8 Million Americans have Near Death Experiences according to Gallup Poll
- Thread starter Mazulu
- Start date
Why don't you check out the evidence? Look at the video I posted.
Mazulu, I have checked out what you "copy and paste" as your so called...evidence...
Mazulu, do you honestly take the time to check out the evidence that other Posters supply for you?
Mazulu, maybe check this out : http://www.livescience.com/16019-death-experiences-explained.html
...or possibly this :http://orthodoxinfo.com/death/nde.aspx
Incidentally, Mazulu, since you are so good at "drawing conclusions" from evidence presented to you :
Am, I, dmoe, an atheist?
Am, I, dmoe, a theist?
Do, I, dmoe, believe in an afterlife?
Have, I, dmoe, ever been clinically dead and had to have been resuscitated?
Mazulu, you will of course excuse me if I do not hold my breath while waiting in antici.....................pation for your non-answer!
That is a childish, pedantically lame excuse for an argument. It doesn't matter in the least.
Duh, the brain dies, hence no consciousness. Are you an idiot?
Why is your brain dead? Why do constantly make up shit as you go along? Why are you such an idiot?
No, people have had brain traumas and attempted to remember what they experienced, but their brain was undergoing TRAUMA!!! Look up that word, you idiot.
Many remember seeing images during the trauma. So what?
Many do. Duh.
Bullshit.
Nothing makes sense to you except the fantasy world you've created for yourself, detached from reality.
Yes, a bazillion reports. Or, maybe it was a kajillion, or a superduperillion.
It's utterly hilarious to watch the shit come of your mouth, dude, one long log after another. You don't even need to wipe cause it never stops.
1. Youtube videos are NOT enough evidence to anything.
2. We have NOT received any kind of tangible evidence of NDE to consider it factual besides "reports from people", this, by itself is enough to make a point.
3. Does Near Death Experience relates, even remotely to the OP? Please tell us.
I seriously wonder if you really believe what you post or is just hurling trollings at random.
Religion is important if we have a soul.
Science cannot reproduce conscousness (and has no clue how to do it). Furthermore, 8 million reported NDE experiences are telling us that we disconnect from our body and brain when they die. Then we go on. Obviously this challenges your world view. Unfortunately, you can't just throw out a giant pile of data and insist that it doesn't exist.
They see the disconnection process from the brain (the tunnel into light). Then they hover above their body, then they go see their dead relatives, dead friends, angels, etc... Those are not just random images, it's a theme.
8 million reports of near death experiences. Actually, that 8 million Americans who have reported NDE experiences.
No, I'm just making a strong argument. If science knew how to reproduce conscoiusness, they could put it on a computer chip. You could apply 5 volts on the pain pin or 5 volts on the pleasure pin. Human consciousness is certainly capable of experiencing pain and pleasure (from the nervous system).
But the other fact is that there are a lot of people who have near death experiences. Nobody knows how many go unreported.
Mazulu,
I think it's because angels probably don't exist.
How would I know when an angel was trying to communicate with me? What form would that communication take? Would I see the angel?
That's quite complicated. Things such as the white tunnel could be a result of reduced oxygen supply to the visual cortex or other parts of the brain dealing with the processing of vision, for example. Thinking of loved ones when your life hangs in the balance is very very common. Seeing angels or other religious figures is most likely a culturally conditioned response.
Nobody can recount information from before they were born, unless they were previously told about it or read about it, or whatever.
What is the evidence that a soul exists?
You can't use near death experiences to prove there is a soul, and then also use the fact that there is a soul to explain near death experiences. That is circular reasoning.
And they are also consistent with an oxygen-deprived brain.
Maybe people don't love Darth Vader to the same extent that they love their mother or other loved ones. On the other hand, how do you know that nobody reports experiences with Superman or Kermit the Frog? I'm sure those experiences, if they exist, would not be widely reported by religious organisations, for example.
Why?
Consciousness is likely to be an emergent phenomenon. The brain is a very complex thing.
How do you know that science hasn't reproduced consciousness, though? Please explain what consciousness is.
No. 8 million NDEs are showing us things about how the brain behaves when it is near death.
Maybe they already have. How do you know you computer is not conscious?
Like the ones where people meet the Easter Bunny, perhaps, or Elvis?
I think it's because angels probably don't exist.
How would I know when an angel was trying to communicate with me? What form would that communication take? Would I see the angel?
That's quite complicated. Things such as the white tunnel could be a result of reduced oxygen supply to the visual cortex or other parts of the brain dealing with the processing of vision, for example. Thinking of loved ones when your life hangs in the balance is very very common. Seeing angels or other religious figures is most likely a culturally conditioned response.
Nobody can recount information from before they were born, unless they were previously told about it or read about it, or whatever.
What is the evidence that a soul exists?
You can't use near death experiences to prove there is a soul, and then also use the fact that there is a soul to explain near death experiences. That is circular reasoning.
And they are also consistent with an oxygen-deprived brain.
Maybe people don't love Darth Vader to the same extent that they love their mother or other loved ones. On the other hand, how do you know that nobody reports experiences with Superman or Kermit the Frog? I'm sure those experiences, if they exist, would not be widely reported by religious organisations, for example.
Why?
Consciousness is likely to be an emergent phenomenon. The brain is a very complex thing.
How do you know that science hasn't reproduced consciousness, though? Please explain what consciousness is.
No. 8 million NDEs are showing us things about how the brain behaves when it is near death.
Maybe they already have. How do you know you computer is not conscious?
Like the ones where people meet the Easter Bunny, perhaps, or Elvis?
Oxygen deprivation (hypoxia) diminishes conscousness. But the near death experience is described as being more real than reality.
There are things that both computers and conscousness can do, like processing information, manipulating objects, regulating feedback loops. But there is one thing that a computer cannot be programmed to do (actually two things): feel pain and pleasure. Nobody knows how to make a machine do that. The near death experience is described, independtly of culture, as disconnecting from the brain/body. Which is probably why people feel such joy and happiness, because those connections to all of the physical and emotional pain of the body are being disconnected.
How do we know that computers are not conscious? Because that would be anthropormphizing my computer (which is a big no no in science).
I don't remember what it's actually called or how it's labeled, but science tries to use everything it knows to explain a phenomena before it resorts to adding something new. Consciousness (suffering/pleasure) are quite simply beyond what science can explain. Something new is called for.
So nobody wants to admit there is nothing in the standard model that can be used to build a machine that will feel pain/pleasure. In fact, science is clearly incomplete because it would not be able to demonstrate or prove scientifically that the machine really did feel pain/pleasure or anything at all. So it's really no surprise that when we die, we experience joy, we float above our body and fly off into heaven. Clearly that is the part of the biological machine that feels the pain and pleasure of being alive. All those electrical and electrochemcial signals are just modulating the experiences that consciousness experiences.
Since nobody can dispute what I say about consciousness, then I guess the 8 million NDE evidence really does mean what we think it means: there is an afterlife.
Since nobody can dispute what I say about consciousness, then I guess the 8 million NDE evidence really does mean what we think it means: there is an afterlife.
Mazulu,
The brain can play some funny tricks on itself. There's no question that people undergoing near death experiences are unconscious.
How would you know if a computer felt pain or pleasure? For that matter, how do you know if another human being feels pain or pleasure? This is a common problem in philosophy.
Yes, it does feel like that, apparently. That's very far from proof that the brain and body actually are disconnected.
If you believe the soul is separate from the body, then my question to you is to explain how the soul can cause the physical body to do anything. Does it send messages to the body somehow? If so, by what means? Can we detect these messages using appropriate measuring apparatus?
How do you know that I'm conscious? Aren't you just anthropomophising words on a screen?
This is like the "God of the gaps" argument. If science can't explain something in full right now, then it will never be able to do so; therefore God exists. Unfortunately, that argument fails every time that science explains something new, which it has done over and over again.
We know that consciousness is a product of brains. We don't know all the details yet. But there's no reason to hypothesise the existence of a "soul", for example. Consciousness is a natural phenomenon, not a supernatural one.
Suppose there's a temperature sensor that monitors the temperature of some kind of system. When it gets too hot, the machine sends a signal to a computer saying, in effect, "Warning! This is too hot!" This might be the computer in your car when there's a hole in your radiator, for example. Tell me: is it fair to say that your car computer is then feeling "pain" at a non-normal state of hotness that it has sensed? Or is this not pain because your car computer is not "conscious"?
Define "consciousness" for me. I've already asked you once.
I don't think anybody has argued that science is complete. If it was, I guess we wouldn't need scientists any more.
How does consciousness communicate with those electrical signals in the nerves and the brain?
I've just disputed it. Didn't you notice?
The brain can play some funny tricks on itself. There's no question that people undergoing near death experiences are unconscious.
How would you know if a computer felt pain or pleasure? For that matter, how do you know if another human being feels pain or pleasure? This is a common problem in philosophy.
Yes, it does feel like that, apparently. That's very far from proof that the brain and body actually are disconnected.
If you believe the soul is separate from the body, then my question to you is to explain how the soul can cause the physical body to do anything. Does it send messages to the body somehow? If so, by what means? Can we detect these messages using appropriate measuring apparatus?
How do you know that I'm conscious? Aren't you just anthropomophising words on a screen?
This is like the "God of the gaps" argument. If science can't explain something in full right now, then it will never be able to do so; therefore God exists. Unfortunately, that argument fails every time that science explains something new, which it has done over and over again.
We know that consciousness is a product of brains. We don't know all the details yet. But there's no reason to hypothesise the existence of a "soul", for example. Consciousness is a natural phenomenon, not a supernatural one.
Suppose there's a temperature sensor that monitors the temperature of some kind of system. When it gets too hot, the machine sends a signal to a computer saying, in effect, "Warning! This is too hot!" This might be the computer in your car when there's a hole in your radiator, for example. Tell me: is it fair to say that your car computer is then feeling "pain" at a non-normal state of hotness that it has sensed? Or is this not pain because your car computer is not "conscious"?
Define "consciousness" for me. I've already asked you once.
I don't think anybody has argued that science is complete. If it was, I guess we wouldn't need scientists any more.
How does consciousness communicate with those electrical signals in the nerves and the brain?
I've just disputed it. Didn't you notice?
Unconscious? If they're having an NDE then they're either hovering over their body or they're talking to dead relatives or God. They're conscious, they're just "away from the body", be back soon.
If scientists could give a computer emotions, pain/pleasure, then it's possible that your computer might hate you, want to kill or destroy you, and will do anything in its power to hurt you. It's about motivation. If your computer knows you have important files, it might delete them just to spite you. But how do you make a computer really feel that way? All computers do is store machine language code, as voltages, in memory locations.
How do I know other people feel pain and pleasure? I guess because they have motives.
A Higgs field gives mass to weak force particles. Why not a "consciousness" field that gives consciousness to the brain? Admittedly, such a consciousness is not very sophisticated on it's own, but when it connects to the body, there are lots of mental resources available to this consciousness, this soul. This soul has a relationship to the consciousness field analogous to the relationship between an electron and a hole in a semiconductor chip. So, in a sense, the soul is attracted to the consciousness field. But since the soul is something that has consciousness, then one might say that the soul loves the consciousness field. The consciousness field is commonly called God. Consistent with the 8 million Near Death Experience reports, the soul is trying to recombine with God, that's why people report feelings of love and joy. It is this attraction between the soul and God that makes emotions possible.
You're human, I can tell.
I described a model, above. A consciousness field.
8 million Americans will tell you from personal experience that the brain is not the source of consciousness. If there is something like a "consciousness field", then it most definitely is beyond the natural world.
If I power-up a circuit board, and I run a screwdriver across pins on a chip, causing it to spark, does the circuit board suffer pain? Or does it like the pleasure of the short circuit? It is the scientific community's burden to show proof that the circuit board is indeed a consciousness.
The ability to experience pain, pleasure, other senses.
Take a network of neurons, axons, dendrites, and some unseen magic, and consciousness emerges.