I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about events where the patient sees particular things while he/she is dead, but that were not present while he/she was conscious, and when the patient what was doctor saying at these given moments and similar, this is not made up by hallucinations.
Heaven is real, says neurosurgeon
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I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about events where the patient sees particular things while he/she is dead, but that were not present while he/she was conscious, and when the patient what was doctor saying at these given moments and similar, this is not made up by hallucinations.
Work cannot be destroyed, either you have work or you don't have work, it's neither created or destroyed energy always transforms from one form to the other. You should look in the forum "Energy, what is it" and see that this definition of energy is not really correct:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?114726-Energy-What-is-it&p=2966423#post2966423
And what makes you think math can solve everything, how arrogant is that? Biophysics should explore this question. PMB on the link I gave you said nicely:
"The most important property about energy is that the total energy of a closed system is conserved (i.e. constant in time). Momentum can also do work and is also conserved but its not the same as energy. It’s for reasons like this that there’s no real definition of energy. As Richard Feynman says in his lectures:
It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount. It is not that way. However, there are formulas for calculating some numerical quantity, and we add it all together it gives “28” - always the same number. It is an abstract thing in that it does not tell us the mechanism or the reasons for the various formulas."
Because you forbid other people to think otherwise because you think this approach is correct, like I said science has explained over 99% of NDEs/OBEs events, but some of the events are not explained, I've shown which one.
Very funny.
The patient only THOUGHT they were dead, and after being resuscitated and told that they died, their misinterpretation seemed confirmed. They had the hallucination just before actually dying. Machines may register you as dead a few moments before all brain activity stops. Your heart can stop and your breathing cease but your brain is still racing around trying to stay alive, all the while hearing what is going on and imagining the imagery to go with it. So you may even hear the time of death called just before you actually die. and a moment or two later your brain stops. Then in a flash you are "back in your body" because they have resuscitated you and your brain picks up where the last thought left off. Your brain doesn't interpret time correctly when in a dream state. a dream takes place in a few flashes but when you remember it to tell a friend it seems to have lasted an hour or two. And time seems to stop when you are actually dead. When you go to sleep for 8 hours, you don't perceive the 8 hours go by because you are sleeping.
There are also certain natural brain chemicals that can give you that out of body sensation. Meditation can induce the production of these chemicals. I used to be into silly nonsense like esp, magic, ghosts and stuff as a kid. I had a book that told how to have an OBE. I followed the steps and sure enough I felt as if I was rising off the floor. I found out as I got older that the technique I used worked by flooding the brain with endorphins. The same thing happens when you use certain drugs, such as high doses of Demerol.
You mentioned that it was a crime to tell someone that there is no afterlife when they are facing certain death at any moment. Maybe it is cruel to tell them in that moment that they will soon cease to exist and there is no heaven or god to receive them and comfort them and that they spent their life worshiping an imaginary friend. But it is also cruel to tell a 600 lb woman how gross and disgusting she looks. Never telling her how unsettling it is to even look at her wont change the fact that most people would be repulsed by her appearance or that she is not hot and sexy to most people. So telling a lie to make someone feel better is still a lie.
How can chemicals work if they are clinically dead, and heart does not pulsate?
The brain produces the chemicals in the time leading up to death. The brain is flooded with them and until the absolute last spark of activity occurs in the brain, which may be a couple of minutes after the heart stops and breathing stops. And as long as sparks of activity are taking place in this endorphin flooded brain, it will perceive sensations associated with an endorphin high.
Yes, but chemicals cannot function anymore in these death situations and cannot create any kind of illusions, since there are no electrical activities to induce these hallucinations.
How odd you say this; yet you say that the mind keeps functioning after death as a spirit.
Didn't really think this one all the way through, did ya?
You aren't listening. I said,
Chemicals do not function. They are just fluids that are there. They have an affect on the tissues and synapses in the brain. The brain continues to function for a few moments after the heart stops and breathing stops. Chemicals do not have to exist in a living body to have an affect on the matter they are in contact with. Endorphins in contact with human brain tissue will continue to affect the tissue until the absolute last spark of activity occurs. That last spark can happen after clinical death is declared.
I think if God came down himself and told you he didn't exist and that there was no heaven you would still refuse to believe. You simply do not WANT to understand what I am telling you. It hurts, I understand. It's scary, I get it. Don't accept it if you don't want to. It's a relatively harmless delusion to believe in life after death. It's a coping skill that I don't really want to take from you. You NEED to believe. Others don't.
My point here, is if there is no electrical activity, than there are these chemical fluids cannot make those hallucinations-which are leftovers from chemical activity while they were still active with electrical activity, and this still does not explain how can see a picture that was not in the room while patients were awake.this picture cannot be hallucination, for example.
But your transformed energy would keep going, who says you die. Work cannot be destroyed, because it's not created. You should look at this thread:
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?114726-Energy-What-is-it
"This is the one definition of energy, merely one property of energy and not even the most important property of energy. The most important property about energy is that the total energy of a closed system is conserved (i.e. constant in time). Momentum can also do work and is also conserved but its not the same as energy. It’s for reasons like this that there’s no real definition of energy. As Richard Feynman says in his lectures:
It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is. We do not have a picture that energy comes in little blobs of a definite amount. It is not that way. However, there are formulas for calculating some numerical quantity, and we add it all together it gives “28” - always the same number. It is an abstract thing in that it does not tell us the mechanism or the reasons for the various formulas."
I already answered energy question, and regarding math, math is not omnipotent, you cannot solve everything by using math, when you will learn that? Match can help in these situations, but it cannot be definite proof, it can wrong or right. When you die, yes energy is transformed, how do you know this? Transformed energy continues to exist, in some other form, and you cannot be sure that some sub-conscious part of us does not continue to exist-in order to know that we should have the entire knowledge on everything in the universe, on all levels.
Because I've got the impression you forbid others to think otherwise, thinking you're right, in these cases, either you or me or anyone else can be right.
Very funny...
Good grief, do you just read every other sentence? I already explained that the hallucinations happen just before that last spark of activity which may well occur moments after the doctor has declared a time of death.
And how exactly hallucinations are going to take affect if you have no activity at all after that, they can start affecting person, but than the brain shuts down, and activity stops, hallucinations without "the fuel" cannot do anything.
And I already gave you example: this still does not explain how can a clinically dead person see pictures that were not in the room while patients were awake, these pictures cannot be hallucination when clinically dead persons see them after they fell into clinical death without previous observation when they were awake, for example.
They don't take affect after the last spark of activity. I have stated this many times. It happens just before that last spark.
source
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As you can see, clinical death does not mean that the brain is dead. It only means that the heart has stopped and the breathing has stopped. The brain can continue to flicker for a few moments beyond that but not long. It may be less than a minute but that is all the time it takes to produce a hallucination where even time is distorted to seem longer than it was.
Also the "memories" that people have after a NDE are often modified by hopeful and caring family members and doctors that help, inadvertantly to confirm and correct the details of the memory as the patient describes them. They help because they too want to believe.
no one truly knows what happens to the mind in a coma.. it could be a made up place by the brain.. op stated he was religious just not hard core religious.. so he was explained what "heaven" was like.. you hear lots of stories saying i saw heaven never i saw hell...
and since you call intelligent people assholes. well the "assholes" here ask the religious crazies for proof of anything.. and throught the thousands of posts not 1 piece of evidence has been collected.. hell there is more sightings of credible UFO sightings than anything in the bible..
as the old saying goes
if you have an invisible friend as a child you have an active imagination
if you have an invisible friend as an adult your crazy
if you have an invisible friend as an adult named jesus or god your religious
And once again when patients say what doctors were doing at any given moments during operations and doctors confirm everything what they have done at any given moments, than you know this is not a hallucination, but a true NDE/OBE, this is crucial what you're ignoring.
That doesn't actually happen. There is no such thing as a "true" NDE/OBE.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
There is such a thing as irrational faith, based on nothing but Stone Age legends and wishful thinking. This is the faith of the religionist.
And there is such a thing as rational faith, based on reasoning and evidence. This is the faith I have in my wife, who has been loyal, kind and supportive for 35 years, and many other people have observed this and can corroborate it.
* * * * NOTE FROM A MODERATOR * * * *
Will all of you please dial back the insults and try to maintain at least the illusion of scholarship in this discussion? Calling each other rude names and accusing each other of ignorance and illiteracy takes the discussion off track, halts its progress, and is therefore, technically, trolling. Try to act like scholars and scientists, and stay on topic. We can all read, or else we wouldn't be here, so if someone is an idiot it's immediately and glaringly obvious. There's no need to point it out.
One of the principles of science is:
It is not necessary to prove a negative.
The burden of proof is always on the person who claims that something is true. If it were not for this, the finite resources of science would be quickly dissipated in disproving every bit of crackpottery, pseudoscience, and supernatural nonsense that is brought to the door of the Academy every day. It is the responsibility of the crackpot, the pseudoscientist, and the supernaturalist to provide evidence supporting his claim, before anyone else is obliged to refute it.
I believe that my dog can speak Tibetan (he's a Lhasa Apso so that's his native language
), but until I show up at the Academy with a video of this phenomenon, I'm just another crackpot to be denied entry.There is also another principle of science that bears on this issue, The Rule of Laplace (or "Sagan's Law" as American TV viewers usually call it).
Extraordinary assertions must be supported by extraordinary evidence before anyone is obliged to treat them with respect.
Virtually all claims of the truth of supernatural phenomena automatically qualify as "extraordinary" because they inherently claim that the fundamental premise which underlies all science is false. This premise is: "The natural universe is a closed system whose behavior can be predicted by theories derived logically from empirical observation of its past and present behavior." This premise has been tested exhaustively for half a millennium and often tested with great hostility by people who wish it weren't true (such as religionists) and by people who stand to profit by disproving it (such as a photo on the cover of TIME with the caption, "The man who proved science false").
Yet this cornerstone of the scientific canon has never been falsified. There is no respectable evidence of supernatural phenomena, including the oxymoron of "life after death."
So people who claim that supernatural events occur (while providing exactly zero credible evidence) are not only denied entry to the Academy, but the security guards have a standing order to turn the dogs loose on them. (It's okay, they're Lhasa Apsos and all they'll do is bark.)
In recent years it's been discovered that the electrical signals that comprise brain activity are often so slight that it is nearly impossible to detect them with instruments. You'd have to put the patient in a controlled, isolated laboratory with lead walls and no background radiation, and bring in bulky, enormously expensive instruments that are customarily used for experiments in particle acceleration and the detection of atoms of transuranic elements. This would make it difficult or even impossible for the physicians to do their work.
The activity in our brain consumes a huge amount of energy and requires a massive component of protein in our diet. (Dogs have smaller brains than wolves because they have adapted to a scavenger's diet and don't eat as much meat as wolves do.) So evolution has fine-tuned our brain activity to be as resource-conservative as possible. Those signals can be received and interpreted inside the brain, but not, reliably, outside. Otherwise we'd have to eat an entire cow every day.
You did not die because death is irreversible. I wish both we atheists and our honorable opponents on the other side of the supernaturalism argument would be more precise in our use of language. We have a special word for people who have died: "dead."
Much as I avoid quibbling over the arcana of atheism in front of those honorable opponents, I do think you're selling them a little short. Death is not the only thing in the natural world that people find hard to face. The casual, pervasive, deliberate injustice of Bronze Age civilization (not to mention Iron Age and Industrial Age) made people yearn for a supernatural source of justice. War, slavery, aristocracy, not to mention the cavalier priestly class... inspired the hope that fantastic creatures and other forces would occasionally emerge from an invisible, illogical supernatural universe, to suspend the laws of nature for a little while and give all the bad people the punishment that the good people were too powerless to dispense.
In fact the afterlife was not a universal motif in supernaturalist philosophy throughout the ages. Heaven as we know it was an invention of Protestant Christians within the past couple of centuries, and to find support for this doctrine in the scriptures is said to require a very liberal reading. Traditional Abrahamist doctrine regarding what happens to the so-called "soul" after death is probably most faithfully preserved in the Orthodox Jewish teaching: When you die, your body stays there in the ground and your soul is... well, "dormant" would be a good word, or perhaps, "temporarily out of service, please stand by." At some unspecified, very distant date in the future, God will come down and reanimate (literally "restore the souls to") all the corpses and lead them to... well, "somewhere," presumably the good people to a nice place and the bad ones somewhere else, again not specified. This is why Orthodox Jews do not allow embalming, cremation, the borrowing of organs, etc. You wouldn't want to wake up six billion years from now with chemicals in your veins instead of blood, with no heart or eyes, or as an urnful of ashes.
Of course they conveniently ignore the well-established fact that in less than one million years your body will have been eaten by worms and/or fossilized. Cognitive dissonance: thy name is religion.
And this is why Judaism is very much a religion of this world rather than the next. The people who invented the concept of discounted-present-value, in order to rescue Christendom from its misreading of the Hebrew word for "usury" so they could borrow money at interest and keep their economy going, can't be exhorted to do something now that won't be rewarded until the Sun is a red dwarf. Jews exhort each other to be good in this current life, so their family will not have to live in shame after they're dead. Read up on the D.C. Jewish community's abject reaction to the Bernie Madoff scandal for a touching contemporary treatment of this issue. It isn't his soul they're worried about, but their own. Guess they haven't forgotten the Holocaust and the last thing they want in the headlines is a genuine, incontrovertibly evil Jew.
As I pointed out above, the term "clinically dead" means very little. The brain can survive on the oxygen within its blood vessels for a couple of minutes without a pulse. It loses consciousness because that reduces its electrical activity and conserves resources. During this time it is difficult, if not literally impossible, to determine whether the person is still "alive," in the literal definition of "capable of being revived." As I said it would require instruments that are simply not practical to use in a medical setting, and in any case would not help the doctors but more likely just get in their way.
In the Third World and even in rural locations in the developed world, it occasionally happens that a person's vital signs are so weak that the local doctors can't detect them with the instruments they have. I've been told (without verifying it) that one cause of this is the venom of certain snakes. They put their prey into a very deep coma, with heartbeat, blood pressure and respiration so weak and slow that a country doctor simply can't find it. The purpose is to keep the animal barely alive so the meat doesn't start to decay. Snakes are as vulnerable to the bacteria in spoiled food as we are.
And if you're a doctor and you get one of these patients and you don't want to make the mistake of declaring him dead when all that's wrong is that he was bitten by a big snake, the obvious solution is to wait a few hours before cutting him open for an autopsy, and see if he's starting to show the signs of genuine death, such as a steadily lower body temperature.
As I have now pointed out twice, those electrical activities are indeed occurring. The problem is that they are so weak that the instruments available in a hospital cannot detect them. Hospitals are not physics laboratories so they don't have that kind of equipment. It's expensive, takes up a lot of space, and requires highly-paid experts to operate. Hospitals have to make economic decisions just like any other business. They'd rather spend the money on hiring more doctors and nurses.
Not all intelligent people are atheists. If this were true there'd be a lot more atheists in the world. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful force. Many people do perfectly honest scientific work in their day jobs, but when they take off their lab coats and go home they pray to an imaginary god.
I refer back to the Rule of Laplace. There is no assertion more extraordinary than that the fundamental principle that underlies all science is false: that an invisible, illogical supernatural universe exists, from which fantastic creatures and other unimaginable forces emerge at random intervals, whimsically and often petulantly, to interfere with the behavior of the natural universe, causing it to violate its own laws. Therefore this assertion requires the most extraordinary evidence,
Yet given the sensitivity of the issue, we waive the Rule of Laplace in just this one case. We will be willing to treat this assertion with respect if merely ordinary evidence is presented in the Academy.
Yet even this ordinary evidence has never been brought forth. As I have noted so often that some of you probably know it by heart, the best that the religionists have ever been able to bring us is a tortilla--one out of hundreds of millions cooked every year--bearing a scorch mark that is breathlessly asserted to be the perfect image of a Biblical figure--of whom no portraits exist against which to compare it.
There's nothing wrong with having an active imagination. I love Winnie the Pooh, Frodo Baggins and Kermit the Frog, and the things they have taught me have made me a better and happier person. Whenever I think fondly of the Hundred-Acre Wood or look warily for Sauron in the next election or sing "The Rainbow Connection" at karaoke to reflect on how happy my life has been overall, I don't stop and remind myself that those important people in my life are imaginary. Who cares? Their physical existence is irrelevant. The important aspects of them are indeed real.
And I feel the same way about Jesus. Sure I know it's very unlikely that he was a real historical figure, and even if he was the amazing feats attributed to him are just the imaginations of an earlier generation of journalists. But Jesus was a role model for us all and it wouldn't hurt us to try to live up to his alleged expectations. Those expectations are far more important than physical existence.
It's okay to love Jesus and it doesn't matter that he's a fictional literary character.
There is such a thing as irrational faith, based on nothing but Stone Age legends and wishful thinking. This is the faith of the religionist.
And there is such a thing as rational faith, based on reasoning and evidence. This is the faith I have in my wife, who has been loyal, kind and supportive for 35 years, and many other people have observed this and can corroborate it.
* * * * NOTE FROM A MODERATOR * * * *
Will all of you please dial back the insults and try to maintain at least the illusion of scholarship in this discussion? Calling each other rude names and accusing each other of ignorance and illiteracy takes the discussion off track, halts its progress, and is therefore, technically, trolling. Try to act like scholars and scientists, and stay on topic. We can all read, or else we wouldn't be here, so if someone is an idiot it's immediately and glaringly obvious. There's no need to point it out.
One of the principles of science is:
It is not necessary to prove a negative.
The burden of proof is always on the person who claims that something is true. If it were not for this, the finite resources of science would be quickly dissipated in disproving every bit of crackpottery, pseudoscience, and supernatural nonsense that is brought to the door of the Academy every day. It is the responsibility of the crackpot, the pseudoscientist, and the supernaturalist to provide evidence supporting his claim, before anyone else is obliged to refute it.
I believe that my dog can speak Tibetan (he's a Lhasa Apso so that's his native language
There is also another principle of science that bears on this issue, The Rule of Laplace (or "Sagan's Law" as American TV viewers usually call it).
Extraordinary assertions must be supported by extraordinary evidence before anyone is obliged to treat them with respect.
Virtually all claims of the truth of supernatural phenomena automatically qualify as "extraordinary" because they inherently claim that the fundamental premise which underlies all science is false. This premise is: "The natural universe is a closed system whose behavior can be predicted by theories derived logically from empirical observation of its past and present behavior." This premise has been tested exhaustively for half a millennium and often tested with great hostility by people who wish it weren't true (such as religionists) and by people who stand to profit by disproving it (such as a photo on the cover of TIME with the caption, "The man who proved science false").
Yet this cornerstone of the scientific canon has never been falsified. There is no respectable evidence of supernatural phenomena, including the oxymoron of "life after death."
So people who claim that supernatural events occur (while providing exactly zero credible evidence) are not only denied entry to the Academy, but the security guards have a standing order to turn the dogs loose on them. (It's okay, they're Lhasa Apsos and all they'll do is bark.)
All I'm saying just because there is no proof it doesn't mean life after death does not exist in some form. You said: Extraordinary assertions must be supported by extraordinary evidence before anyone is obliged to treat them with respect."
That's true but appears that scientists can go out in public with all kinds of hypotheses based on mathematical equations with no scientific evidence at all, and none is accusing them they are breaking the rule "extraordinary assertions must be supported by extraordinary evidence before anyone is obliged to treat them with respect". So if scientists can break that rule, so can other people break that rule as well.
And what makes you think that other forms of energy do not exist? Just because the math says so? Math has its limitations, you know. Look at neutrino it barely has interaction with other matter in the universe, but it has it. Yes, math has predicted neutrino, but neutrino case shows there are maybe other particles that do not interact with no matter/energy in the universe, which are truly ghostly particles (neutrino is considered ghostly particle since it has so weak interaction with other matter/energy) which have zero interaction with all the known matter in the universe.
Regarding transformation of energy, yes, energy transforms in the way you said, but who says that's all, that's all that we can detect, once you have the ability to detect everything in the universe, than we can that's it, but there is no way of knowing this, until this is the case (and we will never be able to detect everything).
I agree with you, I really don't know why is so bad to be religious or spiritual person just like anyone has the right to be atheist/theist, gnostic/agnostic or whatever they want that's the fundamental right of any person on this planet, not to mention there are scientists (and there were scientists) who were religious/spiritual, believed in afterlife, and yet they are excellent scientists (just for example).
Cheers.
When are scientists 'breaking this rule?'
You state this as fact- examples showing scientists making bold assertions with zero evidence would suit better.
This entire paragraph claims that there will always be the 'unknown' beyond detection. I won't argue whether or not that is true (hardly) at the moment.
Merely point out- that's an excuse.
It's not "so bad" to be religious, it's "so bad" to be absurd.
Absurdities lead to a great many problems, financially, politically and physically. Think about how many parents make their young children suffer in bed at home praying over them instead of allowing proper medical care.
How about that Oklahoma case where a 13 year old was raped... raped, not 'touched,' not shown videos- Held and raped. The parents are refusing to cooperate with the police, choosing instead to pray about it.
What kind of trauma does this do to the child? Is that child going to feel safe out in the world with that kind of response? Trust has been absolutely shattered.
Through-out time, religion has been the bane of progress, convincing people to remain devout in absurdities, ignorant and giving excuses for the bigots and greedy to use against people.
How often have I heard religious people claim that scientific understanding was of the Devil? Teaching that learning things that question God is Satans work to children?
That generation is to become doctors and researchers and developers?
How often has religion been used to support/defend things like racism, sexism, hate crimes and war?
Granted- that is not the fault of 'religion,' rather it's the fault of ignorance that people use religion to cover for. Religion allows it. It offers nothing progressive in return.
You did not die because death is irreversible. I wish both we atheists and our honorable opponents on the other side of the supernaturalism argument would be more precise in our use of language. We have a special word for people who have died: "dead."
Thank you for pointing that out. I should have said I was clinically dead. My heart had stopped and my breathing had stopped. The doctor didn't officially call it though. He said he sees it happen too often and wanted to wait and see if I revived. Which of course I did. He said I was "dead" only about 30 seconds. Though my vision of following my son seemed to last about 30 minutes. Hallucinations in time are fun. Most of what I viewed in my vision, was accurate by my memory but I didn't "realize" I had seen real places in the hospital until I was up and able to go to the NICU. So in reality the hallucination was likely to be very blurry and details obscured but as I walked along the corridor my brain saw similarities and filled in the gaps of the "memory" giving me the false assumption that the hallucination was real rather than an incomplete invention that was completed after my resuscitation.
Add that to the 4 or 5 times I pointed it out. Thank you for elaborating on this. I was starting to wonder if I was the only one aware of this.