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Science Attempts To Explain Heaven
Hugh Pickens writes "Lisa Miller writes in Newsweek about the thesis that heaven is not a real place, or even a process or a supernatural event, but rather something that happens in your brain as you die. The thesis is based, in part, on a growing body of research around near-death experience. According to a 2000 article by Bruce Greyson in The Lancet, between 9 and 18 percent of people who have been demonstrably near death report having had an NDE. Surveys of NDE accounts show great similarities in the details, describing: a tunnel, a light, a gate or a door, a sense of being out of the body, meeting people they know or have heard about, finding themselves in the presence of God, and then returning, changed. Scientists have theorized that NDEs occur as a kind of physiological self-defense mechanism when, in order to guard against damage during trauma, the brain releases protective chemicals that also happen to trigger intense hallucinations. This theory has gained traction after scientists realized that virtually all the features of an NDE can be reproduced with a stiff dose of ketamine, a short-acting, hallucinogenic, dissociative anesthetic. 'I came out into a golden Light. I rose into the Light and found myself having an unspoken interchange with the Light, which I believed to be God,' wrote one user of his experience under ketamine. 'Dante said it better,' writes Miller, 'but the vision is astonishingly the same.'"
Get it off... get it off.
Everything I needed to know about science I learned from Glenn Beck.
IT'S A WORLD GUBMINT CONSPIRACY!
that explains it... finally...
but seriously, wasnt this exact theory discussed a few years back... I mean im all for believing it anything to shut up the extremest religionists, glad there is more "proof" this time around however
who knew all that drug use could bring a person closer to fakegod?
How did they explain the out-of-body visions experienced by people who were born blind (and then actually saw things when their heart stopped beating)?
Next you'll be trying to tell us God doesn't exist.
And we all 'evolved from apes'.
And the iPad is a game-changer.
http://www.mindspring.com/~scottr/nde/jansen1.html, can itself cause a NDE. Geocities is that you?
my boner just had a near death experience reading that damn article about the stupid driver who brained herself on a wall at 100 clicks
This doesn't state anything about what happens when you're dead (probably not much), just what happens when you're on the point of death. It doesn't "explain heaven" at all.
All we've discovered here is what cats have known all along: it's comforting to purr when you're dying.
Now we know what Michael Hutchence was going for.
I remember that Robert J. Sawyer's Neanderthal Paralax books mentioned that religious experiences can be triggered by electrical fields as well, kind of a reverse MRI i think? I'm pretty sure that part was based on actual research.
Hmmm, a quick google search turns up this article on reading such experiences with an MRI, but i think there was a way to trigger them too.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Blind people still "see." Brain pathways have simply been remapped so that the "vision" parts of the brain are now associated with other senses.
If you blindfold yourself, and navigate the world by touch, you will still instinctively build a "picture" of the world around you. The spatial cognitive portions of your brain that are usually excited by vision, will come to be associated with touch, or other senses. After years, your neural pathways will remap themselves.
In people who are born blind, those spatial picture generating portions of their brain are still functional, but more closely attuned to nonvisual senses. So they can still "see" in that they generate a spatial impression of the world around them.
They've done experiments with artificial vision systems based on the receptors in your tongue, remapping and training the brain to "see" via your tongue's tactile receptors rather than your eyes.
This theory has gained traction after scientists realized that virtually all the features of an NDE can be reproduced with a stiff dose of ketamine, a short-acting, hallucinogenic, dissociative anesthetic.
. . . by taking stiff doses of ketamine. You don't want to enter such a difficult level as death without enough experience.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
...comes back to us: the experiences to be had with certain drug-induced states truly widen the minds. Queue the bitter bunch saying "makes it delusional, you mean. bah."
...Doesn't mean that there is no key.
Hallucinations are frequently heavily influenced by preconceptions.
There's even a case mentioned that sounds suspiciously similar to experiments made in getting people to accept and elaborate on suggestions made about events that have not transpired.
It's the k-hole. The easist way to find the k-hole is k + lots of booze .
Connie Willis wrote a novel "Passage" about scientific investigation of NDEs. I rate it as the second best book by the best author I know. (Warning: Willis's books generally fall into the categories of 'comedy' or 'tragedy'. Which do you suppose a book about what you experience when you die is going to be?)
In Passage, the protagonists are following a two pronged strategy of interviewing patients who have had NDEs naturally, and simulating them in volunteers by using a drug, while the volunteer is in a brain scanner.
To say more would stray into spoiler territory, so just go out and buy the book and read it.
(For what it is worth, the book which beats "Passage" is "To Say Nothing Of The Dog", a time-travel Victorian farce.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Science is religion, today people don't believe in religion anymore, they believe in science...
Religion tries to explain everything from above. Science tries to explain everything like a couple of blind people touching an elephant. Sometimes they will be close to the truth sometimes they are completely off.
The problem with science is that they are missing the moral factor, allowing them to do everything that only hurts us, or destroys our world. They are of course doing some good things too, but the question is if those good things outreach the bad things. Looking at our earth, I would say no.
Taking away our believes, in a better life afterwards, makes people lose hope for this live, losing the moral, making humankind do all kind of bad things, making live for themselves or for others unlivable.
People are living worse everyday, no moral anymore, lots of sickness, more struggles, no hope, and still science believes they are god...
I can't even explain it Philosophically, let alone with science!
I mean, if life is hard here because God gave us Free Will, but Heaven is Perfect with no pain. Doesn't that mean there's no free will there?
And wouldn't that be way worse than life here? Are you really YOU without the ability to make your own choices?
If he lets us keep our freewill, and only lets people in who won't make things bad, than wouldn't that mean a pleasant personality trumps true acts of good? Would you rather have an asshole cop who saves lives every day, or a guy who makes witty comments and makes everyone laugh?
I think real scientists should stay well away from this kinda crap, if you got to research what happens when people die, don't link it to heaven.
It is like "scientist" trying to explain Bible myths. How could Moses have parted the seas, what could have caused the plagues etc.
That is like a bad episode of myth-busters where they test movie stunts. What they do first is try to convince people that a scene in the movie is somehow real and has to follow real world physics and then disprove it... learn to seperate fantasy from reality for Christ damn, for god's sake oh fuck it.
All the happenings in the Bible can be explained very simply if you think of it as a bunch of Fantasy written by people who wanted to create a religion. There is even clear evidence that the Bible is fabricated. Even its followed accept that the New Testament was created from seperate books, edited with some parts and books left out completely. So we know that it is edited. No truly religious person would dare to edit the word of god, so what made the person who edited the new testament decide to think he could do this?
And low and behold, if you think of it as a bad hack job, then suddenly it all makes sense. And we know religions can be entirely fabricated. Scientology anyone?
It is amusing to see a program on trying to explain the story around Moses, when nothing in the historical record mentions this at all. Explain the parting of the red seas, but not why an exodus of slaves was not mentioned in Egyptian records. Now that is science. Up next, myth-busters and the geographic channel examine how a grandmother and a little girl can fit in a wolves stomach whole. Leave your brain at the door.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I was in bed in the early morning, I just awoke a couple of minutes before. Without prior warning it felt like all my internal organs started to move up through my trachea. I sensed I was paralyzed, unable to stop it and immediately I felt something like a heart stroke. I thought I had only a few seconds left. In those few seconds everything I had done, still had wanted to do, the implications for my family members went through my head. The brain has an enormous extra capacity when it is needed. I never felt the urge to resist or panicked, just to accept the inevitable. It later turned out my diaphragm had ruptured and my stomach had gone through that hole, collapsing my left lung and displacing my heart by 10 centimeter. It took five years to diagnose correctly.
heaven is not a real place, or even a process or a supernatural event, but rather something that happens in your brain as you die
I challenge anyone create a testable hypothesis on whether there is a soul or life after death or heaven etc. What this experiment is testing for is a correlation between chemical processes in the brain when a person nears death and the subjective experience of said person. Where does the existence of heaven or supernatural events even come into this? Those are questions that shouldn't come into play when speaking of science. Whether an objective explanation of a subjective experience nullifies the "reality" of it or not is philosophical has nothing to do with the experiment in question. This is a bunch of horseshit.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
I think the answer may be easier than it seems:
Particles in movement are more heavy than non-moving particles. When you die your brain stops, so no electrical charges are in movement, no more extra-weight.
I think NDE is an endnote of the dying brains ( just as the sound of dying engines are all alike) assuming there's no afterlife. The human mind is very good at creating reality. I once had a NDE after I lost total control of my voice and my muscle which means I can't move a finger of mine. Then I went through this tunnel so fast I felt the dragging of my feet. The decoration of the tunnel is like that of the red bricks screen saver from Windows 3.1 or 95. I didn't see any bright light but I came to a sphere(planet) where I saw massive greenish looking buildings. Our tallest skyscrappers would look thin and skinny in comparison. The people there wore blue uniforms and very discipline in the way they walked. This happened about twenty years ago before I've heard about X-seed or any of the massive buildings that we're planning to build. Thanks for reading.
I've heard about these type of studies for years, and the explanations they pose. The problem is, most of the time when people experience NDE, they, are, um... dead. They have no brain waves and no heart beat. The key item being is NO BRAIN ELECTRICAL ACTIVITY. Science, I love you, but dead men dream no dreams, including about the after life. So please explain to me how a brain that is flat line on the monitor is producing, and i quote you "intense hallucinations"
So odds are, if you off yourself, you'll get the last word in euphoric mind fucks. Best not let this get out. Oh wait it's been /.ed. Nevermind.
Don't these researchers at least look at trip reports from the Internet? Going further one has to question their credentials, their lack of first hand experience with hallucinogenic drugs implies they never really went to university.
If drugs can induce NDEs and indeed some even more fantastical experiences than your basic Im-dead-tunnel-of-light-OMG-aw-crap-im-back fare, this kind of shuts down any proof of a afterlife possibly presented in NDEs. It's at once depressing - oblivion after all - and kind of exciting... I'm going to visit my dealer now.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Man do I love a yearly heavy dose of Ketamine. I would describe it as packing a year of psychotherapy into an hour. No better way to change who you are than to see yourself as others do.
What if certain drugs/chemicals created inside the brain or introduced in the body from outside just stimulates the right parts of the brain so that we are more sensitive to what we call supernatural ?
The fact that they discovered the mechanism that makes us experience NDE does not eliminate the possibility of it being more than just an in-brain experience.
This research is probably accurate in explaining near death experiences, however I think that's as far as it goes. If you study religions, the concept of an afterlife varies quite a bit. In non of them is the "white light that is God" mentioned (to my knowledge). If you look at these near death experiences; all the cases appear in relation to where modern medicine has literally brought the person "back from the brink" (that is to say that they were very near to death indeed by modern standards) Certainly, they were not conscious during the experience. How then could primitive man regale his story when it would have lead to actual death while unconscious? More damning to the idea, though, is simply that these depictions are not represented in any of the religions.
What I want to know is how do they deal with the inherent bias of materialistic western science (I suggest there is one).
I'm not saying that Western science is wrong, or invalid (not at all) but that it is inherently materialistic in it's outlook and in the tools it uses to measure things and test them. Is it EVER possible that the methodologies of science (as it now is) could ever validate 'spiritual' experience if it WERE true as a thing in itself, or is there an inherent bias that makes the methods and means of testing such things unfit for purpose: that it would always reduce any spiritual or transcendental experience to a physical, chemical or biological basis (and nothing more)?
Valid question?
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
You may want to check something similar:
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
She had a stroke, something that she knows very well what it is, yet she doesn't think of it as a plain scientific experience. Science can only bring us so far.
In any case, explaining the mechanism of NDE doesn't eliminate the possibility of something existing for our consciousness beyond the death of the physical body.
i'm frustrated that most people who try to talk about transcendence, faith, or "supernatural phenomenons" whatever you want to call it..are the people who had no expirience with it whatsoever and link amazing things like that to organized religion..
:/ ) block any chance of exploring your mind, your self and the world without the standard cultural preconceptions that shape and distort the world as you see it..
:) or take any kind of drug
Well please don't be fooled and realize that organized religion is here to take control of peoples natural urges to expand their consciousness and to pacify them with a preset truth that will for the people that take stuff as its given to them (90% of the population
Science is a great, but a bit to cocky to try and explain things that are in these day surely out of our analytical scope...
So my advice to you is if your proud to be a skeptic then be a true skeptic and try some thing out for yourself.. try meditation, have an out of body experience, take a hallucinogen don't take anybodys word for granted be it scientist or "flake"
Try it for yourself don't pay anybody anything, and dont belive anybody who wants to explain it to you... this is a subjective thing that will help you see the world clearer in many ways... just be in a safe enviroment and with people you love and trust if you're gonna choose the quickest way and drop some acid
The actuall research was related to why people have these weired and wonderful experiences when they almost die. There is also a fare degree of similarity in the experiences, which has made it all the more fascinating. This research posits a possible reason, which is very interesting in my personal view. Any extension of "it explains heaven" is really not relevent to anyone except those that believe this to be a glimpse into an afterlife (the exception being anthropologists, however I think this is flawed as given in my previous post). As to your off topic biblical rant; do some research! There are plenty of reasons to disregard the Christian religion, however "the edited bible" is not one of them. The new testament is textually stable, and has more source material than any other ancient document. It is not on these grounds that you should make your case! If we go down this road, however, be prepared for pages of discussion and plenty of links. Textual criticism is not a light topic!
If any of it was actually "Word of God", wouldn't he just zap the fake ones out of existence? Or better yet!
Have them start burning when put to the actual "sacred" texts, burning out completely without damaging the "true Word of God".
You know... miracles and that shit.
It's not like Jesus's dad is the bad old god that kicks you out in the desert to wander around it until you finally understand what he is telling you.
He should be a loving god. Not a mindfucking, constantly testing you, teasing god.
For fucks sake - he gave his only son to save our asses. Why not make some paper burn?
You know... if he actually existed instead of being an invention in order to make money and control the masses.
Kinda like Mickey Mouse.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
I challenge anyone create a testable hypothesis on whether there is a soul or life after death or heaven etc.
But first, I will need a gun and several volunteers.
Step right up folks, don't be shy, this won't hurt a bit and you may get to see god in person.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Interesting article.
Interestingly, one of the study authors at least is taking this the other way. Rather than taking the similarity between NDEs and ketamine experiences as evidence that NDEs aren't spiritual, he's taking it as evidence that ketamine experiences are spiritual, just like NDEs. It's not clear as a whole that explaining NDEs was even the goal: for at least one of them, it seems that explaining ketamine experiences was the goal.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This is one occasion where things are up in the air and it will be a long time since science will be able to explain it. Science cannot explain what life is yet, how it happens or how something is alive versus something that isn't, and what that 'something' is that makes us alive, so trying to explain this is well wide of the mark at the moment.
Its all the same thing. Religion cant be proved, so its fantasy.
Science, however, can be proven if the theories are correct. ( and if they aren't correct and thus cant be proven, well they were just a fantasy too )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In my opinion, NDE is nothing more than the lie some very scared folk tell themselves (and then their doctors) to compensate the nothingness they've just been facing (or almost facing. This would explain why almost everyone sees the same thing and also why it's awkwardly familiar of a story for a judeo-christian.
Abstract Beliefs blog goes into my own experiences and investigations.
Start at the first blog entry and read up.
When the void became aware of itself it split into two, Consciousness and Existence.
In understanding this, there is nothing supernatural going on, but this does not exclude what we don't yet understand as living within existance.
What is past the "light" is the void.
No religion has it right, nor do the Atheist. But all in existence is in part, for it is the splitting of the void (breaking into parts) where all comes from.
It shouldn't be difficult to understand that in death of the body, the sequence is going to use what is of existence in the process, including brain and body chemical reactions. For it is chemical reaction that much changes in existence.
From Science POV, the observer effect proves that we will never prove there is a god, and the true meaning of teh science short hand of "can't prove a negative" catches the other end. And in the hierarchy of how things developed, we are no more able to prove god exist or not, than a 2D creature would be able to prove the existence of a 3d creature.
After I explained many of the miracles of communicated in the bible, in common sense manner, one person responded that god would not break the rules of physics and nature that god created. As that woudl be something of a double standard.
So though science maybe able to establish a chemical change taking place during death, so was there chemical changes taking place at conception, and all through life.
And none of this explains or proves there is of not existence after life.
Well then, by extension this NDE thesis also shows that if there is no heaven, then there are no ghosts for the ghost buster TV shows. All this regarding paranormal entities people reort must be from a sick brain. The implications of this thesis is mindblowing, or should that be mind dying.
Fortunately, "Heaven" is not a wee bright light that occurs the instant before you die. Read through the Bible, you'll note that God exists outside his Creation. So, you're not going to be able to measure him or prove him by scientific observation.
Furthermore, "[w]e cannot determine the character or nature of a system within itself. Efforts to do so will only generate confusion and disorder." John Boyd
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
...science could explain Teabaggers
Contrary to what popular media would have you believe, you don't go to heaven right away after you die. Everyone is suspended when they die, and called back to life in the judgment day to be judged if they qualify to spend the eternity in the new world. The new world is a replacement of the imperfect world we live in now, and the old world would no longer exist. Disqualified people will be thrown into a lake of fire and sulfur.
To find out how to qualify, find a local Christian church near you and attend an Easter service today.
I once had a signature.
What evolutionary advantage do NDE's serve?
How does reducing trauma in the brains of those who are dying aid survival?
Only time when I have an out of body experience is when after a few shrooms and and a few hits of White Widow and trying to drive....
"Taking away our believes, in a better life afterwards, makes people lose hope for this live, losing the moral, making humankind do all kind of bad things, making live for themselves or for others unlivable."
OR they finally have to pull themselves together and GROW THE FUCK UP and start taking responsibility for the planet instead of just shrugging "there is nothing we can do" - there is something you can do you just can't be bothered to do it.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Atheist Scientist: Chooses to believe that only that which can be directly observed and measured is real. That there is nothing more.
Theist Scientist: Chooses to believe that, while science is useful, there is more to this universe than that which can be directly observed and measured.
Which you believe is up to you. Logically, the Atheist theory is of no more substance than a Theist theory on this particular issue.
"Scientists" who feel the need to undermine the religious faith of others are just ignorant, selfish, and insecure. The fact some NDEs, few actually, have an experience similar to those of someone who took some ketamine does not prove or disprove the existence of heaven. I have had an NDE and did not experience anything of the sort. Describing the observations and having a theory are fine. Stating that this "proves" that there is not a "heaven" is ridiculous and illogical.
I've read through about half the posts on this lengthy thread, and I'm disappointed with the caliber of slashdot thinking.
(Okay, no surprise there! But still...)
People here are not recognizing that if there is any kind of afterlife state, the transition from the universe of everyday physics into that state is going to be similar to the experience of an observer accelerating toward the speed of light, or another observer dropping into a black hole. Among other things, time dilation is a reasonable expectation. So what we might observe from the outside of the experience may be entirely different from the experience of the person going through the "moment of death".
Connie Willis does a good job of exploring this in her novel Passage. Anyone interested in the changes of point of view that occur at those places where one is about to exit the known universe (approaching black holes, approaching the speed of light, approaching death) should check out this book. (The book is strongly based on the research into NDEs that are the subject of this slashdot story).
Willis needs almost 600 pages to talk about this. I won't pretend to be able to summarize her work. Her book can help a person shed preconceptions they did not even know they had, and become open to new points of view, and that is not easy stuff to handle (for either the author or the reader).
Will
Is that why the Pope talks so slow?
I think my signature says it all.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
The dominant religions on this planet teach that there will be a world-ending apocalypse but the faithful will be whisked away to a better place.
The Atheist Apocalypse!
Yea, sorry but this one falls outside the realm of science and religion. That is why we have Philosophy to referee these things.
Living in Chile
Can you tell that to the survivors of "medical experiments" at Holocaust and other such places?
Mind you, most of these folks are unable to even speak about what happened at these worst of places. So we really don't know who they are, mostly. If you ask them, they would probably mention that those dying sooner was the lucky ones.
So, science and ETHICS is absolutely necessary. Especially now with power in science to extingiush life on this planet in so many horrible ways, intentional and unintentional.
I would distinguish morality and ethics though, where morality is some agenda coming from outside, and ethics is about personal maturity and integrity inspired from experience.
We don't need to be slaves to some other people's morality, that's absolutely correct. We need to come up with ethics and universal values where we can live in harmony with all traditions and nature itself.
No Godwin doesn't apply here, as WWII is hardly the only situation such "experimentations" have / are occuring.
The ability to record an actual death experience is the centerpiece of Brainstorm, a classic science fiction movie from the 80s, starring Natalie Wood (in her last screen role, I believe) as the user experience designer, Christopher Walken and Louise Fletcher as the idealistic genius scientists, and Cliff Robertson as the entrepreneur. They invent a way to record brain activity, and then play back the experience so the user feels he or she has actually done it themselves. They make a "demo tape" of riding a roller coaster, hang-gliding, riding on horseback, eating great food, having sex, etc. When the chief scientist has a heart attack, she records her slow, agonizing death in an unforgettable scene. Whenever anyone plays it back, the shock starts to kill them, too.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
I can't stand organized religion and certainly don't believe in the existence of a "heaven" (I consider myself a "mystical agnostic" and suspect that all existence is an infinitely vast, infinitely dimensional, omniscient metaverse and every one of us - including all life throughout space and time - are manifestations/embodiments of this - for lack of a better word - "God") but this "research" strikes me as ideologically motivated...
This idea that a NDE is a coping mechanism as the brain dies is not new. I heard about it on a Discovery Channel show on NDE's about 10 years ago. As a Christian, I have no problem agreeing that like shock, NDE's are a nice built-in feature for dealing with end-of-life without unnecessary pain.
NDE's and most "spiritual experiences" not backed up by physical proof and/or logical consistency with known teachings are considered unreliable for determining what is and isn't "of God."
http://christian-thinktank.com/sh6end.html
BTW, I seriously doubt these people were ACTUALLY talking to God, since God cannot be viewed directly by humans. The current theory is that God's goodness experienced in His presence would decimate the evil that lives in each of us, which would kill us. Only after death, at the choice of the individual, would that evil be removed entirely, so that people could become pure beings capable of being in the same room as the full presence of God.
This website contains no CSS formatting: delusions of living in 1995 may ensue.
Well, a few days ago, I had a dream where my father and I had a conversation with Bill Gates (*really*) [1]. When I woke up I thought "What a cool dream, what brought that about?" I put it down to having watched the TED conference presentation by Bill a few months ago, articles I have read about his house (where the conversation took place) a few years ago and the general separation (2-3 degrees) that I have from him [2]. I can contrast this "memory" (which might better be called a synthetic pseudo-experience) with a ~17 year old memory of a diner at Larry Ellison's house that included Steve Jobs and others. The advantage of the 2nd "memory" is that there were sufficient additional people present and external evidence (I probably have the charge records of flying from Seattle to S.F. and have the email exchanges setting up the diner) so that I have a relatively high confidence that the diner really took place in physical reality rather than just the reality of thoughts bouncing around in my head [3].
So, are NDE "real"? Quite probably for some people, particularly those who may have spent a significant fraction of their lives participating in or holding on to a particular perception of "reality". Are they "significant"? Perhaps only if you use them constructively in the remainder of your life. Otherwise I'd tend to place them in the same category as my conversation with Bill.
1. Over the last few years my dreams have become more complex and my ability to recall them seems to be increasing. I tend to put this down to some combination of possible mental changes from a variety of drugs, natural aging and simply having the time to sleep more than other periods of my life.
2. My ability to "make stuff up" to fill in the blanks in dreams amazes me. I put it down to the fact that I've lived 50+ years in a relatively fixed framework (non-changing laws of physics, relatively "normal" people around me, etc.) so the reality that my brain "expects" is pretty fixed. If I could harness the ability of my brain to "make up good (borderline plausible) stories" for my dreams in my waking reality I'd be a famous fiction author.
3. Generally speaking acting on the basis of the validity of the external reality rather than the internal reality saves me the trouble of having someone come and bail out of jail the next time I encounter Bill and nonchalantly walk up to him saying "Yo Bill, what's happenin?".
I became agnostic just a little while back. Despite this, if I could go back to believing in some sort of higher entity/afterlife, I would. It's comforting, and I don't begrudge people that sort of comfort. The only thing I begrudge is the manipulation factor that accompanies religion, but that doesn't seem to be 100% across the board. I have a feeling that we're seeing a temporary increase in fundamentalism, but that too shall soon pass. That said, I have looked at some reports of NDEs, and I've read that even very young children have had very mature visions while clinically dead, which makes me wonder if there are still some variables which we aren't accounting for. Also unexplained is the characteristic "hovering" associated with NDEs, where clinically dead or comatose individuals report details of medical procedures from impossible angles.
Regardless of one's views on supernatural experiences, religion, or life after death, the arguments presented in the linked article must be rejected, because they are illogical, and very embarrasingly so for their authors, and also for their publishers.
In essence, they argue from the premise that the mere fact that a perception of having an experience can be triggered by an artificial stimulus to the brain, implies that the experience itself is never caused by anything in objective reality, and is entirely a product of subjective internal biochemical processes. But that conclusion doesn't follow logically, at all.
For example, we know that visual hallucinations can be triggered by artificial stimuli, but from that observation, it does not follow that light does not exist, and that those of us who claim to see things, such as this text on the screen, must be imagining it.
We also know from experiments conducted by electrically stimulating the brains of patients undergoing brain surgery, that vivid memories of childhood experiences can be evoked, having such clarity and vividness that they seem to the patient as if they were happening right then and there on the operating table, at the time of the experiment. But from these observations it does not follow that those experiences never really took place at all, or that the persons claiming to have had those childhood experiences were merely hallucinating when they were four years old, and thought that they were playing with their father.
How do you explain people who were born blind?
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Sound theory.....slight problem: what about the people who experience NDE regarding Hell? I can understand the brain creating a safe, positive environment when under extreme trauma to protect itself. But why would it create a torturous, painful and very negative experience? That would hardly seem to protect itself.
The other problem: why are all these NDE all the same? Why doesn't the brain create different scenarios for different people relevant to their personality or history?
My other question, why are we so quick to try and disprove the existence of a "better place" after death? Are we so anxious to make death even more terrifying? As if dying isn't bad enough, now we have to say that when we die we just cease being? How terrifying is that? Are we so afraid of Hell, that we have to disprove the existence of both it and Heaven?
I'll continue to stick with what my Bible says regarding the "afterlife" so to speak. It's much more comforting.
This is a pretty cold thing to throw out on Easter. Have some respect for other people's beliefs even if you don't agree with them or even follow a spiritual path.
Though not for religious purposes, but to aggregate the orgasm at jacking off while strangling them selves:
"When the brain is deprived of oxygen, it induces a lucid, semi-hallucinogenic state called hypoxia. Combined with orgasm, the rush is said to be no less powerful than cocaine, and highly addictive" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotic_asphyxiation
"Life after life"
"Many Lives Many Masters" by prof. Brian Weiss
No intepretations. No superstitions. Just delivery of facts and spoken material.
Positing AC because I don't want any potential future employers thinking I'm a drug addict... I've experienced the out of body experience on K a few times when I was in college (much more easily if you do it on your own, in the dark, laying down on the bed with music on... doing it with friends would never trigger this effect). I'd always feel very "in-tune" with the world after this effect, and very spiritual. I guess everyone's "K hole" is different, but for me I'd feel myself like lifting from my body at 1,000MPH and then riding up and down a wave. In my hallucinations I'd feel like I was visiting every country in the world (thus the "in-tune" feeling). After experiencing this I found it very hard to feel racist or biased toward any one (not that was racist, but I probably was a little biased). I've always felt that this feeling was the "out of body" effect some people experience in near death experience. As an aside; I want to point out that experimenting with drugs did not negatively impact my life (in fact, I believe that some of the experiences made my life richer...some didn't, but that's beside the point). I believe that if used properly, many of these drugs would help people with certain types of depression. It's unfortunate that there probably isn't much research in some of these alternate types of drugs due to our current (IMO ridiculous) drug laws.
... Hell has also been explained.
Have gnu, will travel.
DMT is where it's at.
http://www.amazon.com/DMT-Molecule-Revolutionary-Near-Death-Experiences/dp/0892819278
You take the blue pill, you go back to your normal life and live as you always believed. If you take the red pill, a Christian will show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
I once had a signature.
Tell Ghosthunters that there is no heaven and they'll say "Obviously". Tell a priest at your own risk. Their racket has thousands of years of built up momentum.
While certainly not conclusive, it puts the lie to the assertion that "there is no evidence of an after-life."
http://www.nderf.org/evidence_afterlife.htm ...
BTW, the author of the study referenced by the Newsweek story had this to say:
'I am no longer as opposed to spritual explanations of these phenomena as this article would appear to suggest. Over the past two years (it is quite some time since I wrote it) I have moved more towards the views put forward by John Lilly and Stan Grof. Namely, that drugs and psychological disciplines such as meditation and yoga may render certain 'states' more accessible. The complication then becomes in defining just what we mean by 'states' and where they are located, if indeed location is an appropriate term at all. But the apparent emphasis on matter over mind contained within this particular article no longer accurately represents my attitudes. My forthcoming book 'Ketamine' will consider mystical issues from quite a different perspective, and will give a much stronger voice to those who see drugs as just another door to a space, and not as actually producing that space'.
This is like saying that although I live outside my computer, I am irrelevant to the lives of the Sims living in it.
I could never enter their world in person, and maybe I will just watch them and let them live their entire lives on autopilot without any input. But for them, my whims are absolute. Get in the shower! Go have a snack! My power increases if I get a trainer to alter them more directly.
If they displease me I am totally building an unescapable maze house around them while they sleep ("For the love of God, Montressor!"), or pulling out the pool ladder while they swim. Does their code have anything where they feel a rush of hormones and peacefulness as they die? > : -)>
Maybe I will play the game as a benevolent guide, helping them meet their needs and finding love and progressing through their career. But nothing in the game says I have to do that. I'm just as free to make their lives a living hell for my amusement.
What is really interesting is, what if a Sim somehow achieved sentience? They somehow reverse engineered that they were in a program, figured out their linear address in RAM and so forth, realized I was watching. What if they looked directly at the screen and addressed me by my user name, begging for me to sypmathize with and help them?
That would probably be akward. But it could also be touching. Would they ask me to help guide their life, or butt out and live it the best they could? Could the Sim who figured out s/he was a program convince has family and neighbors or would s/he just be seen as insane? Would they become a Prophet? Would they end up nailed to a SimCross for being too insane? Maybe they could ask the user to open up their code and change the WillDieIfThisOld{76) variable to 100,000 or something. Then the NDE hormones wouldn't be needed!
There's probably a good movie in this somewhere.
I am a 'random religionist' and given the hate for christians and other people of faith here I am posting AC. So if you are experiencing a "near" death experience - you have not been to heaven yet. No one who experiences actual heaven will be in a position of communicate it back to us. The have stepped past that threshold.
but I pray there ain't no hell..."
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
what a surprise? what of that small weight of 'vapor' that leaves the carcass of every dead being? the scientifically 'soothed' brain is obviously no longer of much use, unless one fails to die. then, what would be wrong with becoming aware that 'death' is not such an unpleasant destination?
so, go ahead & bet your soul that we're caught in some randoidian crapshoot that ends in 0 if it makes you feel better?
or, consider that there will never be a better time to consult with/trust in your creators, just in case they're there, like it says in ALL of the spirit based manuals.
either way it's a bet. wager correctly it is said, & one could lose all of their greed/fear/ego based misconceptions, while still alive, & possibly gain eternal life, if only as a vapor (possibly much more), with more energy in it than it takes to power a planet. there's other theories, supported by physical evidence, of something(s) besides ourselves taking their place all around us constantly. could be we crash landed here? that would still leave room for there to be a spirit in each of our (relatively soon to be) carcasses. our only pupose here is to care for one another. don't get shut out.
Albert Eintsein on the need for *both* science and religion:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/aor/einstein/einsci.htm
Also, while you would be right to say some things are better than in the past, many things are not. Rampant vitamin D deficiency from too much time indoors (and listening to dermatologists) is contributing to all sorts of health problems like cancer, heart disease, and even increasing autism.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml
Depression from lack of community (something not valued by modern economists) is widespread.
http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Americas-Depression-Epidemic-Community/dp/1933392711
Herbert Shelton, who from the 1920s advocated sunlight, better diet, and occasional fasting as proven ways for good health, was hit with endless lawsuits and harrasment from medical professionals:
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/shelton.bio.bidwell.htm
Our entire society has become locked in pleasure traps associated with supernomal stimuli, manipulated by advertisers to destroy children for profit:
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X
http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-Soon-Sexualized-Childhood/dp/0345505077
Sure, we have neat iPads now. What does it matter if the kids are all obese and depressed?
The mainstream USA is in a death spiral as a society because it refuses to acknowledge things like the irony of using the tools of abundance like robotics, AI, material science, and so on to build weapons of destruction like nuclear millsiles and killer robot drones, rather than use the same tech to create abundance for all and have a basic income. Likewise, our society is unable to admit the declining value fo most human labor and the need for a rethink of our economics like a basic income. Renewable energy like solar thermal, geothermal, and wind have been cheaper than fossil fuels or nuclear for decades when you factor in the external costs of war, pollution, health costs, and risks, but our society refuses to price those costs in. I could go on about many other issues (like how organic agriculture is cheaper when looking at all the costs including soil depletion and oil, singple payer health care being way cheaper, and so on). Still, there are hopeful signs here and there, so our society may yet heal itself -- but such a society might not be recognizable to many in the USA today.
So, while you have some points, the poster you are replying too makes many good ones too. As Albert Einstein says in the link at the top, science can tell us what is, maybe some of what was, and matbe even some of what could be, but science can't tell us what *should* be. That is a realm beyond science, to set our goals and the patterns we choose to preserve or strive for. Unfortunately, too often science gets misused to claim it is telling what should be. (Economists often do that with claimed mathematical precision.)
To understand another aspect of how academic science is a cult in a sense, with conservative politics woven throughout is, see Jeff Schmidt on how all professio
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I'd say a k-hole feels a lot more like hell.
I see one good thing coming out of this study: at last, we can have a true, honest-to-God religion that not just promises paradise, but actually delivers it!
Such a pity that there's no way for humans to record their observations in a permanent, or at least long lasting, form. Or for events to leave physical traces that could be examined more than 70 (three score and ten, right?) years later.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Rateth ye, upon a scayle of I (devilish) to X (most excellent):
I Thine hovel:
II Thine Lorde (ye competence thereof):
III Thine Lorde (ye compassion thereof):
IV Thine sustenance (ye quantity):
V Thine sustenance (ye quality):
VI Thine bodilly parasites:
Return this parchement before ye XXth day after lente to be entered in ye prize draw! Thou couldst winneth 7ral groats!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I hope this guy gets protection. There's a lot of money riding on Heaven.
then Hell is just pain in your ass?
We carry a memory of our experience of the womb until we die.
Actually, that's not entirely correct as 5-MeO-DMT only occurs in plants, various bufo venom, and although it's more potent per microgram, is far less visual and shouldn't be confused with the brain's chemical: N,N-DMT, produced in the pineal gland near the center of our mammalian brain, and it is undoubtly the "God" chemical associated with not only heavenly afterlife but also hellacious/demonic. It's everything - considered spiritually "whole".
Ketamine, a Veterinary drug, is a terrible example of accessing "God" and shouldn't be mentioned while the effects of far superior, natural, tryptamines are what are actually being observed in a NDE.
The only chemical that should be more thoroughly studied in connection with NDE's is N,N-DMT. Nothing else is necessary, IMO.
In the UK, there's still the issue of glebe land and Chancel Repair liability - large amounts of land that the Church of England has the right to make the owners pay for repairs to churches, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds, as a result of some medieval law. I myself paid £100 for insurance to cover the risk of bankruptcy.
"I don't want to have to buy a batman costume..."
(Quotes don't change the meaning here...) There are good arguments for and against Atheism (or Agnosticism), but calling other belief-systems "stupid and foolish" merely for being belief-systems &mdash is not one of them...
Mirror... Look in the mirror!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Ketracel is a gift from the gods.