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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.'"
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.
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!
This does explain the prevalence of concept though.
It's safe to assume people were experiencing various NDEs for a looong time, especially in more dangerous times - remember they didn't have to survive their injuries for long, just long enough to tell somebody. This even fits as one of the factors why people were so much more fixated on religion in brutal times.
One that hath name thou can not otter
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.
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.
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.
It also takes away the power of people like the Vatican screwing over the poor for larger cathedrals, and more power of more people. Ever wondered what makes it right for a poor family in Phillipines giving their last Pesos to the church to bury a family member, whilst the Pope sits in a palace that dwarfs any king's palace. Now that's morals for you.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
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'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"
The problem with science is that they are missing the moral factor
That's no more a problem with science than it is a problem with lollipops, stars, and waterfalls.
And actually, I find that tying ethics with religion is deeply problematic. It leads to failing to question moral teachings brought about by a religion which might in some cases be bad, very bad. You need to examine and think critically and philosophically abour morals and ethics, for yours to actually be moral and ethical.
allowing them to do everything that only hurts us, or destroys our world...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.
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. *That* allows people to destroy our world. Lacking belief in an afterlife makes this world far more precious; a thing that must be protected because there is, as yet, nowhere else for us to go.
I would astonished to hear that religious non-scientific people polluted more than scientific non-religious people; I know of absolutely no evidence of this. This of course excludes the category of scientific-religious and non-scientific-non-religious, which your post also seems to exclude.
This brings me back to your original statement:
Science is religion, today people don't believe in religion anymore, they believe in science...
I'd like you to define "science", because it's not the standard definition. Strictly speaking, if you don't believe in science, you're an extreme moron. Religion is a set of unproven beliefs taken on faith, science is a process that explicitly excludes faith. Science works, that's how we figured out how to make computers, and refrigerators, and so on. It's up to you to figure out if the process of science has lead to conclusions that contradict your religion. I think it does, but you're not necessarily an extreme moron if you disagree.
I'm pretty sure you're confusing science with some set of conclusions from some scientists, but I'm not going to set up straw arguments, I need you to tell me.
People are living worse everyday, no moral anymore, lots of sickness, more struggles, no hope, and still science believes they are god...
People are living better today than they ever have in the history of the Universe, "no moral anymore" is a context-free statement but I can tell you that at least in the US and Canada youth violence is at an all-time low (and, as they say, children are our future), disease is similarly at record low levels for the past several decades, "more struggles" is again ill-defined (there are more people alive than there used to be, so I don't doubt we have more absolute struggles), there's a whole tonne of hope all over the place, and "still science believes they are god" doesn't mean anything at all and is frankly confusing.
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.
1. Science and religion are trying to explain completely different things (religion tackles moral issues, science tackles the workings of reality). 2. Hence, if I want to know what the elephant looks like, I'll listen to the blind guys. If I want to know where the elephant came from, I'll listen to that other blind guy who goes to the zoo every Sunday.
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.
Science does things. It is up to the consciences of the user of science and observer whether science is used for, and whether that use is, good or bad.
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.
You're saying that unless there's the fear of consequences in the afterlife, people won't bother doing good in this life. On the contrary: all the rules of law in human history make doing good for your fellow man profitable now.
People are living worse everyday, no moral anymore, lots of sickness, more struggles, no hope, and still science believes they are god...
I don't know whether this is true or false (only way to know the state of the world is via the media, and the media is useless), but if science is the cause, it's only accelerating the inevitable.
To prevent this day from getting worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD TH
Science makes no claims towards what it is not. Science comes with error bars. Science tells us, "This is exactly how wrong I am." Science takes your pet theory, that really elegant one that you WANT to believe is Truth, and tells you, no, there's no strong correlation. That is the morality of science. When you do an experiment, and determine that your hypothesis is unsupported, you pick a different hypothesis, not a different experiment.
Yes, sometimes scientists seem like they are stumbling about in the dark. They might pick the wrong conclusion. But science is based around revisiting prior assumptions and refining them as you gather more data. What religion has such a mechanism built in? What religion describes how to amend its holy books in the event that they are demonstrated incorrect?
You're right that science takes away beliefs. But it can only harm false beliefs. How could you use science to demonstrate something incorrect? That is the strength of explaining everything from the ground up. There is a strong foundation, not based on strength of faith, but rather on a series of repeatable experiments. If you take issue with how an experiment was done, do it yourself. If you get different results, publish them. The scientific community thrives on that. If you get the same results, know that the truth of the matter has nothing to do with how willing you are to stomach it.
The one thing I will grant you is that the media does a very poor job of representing the scientific process. These scientists did not prove that there is no heaven; they did not set out to, and their experiment is not set up in a way to demonstrate that fact one way or another. What they can demonstrate is that a chemical released by the brain under extreme duress can produce strong hallucinations accompanied by a feeling of the numinous. That's not terribly exciting in and of itself, so the press fancies it up, makes the bold claims that science cannot, and releases it in comprehensible chunks to the public.They have a difficult job, trying to represent incredibly technical work to a public without the background to understand it, and often having to make it entertaining as well. Much is lost in the translation.
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
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?
I think there are a few people who would be comforted to know that they would no longer be capable of bad decisions. To view it another way; everyone finally knows _why_ all the bad decisions are bad, and thus do not choose them.
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?
Acts of good are just that; actions; singular events. If Heaven is eternal, I'd rather have a mousy guy who makes everyone laugh than an asshole who saves lives. To be eternally annoyed by an asshole sounds like hell. Oh, and saving lives isn't much use somewhere where everyone's dead (or living forever).
Science and morality are not related. Neither are religion and morality, although those with a vested interest in religion try to make it appear so.
Well , i am skeptical towards this "proof" .
It just proves that there is a chemical reactions when you die , which explains the tunnels of light you see when you have a near death experience.
In other words , it explains that this experience itself, is not really heaven , but just a physical reaction . It doesn't say anything about heaven itself.
Slipping shoelaces ?
If NDE's can be explained by chemical reactions, that means there's no evidence for heaven right? And even if we assume heaven exists, there is no longer any reason to believe we actually go there when we die (since obviously you can't be experiencing a NDE and be in heaven at the same time, since the NDE is all in you brains).
Surely this research says something about heaven: it tells us that an NDE is not part of heaven (when previously some people believed it was).
Alcohol is a drug, and after mildly ODing on it I've been known to have long conversations with him via the big white telephone.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
> Looking at science, if science was good to humans, ms windows wasn't such a pain to use...
You're free not to use a computer, or to use another operating system.
> We are living in a culture, were we can't live without science, yes you are right, but if you look where it is heading. At the moment it isn't heading in the nice star trek direction... It is more heading in direction of big calamities, terrorism (without science no boms), diseases, war....
Without science no medicine either. Science can cure diseases, and sometimes completely eradicate them (currently only smallpox, but I'm sure we can do it again). Sure, the virus is still held in a few labs somewhere, but it hasn't killed anyone in decades.
> Why wouldn't I have been born without science ??? People have been born for thousands of years without science... Science says we come from apes ? There is even proof we have been walking strait up for millions of years, and still science says we come from apes.
It's quite likely that without science many of your ancestors would have died long before they were old enough to reproduce, but I admit GP made a lousy argument (unless your mother required a C-secion I guess). I don't know about your walking straight example, but the specifics are not really relevant: whenever science discovers it is wrong is becomes MORE accurate, not less.
> so you say science killed Christ, I rather lived without science then...
You claim not to be a christian, so honestly what do you care about some guy who supposedly died 2000 years ago? Besides, it wasn't science that killed him, just people. If the cross hadn't been invented yet, they'd just have beat him to death with a rock. Science merely enabled the particular way they killed him.
> And yes I am using a computer, and use it for work... If there wasn't one, we would live different, doing other stuff. You can't jump from one situation in the other, people are not used to it...
But you ARE free to do other stuff. Go live naked in the woods! You CHOOSE to use the fruits of the very science that you claim to dislike. There is a word for that: hypocrisy.
> The same when you grow up in a big town, you probably don't want to live some where without people, and the same way around.
So what are you trying to say? You don't like science but don't want to live without it? Or that we like science but only because we grew up with it?
> This is a discussion were we can go on for ages, you believe your stuff, I believe mine.
Yes, if only this were science, so we could use objective data to come to a conclusion.
> I just think science makes our lives more complex and slowly destroys our surroundings... Because money is involved, and moral isn't looked at...
Ah! So it's greed, not science, that you oppose?
As the religionists will correctly point out any minute now, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The experience of heaven in an NDE can be accounted for by chemical actions in the brain? Well, so can hunger -- does that mean that food doesn't exist, or that we don't need to eat? Only a few on the fringes seriously took NDEs as evidence for heaven, because the possibility of hallucinations was too obvious. So, although this is interesting, don't expect it to have any effect on the views of religionists, because it's actually irrelevant to their beliefs.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
It disproves some fundamentalist interpretations of NDEs, yes, but most people who these days have the strong fundamentalist views are as unlikely to accept this proof as they are to accept evolution.
For people who hold philosophy-of-mind views other than the strict dualism of traditional religions, though, it's not as clear what this shows. It shows that something physical happens in the brain when people have near-death experiences, but that in itself isn't too surprising, because something happens in the brain anytime people have any experience: all experiences, sensations, thoughts, plans, feelings, etc., are enacted through some combination of chemical/neuronal/etc. signalling. So it's not actually particularly interesting, philosophically, that someone found a particular one, since we already assume one exists for all sensations, thoughts, and feelings. What exactly that means is trickier. If you were to argue that this means NDEs are "merely physical" and don't correspond to any higher-level concepts at all, would you commit to saying that of all human experiences? It's not impossible, but I find most people balk at it: at most, they'll accept that some mental illnesses are "just brain chemicals" (e.g. "the depression is a chemical imbalance talking, not really you"), but they won't go so far as to admit that the fact that they love their mother, or enjoy steak, is "just brain chemicals" in the same way.
(I personally don't hold to the fully reductionist view; it's not clear to me that even a complete map of neuronal pathways actually resolves all philosophical questions, or renders higher-level concepts obsolete.)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Interestingly, one of the study authors at least is taking this the other way. Rather than taking the similarity between NDEs and ketamine experiences as evidence that NDEs aren't spiritual, he's taking it as evidence that ketamine experiences are spiritual, just like NDEs. It's not clear as a whole that explaining NDEs was even the goal: for at least one of them, it seems that explaining ketamine experiences was the goal.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that if you take enough ketamine you will go to heaven.
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.
Science shouldn't have morals. Morals are nothing more than someone's opinion on how things should be. Most people do agree on the same morals.
Take for instance the age of consent. It can range anywhere from 9 to 20. Who is right? 9 seems disgusting to me but then people who believe it should be 20 may thing 16 is disgusting.
Is stem research morally wrong? Some think so but would it be morally right to stop something that may save millions of lives? Again some say yes and some say no.
It's pretty sad though that most people need some greater force to tell them to treat people as they want others to treat them. Perhaps humans aren't as advanced as we would like to think.
This experiment show a potential, non-supernatural, explanation for why many people have similar NDEs. There are many people that think that since so many people see the same thing when near death, even if those people are not related in any way and have on reason to have seen the same thing, that they must be seeing something external, rather than something created from their own mids. This external place they have seen has been referred to as "heaven".
> As the religionists will correctly point out any minute now, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Yes... and by that logic every lightning strike that we don't measure may have been magical and thrown by Thor, and it's just that sometimes lightning is caused by electricity and those are the only ones we've measured.
If all 'measured' NDEs appear to have been caused by ketamine (of course we can never PROVE *any* causal relationship...) the religionists can point out all they want that the unmeasured ones may have really been caused by heaven, but they'll just look silly. They're free to pump some people full of chemicals that instantly break down ketamine and then almost kill those people (that'd be an interesting if somewhat immoral experiment) and see if any NDE's occured.
> Well, so can hunger -- does that mean that food doesn't exist, or that we don't need to eat?
Well, I believe there is a lot of evidence that suggests not eating causes those chemical reactions, and no evidence that it is caused by some supernatural afterlife. Obviously we could use chemicals to make someone hungry even if they eat enough... but I fail to see how that proves food doesn't exist.
Religion is immoral
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I'm afraid I'm one of the "just brain chemicals" people. In fact it's why I never trust my parents when they say anything positive about me as they don't really have much of a choice in liking me anyway... shut up mom that's just the "my-offspring" chemicals speaking! :p
The Vatican doesn't even have as much money as minor movie studio
[Citation needed]
How about the morals of big hollywood making billions of dollars throwing poor people in jail for copying a movie or a song
Not defending that it's right by me, or the general population, but they don't ooze rubbish about benevolence, and treating one's brother as you wish to be treated and all the rest. Hollywood is a corporation that's out to make money. That's what they claim to be. The church claims to be the representative of god on Earth.
Now tell me this,
If god is so good, then why do his peoples,
Place lightning rods atop of their steeples?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
If all 'measured' NDEs appear to have been caused by ketamine (of course we can never PROVE *any* causal relationship...) the religionists can point out all they want that the unmeasured ones may have really been caused by heaven, but they'll just look silly.
No you're missing the point. The religionists don't have to argue any such dualism. They just have to argue that the encounter with heaven produces ketamine, and it's the ketamine that produces the qualia, the experience. They can argue that the experience can be artificially induced by introducing ketamine, but that says nothing about the supposed "natural" phenomenon.
Absolutely every experience we have come down to chemical actions in the brain. The fact that we happen to know what that chemical action is says nothing at all about the validity of the experience, and it's bad science -- going beyond the observations -- to pretend that it does. The interesting debate here is not about religion at all, it's about the nature of consciousness itself.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I wonder what other hallucinogen cause everyone to have the same basic hallucination.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
- Even if it did make any sort of sense, it's extremely disrespectful and, frankly, anti-scientific to call someone a moron based on their beliefs. You can't be a scientist without an open mind. You can't have an honest discussion without basic respect. In defending Science, please attack the argument and not the person.
I'm inclined to disagree. You can't call someone a moron for not having all the facts, but when someone willfully ignores the entire concept of fact.. Well, political correctness and politeness be damned, "moron" is far to mild a word.
Yes that's very true -- I agree.
What I experience subjectively as a mind, has an objective correlate in the physical brain. It is "correlated" somewhat loosely for now -- depression and certain chemicals appear together -- but sometimes you can cure depression by doing something mental, like changing beliefs, and sometimes by doing something physical, like changing diet, or maybe sometimes it is a bit of both.
It can be tempting to say that everything is physical, but that leaves a problem. If everything is just matter, just physical, then where is the subjectively experienced "picture" of the world that I'm experiencing? Where is the "inner movie" or the "man in the movie theatre"? If you cut open a living brain, you don't see the picture the person sees. So where is that located? Someone experiences a picture. Even in purely digital SLRs, there is nobody in the camera experiencing the image. The camera doesn't experience anything, it isn't a conscious being.
Yet, being a conscious being, as abstract and etherial as that sounds, being a pure consciousness, can't exist as far as we know without a physical body to be its "correlate".
It seems that both mind and matter arise as two aspects of the same thing, like two sides of a coin.
With that model, the key is that NDEs are "near" death, not actual death. So they never were heaven after incineration of physical body. Actually, as mind and matter are two sides of the coin, then for there to be anything after biological death, then there must continue to exist some form of physical energy afterwards. We don't have the instruments that can measure those "subtle" energies. Imagine if one day we discovered we could measure them, and that "something" was floating or being radiated away after death. Imagine you could detect "something" being beamed to another birth happening somewhere else. I'm not saying that's going to happen, I'm saying that is what it would take to "demonstrate" that one life was somehow linked energetically to another life by reincarnation, if such a thing really exists.
If there really is some kind of higher mind, then there would need to be some kind of energy to be the physical basis for it. Maybe in 1000 years we could detect that kind of stuff. Or maybe it just doesn't exist.
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.
In other words , it explains that this experience itself, is not really heaven , but just a physical reaction . It doesn't say anything about heaven itself.
And seeing as no one has demonstrably "come back" from heaven, only from possibly an overdose to endorphins and suchlike, it's still a hell of a lot more scientific than all this "you must have faith" crap we've been subjected to for the past 2000 years.
There is still not one iota of proof for or against a god or a heaven, anymore than there is proof that Underpants Gnomes really exist ... the difference being, if I said I believe in the Underpants Gnomes, I'd get locked up in a mental asylum, but if I believe in God that's okay.
Only a few on the fringes seriously took NDEs as evidence for heaven, because the possibility of hallucinations was too obvious.
Actually, most people don't think about this kind of thing too seriously, and do assume NDEs are actual connections with God. I don't know if you're aware of this, but normal people don't really sit around and debate their beliefs, they just take them at face value.
So, no, it wasn't just fringes. It may have been the fringes of serious debate, but normal people do believe in this kind of bunk. Because they just don't question it at all.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
What evolutionary advantage do NDE's serve?
How does reducing trauma in the brains of those who are dying aid survival?
Take as an example, adultery. (defined loosely as a person in a committed relationship cheating)
The application of the scientific method would show if there was harm done by adultery. Also if there was harm done by faithfulness. Science could tell you what is greater.
Another example is smoking around babies. Is second-hand smoking bad for baby's health? Does it convey benefits?
Drinking or drug use while pregnant? ditto.
As to religion* and morals, from the attitude of the 'faithful,' religion, by exposition, has the right to define right and wrong. (Note, I am not arguing that is correct 'morally' or not, just that is part of the definition of religion)
Also, most religions that teach 'Heaven,' teach 'God as Creator'. So following that exposition, pappa knows best.
So here is where religion and science can meet. A scientist can take the moral tenets of a religion and test their rightness or wrongness (are they harmful or not) i.e. Adultery or 'Love thy Neighbor' or 'Kill the Infidel'
So, what do you think of that argument?
*Religion defined as 'a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.')
I'll go there right after you explain to me why I should believe this ancient book of yours, why all the other old books are not true, and why I should support a system that thinks it's okay to throw people in a lake of fire.
Wow, some random college girl writes a thesis, now there's proof.
This is hardly anything new. Suggested reading, author Dr. John Lilly.( The original Altered Statesman, upon whom the movie Altered States was based)
Truthfully there is a lot in between dying or dropping hallucinogens and other perceived dimensions that goes unexplained, except of course to the profoundly religious,profoundly non religious and of course "reliable" press like Newsweek or the National Enquirer.
There are a fair amount of questions about consciousness, perceived soul, other dimensions, creation, chemistry, physiology and more to be accounted for before some patchy explanation covers the subject.
But on the bright side of things, I'm glad Lisa probably got her degree, and some notoriety which will get her a nice career somewhere. Now athiesti can claim proof and argue with Jehovahs Witness in coffeeshops. But, as far as science goes this is a small step sideways and back just a little as this will be proclaimed either truth or garbage by an ignorant public.
We could use much much more research. Unfortunately this is still the dark ages and hallucinogenic research is still taboo to a superstitious nanny government.
My advise? Go score some LSD,not the blotter crap, and do a bit of research on your own. You might not get answers or answers you want, but gosh...
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
But I reckon they only assume NDE's are encounters with God and Heaven because they already believe in God and Heaven, which is what I meant by they don't take NDE's as evidence of Heaven.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
If NDE's can be explained by chemical reactions, that means there's no evidence for heaven right?
An atheist would grab an opportunity and say RIGHT! A christian would grab an opportunity and slam science.
A scientist with a properly neutral perspective will tell you there are too many questions left unanswered.
Timothy Leary would tell you " stick out your tongue".
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
> They just have to argue that the encounter with heaven produces ketamine,
So now all that's left is finding a (nonmagical) mechanism that causes ketamine to be produced/released when the brain is dying, and we'll be able to conclude that NDE's are completely unrelated to heaven, regardless of heavens existence or lack thereof.
No we can't -- that would be a basic scientific and philosophical blunder. The "(nonmagical) mechanism" could be "simply the mechanism that God uses". You can only conclude that NDE's are completely unrelated to heaven if you have already concluded that God does not exist, and I think I can see the makings of a circular argument.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Mescaline tends to lead to geometric imagery and mushrooms tend to lead to a feeling of connectedness.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
Heaven (or whatever you want to call it) is a HIGHLY subjective place. Your idea of what it is an my idea of what it is could be very different. Who is right?
Heaven is a construct of the mind. If it exists (which in my opinion it doesn't), then it is nothing like what people think it is.
~X~
~X~
Unlike the Pope, he and his political party send their dark agents throughout the empire to confiscate the savings...
Uhmmm, Catholics still pass the basket and collect tithes, supposed to be 10% of your net.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Religious people tend to define their world based on beliefs. The word "believe" has a different, special meaning to them. Nothing is more natural to religious people than to think we "believe" in Science the way they "believe" in religion. Their belief is based on faith, which ultimately comes from authority - the Pope, bishop, shaman as interpreters of some ultimate authority that emanates from the divine - a book or the stars or whatever. They find it natural to transfer that to us and they think we take our beliefs from the authority of some fuzzy hierarchy revolving around Academia.
And yet there is a growing amount of religious people for whom Science (big S) is a religion. They call themselves atheists, but they aren't like rational philosopher atheists, instead they're "dig my heels in the sand, I'll believe what this scientist says even though I don't understand it because I don't like the religion I grew up with" type of atheists. There's no skepticism, no logic. The rational folk on both sides of the theist/atheist fence have to come to a point where we recognize that a certain portion of the population is mostly irrational, and that they'll blindly accept whatever view seems to be predominant.
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.
No it doesn't. Secular groups like Humanists believe in making the world better for the sake of future generations. Humanists don't believe in holy wars, or prostrating yourself before some figurehead who claims to speak for some magical cloud people. They believe in the progress and sustainability of the human species.
That's more than I can say for mainstream religions.
~X~
~X~
You yourself said ketamine (or the mechanism that produces ketamine) could be the mechanism that god uses (I assume you mean the mechanism would bring us to heaven, else I think we can conclude that NDEs are unrelated to heaven?). How would triggering that mechanism (possible if it is nonmagical) not bring a person to heaven?
And what if we find that the the mechanism that triggers the ketamine is, let's say, lack of oxygen, would you conclude that heaven produces hypoxia? What if we find the hypoxia is caused by lack of circulation and/or breathing? Would we conclude those things are caused by heaven? The whole thing sounds absurd to me.
And that's the reason why Christianity never really caught on among the native Americans. For they already had a paradise waiting for them full of women and sex.
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
Half of all native Americans are women. Are you implying that native American women are all lesbians?
Or that paradise isn't open to native American women - just native American men? If native American men are like other men, the women will be too busy trying to teach them how to change the toilet paper roll instead of leaving one lonely square on it so that it's "someone else's turn", and pick their dirty underwear and used towels up off the floor.
The Vatican doesn't even have as much money as minor movie studio, just a lot of old stuff that frankly isn't worth very much.
The Vatican itself is estimated to have assets of between $1.5 to $15 billion.
If you consider the Vatican to be the head of a multinational corporation, and include all worldwide assets of the Roman Catholic Church, some estimate they have close to $100 BILLION in money, property and other assets. And think how much of that is tax-free.
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.
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
Calling religion "fantasy" is a poor way of putting it, as it implies that it is "made up" and would have no existence without someone dreaming it up. In theory, this could be true, but it doesn't have to be. Consequently, by using that terminology, you are implying that you know it is fantastic, which you don't.
Just because you can't see or prove something exists, does not mean it has no objective reality beyond your senses. All we get to decide is whether we place credence in that we are told exists beyond our actual senses. For instance, I accept a computer chip works because there are tiny transistors which manipulate electricity in the desired manner. However, there is no way I can tell that this is actually the case without busting out my CPU and examining it. Now, I have no reason to believe that I couldn't do this, and if I had sufficient experience and resources, I could probably prove it.
Unfortunately, I will never have the resources, experience or time to prove everything that I accept as true scientifically. If I were to then use your definition, I would have to call call most the explanations for today's technical achievements "fantasy". This is certainly not the way to think about anything if you want to get anywhere.
What religion bases itself on is an unprovable hypothesis. This makes the scientific method useless in answering questions about it, but it doesn't mean that what we cannot prove or disprove scientifically is imaginary. You are free to believe it is fictional, but you are on the same ground that the religious people are when they say that it isn't fictional. Neither of you can prove it, so you're just going to circle around each other with logic based on differing sets of accepted laws. That doesn't help anything or anybody.
"There is an unrealistic idolisation of humanity on the grounds of our "great scientific achievements", when we're still pretty much as feeble, week, and transient as we ever were, just with a few more gadgets around the place, and more of us surviving to our (still very brief) hundred-odd years of life."
What metric are you using to determine this? Human beings could exterminate all life on this planet if we wanted to. We can launch rockets into space. We can make fire. We can build methods of locomotion unseen in the natural world. We exterminated the scourge of small pox. We have effectively tripled our lifespan. We have built machines that burn with the power of the stars. Our computers rival those found in nature as does the beauty of our art forms. Our achievements make the Gods of the ancient world seem petty and pathetic.
We may be violent and cruel and at times evil beyond comparison, but damn are we marvellous by any of the standards we have devised. What are we to idolise if not that which is good in humankind? Should we pray to small sky daddies whose pathetic notions of grandeur seem to extend only to concern for our sexual conduct? For all it's faults the wonder that is the human race is more worthy of praise than and idolisation than any deity.
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.
If we had any brains we would put together that the Dempublicans and Republicrats are pretty much the same run around each time. If we feel we must have a two party system, we need to quit inviting them to the party.
They both screw the economy and start wars, but Al Gore is the reason it takes two flushes to get a turd out of the house.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!