We Actually Do Know that Literal “Spirits” Aren’t Real

[Analytics]

16 hours ago, manol said:

Hi Analytics, obviously I'm not @BlueDreams, but I hope you don't mind me replying.  I respect you and your skepticism.

Of course not--I’m always interested in other people’s perspectives; thank you.

16 hours ago, manol said:

My understanding is that anecdotal evidence is considered to be the least reliable type of scientific evidence, but sometimes it is all that is available. Medical case studies, for instance, are based on anecdotal evidence. NDE studies conducted by medical professionals are in the same general category. All of the authors I mentioned in my previous post are medical professionals, though I do not know how many of them have published peer-reviewed research on near-death experiences. I have encountered at least one  such paper by Dr. Jeffrey Long but did not read it as it was behind a paywall.

That's fair. Anecdotal evidence is evidence. The question is what can we infer from it. If I asked 100 people which line appeared longer, A or B (the Müller-Lyer illusion), if 90% said B that wouldn’t be evidence that B really is longer.

16 hours ago, manol said:

A broken clock being right twice a day is a mathematical certainty.  NDE accounts accurately describing events the patient could not possibly have witnessed normally are not.  Nor would it be trivial to reliably estimate the probability of NDE accounts accurately describing events the patient could not possibly have witnessed normally.   Without such an estimate any dismissal of such NDE accounts which have been documented by medical professionals as being due to "luck" or some version of "it was bound to happen anyway" is conjecture, in my opinion.

Good point. 

16 hours ago, manol said:

The following I post not because it is a persuasive argument (it most certainly is not!), but because it is a snapshot of the alternative perspective that near-death experience accounts offer to the rest of us. From an NDE account in an online article by Dr. Jeffrey Long:

"There was not one single part of me or part of anything else that was not love. Individuals did not exist in the same way as we do here. I was still me, but I was also part of the loving. I KNEW things without hearing a single spoken word. I WAS love. I KNEW that all religions had it wrong. There is no way rules and judgment could flow from this place. Earthly religions made it complicated when it was very easy. There is only love, and all of us are part of it. There is NO way that we cannot be loved. We ARE love. Time did not exist. I have always loved my family on earth, but I did not miss them. I did not think of them. I was more joyful than I ever have been. I felt utterly connected to everything and everyone. We ARE inter-connected as one. There is no such thing as 'death'. This experience has changed me."

When I read this, the Beatles song “All You Need Is Love” came into my mind:

Quote

 

Nothing you can make that can't be made (love)
No one you can save that can't be saved (love)
Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time (love)
It's easy

 

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
 

Love is all you need

Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love

 

This song was inspired, of course, by the drug LSD.

"The rest of the trouble sprang from the ethos of 1967 itself - a passive atmosphere in which anything involving struggle, conflict, or difficulty seemed laughably unenlightened. ‘It’s easy’ - the half-ingenuous, half-sarcastic refrain of ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE - expressed both this starry-eyed mood and The Beatles’ non-evaluative attitude to their music in the dazzling light of LSD.” (MacDonald, Ian. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties. Chicago Review Press. Kindle Edition.) 

I have a few friends who have done LSD and mushrooms,  and their descriptions of psychedelic trips sound a lot like the descriptions of NDE’s that are in the Long paper you shared--floating above your body, a heightened sense of awareness, seeing things in vivid colors, the perception of the passing of time changing, etc.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice this, and I googled "similarities between nde's and lsd”. A lot of articles came up. For example, here is a link to a recent article in Psychology Today entitled: How Similar Are Near-Death Experiences to Acid Trips?: New research suggests that there is something to this idea.

However, there are some elements of NDE’s/OBE’s that are not found in typical psychedelic trips: meeting a deceased loved one, a life review, and a threshold of no return. See “Study analyzes the similarities between near-death experiences and psychedelic experiences" at News-Medical.net.

Of course dying is not an identical biological process to taking a psychedelic drug, so we wouldn’t expect the experiences to be identical. But since there is convincing evidence that some of the elements of NDEs can be replicated through biological processes, it’s quite possible that all of them are.

16 hours ago, manol said:

Link to the article: https://www.espiritualidades.com.br/Artigos/L_autores/LONG_Jeffrey_tit_Evidence_survival_consciousnee_in_Near-Death_experiences.pdf

I read this 50+ page paper in its entirety. It was interesting--thank you for sharing.

The objective of the paper is to lay out the evidence "for the reality of an afterlife.”  In general, I’m left unconvinced. I just don’t think that stories that are told after the fact are convincing evidence that physicists are fundamentally wrong about the laws of physics within a well-defined domain of applicability (Sean Carroll’s arguments) or that consciousness and thinking don’t emerge out of biological processes in the way that cognitive neuroscience has discovered (Gazzaniga’s argument).

To me, the strongest evidence in favor of an after-life interpretation of NDE’s would be prospective studies such as the AWARE study. If somebody died, floated above the operating table and accurately saw some stuffed raccoons playing poker on a secret shelf above the operating table that nobody in the room knew about, that would be impressive. In the AWARE study, dozens of rooms in seven hospitals were set up with such things over the course of a 4-year study. 2,060 people suffered cardiac arrest in those rooms during the study period. Of those 2,060 near-deaths, precisely zero people accurately saw the secret cues after feeling that they were floating around the operating room. And other studies have been done with similar results. At a minimum, this should tell us that such experiences are a lot less common than we are lead to believe. And at some point, negative results from such studies will constitute evidence that people don’t really float above the room and see things which are impossible to see without physical eyes.

The paper you linked to does in fact briefly touch on these studies, and puts a more positive spin on it. It says:

Quote

Several investigators prospectively studied the accuracy of OBEs during near- death experiences. These studies usually involved placing targets that might be seen during OBEs in critical care areas of a hospital where an NDE might occur. These targets were usually placed in locations not visible to the patients or the hospital staff. Very few NDEs occurred during these studies, and even fewer OBEs were reported. None of the NDErs in these studies had OBEs with their visual perception directed toward the target. These studies could neither confirm nor refute the reality of OBE observations during NDEs. It is important to continue prospective NDE investigations with this methodology to help understand the special consciousness consistently described in NDEs.

Repeatable results from that type of experiment would be the type of evidence that I would take seriously. So far, the results are entirely consistent with a materialistic viewpoint.

In general, (for a lack of a better word) “real" science progresses towards figuring stuff out. It doesn’t go around in circles. There are some things scientists haven’t figured out yet and there are some things that are beyond knowing, but science figures stuff out. Charles Darwin was the first scientist to predict the earth had to have been at least hundreds of millions of years old, and scientists from multiple disciplines have proven him right. We used to speculate on what happened to the dinosaurs, but we now know it was a specific astroid with a known crater. We now know how the brains of robins actually take advantage of quantum spookiness to have extremely precise magnetic compasses that they can use to migrate across continents. And we have detailed theories that are being validated for how clown fish use quantum spookiness to smell the reefs where they were born that are dozens of miles away across all sorts of currents and aquatic environments.  I’d highly recommend the book Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology by JohnJoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili for a look at the extraordinarily subtle things that science is figuring out in detail.

The reason I bring that up is that the so-called evidence “for the reality of an afterlife” is fundamentally religious in nature--it reads like apologetics. People are believers in this abstract concept of an “afterlife”, and are trying to find evidence to rationalize their testimonies. If serious scientists were seriously engaged in this stuff, they’d be looking for the details of how “spirits” interface with the brain. They’d come up with hypotheses for how Quantum Field Theory should be modified to account for spirit forces and spirit matter that allegedly interact with the brain but don’t show up in the experiments that QFT insist would reveal them. They’d have detailed hypotheses for what it means for a disembodied spirit to see without having eyes to focus and isolate reflected light rays. They’d have detailed theories for how a disembodied spirit can think without a brain, and they’d be working furiously on figuring out what role the brain plays in thinking if the spirit is what’s really doing the heavy lifting. They’d define what it means to see without eyes focusing and isolating light rays. Read Life on the Edge to look at the extraordinarily subtle things on obscure topics that mainstream science is figuring out, and compare it to the questions that don’t even cross the minds of NDE enthusiasts. It’s the difference between trying to peel back how the world really works all the way to the core and between rationalizing a specific religious belief.

Christof Koch, an elite neuroscientist, recently wrote an article in Scientific American called “What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about the Brain.” He has looked at this body of evidence in some detail and says:

Quote

 

NDEs are not fancy flights of the imagination. They share broad commonalities—becoming pain-free, seeing a bright light at the end of a tunnel and other visual phenomena, detaching from one’s body and floating above it, or even flying off into space (out-of-body experiences). They might include meeting loved ones, living or dead, or spiritual beings such as angels; a Proustian recollection or even review of lifetime memories, both good and bad (“my life flashed in front of my eyes”); or a distorted sense of time and space. There are some underlying physiological explanations for these perceptions, such as progressively narrowing tunnel vision. Reduced blood flow to the visual periphery of the retina means vision loss occurs there first...

I accept the reality of these intensely felt experiences. They are as authentic as any other subjective feeling or perception. As a scientist, however, I operate under the hypothesis that all our thoughts, memories, percepts and experiences are an ineluctable consequence of the natural causal powers of our brain rather than of any supernatural ones. That premise has served science and its handmaiden, technology, extremely well over the past few centuries. Unless there is extraordinary, compelling, objective evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to abandon this assumption.

The challenge, then, is to explain NDEs within a natural framework....

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-near-death-experiences-reveal-about-the-brain/

I’d highly recommend that entire article. 

 

 

[longview]

23 minutes ago, Peppermint Patty said:

You might find this interesting.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ4aBaofwDc

Dan McClellan might appear to be scholarly and well-spoken but he really does NOT have much wisdom or depth. There are many forces at play today in this "vale of tears" such as:

• wokist derangement
• persecution of traditionalist around the world
• Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum (WEF)
• many government regulations to curtail small family farms
• dumbing down of education of K thru 12 and many colleges
• destabilization of the family (basic unit)
• unfair disruption of women's sports
• surgical mutilation and chemical castration of under-age children
• fanatical hatred of the state of Israel and ever increasing antisemitism
• an increase of violent thugs across society

All of these things and more could have one thing in common: Lucifer is raging in the hearts of men and orchestrating many things at once. Those things might be considered to be leaves that Jesus spoke of in His parable: Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

21 hours ago, manol said:

A broken clock being right twice a day is a mathematical certainty.  NDE accounts accurately describing events the patient could not possibly have witnessed normally are not.

It’s less like a broken clock and more like the principals laid out here:

https://www.amazon.com/Improbability-Principle-Coincidences-Miracles-Events/dp/B00I3LJAI6/

[Teancum]

28 minutes ago, longview said:

Dan McClellan might appear to be scholarly and well-spoken but he really does NOT have much wisdom or depth.

Really?  On what do you base this conclusion?

[Teancum]

28 minutes ago, longview said:

wokist derangement

What is this?  Can you define this?  Seems politically bent as does your entire post.

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, longview said:

Dan McClellan might appear to be scholarly and well-spoken but he really does NOT have much wisdom or depth. There are many forces at play today in this "vale of tears" such as:

• wokist derangement
• persecution of traditionalist around the world
• Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum (WEF)
• many government regulations to curtail small family farms
• dumbing down of education of K thru 12 and many colleges
• destabilization of the family (basic unit)
• unfair disruption of women's sports
• surgical mutilation and chemical castration of under-age children
• fanatical hatred of the state of Israel and ever increasing antisemitism
• an increase of violent thugs across society

You forgot to mention:

• Promiscuity
• Godlessness
• The mongrelization of the races
• Disrespect to high-ranking officers of the United States army

[SeekingUnderstanding]

1 hour ago, longview said:

Dan McClellan might appear to be scholarly and well-spoken but he really does NOT have much wisdom or depth. There are many forces at play today in this "vale of tears" such as:

• wokist derangement
• persecution of traditionalist around the world
• Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum (WEF)
• many government regulations to curtail small family farms
• dumbing down of education of K thru 12 and many colleges
• destabilization of the family (basic unit)
• unfair disruption of women's sports
• surgical mutilation and chemical castration of under-age children
• fanatical hatred of the state of Israel and ever increasing antisemitism
• an increase of violent thugs across society

All of these things and more could have one thing in common: Lucifer is raging in the hearts of men and orchestrating many things at once. Those things might be considered to be leaves that Jesus spoke of in His parable: Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

I will just note that you didn't address a single point Dan made, but instead resorted to saying that Satan is behind the message. I wonder why that is? Actually no I don't. If you can't address the argument, attack the messenger am I right?

Edited May 16, 2024 by SeekingUnderstanding

[Analytics]

4 hours ago, longview said:

Dan McClellan might appear to be scholarly and well-spoken but he really does NOT have much wisdom or depth. There are many forces at play today in this "vale of tears" such as:

• wokist derangement
• persecution of traditionalist around the world
• Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum (WEF)
• many government regulations to curtail small family farms
• dumbing down of education of K thru 12 and many colleges
• destabilization of the family (basic unit)
• unfair disruption of women's sports
• surgical mutilation and chemical castration of under-age children
• fanatical hatred of the state of Israel and ever increasing antisemitism
• an increase of violent thugs across society

All of these things and more could have one thing in common: Lucifer is raging in the hearts of men and orchestrating many things at once. Those things might be considered to be leaves that Jesus spoke of in His parable: Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

I normally wouldn’t offer a serious reply to something like this, but since the topic of this thread is broadly about what we actually know, I’ll go ahead and make a response.

Bill Gates said the following about the book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress:

"The world is getting better, even if it doesn’t always feel that way. I’m glad we have brilliant thinkers like Steven Pinker to help us see the big picture. Enlightenment Now is not only the best book Pinker’s ever written. It’s my new favorite book of all time.”

The opening paragraphs of Enlightenment Now touch on the exact same topic as this thread. The book begins by saying the following:

Quote

 

In the course of several decades giving public lectures on language, mind, and human nature, I have been asked some mighty strange questions. Which is the best language? Are clams and oysters conscious? When will I be able to upload my mind to the Internet? Is obesity a form of violence?

But the most arresting question I have ever fielded followed a talk in which I explained the commonplace among scientists that mental life consists of patterns of activity in the tissues of the brain. A student in the audience raised her hand and asked me:

“Why should I live?”

The student’s ingenuous tone made it clear that she was neither suicidal nor sarcastic but genuinely curious about how to find meaning and purpose if traditional religious beliefs about an immortal soul are undermined by our best science.

 

Pinker, Steven. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress (p. 3). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

The book goes on to explain that starting in the 17th century, enlightenment thinking began. The themes of this era are reason, science, humanism, and progress. Because of these things, life has gotten much better for a greater and greater percentage of the population in almost every conceivable way. Supported by an overabudance of data that makes it a bit tedious at times, the book explains how the world has radically improved in the following ways:

• Mortality rates
• Health
• Sustenance
• Wealth
• Inequality
• The environment
• Peace
• Safety
• Terrorism
• Democracy
• Equal Rights
• Knowledge
• Quality of life
• Happiness
• Existential threats

On average, the quality of life for a large and growing percentage of humans is much, much better than its ever been, and if we continue to embrace the values of the enlightenment and the tools which have been proven to lead to real knowledge, we can continue this trajectory of making it better. People who lustfully look to the Book of Revelation and fantasize about God raining global destruction down upon humanity for turning away from ancient myths that were written in days of utter ignorance aren’t the real heroes of this story.

Edited May 16, 2024 by Analytics

[manol]

7 hours ago, Analytics said:

Of course dying is not an identical biological process to taking a psychedelic drug, so we wouldn’t expect the experiences to be identical. But since there is convincing evidence that some of the elements of NDEs can be replicated through biological processes, it’s quite possible that all of them are. 

If it becomes feasible to safely induce an NDE-like experience (LSD and/or Ayahausca come to mind as possibilities, though I haven't studied about either), that could be very interesting.

 

7 hours ago, Analytics said:

I read this 50+ page paper in its entirety...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-near-death-experiences-reveal-about-the-brain/

I’d highly recommend that entire article.

I'm genuinely impressed that you read the entire article; I didn't ask you to because that seemed like way too big of an ask.  I read the article you linked to as well.   Imo his premise that "all our thoughts, memories, percepts and experiences are an ineluctable consequence of the natural causal powers of our brain" predictably shapes his analysis.  But again the prospect of technology advancing to the point of being able to safely induce an NDE-like experience came to mind. 

(When I read that 50-page article, I kept wanting to know more about the specific experiences of the outliers, like the 5.3% who came back saying God does NOT exist!   And I was disappointed that the author did not find a way to include input from those who had negative NDEs.)

 

7 hours ago, Analytics said:

To me, the strongest evidence in favor of an after-life interpretation of NDE’s would be prospective studies such as the AWARE study. If somebody died, floated above the operating table and accurately saw some stuffed raccoons playing poker on a secret shelf above the operating table that nobody in the room knew about, that would be impressive. In the AWARE study, dozens of rooms in seven hospitals were set up with such things over the course of a 4-year study. 2,060 people suffered cardiac arrest in those rooms during the study period. Of those 2,060 near-deaths, precisely zero people accurately saw the secret cues after feeling that they were floating around the operating room. And other studies have been done with similar results. At a minimum, this should tell us that such experiences are a lot less common than we are lead to believe. And at some point, negative results from such studies will constitute evidence that people don’t really float above the room and see things which are impossible to see without physical eyes.

I recall decades ago reading an NDE account wherein a patient described observing a slipper atop a very tall cabinet or somesuch in an operating room setting during the out-of-body portion of their NDE.  The observation was confirmed, the slipper was located where the patient had said it was, and my recollection is that this incident helped inspire the AWARE study, which as you point out, failed to produce any evidence supporting out-of-body observations during NDEs.  The article you read presented its explanation for that result, and another possible explanation might be that the stuffed raccoons simply did not attract the person's attention while they were out of body.  Here is why I think this is a possibility:

I'm going by memory here unfortunately so I cannot give a reference, but there was a controlled experiment done wherein the subject was supposed to go out-of-body and read the contents of a sealed envelope locked in another room.  Two scientists, a man and a woman, were monitoring the experiment from yet another room.  The subject claimed to have gone out-of-body and to have been unable to maintain any interest in reading the contents of the envelope.  Instead, he moved into the room where the two scientists were having a conversation that interested him.  He was able to accurately recount their conversation, but the experiment was a failure because he did not read and accurately report the contents of the envelope.  My point being, that which attracts and holds our attention when out-of-body may not be that which would have if we were in the body.  I came across another description of this same experiment years later, and this second description identified the subject as Robert Monroe.

Also [anecdote disclaimer], my own careful-but-amateur experimenting, which involved what might be called "non-ordinary sensing" rather than full-on out-of-body exploration, leads me to believe that focused attention is a critical element, and that if attention is not maintained the results degenerate into what one would expect from random chance.  (If your background includes statistical analytics, and if you'd be open to an exchange of private messages, I would appreciate your expert analysis; I stumbled through introductory statistics but that was forty years ago.)

So in summary, I don't find it improbable that a person having a near-death experience would not notice things they normally would, like a stuffed raccoon in an odd place, if something else is dominating their attention focus.  

 

6 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

It’s less like a broken clock and more like the principals laid out here:

https://www.amazon.com/Improbability-Principle-Coincidences-Miracles-Events/dp/B00I3LJAI6/

That looks like a very interesting book, but I probably won't read it any time soon, as my limited book-reading time goes into other topics. 

The blurb on Amazon mentions "The laws of inevitability", and it is not clear to me that there is an "inevitability" aspect to near-death experience accounts which accurately describe events the person could not possibly have been normally aware of.  If you've read the book, is such an "inevitibility" obvious to you?  Maybe I'm not understanding what the author means by "the laws of inevitability".

Edited May 17, 2024 by manol

[BlueDreams]

On 5/14/2024 at 2:13 PM, Analytics said:

Hi BlueDreams,

First of all, thank you for thinking about what I’ve written and for the thoughtful reply. I read it twice.

Something my mind kept going back to as I read this is the brain research about how our perceptions and memories are typically related to perceptions of outside things that are real, and how they are also driven by the brain interpolating, extrapolating, and in general trying to make sense of what’s going on, including things the body does that aren’t driven by the conscious mind.

Here is a longish quote from Gazzaniga about how the brain makes up stories:

Gazzaniga, Michael S.. Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain (pp. 91-92). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. 

If someone is experiencing cardiac arrest and remembers details about what was happening while her heart was stopped and experienced the event from floating above the room, I think the best explanation is that the physical body still received some stimuli from its immediate surroundings that was weak and confused, and that the interpreter functionality of the brain constructed the experience. A near-death experience isn’t necessarily going to be the same thing as a total-death experience. 

Stories about things that take place away from the physical body are more impressive, such as the story about Crystal. But they are anecdotal in nature. I can’t help but wonder if there was conscious or unconscious embellishment going on, or whether the stories that are highlighted are just the ones that are most lucky--a broken clock is still right twice a day; if hundreds of millions of people have NDE’s, we’d expect that luck would result in a few of them sounding more impressive than they really are in terms of proving an actual spirit leaving the body and having an authentic real-world experience.

Regarding the stories of people who described what they saw in terms of more vivid colors and seeing things made up of particles, etc., to me the accounts sound identical to how some people describe the experiences they have when taking mushrooms, LSD, or related drugs. And its interesting that people who take such drugs often do so because it results in what is to them an authentic, deeply spiritual experience. I have nothing against finding transcendence through such means if done responsibly, and if the experience is real to them then that is great. But it doesn’t mean the events aren’t driven by brain chemistry that is being altered either by drugs or by the brain going through the stress of dying.

I'll try to be less long winded for this bit. Manol  gave a good response and I don't want to be too repetitive. 

This reminded me of the explanation I remember watching that took a purely naturalist response based on the information we already know about perception. Some of this is likely tied to it. Even if we take NDE's by their word and they really are experiencing something outside of physical consciousness, their experiences would still have to go through the filter of their brain and temporal descriptions to transmit the stories. Many NDE's will note and describe the limitations that said reality gives to trying to describe what exactly they experienced. 

But it also runs into limitations when giving a solid explanation for all that they experienced. For example, many of the stories I referenced are where their bodies would have had severe limitations in both perception, physical visibility, and just where it was compared to what they saw or experienced. From people leaving the room where their body was at to obstructions blocking of sight, to foreign objects that they didn't have a name for being described in detail. 

Likewise people who've experienced drug or psychologically induced hallucinations have also had NDE's and their accounts will usually describe a distinct difference. Not by degree, but more in kind. This difference can somewhat be seen with FMRI's as to what areas light up in the brain with said events. This was in an audible book so I don't have direct quotes. But to summarize from memory, thinking about NDE's would light up regions tied to memory. Whereas thinking about experiences like LSD would not. But there's other major differences. Psychedelics will usually warrant experiences that are very unique to the individual. There's no real rhyme or reason to them except that it fits within symbols, thoughts, and issues related to the person.  These are at best loosely tied to reality around them. NDE's may have personal aspects to it, but follow pretty specific theme across accounts.  How these are described are also likely to vary. I've known I few who've done psychedelics (usually medically guided ketamine and once shrooms). They generally described very helpful experiences that have real effects on them afterwards. But none of them thinks what they experienced really happened to them. They know they're hallucinations induced by drugs. That is not what's described by people who have NDE's, who often described it as more real than anything else they've ever experienced.

On 5/14/2024 at 2:13 PM, Analytics said:

 

Regarding the definition of consciousness, I think I read that quote the same way you do; the hard problem of consciousness is indeed hard, and that includes defining what it is. Another Gazzaniga book that I recently started reading is The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind. Currently I’m in the middle of Chapter 3. What’s really interesting is that Gazzaniga tells the story in some detail of how thinkers thought about consciousness from the ancient Egyptians through Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, etc., all the way to the present day. The original semi-modern thinkers back in the 17th century (e.g. Rene Descartes) believed that the body contained some sort of spirit that was driving things behind the scenes, and they were earnestly looking for how the spirit connected to the brain. This is what was originally believed by the top scientists who studied the topic back then, but the theory was eventually abandoned by mainstream neuroscientists for the belief that the brain makes the mind. This shift didn’t take place based on a materialistic philosophy. Rather, it took place because that is where the evidence led. 

If there are any other specific things you’ve said that you’d like me to reconsider or comment on, please let me know.

Best,

Analytics

 

It is interesting to think of how definitions of shifted based on focus. Evidence is still grounded largely in physical evidence and repeatable experimentation. And that will limit how one define amorphous constructs like consciousness. Which is more what I meant. 

As an aside, another book that I read recently that indirectly relates to this was The Awakened Brain by Lisa  Miller. It discusses the science around the effect of spirituality on the brain. I really enjoyed it, but with this convo and other things that it's resurfaced, there's still this really indirect study of things like will, consciousness, and decision making. Science to me will always have a bit of a limitation to describing the human experience, let alone the spirit and/or consciousness of us. It's not really built to capture all that it is...but rather to dissect and analyze aspects of it. And that's absolutely valuable. It's just not all there is. 

 

With luv,

BD

[Analytics]

@manol & @BlueDreams,

 

First of all, I appreciate your kind and thoughtful replies. Not wanting to be repetitive, I’ll make two points.

First, I’ve been pushing through the audio book The Consciousness Instinct, and one of the things I found really interesting is that Gazzaniga tells the story of how mainstream neuroscience got to where it is today ("mental life consists of patterns of activity in the tissues of the brain,”  in the words of Pinker). Going back to Descartes, neuroscientists and proto-neuroscientists had been speculating and hypothesizing about how the spirt and body connected (Descartes suggested that the spirit interfaced with the body in the pineal gland). If spirits have the ability to somehow nudge our physical bodies or brains, even if subtly, then in principle science should be able to detect them. But one after another, all of those hypotheses of how the spirit and body interfaced failed. Mainstream science didn’t start with a materialistic assumption that was embraced on philosophical grounds. They abandoned spirits because there hasn’t been a coherent definition of what a spirit is that has withstood careful examination by scientists, including the ones who believed in spirits and were looking for them. When you add to that what we’ve learned about brain functionality through examining people with broken brains, a convincing picture emerges about how mind emerges from the brian.

My second point is more of a question. From the Jeffrey Long paper we read the following starting on page 41 (the itallics are in the original, what I want to focus on is bolded:

Quote

The NDERF study of God in near-death experiences found that the most common descriptor of God was love.195 Love in NDEs has already been discussed, but the awareness of love seems especially strong when God is encountered. Here are examples of what NDErs said about God’s love:

The light and the presence of the entity was clearly God. It was present everywhere and a part of everything. There were no limits to the power of God. There was unconditional acceptance, forgiveness, and love.196

The entire encounter was about God, the ultimate power of God, and God's forgiveness. The message was, "Love is the greatest power in the universe."197

God does exist. I was aware that God is not a man or woman. God is everything as pure love energy. We are God because we are one entity.198

I could go on with vast numbers of quotes like these describing the powerful and unearthly love of God. A profound and reassuring message from near-death experiences is that God loves everyone.
41

While talking about God in near-death experiences, it is noteworthy that NDErs may become aware that there is no preferred religion. Jean learned this when her heart stopped four times as she battled for her life with toxic shock syndrome. In her NDE she asked a spiritual being directly about religion:

I found myself in a city and was told this was the City of God. I was at a water fountain along with a man dressed in a long white linen robe that was tied around his waist with a cord. He told me that I could ask any question. My first question was, 'What is the right religion?' He said, 'They all are. Each religion is a pathway trying to reach the same place.' I was shown a mountain, with each religious group trying to reach the top. A distance separated the religious groups, but all were trying to get to the same place.199

Another important spiritual concept in near-death experiences is an absence of judgment. We previously discussed that judgment by other beings almost never happens during life reviews. The lack of judgment is a strong and consistent theme throughout NDEs....

Do you guys agree with Dr. Long that “there is no preferred religion” and that God isn’t in the judgement business? It seems to me that if the accounts Dr. Long has compiled have strong evidentiary value of an afterlife, then these religious messages are supported by very strong evidence and indicate that while somebody could take the path of “the one and only true and living Church” to reach God, the truth is that God doesn’t endorse that religion’s judgmentalism and claims to exclusivity.

Edited May 17, 2024 by Analytics

[Doctor Steuss]

16 hours ago, Analytics said:

On average, the quality of life for a large and growing percentage of humans is much, much better than its ever been, [...]

See, that's Satan's plan though.  If humans aren't suffering and dying young, that means they'll have more time for soul-damaging pursuits, like listening to ragtime music, and playing with face cards.

Think of the children, Analytics.  Think of the children!!!

[Tacenda]

20 hours ago, Teancum said:

What is this?  Can you define this?  Seems politically bent as does your entire post.

Can't agree more. 

[manol]

4 hours ago, Analytics said:

@manol & @BlueDreams,

First of all, I appreciate your kind and thoughtful replies.  

Thank you.  I appreciate enormously being able to have this conversation with someone who exemplifies how to disagree without being disagreeable.

 

4 hours ago, Analytics said:

First, I’ve been pushing through the audio book The Consciousness Instinct, and one of the things I found really interesting is that Gazzaniga tells the story of how mainstream neuroscience got to where it is today ("mental life consists of patterns of activity in the tissues of the brain,”  in the words of Pinker). Going back to Descartes, neuroscientists and proto-neuroscientists had been speculating and hypothesizing about how the spirt and body connected (Descartes suggested that the spirit interfaced with the body in the pineal gland). If spirits have the ability to somehow nudge our physical bodies or brains, even if subtly, then in principle science should be able to detect them. But one after another, all of those hypotheses of how the spirit and body interfaced failed. Mainstream science didn’t start with a materialistic assumption that was embraced on philosophical grounds. They abandoned spirits because there hasn’t been a coherent definition of what a spirit is that has withstood careful examination by scientists, including the ones who believed in spirits and were looking for them. When you add to that what we’ve learned about brain functionality through examining people with broken brains, a convincing picture emerges about how mind emerges from the brian.

I don't have a testable hypothesis about the physical evidence for a physical interface between "this" world and “that”. 

 

4 hours ago, Analytics said:

Do you guys agree with Dr. Long that “there is no preferred religion” and that God isn’t in the judgement business? It seems to me that if the accounts Dr. Long has compiled have strong evidentiary value of an afterlife, then these religious messages are supported by very strong evidence and indicate that while somebody could take the path of “the one and only true and living Church” to reach God, the truth is that God doesn’t endorse that religion’s judgmentalism and claims to exclusivity.

Excellent question!  Speaking only for myself of course...

It took me decades to become comfortable with the concept that God doesn't have a “preferred religion”, which concept is an element of numerous NDE accounts. For many years my interpretation/rationalization went something like this: “Of course God (or whoever the person encounters) doesn't tell people having an NDE that the LDS Church is the right one because that would be like telling students who were taking a test the answer to one of the most important questions right in the middle of the test.” (I'm no longer LDS, which no doubt is part of the reason why this concept is no longer a hurdle for me.)

Regarding God being non-judgmental, I'm not quite finished wrapping my head around this one. I can find what I think is evidence for this concept in the LDS Church but it's obviously not a mainstream teaching by any means. Ime this is a concept that calls for expanding one's “circle of inclusion” to the point where there is no longer “us and them”; there is only “us”. So this is a concept I “believe in”, and am hopefully in the process of fully internalizing.  (Note that part of being "non-judgmental" is not being judgmental towards those who are judgmental, but the act of labeling someone as "judgmental" is making a negative judgment about them... so, it's not as easy at it sounds!  It calls on me to set down and walk away from a lot of my history and baggage!)

Regarding the nature of God (“God is everywhere as pure love energy”, “God is present everywhere and a part of everything”, “We are [part of] God because we are one entity”), these ideas again are obviously not mainstream, but imo neither are they entirely foreign to the LDS canon. The LDS Church emphasizes a different view of God and I'm not theologian enough to say whether or not the two views are mutually exclusive, but I'm inclined to think there is enough overlap than one need not abandon the one in order to embrace the other. (To borrow a metaphor, one can reset their compass to draw a bigger circle which is inclusive of more truth.)

So to finally circle back to your question, yes. I agree with the findings of Dr. Long.

Edited to add:  In my opinion “God is everywhere as pure love energy”, “God is present everywhere and a part of everything”, “We are [part of] God because we are one entity” constitutes a megathought.  Incorporated into one's personal belief system, imo it's a "this changes everything" concept.  At least such has been my experience, to the extent to which I've been able to internalize it. 

Edited May 17, 2024 by manol

[mfbukowski]

On 5/15/2024 at 1:18 PM, manol said:

My understanding is that anecdotal evidence is considered to be the least reliable type of scientific evidence, but sometimes it is all that is available. Medical case studies, for instance, are based on anecdotal evidence. NDE studies conducted by medical professionals are in the same general category.

Thanks for proving by science that "faith healing" ACTUALLY happens.

The "placebo effect" is direct evidence that it works; in attempting to prove one "truth", the evidence can also be seen as confirming what wasn't even considered.

Quote

 

Dictionary

Definitions from Oxford Languages · Learn more

pla·ce·bo ef·fect

/pləˈsēbō əˈfekt,ēˈfekt/

noun

a beneficial effect produced by a placebo drug or treatment, which cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient's belief in that treatment.

"orthodox doctors dismiss the positive results as a result of the placebo effect"

 

So according to this, the healing is "due to ... faith".

Science proves that faith works for healing.   OOPS    

And precisely how does THAT work?

Get out the "Faith-O-Meter" I guess.... 

Spirit / energy is matter. - Joseph Smith, Oppenheimer, and Einstein.   E=MC2

 

Edited May 17, 2024 by mfbukowski

[Smiley McGee]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Thanks for proving by science that "faith healing" ACTUALLY happens.

The "placebo effect" is direct evidence that it works; in attempting to prove one "truth", the evidence can also be seen as confirming what wasn't even considered.

So according to this, the healing is "due to ... faith".

Science proves that faith works for healing.   OOPS    

And precisely how does THAT work?

Get out the "Faith-O-Meter" I guess.... 

Spirit / energy is matter. - Joseph Smith, Oppenheimer, and Einstein.   E=MC2

 

 Waiting for someone to close a priesthood blessing with "All these things I bless you with, according to the placebo effect, in the name of ...." 

[Analytics]

8 hours ago, manol said:

Thank you.  I appreciate enormously being able to have this conversation with someone who exemplifies how to disagree without being disagreeable.

Back at you. I appreciate you opening up with sincere answers to those last questions.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me, and for learning a little bit about mine.

[BlueDreams]

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

@manol & @BlueDreams,

 

First of all, I appreciate your kind and thoughtful replies. Not wanting to be repetitive, I’ll make two points.

First, I’ve been pushing through the audio book The Consciousness Instinct, and one of the things I found really interesting is that Gazzaniga tells the story of how mainstream neuroscience got to where it is today ("mental life consists of patterns of activity in the tissues of the brain,”  in the words of Pinker). Going back to Descartes, neuroscientists and proto-neuroscientists had been speculating and hypothesizing about how the spirt and body connected (Descartes suggested that the spirit interfaced with the body in the pineal gland). If spirits have the ability to somehow nudge our physical bodies or brains, even if subtly, then in principle science should be able to detect them. But one after another, all of those hypotheses of how the spirit and body interfaced failed. Mainstream science didn’t start with a materialistic assumption that was embraced on philosophical grounds. They abandoned spirits because there hasn’t been a coherent definition of what a spirit is that has withstood careful examination by scientists, including the ones who believed in spirits and were looking for them. When you add to that what we’ve learned about brain functionality through examining people with broken brains, a convincing picture emerges about how mind emerges from the brian.

 

It's an interesting history. It just feels a little incomplete. Studying spirit by scientific direct means very likely schluffed off. But the assumption that we are more than these flesh sacks likely hasn't followed suit nearly as extensively. In recent polls, at least half of scientists believe in a higher power. Most of that half define that to some degree as God. Most, particularly outside the US/UK do not see this as conflictual but more like different ways to look at the world. But I can see if I can find sources for what I mentioned if you need them. They're things I ran into while googling. 

Something not being of scientific study doesn't mean it's not there. It means we don't have good means or ethical methods of studying it or that it's more in the sphere of interpretation of data rather than the data giving us the answer. 

As an aside, the algorithm threw up this discussion between 2 astrophysicists about free will. It's a fun example of what I mean by having differing interpretations of similar data and observations. 

 

13 hours ago, Analytics said:

My second point is more of a question. From the Jeffrey Long paper we read the following starting on page 41 (the itallics are in the original, what I want to focus on is bolded:

Do you guys agree with Dr. Long that “there is no preferred religion” and that God isn’t in the judgement business? It seems to me that if the accounts Dr. Long has compiled have strong evidentiary value of an afterlife, then these religious messages are supported by very strong evidence and indicate that while somebody could take the path of “the one and only true and living Church” to reach God, the truth is that God doesn’t endorse that religion’s judgmentalism and claims to exclusivity.

Warning: this one will be a little long winded  

I'm pretty sure my answer will differ from Manol's. I'm purposely not reading his before answering so it won't influence how I first thought of this question.  

I want to note first that there's interpretations of people's NDE's that I don't agree with in general. Part of that is the limited period that a person has to experience this form of being. Some NDE's include explicit or implicit assumptions of limitation in explaining their experiences and what they experienced in general. And some include interpretations of events that are obviously incorrect. A funny example of this was one in the more research oriented book I read who noted meeting a man in the afterlife with a long white beard and interpreting this after coming back as being Gandolf. 

I say this to note that I don't take NDE's as absolute sources of truth. To be fair, I don't take any source as absolute truth. It all gets filtered through really fallible material that will be limited by context and capacity. And I don't say that flippantly. It's one of my core values. I see that in others and I see it within myself and my experiences. 

My current position is nuanced. On the religions things I believe and am working to engage with the truth found in the BOM: 

Quote

 I command all men, both in the east and in the west, and in the north, and in the south, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them; for out of the books which shall be written I will judge the world, every man according to their works, according to that which is written. For behold, I shall speak unto the Jews and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the Nephites and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the other tribes of the house of Israel, which I have led away, and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto all nations of the earth and they shall write it.

I also think a lot about the parable of the Olive tree found in Jacob 5. There's a very blurred ending where the whole vineyard is described as one tree and multiple trees. Each tree a people. I think the end is one body and we have a work in it...but we're not the only work being had. We're not the single source of truth. There's been divine wisdom given to everyone everywhere in every people.  What we do with that knowledge is important both individually and collectively. I've chosen a few of those works that I'm taking some time to at least go through samplings of them to explore and learn from these other sources of truth. I started with two very very different traditions. It's been so interesting to see core truths and aspects in them. Ones that I both resonate with and have to sit with and explore their potential value. Like nearby trees, I find myself supported in my own space while gleaning goodness from others and support from others. There are aspects of our faith that have exclusive claims and I think there's aspects of humanness that overaccentuate those in us as a faith...but there are aspects of our faith that have universalist claims as well that are far from exclusionary. I think those are getting more breathing space nowadays as we start to balance out the aspects of our faith that prefer comfort in absolutes.

 

Judgments another thing all together. Personally I think Judgment has a specific cultural stigma and utility that is false. It's founded in punitive assertions and expectations. It lends itself to extreme depictions when viewing other people (people as monsters, bad, etc). It often leads to confusing revenge with justice. I don't think that form of judgment is true. It's out of balance with mercy. It doesn't really have a place for love. Worse, it can warp people's sense of love. I can imagine interpretations that focus on this definition of judgmentalism going into these NDE's and coming out realizing there is no form of this in the next life. Cuz it ain't true.

That said I've seen people pendulum swing and struggle to acknowledge when something is wrong. They don't want to be mean/punitive/judgy/whathaveyou towards another so they dismiss or ignore when something is obviously wrong....let alone slightly off.

I still value judgement as needed. I prefer describing it as loving judgment to help delineate other forms. This form of judgment is grounded in love and remembering who each person around me truly is at their core (Children of God, the essence of light and truth). And then it also recognizes when something feels out of alignment with said core truth and works to try and help them realign to something closer to that core source of goodness. I'm not worried about punishment or super toeing the line. I'm concerned about becoming, healing, re-establishing peace, and reducing harm to others from people who choose to stay out of alignment.* I see that form of judgment more in another feature of some NDE's called the life reviews, where people are shown their lives and are lovingly helped through the sometimes negative impacts of their decisions. 

 

*on my good minutes. It's still work to keep myself aligned with that way of being. I have plenty of judgmental thoughts that I'm not proud of nor do I think will persist into the eternities. 

With luv,

BD

Edited May 18, 2024 by BlueDreams

[sunstoned]

On 5/16/2024 at 11:53 AM, longview said:

Dan McClellan might appear to be scholarly and well-spoken but he really does NOT have much wisdom or depth. There are many forces at play today in this "vale of tears" such as:

• wokist derangement
• persecution of traditionalist around the world
• Klaus Schwab's World Economic Forum (WEF)
• many government regulations to curtail small family farms
• dumbing down of education of K thru 12 and many colleges
• destabilization of the family (basic unit)
• unfair disruption of women's sports
• surgical mutilation and chemical castration of under-age children
• fanatical hatred of the state of Israel and ever increasing antisemitism
• an increase of violent thugs across society

All of these things and more could have one thing in common: Lucifer is raging in the hearts of men and orchestrating many things at once. Those things might be considered to be leaves that Jesus spoke of in His parable: Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

I think it would be best to keep politics out of this conversation. This sounds like a list from a MAGA rally.

[teddyaware]

7 hours ago, sunstoned said:

I think it would be best to keep politics out of this conversation. This sounds like a list from a MAGA rally.

The National Institutes of Heath have just announced that suicide risks are 1200% higher among those who’ve had so-called “gender affirming surgery,” but you don’t want to talk about it because opposition to this Joseph Mengele inspired insanity is associated mainly with those who espouse traditional conservative family values? How strangely ironic it is that it’s the very people who support the shocking butchery of “gender affirming surgery,” and the mass slaughter of the innocent unborn, who are always equating those who hold traditional conservative family values with the monsters who perpetuated the fiendish horrors of Europe in the mid-20th century. Talk about a monumental lack of self awareness! But this is what happens when people turn away from the Spirit of God, for such are always occupied in deceiving others while simultaneously being deceived.

"In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost."
-President Russell M. Nelson.

[mfbukowski]

On 5/17/2024 at 1:34 PM, Smiley McGee said:

 Waiting for someone to close a priesthood blessing with "All these things I bless you with, according to the placebo effect, in the name of ...." 

They already are, in a different language game that's   

Gotta get past dualism to see it.   Suggest you read some philosophy of language.

 

 

[Smiley McGee]

36 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

They already are, in a different language game that's   

Gotta get past dualism to see it.   Suggest you read some philosophy of language.

 

 

I prefer to learn my philosophy the old-fashioned way: act a belligerent a-hole on an obscure message board and have the amateur philosophers here tell me how stupid I am. Rinse and repeat. That said; I don't feel like I was critiquing your philosophy but the awkward intersection of the your philosophy and predominant LDS thought. 

[Peppermint Patty]

10 hours ago, teddyaware said:

The National Institutes of Heath have just announced that suicide risks are 1200% higher among those who’ve had so-called “gender affirming surgery,” but you don’t want to talk about it because opposition to this Joseph Mengele inspired insanity is associated mainly with those who espouse traditional conservative family values? How strangely ironic it is that it’s the very people who support the shocking butchery of “gender affirming surgery,” and the mass slaughter of the innocent unborn, who are always equating those who hold traditional conservative family values with the monsters who perpetuated the fiendish horrors of Europe in the mid-20th century. Talk about a monumental lack of self awareness! But this is what happens when people turn away from the Spirit of God, for such are always occupied in deceiving others while simultaneously being deceived.

"In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost."
-President Russell M. Nelson.

Teddy,

I read the study you mentioned, which showed that 3.5% of those who had surgically transitioned were treated for suicide attempts, compared to 0.3% of the general population. 

There are studies that have presented evidence and statistics which explain that the higher suicide rate is probably linked to:

 

-- A lack of recognition and acceptance of transgendered individuals

-- Political and religious motivated attacks on transgendered individuals

-- Bullying, discrimination, increased stigma and prejudice

-- Related exposure to minority stress

 

All of which also contributes to higher rates of substance use and suicidality among transgendered people.  

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Peppermint Patty said:

which showed that 3.5% of those who had surgically transitioned were treated for suicide attempts, compared to 0.3% of the general population

Yes, given your summary (not in the mood to read it, but not going to let that stop me commenting today, lol) this study only suggests not all issues are resolved by surgery, it doesn’t indicate surgery makes things worse or whether or not it can help to some degree (3.5% may be lower than those without surgery).

A better comparison would be between those who wanted surgery but didn’t get it for a variety of reasons (health issues, money, couldn’t get a doctor or parent to approve, not available in their area, etc) and those who did. If the post surgery had a much higher number than those who didn’t get surgery even if they wanted it, that would be a major red flag. 

If the numbers were the same between pre and post surgery, that might indicate given significant problems (typical surgical complications and issues, hormone sensitivity), surgery shouldn’t except for rare situations be added to the equation, at least not till additional studies teased out the possible effects of surgery. 

Patients who undergo cardiac surgery still have an elevated risk of heart failure and death compared to the general population. Doesn’t lead doctors to recommend shutting down cardiac surgery as too dangerous because rates are still better than without it. 

Edited May 19, 2024 by Calm

[rodheadlee]

On 5/16/2024 at 10:08 AM, Analytics said:

Of course not--I’m always interested in other people’s perspectives; thank you.

That's fair. Anecdotal evidence is evidence. The question is what can we infer from it. If I asked 100 people which line appeared longer, A or B (the Müller-Lyer illusion), if 90% said B that wouldn’t be evidence that B really is longer.

Good point. 

When I read this, the Beatles song “All You Need Is Love” came into my mind:

This song was inspired, of course, by the drug LSD.

"The rest of the trouble sprang from the ethos of 1967 itself - a passive atmosphere in which anything involving struggle, conflict, or difficulty seemed laughably unenlightened. ‘It’s easy’ - the half-ingenuous, half-sarcastic refrain of ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE - expressed both this starry-eyed mood and The Beatles’ non-evaluative attitude to their music in the dazzling light of LSD.” (MacDonald, Ian. Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties. Chicago Review Press. Kindle Edition.) 

I have a few friends who have done LSD and mushrooms,  and their descriptions of psychedelic trips sound a lot like the descriptions of NDE’s that are in the Long paper you shared--floating above your body, a heightened sense of awareness, seeing things in vivid colors, the perception of the passing of time changing, etc.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to notice this, and I googled "similarities between nde's and lsd”. A lot of articles came up. For example, here is a link to a recent article in Psychology Today entitled: How Similar Are Near-Death Experiences to Acid Trips?: New research suggests that there is something to this idea.

However, there are some elements of NDE’s/OBE’s that are not found in typical psychedelic trips: meeting a deceased loved one, a life review, and a threshold of no return. See “Study analyzes the similarities between near-death experiences and psychedelic experiences" at News-Medical.net.

Of course dying is not an identical biological process to taking a psychedelic drug, so we wouldn’t expect the experiences to be identical. But since there is convincing evidence that some of the elements of NDEs can be replicated through biological processes, it’s quite possible that all of them are.

I read this 50+ page paper in its entirety. It was interesting--thank you for sharing.

The objective of the paper is to lay out the evidence "for the reality of an afterlife.”  In general, I’m left unconvinced. I just don’t think that stories that are told after the fact are convincing evidence that physicists are fundamentally wrong about the laws of physics within a well-defined domain of applicability (Sean Carroll’s arguments) or that consciousness and thinking don’t emerge out of biological processes in the way that cognitive neuroscience has discovered (Gazzaniga’s argument).

To me, the strongest evidence in favor of an after-life interpretation of NDE’s would be prospective studies such as the AWARE study. If somebody died, floated above the operating table and accurately saw some stuffed raccoons playing poker on a secret shelf above the operating table that nobody in the room knew about, that would be impressive. In the AWARE study, dozens of rooms in seven hospitals were set up with such things over the course of a 4-year study. 2,060 people suffered cardiac arrest in those rooms during the study period. Of those 2,060 near-deaths, precisely zero people accurately saw the secret cues after feeling that they were floating around the operating room. And other studies have been done with similar results. At a minimum, this should tell us that such experiences are a lot less common than we are lead to believe. And at some point, negative results from such studies will constitute evidence that people don’t really float above the room and see things which are impossible to see without physical eyes.

The paper you linked to does in fact briefly touch on these studies, and puts a more positive spin on it. It says:

Repeatable results from that type of experiment would be the type of evidence that I would take seriously. So far, the results are entirely consistent with a materialistic viewpoint.

In general, (for a lack of a better word) “real" science progresses towards figuring stuff out. It doesn’t go around in circles. There are some things scientists haven’t figured out yet and there are some things that are beyond knowing, but science figures stuff out. Charles Darwin was the first scientist to predict the earth had to have been at least hundreds of millions of years old, and scientists from multiple disciplines have proven him right. We used to speculate on what happened to the dinosaurs, but we now know it was a specific astroid with a known crater. We now know how the brains of robins actually take advantage of quantum spookiness to have extremely precise magnetic compasses that they can use to migrate across continents. And we have detailed theories that are being validated for how clown fish use quantum spookiness to smell the reefs where they were born that are dozens of miles away across all sorts of currents and aquatic environments.  I’d highly recommend the book Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology by JohnJoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili for a look at the extraordinarily subtle things that science is figuring out in detail.

The reason I bring that up is that the so-called evidence “for the reality of an afterlife” is fundamentally religious in nature--it reads like apologetics. People are believers in this abstract concept of an “afterlife”, and are trying to find evidence to rationalize their testimonies. If serious scientists were seriously engaged in this stuff, they’d be looking for the details of how “spirits” interface with the brain. They’d come up with hypotheses for how Quantum Field Theory should be modified to account for spirit forces and spirit matter that allegedly interact with the brain but don’t show up in the experiments that QFT insist would reveal them. They’d have detailed hypotheses for what it means for a disembodied spirit to see without having eyes to focus and isolate reflected light rays. They’d have detailed theories for how a disembodied spirit can think without a brain, and they’d be working furiously on figuring out what role the brain plays in thinking if the spirit is what’s really doing the heavy lifting. They’d define what it means to see without eyes focusing and isolating light rays. Read Life on the Edge to look at the extraordinarily subtle things on obscure topics that mainstream science is figuring out, and compare it to the questions that don’t even cross the minds of NDE enthusiasts. It’s the difference between trying to peel back how the world really works all the way to the core and between rationalizing a specific religious belief.

Christof Koch, an elite neuroscientist, recently wrote an article in Scientific American called “What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about the Brain.” He has looked at this body of evidence in some detail and says:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-near-death-experiences-reveal-about-the-brain/

I’d highly recommend that entire article. 

 

 

I have had quite a bit of experience with the LSD and one experience with dying and they are nothing alike, there is no similarity. Of course it's anecdotal evidence.

Edited May 19, 2024 by rodheadlee