8 Million Americans have Near Death Experiences according to Gallup Poll

james r,
The brain is a neural network. Parts of it light up because neurochemicals are crossing synaptic clefts, causing potential energies to travel along axons and dendrites. So which part is the conscousness part? Which part is me experiencing pain because I stubbed my toe? How do a bunch of neural chemcials and voltages generate me?
 
Mazulu said:
Pam Reynolds had an anyrism on her brain stem. In order to operate on her, the blood had to be drained out of her brain and brain stem. There was close monitoring of her brain wave activity, no brain activity was found. But she had a near death experience anyway. Why?


Originally Posted by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pam_Reynolds_case
Pam Reynolds Lowery (1956 – May 22, 2010), from Atlanta, Georgia, was an American singer-songwriter.[1] In 1991, at the age of 35, she stated that she had a near-death experience (NDE) during a brain operation performed by Robert F. Spetzler at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. Her experience is one of the most notable and widely documented in near-death studies because of the unusual circumstances under which it happened. Reynolds was under close medical monitoring during the entire operation. During part of the operation she had no brain-wave activity and no blood flowing in her brain, which rendered her clinically dead. She claimed to have made several observations during the procedure which later medical personnel reported to be accurate.

This famous near-death experience claim has been used by some believers to corroborate their beliefs in the survival of consciousness after death, and of a life after death. However, critics and skeptics have claim that the claims can be explained through prosaic and conventional means
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How can you have consciousness without brain activity?
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This case is also examined on the site I had posted a link to earlier. Here it is again:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/HNDEs.html

Click on the link for "Pam Reynolds" for debunking of some of the claims.

I won't go into the part about the accuracy of the OOBE, since even I don't find the site's presented evidence against it to be that strong. However, I do want to note that the site does point out a very notable misconception about the case.

Mazulu said:
Did you have a near death experience with all of the blood drained out of your brain? Did you have an NDE while no brain activity was recorded?
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The part about the NDE (more accurately, the OOBE) occurring while no brain activity (flat EEG) was recorded is incorrect. I'm not going to copy-paste what's at the site because it's too long, but I will try to summarize it.

As supporting evidence of her OOBE, Pam accurately describes a comment made by the cardiothoracic surgeon (Dr. Murray), after Pam was put into general anesthesia, about Pam's veins and arteries being small.

What needs to be noted is that this comment by the surgeon was obviously made PRIOR to the "no brain activity recording", NOT DURING.

The reason the timing is obvious is because in order to drain Pam's brain of blood (and thus enter the "no brain activity" state), Dr. Murray needed to hook Pam up to a cardiac bypass machine to cool Pam's blood BEFOREHAND. The original plan was to use Pam's right common femoral artery, but Dr. Murray noted that the artery was "quite small" (cue Dr. Murray commenting aloud about this and OOB Pam listening) and deemed it unsuitable for hooking up to the bypass machine. Dr. Murray thus did a bilateral groin cannulation instead to hook Pam up to the bypass machine. The bypass machine that cooled Pam's blood. The cooling of the blood that led to Pam's cardiac arrest and eventual flat EEG.

Timeline pic from the site:
View attachment 6756

Did Pam really float away from her body and see/hear things she physically couldn't have? Perhaps :shrug:.

Did Pam's OOB observations occur during her flat EEG state? NO. Pam didn't describe any events that occurred during her flat EEG state but instead described things that occurred prior to that no brain activity state. In other words, Pam's OOBE was during general anesthesia (non-life threatening), not during death/near-death, thus does not qualify as an NDE.

Oh, and Pam's visual description of the bone saw and what it sounded like? Well, from the site:

First, in the head surgeon's report, Dr. Robert Spetzler noted that when he was cutting open Pam's skull, "Dr. Murray performed bilateral femoral cut-downs for cannulation for cardiac bypass" (185).
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Yeah, Pam was nowhere near having a flat EEG yet when the bone saw she described was used to open her skull up. In case it's not crystal clear, general anesthesia (the time during which Pam's OOB descriptions match the events) is NOT when all brain activity is stopped.
 
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Monimonika said:
Yeah, Pam was nowhere near having a flat EEG yet when the bone saw she described was used to open her skull up. In case it's not crystal clear, general anesthesia (the time during which Pam's OOB descriptions match the events) is NOT when all brain activity is stopped.
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Wait a minute. What doctor is going to leave a patient in a semiconsious state when he's using a bone saw on her head? If you were in brain surgery, would you want to be in and out of consciousness while you listened to the whining sound of a bone saw cutting through your head? That sounds horrific! It sounds like something you might see in the horror movie SAW. If the patient partially wakes up during the bone cutting process, she could panic, move around, and then sue the doctor for malpractice for allowing her to wake up during bone cutting.
 
Mazulu said:
Wait a minute. What doctor is going to leave a patient in a semiconsious state when he's using a bone saw on her head? If you were in brain surgery, would you want to be in and out of consciousness while you listened to the whining sound of a bone saw cutting through your head? That sounds horrific! It sounds like something you might see in the horror movie SAW. If the patient partially wakes up during the bone cutting process, she could panic, move around, and then sue the doctor for malpractice for allowing her to wake up during bone cutting.
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Don't look up "anesthesia awareness" or "intraoperative awareness" then. It's a real thing, unfortunately.

Let's see if I can break this down for you.

From Wikipedia (I'm lazy, ok?):
General anaesthesia has many purposes including:

Analgesia — loss of response to pain,
Amnesia — loss of memory,
Immobility — loss of motor reflexes,
Unconsciousness — loss of consciousness,
Skeletal muscle relaxation.
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In order to accomplish the above effects, several different drugs at differing dosages have to carefully and constantly be administered to the patient by an anesthetist/anesthesiologist who has to figure out (prior to surgery) the combination of drugs and dosages needed based on the patient's body mass index, age, medical record, diet, etc. It is not in the patient's best interest to lie about/omit any drug use (either illegal or over-the-counter) or special diet fad he/she is currently on. Too much of certain drugs and the patient can overdose and die. Too little and... well... living nightmare fuel. Sometimes a patient's health just cannot handle the dose of the drugs necessary for full general anesthesia (for example, huge blood loss prior to surgery), so some things get compromised out of necessity (it ain't a perfect world, live with it).

Note again that general anesthesia does not stop all brain activity. It puts the patient into a medically induced coma, which is not synonymous with brain-dead. Brain activity does not equal consciousness/awareness.

Anesthesiology is not a perfect science that works 100% of the time with all patients (the advances made, though, are astounding). Experiences can range from becoming briefly aware of hearing the doctors murmuring (and then going right back to unawareness), to the patient shifting about during surgery but not recalling anything, to recalling dreams had during the surgery, to feeling full on pain of surgery while unable to twitch a single muscle (and able to recall the horrible details). The latter kind is very rare but makes the headlines. Failures can be due to equipment malfunctioning, the anesthetist being an incompetent human being, patient not following pre-surgery instructions, unknown drug and patient body factors, etc. Monitoring via various equipment (oxygen levels, blood pressure, EEG, etc.) during surgery is done in order to adjust drug dosages as need be.

Just to be clear, several different drugs are used in combination because no one drug provides all the effects usually needed to achieve general anesthesia. So it is very highly unlikely that failure of the drugs to induce unconsciousness will simultaneously happen at the same time as failure of drugs to induce immobility or the failure of drugs to prevent pain. And the risk of overdosing is very real, so anesthetists can't just give the max amount of drugs and call it a day.

I don't recall Pam complaining about feeling pain, so those particular drugs seemed to be working just fine during her surgery. So you can stop getting upset about that aspect, okay? And not all bad things are the result of deliberate actions, okay?

Now, are you going to ignore the fact that Pam Reynold's case does not qualify as an NDE since her OOBE was during a "brain is still showing activity" stage of the surgery and her life was not being threatened (yet)?
 
Mazulu,

Mazulu said:
The brain is a neural network. Parts of it light up because neurochemicals are crossing synaptic clefts, causing potential energies to travel along axons and dendrites. So which part is the conscousness part? Which part is me experiencing pain because I stubbed my toe? How do a bunch of neural chemcials and voltages generate me?
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Van Gogh's painting of sunflowers consists of lots of brushstrokes of different colours. Which part of the painting is the sunflowers part?
 
Monimonika said:
Don't look up "anesthesia awareness" or "intraoperative awareness" then. It's a real thing, unfortunately.

Let's see if I can break this down for you.

From Wikipedia (I'm lazy, ok?):


In order to accomplish the above effects, several different drugs at differing dosages have to carefully and constantly be administered to the patient by an anesthetist/anesthesiologist who has to figure out (prior to surgery) the combination of drugs and dosages needed based on the patient's body mass index, age, medical record, diet, etc. It is not in the patient's best interest to lie about/omit any drug use (either illegal or over-the-counter) or special diet fad he/she is currently on. Too much of certain drugs and the patient can overdose and die. Too little and... well... living nightmare fuel. Sometimes a patient's health just cannot handle the dose of the drugs necessary for full general anesthesia (for example, huge blood loss prior to surgery), so some things get compromised out of necessity (it ain't a perfect world, live with it).

Note again that general anesthesia does not stop all brain activity. It puts the patient into a medically induced coma, which is not synonymous with brain-dead. Brain activity does not equal consciousness/awareness.

Anesthesiology is not a perfect science that works 100% of the time with all patients (the advances made, though, are astounding). Experiences can range from becoming briefly aware of hearing the doctors murmuring (and then going right back to unawareness), to the patient shifting about during surgery but not recalling anything, to recalling dreams had during the surgery, to feeling full on pain of surgery while unable to twitch a single muscle (and able to recall the horrible details). The latter kind is very rare but makes the headlines. Failures can be due to equipment malfunctioning, the anesthetist being an incompetent human being, patient not following pre-surgery instructions, unknown drug and patient body factors, etc. Monitoring via various equipment (oxygen levels, blood pressure, EEG, etc.) during surgery is done in order to adjust drug dosages as need be.

Just to be clear, several different drugs are used in combination because no one drug provides all the effects usually needed to achieve general anesthesia. So it is very highly unlikely that failure of the drugs to induce unconsciousness will simultaneously happen at the same time as failure of drugs to induce immobility or the failure of drugs to prevent pain. And the risk of overdosing is very real, so anesthetists can't just give the max amount of drugs and call it a day.

I don't recall Pam complaining about feeling pain, so those particular drugs seemed to be working just fine during her surgery. So you can stop getting upset about that aspect, okay? And not all bad things are the result of deliberate actions, okay?

Now, are you going to ignore the fact that Pam Reynold's case does not qualify as an NDE since her OOBE was during a "brain is still showing activity" stage of the surgery and her life was not being threatened (yet)?
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Do you look like your avatar? Just curious.

I think I should stop coming to this website. I like my beliefs in an afterlife. It's not my fault that medical science and physics are trying to sterilize everything magical, everything inspiring about the world; I've fought this battle and I'm losing. The egghead nerdy dictators of reality and the reality police are just overwhelming my arguments with their cold callous responses to my ideas. Even though you, Monimonika, are the one to discourage me, I still think your sweet. As for all the atheist scum, I hope to see them suffer in a hell created by the God that escaped their notice. It is my opinion that science-atheism will fail to sterilize the world of God/magic/fun/love/mystery; I think eggheadedness goes against human nature. We were meant to stand around the fire, to dance, to sing, to tell stories to each other, to the crackling of the flames. Human beings were meant to see and hear the echos of our passed loved ones, our ancestors, our wise teachers. These things are natural and normal for the human spirit, but to science it is an aberration, a hallucination by a sick and troubled mind. But it is really the scientific culture that is psychologically sick; they suppress religion and spirituality (which bring peace and happiness); they replace it with anti-depressants and worthless knowledge of useless things. Monimonika, don't be fooled by their attempts to brainwash you; they will take your soul and your personhood.
 
James R said:
Mazulu,
Van Gogh's painting of sunflowers consists of lots of brushstrokes of different colours. Which part of the painting is the sunflowers part?
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Why don't you just tell me the answer you want me to memorize. I'll just subjugate my will to the smart people.
 
Mazulu,

Mazulu said:
I think I should stop coming to this website. I like my beliefs in an afterlife.
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So you'd rather be happy than accept the truth. Fair enough. There are lots of people out there who are just like you.

It's not my fault that medical science and physics are trying to sterilize everything magical, everything inspiring about the world; I've fought this battle and I'm losing.
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It's a pity you don't know enough science to have come across some of the truly inspiring stuff, and instead have to rely on mythology to inspire you.

The egghead nerdy dictators of reality and the reality police are just overwhelming my arguments with their cold callous responses to my ideas.
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Don't worry. You can always block your ears, blindfold yourself and retreat to your happy place as you sing "la la la I'm not listening".

As for all the atheist scum, I hope to see them suffer in a hell created by the God that escaped their notice. It is my opinion that science-atheism will fail to sterilize the world of God/magic/fun/love/mystery; I think eggheadedness goes against human nature.
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That doesn't sound very Christian of you. You should be trying to save the evil atheists from hell by leading them to God, shouldn't you?

As for eggheadedness, if some humans are eggheads then clearly it is not against human nature.

We were meant to stand around the fire, to dance, to sing, to tell stories to each other, to the crackling of the flames. Human beings were meant to see and hear the echos of our passed loved ones, our ancestors, our wise teachers. These things are natural and normal for the human spirit, but to science it is an aberration, a hallucination by a sick and troubled mind.
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I think you'll find that atheists share stories of dead loved ones, just the same as religious people do. They just don't pretend that the loved ones aren't really dead after all, but are instead living an afterlife.

But it is really the scientific culture that is psychologically sick; they suppress religion and spirituality (which bring peace and happiness); they replace it with anti-depressants and worthless knowledge of useless things.
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Scientists, in their daily work, seldom even think about religion or spirituality (unless they are psychologists or anthropologists studying those things). Religion and spirituality are largely irrelevant to science, rather than being suppressed.

I do find it interesting that you can sit there at your computer (which wouldn't exist without scientists) in your house with its electricity (which we would know nothing about if not for scientists), with your life expectancy of 80+ years (which would be less than half of that without science) and still somehow manage to claim that scientific knowledge is worthless. You must be trying to make a joke.
 
James R said:
I do find it interesting that you can sit there at your computer (which wouldn't exist without scientists) in your house with its electricity (which we would know nothing about if not for scientists), with your life expectancy of 80+ years (which would be less than half of that without science) and still somehow manage to claim that scientific knowledge is worthless. You must be trying to make a joke.
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Science is valuable, but atheism is worthless. When you look at the suffering of people around the world, of women (and children) forced into prostitution, or children in India whose arms and legs are broken so that they can be more pathetic beggars, or "the necklace" where a tire is put over someone's head, by an African warlord, they are dumped on with gasoline and then set on fire, or a million other forms of torture that destroy people's lives, and you want me to tell them that they only get one chance at life? Sorry, but no. I would rather mutilate physics.
 
Mazulu said:
The real issue is whether or not you and I have a soul (something that survives death). Apparently, even evolutionary biology thought it was so important to at least create the illusion of an afterlife, that near death experiences are triggered when the heart stops (in some people anyway). What is odd about near death experiences, is that when the heart stops, the brain stops working. If the brain stops working, then consciousness stops working. Right? So why do people experience hovering over their body, have their life reviewed, meet dead relatives, meet angels/God/Jesus/beings of light? How is all this possible when the brain isn't working? It's like unplugging your computer, but it still works.
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ɯoɹɟʇɐld ɐ sᴉ ssǝusnoᴉɔsuoɔ
 
Mazulu said:
Science is valuable, but atheism is worthless. When you look at the suffering of people around the world, of women (and children) forced into prostitution, or children in India whose arms and legs are broken so that they can be more pathetic beggars, or "the necklace" where a tire is put over someone's head, by an African warlord, they are dumped on with gasoline and then set on fire, or a million other forms of torture that destroy people's lives, and you want me to tell them that they only get one chance at life? Sorry, but no. I would rather mutilate physics.
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I would like to point out that many of the people burned alive, slowly, in Africa (I'll spare you the videos, but they are out there) are attacked for religious reasons. The existence of witchcraft is not only widely believed but supported by the Bible and Christian missionaries.
 
Mazulu said:
I think I should stop coming to this website. I like my beliefs in an afterlife. It's not my fault that medical science and physics are trying to sterilize everything magical, everything inspiring about the world; I've fought this battle and I'm losing. ...
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Excuse us for daring to insist that one's beliefs be based on reality and not wishful thinking. Nothing about the pursuit of truth is incompatible with fun, love, or mystery. Indeed religion aims to destroy the mystery by insisting it knows how it all works. As far as religion bringing peace, maybe that would be true if there were only one religion.
 
spidergoat said:
I would like to point out that many of the people burned alive, slowly, in Africa (I'll spare you the videos, but they are out there) are attacked for religious reasons. The existence of witchcraft is not only widely believed but supported by the Bible and Christian missionaries.
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I have new age values. Which means that I don't want to see anyone suffer or be burned for anything (even atheists). I believe that people can, and do, practice their religious beliefs and/or witchcraft/magic without physically hurting other people. In fact, I know a lot of people who use religious and occult practices to send spiritual healing to places and people around the world. So your idea that all religion and magic as being violent is just PURE BULLSHIT.
 
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