Time of death…
Partly due to the fact that the last post has nearly 300 comments and so it is good to start a fresh post, and partly because this really disturbing case study raises a question that is very relevant to the whole subject of NDEs, and therefore worth a discussion all of its own, I am posting this and asking the usual contributors and any new ones, to answer the question…”when are you actually dead?” And also what does this highly unusual case say about the relationship between consciousness and physical death, and NDEs in general:
Patient who remained conscious after heart stopped
“The authors conclude that the high level of patient awareness plus oxygen saturation and arterial gas being almost within the normal range throughout the 90 minutes of treatment indicate that peripheral and cerebral blood flow was good and the chest compressions were highly effective. They note that that even though the patient had a poor prognosis, the termination of CPR after 90 minutes raised ethical questions in the team as the individual was still conscious at the time.”
My thoughts, (the horror of the situation aside):
1. In the overwhelming majority of cases when the heart stops, normal “waking” consciousness is immediately lost. This is proven by the immediate and almost total loss of brain activity as measured by EEG. Prior to modern CPR this was historically defined as the point of death. This is why Dr Parnia refers to NDEs as ADEs…actual death experiences. In other words the patient is technically dead. In this case, the EEG probably showed activity associated with normal levels, although this is not mentioned. The patient experienced heart death but not brain death.
2. Death is a process, and as has been mentioned before, none more so than by Parnia himself, it is reversible, and using various methods, the point at which it can be fully reversed without any long term damage can be stretched beyond the several minutes mark. To me true physical death is the point past this. It is the point at which the cells have endured so much damage that the body, and especially the brain, is no longer able to function properly.
3. This case contradicts something that I had always thought was absolutely true…when the heart stops the conscious either shuts down completely, or starts to “detach itself” from the host as we believe is the case with NDEs. However, it appears that if CPR is immediate, and continuous blood flow is kept going, the conscious can somehow “be fooled” into believing that “its host” hasn’t died. What do these cases say about the nature of the connection between body and conscious? And for the skeptic do cases like this provide evidence against NDEs?
AwareofAware 
Well, it surely was an horrible situation for that unlucky person. But this case is basically the opposite of an NDE, his brain was working, showed by the person moving and having his eyes open, he was “normally aware”, it’s a ver different scenario compared to ADE very the person is flatlined.
This case shows that, although extremely rare, CPR can keep a patient awake. But multiple NDEs/ADEs happened either under EEG monitoring (Pam Reynolds, Mario Beuregard patient) or in absence of CPR. The AWARE II study controls both oxygen levels and EEG during CPR, so we would know if a case like this happened during this study.
This also sounds like an event much rarer than NDEs/ADEs
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Well, you are basically saying the same thing as skeptics are saying: a flat EEG doesn’t necessarily mean no brain activity. Even if it does, resuscitation starts the blood flow again and also the process of regaining consciousness. And you can never be sure at what exact moment a NDE happened. There is no rock solid proof for or againtst nde’s. But I personally do think consciousness is a process coming entirely from the brain. I have no proof for that, but it seems the most likely. If Parnia gets hits from aware 2, I may change my mind. Because if patiënts see images on a screen facing upwards, you can not reasonably say they could have gathered that info through normal means. But as I said, I don’t expect any hits like that.
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Parnia monitors the EEG during CPR, so they would note if it starts again. There have been numerous cases in which people saw stuff they would have never been able to see normally, Pam Reynolds being the most important one. But you also have Loyd Rudy’s patient, that described events with good accuracy while he was given for dead and no CPR was being performed on him. He also had his eyes taped shut, so how could he have gathered the infos through normal means?
The case in the post is just a man that retained normal awareness so eyes open, limb movement, during CPR. But it is really far from what the NDEs are.
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@Stefan I agree that there seems little chance that Parnia will get any hits on hidden, secret, realtime targets. But I do think you still have to be very careful, not to chuck the baby out with the bathwater when you suggest that your preferred idea is that “consciousness is a process coming entirely from the brain”.
I’m pretty sure *I* wouldn’t be having *this* experience without my brain. The problem is, brains are not perfectly shielded from the environment within which they are embedded, so in my view it’s not really accurate to say that my experience comes entirely from *my* brain. Evidence continues to accumulate that supports this idea…
One can read Frank Prato’s studies of the effect of zero magnetic fields on rodents… caused by 1 hour of shielding from ambient magnetic fields inside a light tight Mu Metal chamber. Prato’s results show strong behavioral effects caused by simply blocking magnetic fields.
Landlers stunning work on Magnetoreception in turtles shows that magnetic fields appear to play an important, and as yet poorly understood role, in encoding spatial information in the animal’s immediate surroundings.
The magnetic field strengths we are talking about here are really too weak for any known chemical processes to be affected by them, so we really have to look elsewhere, at more fundamental processes like say… spin
The results from these recent studies seem to show that external hyper-weak magnetic fields may play a completely unexpected and crucial role in memory processing and consolidation.
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Sceptics can’t have it both ways. One anomalous case which slightly favours their hypotheses is just one anomalous case. This doesn’t demonstrate that CPR provides enough blood flow to the brain, because in the 99.99 % (?) of other cases of cardiac arrest, it certainly does not. This case would have needed to be examined extensively by experts from many areas of medicine.
The poor man had an aortic dissection…was his aorta dissected before CPR began ? Or did CPR at incorrect depth split his artery ? Furthermore, what does this mean for the accuracy of the measurement of heart function during CPR ? What was actually going on, anatomically ?
Obviously, I don’t know (as a layperson) but I do know that functioning brains need a very steady blood supply to maintain consciousness. If that wasn’t the case, then why do people faint so easily with even a slight loss of blood pressure ?
You can’t have electrical activity in a brain with no oxygen and glucose it doesn’t make sense; if sceptics want to say that somehow you can …then they are being as silly as someone who told you that their car engine could run without petrol.
The arguments and issues around NDE’s are getting so complicated (mainly because of deliberate sceptical shenanigans) that it’s causing us to lose sight of the basics (and I believe that’s exactly what they do indeed want to happen)
How can a person report a clear consciousness with veridical observations, reasoning and memory formation, out and above their physical bodies, sometimes outside the room and even the building, when their dire medical condition (cardiac arrest) warrants the greatest effort of medics to try to save their lives (because they are in the first stage of death) ? If NDE’s were just a product of having some blood flow to the brain, then why doesn’t everyone have NDE’s all the time ?
As Raf points out, what about cases like Pam Reynolds ? In her second veridical observation, she had no heart beat/no blood flow, a flat EEG; she was still under the influence of massive amounts of barbiturates and her body temperature was 27 degrees C, a temperature at which you cannot be conscious. And there’s quite few of these now ! In other words, her brain was completely offline, in fact she was dead (Dr Karl Greene)
@Ben (I’ll stick to Ben if that’s okay) You could always send this case to Pim Van Lommel. He’d be interested, I’m sure.
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Perhaps this will be a little off topic, but we do all remember the Pam Reynolds case. I’ve found this article, analysing her experience and trying to skeptically explain her case of NDE. I have no medical experience, therefore I’d love to hear your opinion on the subject. http://www.neardth.com/pam-reynolds-near-death-experience.php#induction
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https://www.neardth.com/out-of-body-experiences.php This is also an interesting article. Actually, for those who are interested Woerlee tries to debunk many theories. What do you think about his arguments? Are they credible?
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Woorlee has been debunked himself many times. He explains Pam’s case through anesthesia awareness, while he as a medic should know that it can’t be like that. She was under EEG burst suppression, and the medics involved in her operation all said that if anesthesia awareness happened they would have noticed it on the monitor.
Also, anesthesia awarness normally brings fear, panic, pain and a lot of distressing things with it. So she had to have a very weird case of it.
Then, he states that she somehow filtered out the very loud clicks in her hears (90 – 100 decibels, basically a jackhammer near you at 2 or 3 meters) because she was a musician. So he is basically saying that she did a feat Daredevil style, filtering ou incredible noise while understanding conversation happening in the room. He then goes on, saying that she reconstructed the scene from sound alone conducted through her bones.
No human, in no way, would be able to acheive a similar feat even in ful consciousness.And anesthesia awareness, although ruled out by the EEG monitoring, would be far from full consciousness. She was at 27 degrees celsious,
So, to believe in Woorlaee debunking you should think that she had the weirdest anesthesia awareness possible+she did some superhuman stuff+the surgeons were morons and didn’t monitor the EEG. That is absurd and totally made up, but Woorlee is a super militant atheist who hates religion in any form and blames it for all the evil in the world. He thinks that NDEs are some kind of “basic religion” so he’ll tell any kind of false/impossible stuff to debunk them.
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Thanks for the detailed answer! I also found his comparison of filtering out 100 db noise with filtering out noice at a party during conversation doubtable
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The fact is that yes, you can filter the noise in a way that you can hear conversation during a party. But you still hear that noise, you register it but try to understand also the conversation. Pam didn’t hear or register it all, that’s basically impossible.
Also, there is big difference from noise coming from outside, even if at 100 decibels, and noise coming from molded earbuds that fit perfectly inside your ears. The sound goes straight inside your ear canals, and any sound coming from outside will be deeply muffled (you can try that by playing loud music with earbuds, they won’t fit as good as good as the molded ones but is still gonna be enough, or by wearing headphones then pressing them firmly onto your ears to fit them as tight as possible. Play 100 decibel on noise on that, and you’ll see that conversation going on around you becomes nearly impossible to understand clearly, and will be deeply muffled. Also you will, for sure, hear those 100 decibels and there is no way you just casually filter them out)
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@Anton Efimov
Gerry is a militant Atheist. He twists the various reports to suit his materialist agenda and outright denies inconvenient facts, therefore a pseudo sceptic. He is however, an accomplished anaesthesiologist.
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Indeed, and as a good anesthesiologist he should know that the effects of anesthesia awareness are often totally different than what Pam described.
There is people that has been so traumatized after anesthesia awareness that they killed themselves. Other had it better, but nearly nobody described it as some sort of paradisiac experience. So Pam should have had a nearly unique case of AW.
She was also under EEG monitoring, but Gerry says the monitors can give false reading or not be accurate. Yeah, another pretty big coincidence.
The whole thing about filtering out the noises is then totally absurd. Could she hear the people talking? Probably yes, although not very clearly. Can you filter a bit of background noise? Sure, but if it is strong enough you’ll still register it, you know the noise is there you just try to focus elsewhere. 100 decibel of noise in earbuds it’s something nobody can totally ignore. It’s a noise so strong you feel pain after a while of hearing it, damn it.
Also the idea that she reconstructed the scene nearly perfectly from sound alone should mean she was basically Daredevil. And she managed to do so under anesthesia awareness. Yeah, that sounds absurd.
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“Also the idea that she reconstructed the scene nearly perfectly from sound alone should mean she was basically Daredevil. And she managed to do so under anesthesia awareness. Yeah, that sounds absurd.”
Nicely put.
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I have nothing to add to to Raf and Tim. This was an anomoly much like how people are kept alive during say heart transplants. Its clear they could nit save this guy unless they had a new heart on hand but I sure dont see how it changes the documented ADE cases.
From Moodys book he really didnt know what the brain was doing. Now we do. Now we do
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Sorry but when did you remain conscious did you have an NDE? It seems to me no … the brain is a sort of valve between the physical and the non-physical and there are different ways of detaching it. Surely the most effective system is … TO DIE! But death can occur at any time (every human body reacts differently, probably even consciences) and therefore that happens immediately after cardiac arrest a little later or much later, what changes? The substance of a near-death experience does not change … “Even if scientific explanations can be found that can justify some aspects of the Near-Death Experiences, I could not find any explanation that would be able to justify them all at once. all in their entirety and it is precisely this … that the skeptics do not. None of the purely physical explanations work. a highly organized and detailed affair (Fenwick 1995: 47). ” I will never cease to mention it … Greetings
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The sense of a CPR is to make shure to supply the brain with oxygene. So you can’t say, the brain is technically “dead” under this conditions…
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I am glad Parnia is including the iPad in his study. If someone sees an image the only argument against it is they were lying. With proving consciousness after death with lack of brain activity the problem is we could always discover something new with brain activity and consciousness in the future. Like being able to see deeper in our brain or whatever.
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Bruce Greyson said it best. When you take away the pieces that don’t fit, like veridical perception, the remaining pieces fit just fine for the skeptics.
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@The little red devil
Yes, I agree !
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Regarding Pam Reynolds. Yeah she was dead during that time she had that awareness. These studies provide further evidence that she didn’t fabricate anything and was telling the truth when she died for that period of time. The only real thing to blame here are people like Gerry who are militant extremists. Pam was telling the truth.
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I rather doubt the A1hit was due to detailed memories of the sound of the machine from doctors shows. Hameroff said this is clearly trye and developed his q mindvtheory on it.
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in a1 ，the patient clearly saw the doctor，and describe the detail of the doctor，the nurse s position and action is all correct。
you cant say the information is all from sound。
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Oh yes I was just focusing on the deatiled descrpition of the machine sound.A1 had hit. It will never satisfy the professional skepitc crowd.
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in a1 ，the patient clearly saw the doctor，and describe the detail of the doctor，the nurse s position and action is all correct。
you cant say the information is all from sound。
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Tim, if your reading this, do you know if Spetzler was interviewed for cases other than Pam? I googled and couldn’t find anything. I know he’s afraid to do these interviews because of damage to his reputation as a well known neurosurgeon, but he’s retired now so wondering if you know anything
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@Chad
“Veridical perceptions” during any operation using general anaesthesia simply should not happen (I thnk it occurs in about 0.2% general surgery)
During Pam’s operation (hypothermic cardiac standstill) it is absolutely out of the question (according to experts but also from a common sense perspective)
The level of anaesthesia (the deepest state possible without killing her) combined with ever increasing hypothermia (5-10% of brain function lost for every one degree reduction in temp) simply obliterates brain function.
The Pam Reynolds case only came out because Pam herself felt a duty to speak out (or at least tell as many people as would listen-she said). Previously, she’d only told her family and close friends.
However, everyone at Barrow Neurological Institute knew about it several hours after she woke up. Surgeons Spetzler, Greene and the anaesthesiologists knew as soon as she woke up. The case was so extraordinary that it brought an enormous influx of interested medical personnel to Barrow, to conduct their own investigations (apparently)
They wanted to see the charts (EEG’s etc) and the video recordings for themsleves to check the timings of observed facts (against the read outs). I know this, because a colleague of Dr Spetzler’s (another neurosurgeon) very kindly told me by email (Of course I don’t know him personally, I’m a layperson)
This other (renowned) neurosurgeon had himself come across two other cases in his career which were just as remarkable (ie veridical observations with absolutely zero brain function)
I know Spetzler has had cases of out of body experiences in other operations but I don’t know if he’s had another one like Pam Reynolds during hypothermic cardiac standstill.
I do know that he was very impressed with Pam’s case (He believes it belongs in the meta-physical=soul territory), a well known NDE researcher told me this (she met him at a charity function in Arizona)
As for Gerry Woerlee, all he has ever tried to do is distort the facts with lies and propaganda. For a medic to use his professional expertise (which has to be acknowledged) to tell untruths about a case, so that it doesn’t threaten his world view, is despicable, in my opinion !
Lastly, for anyone reading this, and because Ben’s blog seems to be attracting a lot of visitors, please don’t take this information as some kind of reason to take an early exit. We’re here for a reason (I believe) and everyone has a purpose. Just saying.
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Apologies. Just to clarify the first line of my post above, I meant to say that anaesthesia awareness occurs in about 0.2% of operations in general surgery. Secondly veridical perception shouldn’t happen at all.
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Exactly what I meant. You don’t need to have a brain to have a consciousness. Pam has shown this. I’m thinking consciousness does not arise from a physical substrate but instead consciousness is the “spark of life”. Without consciousness you just have a lifeless lump. The consciousness in the event of losing a body just moves itself elsewhere probably to find a new vessel. There really is no such thing as “death” because of the laws of energy. The bodies given to us aren’t invincible but the consciousness is. This is a basic quantum mechanic pretty much. Consciousness is an energy form. You can’t really create or destroy it. Only move it elsewhere. I am pretty sure science classes taught us about the mechanics regarding energy. I think that’s what our true consciousness is. A quantum form. That’s why it just floats there like with Pam Reynolds.
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That’s not true. Unfortunately this is the type of argument skeptics jump on and use as strawman when debating real proponents. There’s no spark of life, vitalism has been debunked ages ago. Everything about life excluding the brain is purely mechanical. And the brain is largely mechanical too, just what effect free will has on it prevents it from being a purely mechanical object. Also most behaviours are purely automated, people can do tons of things and not be aware of them. I think without consciousness a person’s body can get along with everyday living just fine, there might be some slightly differences for mundane decisions and big differences when critical decisions are required. No one knows to extent consciousness exerts free will over the brain, but it’s certainly far less than people intuitively think.
Also the “energy conservation implies life after death” is just wrong. Life isn’t about energy, it’s about organization. Death is loss of organization nothing to do with energy levels of cells. Consciousness is entirely different from life, life can exist without consciousness. My view is consciousness just observes the brain like a movie watcher, and make free will decisions some times. Consciousness is definitely not a pilot of all your behaviours, it’s a supervisor at best.
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Right Chad exceot there are skme odd aspects to life. But that said ….I never saw a selective advanatge to consciousness. I think zombie humans or cats might even have an advantage. That viewer aspect might even hurt survival compared to the an unconscious survival only brain.
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Yes try telling that to neuroscientists who think consciousness is an epiphenomenon function of the brain. Assuming consciousness is somehow produced by the brain, it is clearly a disadvantage to any survival instinct, because it uses more energy than a non conscious brain. Also like I mentioned before (and also pointed out by donald hoffman) if it didn’t do anything, why are our conscious experiences like vision so detailed? At best if something didn’t influence an organism’s behaviour, it’ll evolve at random, if it doesn’t get phased out in the first place. Pain shouldn’t exist, neither should pleasure, when a person’s hand gets stabbed it should be just an automated retraction of the hand without any “pain”. It’s hilarious how materialists assume consciousness doesn’t exist or is an epiphenomenon, then proceed to make arguments like “pain is evolved by the brain to warn [i]you[/i] about harm”. This very sentence immediately assumes some form of dualism and that [i]you[/i] have causal consequences on [i]the brain[/i]. A true materialist knows there shouldn’t be any pain and when people are physically/mentally hurt they’ll just show the usual behaviour without having subjective experience of “pain”.
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Just some random thoughts on this… One way we seem to evolve is by splitting apart sensory input data, which increases the richness of our experiences. Organisms which develop a way to distinguish sensory data that appears similar (split it), can gain an advantage if the splitting is useful.
Things like colour, seem to be the sort of richness effects we can get from this splitting. Colour doesn’t exist in the world, but we’ve evolved a way to identify a very useful, and pretty much permanent property of surfaces with colour… ‘Colour Constancy’. Nature (information) seems to be changing around us, but we seem to be evolving ways to tie down this constant change, to try and understand it in a better, more constant way.
Where our sensory input produces a similar effect, but different/unexpected outcomes, the information appears to break into our experience much faster. Energy wise, the splitting advantage might be more energy efficient, simply by reducing the organisms inefficient behavior that occurred before splitting. As the unexpected appears to break into my experience faster than the expected, it’s perhaps suggestive of my experience being – at least – something to do with dealing the unexpected – a way to untangle, and reweave information together that is more accurate.
Also as we know from Quantum mechanics, making an observation changes the state of the system, so there is something akin to a reading, manipulating, then storing of information going on (all in one process) within our shared experience of the world.
Another important aspect is the benefits available to a group organism, when it has evolved to allow it’s individual components to break free from the groups processing, and oppose the group under the right circumstances (i.e. when things become different/unexpected). If there are a group of organisms trundling over a surface, and a few individuals on the left of the group encounter an acid puddle that can kill them, it seems advantageous that these few individuals can oppose the group, and change direction to avoid the danger. That way both the individual, and the group seem to win. (But in my opinion, one problem seems to be maintaining the correct balance between the group, and it’s individual members).
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Could not say it better Chad. Look up todays New York Times story on UFOs. I really do not know what they are but they are something….the best part is tge scepitc response. First he knows more than Raytheon does about their camera ans sensors. Then he blames the whole thing on …Neurological Overload What is that?.
You all should be able to read it there are 3 free artickes a month.
Really interested in your reactions because we have a phenomonon on the most advanced sensors with the best witnesses doing non physical things and a just plain silly scepitc response.
On top of that the Navy confirms it.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/05/28/ufos-exist-everyone-needs-adjust-that-fact/?utm_term=.81a6721640d7
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https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41470-019-00053-0
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But aren’t UFO’s government aircraft?
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I think it’s high time for science to move beyond materialism. I know some materialists like Anil Seth and the like don’t want to hear that.
But here’s what I’M tired of hearing:
“Kids don’t really have a firm enough grip on how reality works…
That’s another pernicious aspect of religion: that adults shirk their duty to validate reality for children.”
“How can adults believe in such childish and naive fairytales? Simple. They can’t stand the thought and reality of not existing that they’ll develop a coping mechanism of ending up in a comforting afterlife at death.
And they want a purpose other than survival and reproduction. They want to be more than just bodies and brains. They’re searching for meaning of life’s inevitable hardships.
Same thing with NDE/OBErs who refuse to hear their experiences being naturally explained away as hallucinations, psychiatric/mental illnesses, delusions, and illusions. They don’t want to cease to exist, and desire meaning and purpose in life.”
“Lots of highly educated people believe in things like souls, afterlives, and new age, mystical, pseudoscience woo.”
I’ve seen these types of comments a LOT on freethoughts blogs and supporters of PZ Myers.
The definition of reality, truth, critical thinking, rationalism, and skepticism has been hijacked.
No doubt I’ll probably get jumped on and be called an “arrogant, gullible, uneducated believer and reality-denier” for saying the above sentence. ( I’ve been called that over and over by materialists. I’m used to it now )
And Quora is often full of atheist/materialists:
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-people-think-NDEs-are-a-real-thing-although-we-all-have-vivid-dreams-that-looks-a-lot-like-reality
“Only the naive and gullible think that NDEs are more than hallucinations”
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I guess when confronted with data just blow it off…….They are the ones taking an a priori religious stance.
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How can you have an Hallucination when you are dead?
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Also, adding things and “pseudoscientists”, such as Bernardo Kastrup, Rupert Sheldrake, ect, that challenge the “rational, critical thinking, and scientific” materialistic worldview to the “Debunkatron” and “Gallery of Wackos” website, ( also by Torsten Pihl, the developer of Debunkatron http://wackos.gallery ) is not going to make materialism reality.
ebunkatron.comWeb result with site linksDebunkatron
And when all else fails, call anyone, including scientists, who question materialism due to evidence “gullible, easily fooled, and claiming to be open-minded, when they’re really closed-minded.”
Torsten pihl does that here:
http://www.newsmulti.com/discussion/p/4364e
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Sorry. Link was off http://debunkatron.com/
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“How can you have an Hallucination when you are dead?”
Exactly, David. But the thing is many skeptics ( real skeptics, not the ones that dismiss things that don’t fit materialism ) say NDEs happen when you’re NEAR death, not completely dead. So there might be just enough brain activity to create a hallucination. The brain’s last hurrah. However, many atheist/materialists are using that as an excuse to completely dismiss NDEs altogether, avoid looking deeper into it, and maintain their materialistic worldview.
Some people acquire information during OBEs and get the details of their surroundings right, even from a completely different room.
Even some children developed new information that they didn’t have before the experience. But ‘skeptics’ keep repeating that the experiences and children were subconsciously fed the information, details of the room, ect. Especially when children are very young. They subconsciously absorb all the information. All of the experiences were subconscious memories, not souls.
Got that from here. This guy says nothing new in the article that explains NDEs and OBEs, and the article after that. Check it out: https://jeremyroyalhoward.com/2014/05/11/are-near-death-experiences-genuine-visits-to-the-afterlife/
And when all else fails, atheist/materialists will say that the brain creates those hallucinations when close to death, and when revived, many experiencers have changed, they’re a lot happier, no longer fear death, and appreciate life more. The brain created the NDE, OBEs, and the after effects of them, for better survival and reproduction rate.
And that “we’re hardwired to believe in these things”. I guess probably it makes sense because “if you fear death, you’re not really living”.
Oh well. If it lets many atheist/materialists sleep at night, so be it.
But evidence against materialism is mounting up as we speak, whether atheist/materialists like/believe it or not.
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Right That is why Parnia pinned down events in Aware 1 and I bet he has more in 2 but these are people like Fundie Christians ironically who have their minds made up
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Yes. And people like this person ( https://www.google.nl/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Psychedelics_Society/comments/ase9lq/the_fear_of_materialism_and_psychedelics/ )
should also know that NDEs are not the only pieces of evidence against reductionist materialism. Many of us do not accept these things out of ‘fear of materialism’.
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Okay. It didn’t like the first Reddit link. Here: https://www.google.nl/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/Psychedelics_Society/comments/ase9lq/the_fear_of_materialism_and_psychedelics/
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Has this guy not even heard of hardcore atheists having NDEs?:
View at Medium.com
View at Medium.com
View at Medium.com
This guy loves saying that some people are not “real skeptics” because they’re open to things like NDEs. How they’re actually “believers deep down” who are scared of death and cling to NDE research.
He should know that it’s not just believers who’ve had NDEs, They are not just hallucinations or results of brain a traumatic brain, and the fact that only some people have these experiences, and others not having them, does not mean they have been debunked and are therefore hallucinations.
And it’s also not a result of FPD ( Fantasy Proneness Disorder) due to “fantasy prone people being more likely to have OBEs, NDEs, and other mystical experiences.” Another desperate attempt to debunk it all in the first link.
Nor is it just the result of “evolutionary mechanism, natural selection for survival and reproduction”.
However I can see how the person in the third link reached the conclusion that souls and afterlives are only comforting mechanism for fear of death, and that OBEs/NDEs are the result of “mind trips, injuries, and illnesses.”
I became severely depressed when I thought materialism was a hard fact, that we’re nothing more than our bodies and brains, and that NDEs were not real.
However, those articles in her links are not new.
And my depression was before I realized that some ‘skeptics’, like Benjamin Redford, Tanya Lewis, ect will not accept evidence against materialism, and that some will twist and distort things to fit their worldview.
I understand that nobody likes having their beliefs challenged, and that they’ll attack and distort things that challenge them. That goes for both materialists and believers. And just because something gives one comfort, does not make it false. Again, it can go both ways.
But many atheist/materialists act like they’re immune to it all, and only “naive” mind beyond brain proponents behave that way.
Another funny thing is that atheist materialists are usually the ones who say “don’t believe everything you see, hear, and read, even if it is true. Especially on the internet, boys and girls. Don’t be naive/gullible, remain skeptical, and always question everything! Because some things are too good to be true.”
And yet they seem to believe everything they see, hear, and read when something or someone supports reductionist materialism, or ‘debunks’ NDEs, OBEs, and afterlife.
Um, hello? Skeptics? What happened to “remaining skeptical, critical thinking, and questioning everything”?
And I think I’ve found a perfect example of this sort of behavior:
View at Medium.com
I’m well aware that Wikipedia is not a very reliable source.
This person here even says that “it’s not reliable” when someone tried to show evidence that NDEs are more than hallucinations, and yet he/she had the nerve to use Wikipedia as a source to debunk NDEs.
I said something like that to ‘skeptics’ somewhere else online, and the only responses I’ve received was that I was “full of myself”, delusional, and a desperate Chopra woo believing fact-denier.
And more name-calling.
This is why I don’t bother engaging with ‘skeptics’ anymore. It’s a waste of my time, energy, and it’s not good for my delicate immune system.
Yes, I do find the ideas of an afterlife, that there is no death, and that we’ll all be reunited with our loved ones, comforting ideas. But I wouldn’t believe any of it if there were ZERO evidence.
https://www.reddit.com › the_fe…Web resultsThe Fear of Materialism and Psychedelics : Psychedelics_Society …
https://www.reddit.com/r/Psychedelics_Society/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=post_header
Contrary to what these Reddit users ( also comments on YouTube on how, “naive, arrogant, and cowardly” afterlife and OBE believers are, and how they need to educate themselves, and read a Metzinger book )
are saying, I accept these things because of the mounds of evidence, not because I’m an “egomaniac scared of materialism and clinging to a fairytale and meaning”, or “spiritual bypassing”.
I got DEPRESSED over materialism, not scared. But again, that’s not the reason why I started questioning it in the first place.
Glad I got all of that off my chest.
I am highly skeptical of the LOA ( Law of Attraction ) though. Please don’t hate me.
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Aware 2 updates from min 49
https://med.nyu.edu/medicine/education/grand-rounds/18-19
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Sadly that link doesn’t work for me. I can’t visit the page.
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Samwise thank you for posting the link. Kano I had the same problem. Copy the link into your web browser then delete everything after education even the /. So it looks like this https://med.nyu.edu/medicine/education Then go down the page to “Grand Rounds” then go the “View 2018-2019… Grand rounds videos. You should be set.
What do you guys think about the 40 some survivors for aware 2 as compared to 300 some survivors for aware 1. Why the big difference? Am I misunderstanding something, because the CA numbers are around the same 2016 to like 1900.
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Think it the 14th may as per grand rounds list on events it state that date
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Well done Samwise. I can’t see what date this was posted? Any ideas?
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I could be wrong. But I assumed this was what Parnia was talking about on twitter that he was going to present in June. On the video it says NYU health. On his twitter he said he is presenting at NYU…. I hope I am wrong.
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You’re probably right. 44 is small, but this is under the AWARE II inclusion criteria so much stricter. I will post on this tomorrow as it is important. Where would we be without Samwise…always there first.
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Think it the 14th may as per grand rounds list on events it state that date
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I can’t find this reference date on the site. the only video in the series is from September 2018, so this could well be from last fall, which would make sense given the modest increase in survivors who meet all the entry criteria.
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Ben. I think your right I jumped the gun and only looked st the last one.
This is a list of the grand rounds
https://med.nyu.edu/medicine/pulmonary/research/current-investigations/critical-care-resuscitation-research-center/news-events
The one is the video is past present and future which was from last sept 2018
But I could be wrong
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I can’t see if there is any way of knowing if this was the October 2018 or May 2019 “past present and future of Cardiac arrest” talk, but I am guessing it is the October one due to the small increase in numbers compared to March 2018. The May 2019 talk on consciousness after death looks particularly interesting…going by the rate at which they upload videos to the NYU server, it may be available to view in May 2021!
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Thanks, Jon and Sam.
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So 10% in CA have seizures on the EEG? This basically explains NDEs, I think the project is doomed.
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I cant get anything on any link. I have no idea wht you mean by EEG seizures. I dont see how that explains anything
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His Paper on Oximity dated June but online in March as an interesting line on EEG. Quote Unlike the EEG NIRs is not suseptible to motion artefact generated by CPR…..Nirs is a monitoring system to look at blood oxygen.
Anyone know what CPR motion artefact in CPR is?
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Well hit the google and google scholar and quickly found there are spikes in eeg caused by motion not from the brain itself
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So does that mean the motion eegs are essentially not brain activity?
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what does that mean now? after the reaction of some, nothing positive?
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You are all welcome. Ben, I think that this is pretty new.
Since his mars update (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkTh6wNlYao) there are almost 1000 newly recruited patients that are categorized in the group of “in hospital cardiac arrest”and 6 newly recruited patients that survived to discharge and could participate in Aware 2.
Btw, this is what Parnia said about EEG, “EEG is prone to motion artifacts, so what we do is we actually only take EEG recordings from the time in which CPR is paused for a pulse check. So we collected throughout, we delete everything during chest compressions and just look at those 5 or 10 seconds where CPR is paused.”
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Hi Samwise, that was March 2018 data. Looking at the other video in the series from NYU grand rounds, which was September 2018, I am thinking this might be from last fall, but I can’t see any way of finding out. It would be really odd to only have an increase of 6 patients in 1 year. I think his comments about EEG artefacts etc is worthy of a whole new discussion, especially the remark about seizures, so I will start a new post a little later on, I just want to nail down the date of this talk first.
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I did not notice that it was March 2018 data. You are most likely correct. An increase of 6 patients in a year seem unreasonable
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but how is everything to be interpreted? They will not get hits, but is the mood negative or positive, what do you think?
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This is new info. Dr. Sam Parnia is talking about the pig brain study at around 45:00.
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That’s a really good point. Thanks Lukas. Must be May 8th talk then, but very strange that there are only 6 new subjects enrolled in a year. I will create a new post to unravel some of the things he says.
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What do you guys think are the chances that Parnia got some hits from aware 2 (meaning nde patiënts who do see images on the tablet?) And when would we know?
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I think the chance of hits are high considering there were hits in the first Aware study. Aware 2 though will verify the hits more as they have better equipment.
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