personally, whether he would agree that the mentioned mind, which does not need the body, would be the individual immortal soul? He strongly disagreed and mentioned that the mind is floating away.
Only the body is truly immortal. It moves seamlessly from one organism dividing to another, from mother to offspring. The mind is a temporal artifact, it's inherited through the mechanism of culture.
Her optic nerve ( the nerve that connects and transmits information between the eye and the brain.) was completely destroyed (according to the link). Are you sure you're not mistaking ''Blindsight'' with ''Mindsight'', book written by Ring & Cooper? According to Eban Alexander's doctors, his brain (neo cortex) was hammered. I think these are good breakthrough's. Do you? jan.
No. They are hallucinations. I've had hallucinations before. What did she "see" that she could not have otherwise known? Nothing. Maybe she didn't even see. If she never saw before, we don't know exactly what she was experiencing.
Indeed. Last night I experienced that I won the lottery. When I came to, I had no way to convince anyone it really happened.
So what? Sight is the ability to detect photons. Souls are in theory immaterial and transparent, therefore wouldn't physically be able to detect a photon. Of course, everything we know could be wrong. Or maybe people have imaginations.
