UNCOOL (updated on 29th January)
This post is a doozy, you will need to get your noodle into high gear as we will be delving into 4 publications on or related to the subject of NDEs during HCA (hypothermic circulatory arrest). Before we start, can I ask you a small favour. This blog costs money to create, and time to write. If you have been coming here for a while and enjoy reading what I write, then I would be grateful if you “bought me a coffee” (if you are rich, you can buy more than 1!). This site is trustworthy and used by media creators around the world to get appreciation for creators like me. You will need a credit card, provide the number, expiry, CVV number AND your zip code – the details are not passed on to me or held on the Buymeacoffee site (BTW it’s easy to forget the ZIP code which tripped me up when I tried it out for the first time today, you need to scroll across the details box). If I get lots of support it may motivate me to write more!
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Now to the blog. So this is not a great news blog for those longing for that illusive scientifically verified OBE, and may be bad news for Parnia’s HCA study, but there is a caveat with that.
So to the first paper (big shout out to Constiproute for alerting me to this one – how did I miss it!!):
Ref: Manduit et al; Aorta (Stamford). 2021 Apr; 9(2):76-82. doi: 10.1055/s-0041-1725091
Brief summary of design, methods and results:
Design: It was a prospective study looking at consecutive patients who underwent thoracic aortic surgery between July 2018 and September 2019. Procedures without HCA were included to constitute a control group. The primary outcome was the incidence of NDE assessed with the Greyson NDE scale during the immediate postoperative course, via a standardized interview.
Results: None of the patients reported any recollection from their period of unconsciousness. There was no NDE experiencer in the study cohort.
This makes AWARE II look like a resounding success! The authors sound slightly bitter in their summary of the results, as far is it possible to sound bitter in a clinical study publication.
Firstly let’s get into the weeds. This is a well designed prospective controlled study which makes it a very credible study.
The procedure basically requires cooling the body to 21-28oC by using a bypass technique that cools the blood, and once this temperature is achieved circulation is halted. At this temp many of the metabolic processes that occur within cells are slowed to the extent that damage will not occur, particular to brain tissue. However, after 30 minutes things may get more dangerous and another technique is initiated that restores flow of fluid to the brain. Here are the numbers recruited.:
| Overall ( n = 101) | HCA group ( n = 67) | Control group ( n = 34) |
|---|
All patients survived, and while it is not stated (something the editors or reviewers should have picked up) I assume that all were interviewed. Given data from previous NDE studies looking at CA survivors, you would expect about 6 reports of NDEs from the HCA group given that they were in circulatory arrest. However there were none.
In the lengthy discussion section a number of factors were listed as potential confounders which might have caused this lack of NDEs. Here they are verbatim:
- The hypnotic agents and analgesics used during general anesthesia may induce retrograde amnesia, or merely prevent NDE, although some NDE during anesthesia have previously been described.
- The potential influence of modified neurotransmitter release and systemic inflammatory response induced by the CPB, along with the varying degrees of ischemia/reperfusion during aortic surgery, should also be taken into consideration.
- The duration of unconsciousness in our study (14.4 hours on average), inherent to the prolonged general anesthesia, might prevent the patient from remembering NDE events. Furthermore, the time between awakening from anesthesia and the patient’s interviews might have been too long.
- The number of patients included in our study might also be too limited to evidence NDE, although the incidence rates reported among cardiac arrest survivors suggest that such cohort size should be adequate.
- The level of hypothermia and the optional use of adjunctive cerebral perfusion during circulatory arrest might also play a crucial part.
The first 4 are self explanatory. The issue of being under sedation prior to CA is something that I think is potentially relevant. Does the consiousness need to be consious when CA occurs for an NDE to occur? Not convinced personally since I can recall of NDEs that have been reported when patients were under anesthesia, had a CA during a procedure and consiousness started at that point with the NDE ensuing. Moreover we have the cases from the HCA study in Montreal (the original COOL study) led by Mario Beauregard. I will return to that in a moment.
It is the fifth point that interests me and two papers that are cited in the section of the discussion that delves into this.
Electroencephalography During Hemiarch Replacement With Moderate Hypothermic Circulatory Arrest by Keenan et al in 2016
and
Deep hypothermic circulatory arrest: I. Effects of cooling on electroencephalogram and evoked potentials by Stecker et al in 2001
To summarize the key points, with the application of cerebral perfusion (used in both studies), the EEG does not in general become silent until the body has reached a temperature of 16oC. Below about 24oC it goes into burst suppression, during which consiousness is not possible. This is the status usually encountered during anesthesia.
In summary there are 3 states and outcomes to consider:
- Temp >16oC no circulation (artificial or natural) = isoelectric EEG or clinical brain death in under a minute.
- Temp >16oC with some kind of circulation, either natural or artificial = EEG activity of some kind.
- Temp <16oC with or without circulation = no EEG activity and clinical brain death.
Now I will discuss the Beauregard study from Montreal. The details were published in a journal as a letter which does not require peer review. It was more hypothesis generating than anything, and was supposed to be the launch pad for a larger scale prospective study, but it never happened. Anyway, here is a link to the letter:
Conscious mental activity during a deep hypothermic cardiocirculatory arrest? Beauregard et al 2011
In summary, it was a retrospective study looking at cases between 2005-2010 in which 33 patients underwent DHCA ( deep hypothermnic circulatory arrest), and were interviewed afterwards. 3 reported consious recollections, and one had an OBE, the details of which were later confirmed to be accurate. Given it was retrospective and in such a small cohort, the evidence is a little sketchy (unless you add it to the mountain of other evidence), however this is what has inspired further study. So there is one huge question to ask, why did Beauregard’s study have NDEs and Manduit’s not?
It is noteworthy that when looking at Keenan’s paper, the methods for HCA appeared to change around 2010-2013, with cooling often going to 21-28oC, whereas during DHCA conducted prior to 2010, it appears the body may have been cooled to 16oC or lower.
This may be the key difference between Beauregard’s (recruited 2005-2010) study and Manduit’s (recruited 2018-2019). However, given that in Manduit’s study only 31% of patients had ancilliary cerebral perfusion, therefore 69% would have had isolectric EEG (although they did not measure this), I am not sure this would make any difference in terms of potential for NDEs.
However, this is potentially hypothesis generating regarding the interation between consiousness and the brain in a dualist understanding of our existence, and which I will delve into during the discussion or in another post because I think this is enough for now.
Finally, this has implications for Parnia’s HCA study. Is he using DHCA cooling to 16oC, or MHCA (moderate HCA) and only going to 21-28oC. Is there cerebral perfusion? The answers could effect the outcome.
Wow, my brain is overheating – definitely not 16 or even 21-28oC…it is smoking!
Please review the papers yourselves and see if I am adding 2 and 2 and getting 762, but I think I may be right on this.
Finally, surely after that, you want to buy me a coffee
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AwareofAware 
The Kennan study says that the patients did not only go in cardiac arrest but also received selective antegrade cerebral perfusion (SACP). In that time, there was an EEG pattern.
In these cases, there is always a blood flow to the brain, even if the patient is in cardiac arrest. This explains the existing EEG pattern.
Within the Manduit study, SACP was only applied after 20 minutes. So within the 20 minutes EEG activity should be zero.
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Hi Peter, good comment but I am aware of that. The key study is actually the Stecker study in which they assess EEG through temperature changes. Initially the SACP aspect intrigued me, but it is largely irrlevant to this discussion, whereas the temperature and methodology of HCA is the key. The Stecker study was in 2001, and no mention of ACP is made, and burst suppression was present even after 30 mins in some patients at 18.
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If you read the complete study from Stecker and not only the summary on Pubmed, you see that they also used retrograde cerebral perfusion.
A quote from the study:“ Although the clinical data from patients undergoing aortic arch reconstruction with hypothermic circulatory arrest and retrograde cerebral perfusion was complex and analysis involved a large number of patient-specific and surgery-specific factors, a number of important conclusions can be generated from this data.“
In cardiac arrest you have a zero EEG at all temperatures. Only if you have a blood supply to the brain e.g by cerebral perfusion, you have EEG activity until the temperature goes below a certain threshold.
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Your point is well made Peter, but only exemplifies my point.
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Just to add….I can be a bit lazy and skim read the paper, however if all conditions are the same between the key studies under consideration except temperature, and below 17 there is no EEG with perfusion, then what I am saying applies exactly the same. Of course the studies are not the same in terms of the fact one is prospective and the other retrospective, but if the observations are correct, then it is very important.
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On rereading the 2021 paper, only 31% had ancillary cerebral perfusion, which means that the 69% of patients, roughly 40 odd were in complete circulatory arrest and would have a silent EEG, which kind of blows my theory out of the water!
Back to the drawing board.
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I’m not qualified to render judgment on your theory, although it sounds plausible to me, for what it’s worth. Are you familiar with the Hameroff-Penrose theory of consciousness? Hameroff is a practicing anesthesiologist who no doubt has witnessed many clinically dead resuscitated patients. He’s interested in consciousness, and he teamed up with the brilliant quantum physicist, Roger Penrose, to come up with the microtubule quantum theory of consciousness. Penrose is not interested in the metaphysical implications of their theory, but Hameroff is, and he teamed up with Deepak Chopra on the article below, which might be relevant. You might contact Hameroff to see what he thinks of your idea, as I’m sure he’s qualified to give an opinion. The article is a bit old, but he is still researching consciousness.
Click to access Hameroff-Chopra-2012-The-Quantum-Soul-A-Scientific-Hypothesis.pdf
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I am familiar with their theory. I am not sufficiently qualified in the quantum theory to fully assess their idea.
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Me neither. But I thought it might be relevant to your hypothesis, and that perhaps Hameroff might be a resource.
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Orch-OR is antagonized a lot in the academic circles because it “Gave new age crackpots lots of ammunition” Yet the multiverse is debated. Does this says a lot about the theory or the academics?
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You’re so right! Like the multiverse is so much more believable! I just heard Hammeroff talk about this, and he said that Penrose just shakes it off and says the critics will “get it” eventually. Of course, when you’re recognized to be as brilliant as he is, not to mention knighted, maybe it’s easy to shake off criticism. Then again, maybe that’s why he’s so hesitant to get very much into the metaphysics.
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I am watching everything everywhere all at once between comments…how appropriate.
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Haven’t seen that yet, but definitely need to!
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It’s funny, mind boggling, a wee bit Matrixy, and slightly too long. Thanks for the coffees 🙂
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You betcha!
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Just remember, there are 2 different types of quantum consciousness theories – Orch-OR and the Stapp/Eccles/Popper/Wigner Quantum interactive dualism.
Here’s a podcast cut from Hameroff and Penrose when asked about what they thought about an afterlife: https://youtu.be/OoDi856wLPM?t=3792
Hameroff is very careful what he says here as this is pretty much a mainstream science podcast from a state university, otherwise he’s been much more forceful about the existence of an afterlife. Penrose all this time has pretty much concluded that he hasn’t the foggiest on this question.
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I am of the view that quantum level interactions lie at the heart of the interface between the consciousness and the brain. I have no evidence of that, just a hunch.
I look at this post that I have wrote and it really speaks to the possibility of the brain just being a host. As long as there some residual electrical activity in the brain, be it under anaesthesia or due to artificial perfusion, then consciousness stays put…tethered by the quantum bonds that keep it in place. However, a point is reached when the temperature is too low for this electrical activity to occur any longer,and the brain goes silent…it is clinically dead. That point appears to be 16 degrees. If the Montreal study was done under these conditions, which I suggest they were, and they had NDEs, whereas later studies in which burst suppression was present down to 16, may mean the brain is still retaining some activity.
However, Peter raises some very good points. If there was no ancillary circulation or perfusion, then even at higher temperatures the brain would have been silent. But they have no EEG data. Parnia’s study will have EEG data.
There definitely feels like there is something here…need to reread the papers fully, and particularly the discussion section of the 2021 paper.
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Looks like Beauregard is now affiliated with the University of Arizona. Same as Hameroff. Not sure if they ever collaborate or if it’s just a quantum coincidence
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LOL! It’s not surprising that a guy like Beauregard would move to The Center for Consciousness Studies at the U of Az. They’re also both members of Open Sciences (link below), so they no doubt run in the same circles.
https://opensciences.org/
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So….potentially good news if you’re a dualist?
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Yes, and also if you’re an idealistic monist.
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I had a quick squizz and it’s certainly an interesting idea. Perhaps NDEs only happen if you are dead enough? Would certainly explain their rarity and inconsistency since. But would be good to get a professional’s second opinion I say
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I think that is an interesting idea, but what is dead enough. There is a lot going on with these different papers, as I reread them it is clear that different techniques are being used which makes drawing conclusions difficult.
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I think not necessarily, there are even people who have near death experiences without cardiac arrest, when they feel a near threat
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True. It is intriguing.
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You should read Robert Lanzas ideas, he is fairly clever.
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I HAVE UPDATED THE POST TO REFLECT THE FACT I MISSED A COUPLE OF THINGS FROM THE FIRST READING OF THE PAPERS INCLUDED. THANKS PETER FOR POINTING THIS OUT, ALTHOUGH THE WATERS ARE WELL AND TRULY MUDDY NOW!
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Great work Ben. I think the observation that the modern ‘moderate hypothermic arrest’ procedure with less extreme cooling could explain the lack of ‘events’ in recent ‘cool’ studies makes a very interesting hypothesis.
Have you considered sharing your thoughts directly with Mario Beauregard? Even though he moved to another university he is still involved with related ‘fringe’ research on the border of the mainstream.
Cheers,
Steen
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I would forget qauntum entanglement and microtubules, there is no real evidence for it, no matter what hammeroff says. Microtubules do exist obviously, but to assert that the mind is quantum foam and uses these tubules because of yes, no, is a leap of faith. I have spent my entire life looking for proof of survival, no one wants to face complete extinction, including me, and I am desperate and also dismayed that after so long with the parnia study it has come up blank. I, up to now have only seen with my own eyes one or maybe two bits of evidence, that may lead to that conclusion,
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@Ron,you mean one or two bits of evidence that suggests survival? I’m very much in the same situation. I know we have all these wonderful NDE anecdotes (and related stories) and at the same time I can’t ignore the mountain of evidence that indicates that consciousness is firmly brain based. The strongest part comes from strokes and the terrible and severe consequences they can have on people. I can’t make it fit with consciousness being transmitted.
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As a psychologist, I used to think the way that you do. But the work of cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman now has me open-minded to the idea that consciousness causes the brain, rather than vice versa (see link below). Don’t forget, when two variables A and B are significantly correlated, there are 3 possibilities: A causes B, or B causes A, or C causes both A & B. Since Hoffman wrote the paper below, he has done much more work via game theory and mathematical modeling, which you can find through Mr. Google if interested. Of course, it’s not definitive proof, but I don’t think we will ever have definitive proof of anything, given our quantum nature, since we can only estimate probabilities. I think the NDE research is interesting, but it seems unlikely that it will ever prove anything definitively, since they are only the experiences of people who were not irreversibly dead, and we don’t understand the brain well enough to know if you can have subjective experience while the brain is not demonstrating an EEG signal. So I’m searching answers elsewhere, such as Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup.
Click to access ConsciousRealism2.pdf
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Hi Shawn, I had missed your response to my comment. Thank you for the link to the Donald Hoffman paper. It looks really interesting, reading it now.
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We have plenty of evidence that implies quantum scale processes in biological studies, just no confirmed mechanism. There is a whole field of study investigating quantum biology.
But it does not follow that the NDE/OBE has anything to say about the nature of the afterlife. What the NDE/OBE tells us about is life.
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Well technically everything is quantum, it’s just at macroscopic levels particles behave in the deterministic, materialistic classical physics we all know.
The question on whether QM applies to the mind-body problem is a. is the interaction problem in dualism and observer problem in QM the same problem (if so that would be a point for dualism), b. does consciousness work like a field that interacts with matter (Brian Greene, a materialist who is doubtful about the afterlife has stated that if there was one it would probably be this way. It should be noted that his interpretation of QM is a bit well, strange). That would be more of a point towards some kind of universal consciousness like in Buddhism. We have no evidence today that such a field exists. Or c. can we explain consciousness for all practical purposes by purely its classical states in which case materialism would be the winner out there.
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By a concidence I found this paper: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2399-6528/ac94be
I does not relate to the COOL studies, but I think that it is quite relevant to mind/brain relationship. I would appreciate if someone with background in physics or medicine at least skimmed through it.
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Most neuroscientists and other experts have a bias against quantum mind theories, supposedly because of the ‘warm, wet and noisy” objection, but I strongly suspect the theories implying a form of dualism or at least non-reductionism, have something to do with it too.
They refuse to even consider those theories, but if those experimental suspicions are correct, a revolution would happen.
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Manduit’s paper contains a lot more detail.
Mario Beauregard’s short letter contains little information, and almost no detail of the surgical technique used for the single patient JS who recalled a detailed OBE.
I therefore don’t understand the point of trying to compare it with.
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Hi Max,
I understand where you are coming from, but they are the only two studies that have looked at this issue, and while one is clearly a much better quality study than the other, that does not make it illegitimate to compare certain aspects, and try to understand why the differences in reported outcomes. Given the lack of information about techniques used, it is fine to speculate that the techniques would reflect the standard of the day, and that this might have affected the outcomes. However, given the fact that the Manduit study did not use perfusion in two thirds of the patients, I m not sure any differences would matter.
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My opinion regarding the correlation between quantum effects and subjectivity:
Stochastic processes can be found on the molecular and cellular level of the brain: Fluctuations of the membrane potential, release of transmitters or activation of individual neurons are not exactly predictable. Thus, the incoming action potential at the synapses leads to a release of the neurotransmitter only in 10-20% of the cases (Craver 2007, 22 ff.). Thus, synaptic signal transmission is non-deterministic, and the output of a neuronal network can only be predicted with probability. However, nobody can say today whether microphysical indeterminacies or amplification mechanisms, as they are known from the chaos theory, in the relationship between brain and mind do not pass through to the macrophysical level.
This indetermination provides enough space for a possible influence between subjectivity and brain activity.
Nevertheless, subjectivity, consciousness etc. are of course no products of quantum processes as quantum processes are only part of the physical aspect of the world. Subjectivity is a sphere on its own highly correlated with physical processes and this correlation is only possible with some aspect of indetermination within the physical world. That is the reason, why creatures with a high complex neural system are not only physical bodies but are also a subject.
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Apologies, this a great discussion, but I have been sick all day, so not much use! Also, I would like thank those that have bought me a coffee…it makes me feel that bit better 🙂
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Sorry to hear you’re not feeling well. Chicken soup might be better than coffee today. Maybe you’ll have an OBE, but don’t forget to come back! 🙂
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More research is definitely needed
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I think there is no good explanation for lack of NDEs. Good study, well dessigned, enough poblation… We have NDEs with hypothermia in Beuaregard’s case, Pam Reynolds case, Dentures case or Dr. O’neil case at least. Maybe be it just have been an statistical issue… just bad luck.
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Maybe, hopefully Parnia’s study will not suffer from the same bad luck.
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DO WE NEED A WARM BRAIN FOR AN NDE?
Following the publication of https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34666377/ my first thought was that such a study is inconsequential. The second thing is that the materialists had a point in their favor because if there are no NDEs with a cold brain… a brain should be necessary, hot, but a brain nonetheless, to generate NDEs.
However, I soon realized that if 2 out of 3 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26482779/ patients had a normal EEG before arrest even under anesthesia, why not generated NDEs as proposed by the dying brain hypothesis? Naturally it can be objected that the anesthesia may prevent his memory… but the same can be said by an idealistic monist or a dualist. More if we take into account https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11216734/ up to what temperature (for low) can a brain operate.
And yet NDEs with hypothermia plus cardiac arrest occur… I could remember those of Dr. O’Neal, the man with the dentures, the one told by Beauregard… or the most famous of all: Pam Reynolds’ . So I’ve searched NDERF and found another two searching for “aortic” and 13 more (15) with the term hypothermia. There are few… There are not many that have occurred under anesthesia either. Searching in NDERF for “anesthesia” they show less than 10% (345). If we look for an operation, it rises to 750, a little more than double (it must be remembered that NDERF has more than 4,700 entries).
This should lead us to place a higher value on NDEs under anesthesia.
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Think you might have the wrong of the stick, if anything is to be taken from the Manduit and Beauregard studies, then you are more likely to have an NDE with a cold brain. However, given that most NDEs occur immediately around the time of CA, it is not the temperature that is the determining factor, rather the EEG activity. My thinking is that NDEs are more likely initiated when the brain has stopped functioning…but then I would as I am of the dualist camp.
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Dr. Parnia’s team should time the tablet images with EEG flatlining for best results.
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@yitzgoldberg123 and most importantly, additional real-time targets should be placed where third parties can see them, but patients cannot. Hidden, secret, real-time targets will never be seen.
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I have a question: so if there are mountains of anecdotal evidence for NDEs and beyond, why don’t scientists bear that in mind? I mean does it count as actual evidence per se? Should we take anecdotal evidence seriously here?
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I wouldn’t take anecdotal evidence seriously. Too many problems. I just hope Dr. Parnia’s study has more luck, otherwise. . . our breaths are literally numbered!
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So Yitz, just to clarify, you don’t believe? 😉
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First, let me tell you my biases, since we all have them. I want to believe in life-after-death, but as a psychologist, I know how easily we humans fool ourselves, and that’s why we have science, to do our best at removing subjectivity. Of course, this is hard to do when you’re studying a subjective experience that is not observable! I’m also aware of the large body of literature supporting Terror Management Theory, which describes the many ways humans cope with existential anxiety, and the huge impact that has on our behavior at the unconscious level.
For a summary, see video in first link below, or read Solomon et al.’s book. I’m agnostic on the issue, but I’m not hopeful that NDE’s will ever prove anything. I agree with the article in the 2nd link below, which concludes, “I don’t believe it can ever be shown that an NDE can happen while the brain was dead, but nor can it be shown that it happened while the brain was alive. The point is unfalsifiable and unconfirmable.” I don’t like dashing people’s hopes, but it’s also demoralizing when the NDE studies continue to remain disappointing, so I say, “Don’t get your hopes up.” I get more hope from the work of Donald Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup, but I know they also will never definitively prove their idealism (i.e., monism with consciousness being the only thing that exists). However, we must cope with our existential anxiety in some manner, or else go “mad,” as Earnest Becker said.
View at Medium.com
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Welcome, thanks for posting. Many aspects of NDEs are impossible to verify except one. What do you make of the many OBEs verified by reliable HCPs, including within AWARE I? Do you think that agnostic or even atheist doctors who were present and can only account for what the patient says by accepting that it was a genuine OBE, are in any way subjective?
However, my hopes are very low of there being a scientifically verified OBE any time soon given the troubles recruiting for the AWARE II study and the results from the Manduit study.
My hope in the existence of an eternal soul, a creator God and life after death is certain though. Some of that hope is based on subjective experience, albeit shared with others at times, and some of it based on the fact that the scientific evidence very strongly supports the understanding that the origin of life was the result of an act of intelligence, and could not have occurred through undirected natural processes.
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Hi Ben, I hope you’re feeling better. I don’t think the argument was that the HCP’s were being subjective, at least in the article I linked. The HCP’s did not directly observe the NDE so they could not say when it occurred, and as the author said, “…it is possible to have an NDE (or any other kind of dream, for that matter) in a matter of seconds while waking up from injury-induced coma.” I don’t know how you could ever definitively prove precisely WHEN the NDE occurred. In addition, not mentioned by the article, is the fact that nobody who has ever experienced an NDE is irreversibly dead. Even if it could be proven definitively that the NDE experience occurred while there was no EEG activity, there’s so much we don’t understand about the brain that I am leaving open the possibility that experience can occur while the brain is still “alive” (i.e., not irreversibly dead), but not showing EEG activity. I also find it suspicious that, as stated in the article, NDE’s are much more likely in people who experience REM intrusion. Finally, if the brain were truly “off line” when the NDE happened, then the brain could not form a memory of the NDE, at least not in a dualist model in which the physical brain creates experience and memories of those experiences. If one believes the NDE was real, then that would argue for idealism (consciousness is primary). Or it means the NDE occurred while the brain was not off-line, and I simply don’t know how you would ever tell exactly when it happened. I just wish I didn’t know so much about cognitive biases and Terror Management Theory! 🙂 As for your final argument, the Fine Tuning/Anthropic Coincidences, that does sound convincing to me, but what do I know? I just know it hasn’t convinced many physicists, from Roger Penrose (agnostic) to Sean Carroll (atheist – link below). I hope you’re right Ben, but I don’t think we can ever know for sure, that’s all I’m saying. I think Sheldon Solomon would say this is a community that is serving a very important purpose, but perhaps not the purpose you think! 🙂 Cheers.
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2015/12/31/sean-carroll-debunks-the-fine-tuning-argument-for-god/
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[Hi Ben, I hope you’re feeling better.]
Yes, thanks, much better.
[I don’t think the argument was that the HCP’s were being subjective, at least in the article I linked. The HCP’s did not directly observe the NDE so they could not say when it occurred, and as the author said, “…it is possible to have an NDE (or any other kind of dream, for that matter) in a matter of seconds while waking up from injury-induced coma.”]
I didn’t watch the video as I don’t an hour and a half spare at the moment, I was perhaps misreading what you said, but my point is that it is an objective fact that many doctors who have been told about OBEs by patients, have been utterly convinced that the only way the observations could have been made were if the patients had indeed been able to observe things from outside of their bodies. While their assessment of the evidence may be subjective, the sum of similar evidence from a large cohort of highly trained medical professionals in itself becomes an objective fact that requires more than the dismissive argument posited by many materialists. The last point is less valid. NDEs have been extensively studied and the reproducibility of accounts and structure of NDEs do not lend themselves to being the result of the same neurological processes that generate dreams or hallucinations.
[ I don’t know how you could ever definitively prove precisely WHEN the NDE occurred.]
That’s pretty much the whole point of this blog in terms following a study (or set of studies) that seemed to be attempting to do precisely this. While we are waiting for that to occur, which I am now suspecting won’t be in this decade, we chew the fat with people like you.
[In addition, not mentioned by the article, is the fact that nobody who has ever experienced an NDE is irreversibly dead.]
100% agree, and my position on this and the ensuing acrimonious argument with Tim resulted in this blog losing one its finest contributors. The patients are clinically dead, but not dead as defined by the official and legal definition of the word.
[Even if it could be proven definitively that the NDE experience occurred while there was no EEG activity, there’s so much we don’t understand about the brain that I am leaving open the possibility that experience can occur while the brain is still “alive” (i.e., not irreversibly dead), but not showing EEG activity.]
Show me a repeatable study or experiment in which it is shown that the brain can function in such a way as to support conscious activity without generating sufficient electricity to be measurable by an EEG, and your point might be valid, otherwise I suggest you might want to park this thought because I suspect it is unlikely to be taken seriously by anyone who has a basic understanding of neurology.
[Finally, if the brain were truly “off line” when the NDE happened, then the brain could not form a memory of the NDE, at least not in a dualist model in which the physical brain creates experience and memories of those experiences.]
Agree and disagree. We have had countless discussions on here on the paradox of memories being formed while the brain is not functioning. I address it in the latest version of my book and the only answer that can be derived from evidence from NDEs is that IF NDEs are real then memories, while individually created, are “centrally” stored are universally accessible.
[I just wish I didn’t know so much about cognitive biases and Terror Management Theory!]
Great, I can probably guess the gist of it, but please share this extensive knowledge with us in a way that shows us that it is something more than just a reductionist theory created by people of a materialistic position to try to explain why others don’t share their view. It may be a theory, and I am sure there is evidence to support it, but ultimately I have come to recognise theories of this ilk as little more than academic conjecture supporting a specific unproven worldview. Nothing wrong with that, unless these academics present it as fact.
[As for your final argument, the Fine Tuning/Anthropic Coincidences, that does sound convincing to me, but what do I know? I just know it hasn’t convinced many physicists, from Roger Penrose (agnostic) to Sean Carroll (atheist – link below). I hope you’re right Ben, but I don’t think we can ever know for sure, that’s all I’m saying. I think Sheldon Solomon would say this is a community that is serving a very important purpose, but perhaps not the purpose you think! 🙂 Cheers.]
I address the issue of materialists wafting away into an alternate reality with the theory of the multiverse in my book “DNA:The Elephant in the lab” (My real name is Orson Wedgwood, not Ben Williams – he is a character in my novel, Deadly Medicine). As someone who spent their Ph.D. messing about with nucleosides and amino acids in the lab, I became intimately familiar with the chemistry and biochemistry of these systems. At the time I wasn’t following any faith and was open to the idea that God was a spaghetti monster. However, the more I dug, the more I came to the understanding that the DNA protein translation system could not have arisen through natural processes in this Universe even in the 13 odd billion years that it has existed. The evidence against such an occurrence is so vast that the only way to overcome it is to create an unprovable multiverse of multiverses where it “must have happened because it did happen”..here. In my view, it is very much like your terror theory…it is a hypothesis generated to support materialist belief (Nothing wrong with that of course). Moreover, added to the objective facts that there is zero evidence supporting the emergence of cellular life through a natural process, a mountain of evidence against it, there is the objective fact that there is a small but testable piece of evidence supporting the theory that DNA was the result of intelligence.
I hope our little community is serving an important purpose. The purpose of this community is to discuss emerging evidence on NDEs, and the relevance of that evidence to our understanding of our place in the universe…so I guess at the very least the subject is important, whether or not our musings on it are.
I welcome very much your contributions to our discussion so far, and I hope my response does not feel in any way disrespectful. Your views may not be aligned with the majority of contributors, but they are well thought through and expressed and so I look forward to hearing more. Cheers
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Hi Ben….no worries, you are always respectful. I know I’m not nearly as familiar with the topic as you and many others here are, so I appreciate your pointing out flaws in arguments I make, although if you know my comment history, then you know I’m not a committed materialist. I’m agnostic on materialism, and also on what exactly NDE’s are, and because of that, I like to present both sides of the argument. I admit that I’m confused about this community and what they think NDE’s are. I have gotten the impression from comments that many here seem very hopeful that something is going to be “proven” by Parnia, and I thought that “something” was the existence of an afterlife. But then Max B says NDE’s are about life, not the afterlife. If I understand what he’s saying (and I clearly don’t understand much of what is said in this community), it’s more about anomalous experiences, in particular, people accessing information that is not their own. That sounds to me more like psi, but does that fall into the afterlife realm, or is it basically support for non-materialism, which may or may not necessitate an afterlife? As for my notion about the possibility of the brain being able to produce an experience while not producing an EEG signal not being taken seriously by anybody who knows anything about neurology, I’m sure you’re right, but that doesn’t prove it’s impossible. My point is that our knowledge of the brain is constantly evolving, as is medical technology, and some of what we know now seemed impossible decades ago. I’ll reveal my age by saying that when I started out, the idea that the brain could grow more neurons in adulthood was viewed as ridiculous. So I won’t apologize for being ridiculous! 🙂 However, I’m very open to cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman’s very non-materialist hypothesis about the brain. Anyway, I agree that the NDE subject is important, and I didn’t mean to offend you by saying the important purpose this community serves may not be what you think it is, although it can certainly serve more than one purpose. Now I’ll turn the tables a little bit and say that your guess about the gist of Terror Management Theory is totally wrong. It is not specifically about NDE’s, and does not address the topic of materialism or reductionism, nor imply one or the other. (Sheldon Solomon has written he is agnostic). I brought it up because it may be relevant to the intense desire by some that Parnia “prove” whatever it is they hope he proves. The theory itself and the evidence for it is something that everybody should know, given how much it affects everybody’s behavior, whether they’re “aware” of it or not. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself!) But it cannot be quickly summed up in this little box and I’ve already written too much, plus you don’t sound particularly interested in it anyway. However, for other community members who may be interested in human psychology, I highly recommend the book in the first link, or the “cliff notes” chapter in the second link. For people who prefer listening, I already provided a video link. Happy Weekend!
Click to access Pyszczynski-A-Terror-Management-Theory-Perspective.pdf
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Also the OBE aspect of the NDE can be timestamped, as it happened with the AWARE I study.
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Then again, time may well be an illusion, which renders time stamps meaningless.
https://www.space.com/29859-the-illusion-of-time.html
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Funny.
I liked that old article saying that so far in the battle of egos, no definitive conclusion about the nature of NDE’s can be made.
I’m not exactly a believer but the replacement of old explanations for new ones over time among materialists say something about their form of reasoning.
In a twitter thread about the Surviving Death documentary Neuroscientist Anil Seth eventually gave up responding to civil objections of his arguments for example.
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Funny.
I think some skeptics are somewhat afraid of investigating deeper the phenomenon, like how neuroscientist Anil Seth gave up responding to civil objections to his arguments against the dualist hypothesis.
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Articles like the one above, from Medium, really don’t touch the issues. Understanding the NDE is not about the afterlife, it’s about understanding life.
The problem we have is that people report anomalous access to information quite regularly (that includes, but is not limited to the veridical NDE OBE). This is anomalous access to information they haven’t directly experienced themselves. Nature just makes it very hard to tease out, and expose this effect.
But we’ve struggled with this before, and overcome the difficulties. An example being electromagnetism, where the Greeks knew of two strange phenomena. If you rubbed a piece of amber you could lift up little pieces of papyrus, and a strange rock from the land of Magnesia which attracted iron. It is amazing to think that these were the only phenomena known to the Greeks in which the effects of electricity or magnetism were apparent. The reason that these were the only phenomena that appeared, is due primarily to the fantastic precision of the balancing of charges.
Another example is the three colour principle, which satisfactorily explained the overwhelming perception of colour, apart from a known issue of oddly colored shadows cast by coloured lights in Chinese puppet theatre. It took the brilliant Edwin Land (the inventor of the polaroid camera) to show us that colour is not actually a property of the world, but arises within us.
Many people, don’t accept that classical physics is just an approximation, that it was overturned in the 1920’s, leaving us with the current situation where we’re reduced to using past observations to probabilistically predict future observations.
Most people haven’t even got their ideas straight about direct or indirect perception. And even if they have thought about these things, they often can only go so far.
We’re now in an interesting period where paradox’s with both Spacetime and quantum mechanics, the pillars of our modern understanding of fundamental physics, indicate that these principles are approximate, and must be replaced with something deeper.
IMO it’s likely that we will have to face our reality as being a shared construction, emerging from a simpler and more fundamental theory. That revolution will allow us to more accurately understand, and accept, that people do get access to information, which is not their own. This will reach all areas of science, particularly the soft sciences, like psychology.
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” Understanding the NDE is not about the afterlife, it’s about understanding life.” You may well be correct, but it seems like many of the folks here are hoping that Parnia’s NDE research will prove there is an afterlife. “Spacetime and quantum mechanics, the pillars of our modern understanding of fundamental physics, indicate that these principles are approximate, and must be replaced with something deeper.” Sounds like Donald Hoffman. “IMO it’s likely that we will have to face our reality as being a shared construction…” Sounds like Bernardo Kastrup. My 2 favorite guys for coping with existential anxiety! 🙂
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I don’t see any contradiction between my criticism of the Medium article, and folks on here suggesting they may have an eternal living soul?
Actually, almost all folks on here, understand that one of the key points about the NDE, as discussed on awareofaware, is the visual OBE component.
On here, that is usually discussing the experience of visually observing the medical environment around your body, from a position outside of your own body. In particular, where the visual details from the recalled experience often seem to be – bizarrely – related to the period around the time the experients were in cardiac arrest, and which sometimes contain anomalous information they should not have known about.
Now there are different interpretations for the OBE. Either, that ones ‘self’ is actually out of the body and actually located in that position (something leaves the body), or, as in my own case, that it is only ones ‘sense-of-self’ which is located outside of the body (something enters the boding). AWARE is using hidden, secret, real-time targets to measure the former. It’s certainly not measuring the latter, that is the accuracy of the recalled OBE details more generally, as AWARE uses no visual targets which are not hidden and secret. But neither interpretation disputes the occasional recollection of anomalous information, only where this information is coming from.
But Medium’s article doesn’t even address the visual OBE component of the NDE. Doesn’t mention that if the OBE occurs on the operating table, why that recalled visual information, generally appears to come from the period of cardiac arrest. Medium just waves this vitally important visual OBE information away, as if there is nothing to explain.
I haven’t noticed that you discuss it either?
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I’m more interested in what it could reveal about consciousness itself. It’s it brain based or it’s something else?
Regardless if the dualist or materialist idea is “confirmed” by them, it’s a plus for me.
But the fear I see from materialists (That are dominant in academia) prefering to pretend it isn’t there and burying the matter by forming increasingly nonsensical explanations (Pretending to be dead? seriously?), hoping the wider public accepts instead of trying to research their theories, make a definitive conclusion unlikely in the near future.
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Fascinating write up Ben!
1a. First study, NDEs do not seem to be triggered by “hypothermic cardiac arrest” or at least remain unknown.
1b. Yet the Beauregard study posits that patients are having NDEs while in a hypothermic state (even colder than the study above).
2. Then the first study posits a bunch of good reasons why the patients do not recall the NDEs but could well have had them. Similar to how we dream nightly but do not remember them.
* Was wondering what this write up would “update” over the Aware II?
(Apologies if its obvious, its one of “those” days haha).
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This still doesn’t address veridical perception beyond speculation, most notably in the Pam Reynolds case where she had burst suppression.
Dualists now like to use the “disinhibition” argument (Consciousness being richer in spite of lower brain function) nowdays.
My opinion is that for definitive conclusions to be taken, the studies need to interview a larger amount of patients.
Also look at how the author conflates NDE’s with dreams, lol.
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Gunther P,
I feel that even if we get more studies and larger groups, we come back to the metaphysical positions of those interpreting or investigating the NDEs.
It almost becomes circular and we hit a “wall” and it just comes down to which position you hold prior.
idk….
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Hey Ben, hope you’re well. I am slightly confused. Are we saying that in Beauregard study there was different eeg than in the Manduit study?
Or were eeg flat in both studies below a certain temp? I can’t see why NDE would not of occurred in both studies. Could you help me understand
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As far as I understand, EEG was not measured in either study, rather using the data from other studies, I predict that that there was likely to be EEG activity in the Maduit study if they had measured it due to the temp being above 16,and unlikely in the Beauregard study as it was below 16.
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Thanks for your response. I understand. The Parnia research should be intriguing in this context.
I previously believed that the patients in circulatory arrest, as studied by Manduit, would have a silent EEG. However, it seems that there could still be some brain activity present? potentially preventing a complete disconnection for NDE experiences, as observed in the Beauregard study at lower temperatures.
In that case you would be lead to believe that there may not be any NDE experiences if the brain is still functioning to a degree like burst suppression etc. but then we do see NDE from fear of death. I suppose fear death experiences potentially wouldn’t happen under general anaesthetic and who knows why they happen in the first place.
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What triggers an NDE is a very interesting question.
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@myloveego
We’ve found tricks to opening up/letting stuff in… drugs, prayer, Ouija board planchette, hypnotism, meditation, flow.
There also seems to be a peaceful resignation described by some people when one’s degrees of freedom are reduced to zero, as some dangerously perceived event is unfolding (car crash, climbing fall, parachute failures, drowning).
We see something similar for learning, in the more extreme situation like Stockholm Syndrome for hostages (with reduced degrees freedom), to gentler therapist-client relationships (where one surrenders – to different degrees – for help to change).
It’s difficult to think how to bring all these ideas together, with the more spontaneous anomalous experiences.
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These studies are interesting but I wonder if the lack of a “hit” really advances any materialist theory. If the materialist explanation is that NDEs are caused by a dying brain and the research can effectively stimulate a dying brain then shouldn’t we expect some NDEs per the materialist model? I don’t see how a lack of NDE during DHCA would truly advance that position when a controlled brain death fails to produce the experience
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I’ll add that I’m not naive to what a lack of NDE during DHCA does to the non-material position. I am just coming to the opinion that this phenomenon will never be fully explained
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I agree, the current data doesn’t really advance any position.
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What could advance the field besides larger sample sizes? I imagine you are very likely aware of the prize money offered by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. If the soul phone (misnomer — its a keyboard) worked that would be a breakthrough of some kind whose nature wouldn’t be revealed until some basic questions were answered.
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Larger sample sizes or luck, but the more samples, the more you are likely to be lucky – to paraphrase a famous golfer whose name slips my mind.
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Really, just more data? Are you are aware of the bigelow institute and its desire to advance a science of the afterlife? The soul phone would be slam dunk evidence. I have my doubts on it working of course.
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Hi does anyone has some refutations no This video and in the dmt and rats part?
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I refer you to the past 100 posts and discussion sections. Every point has been covered from every angle, especially the bloody rats.
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@UI
Yep, for the same reason some physicists believed they had a full understanding of nature at the end of the 19th Century, apart from a tiny niggle, which eventually overturned all of classical physics, showing that classical physics was only an incorrect approximation of nature.
Today we know that our two jewels of physics, QM and Relativity (gravity), are also showing the same niggles in understanding of our observations of nature, which suggests these two jewels will have to give way to an even simpler generalised understanding of nature.
Brain science is really still in the dark ages of Alchemy, only very recently have we discovered that the electromagnetic fields generated within the brain by its firing neurons are not just an epiphenomena of the brain (the steam whistle of a steam train), but are actually used to entrain the brains networks in a feedback loop. Indeed the brains neural networks are affected by all Electromagnetic fields within which the networks are embedded.
The rat DMT paper you mentioned from Borjigin’s lab, is from a brain science team, who have only just emerged from the age of alchemy. They are happy to use modern electromagnetic technology to measure electromagnetic fields emanating from the brain, but in their studies they assume no affect of electromagnetic fields upon the brain. It’s simply ruled out, their studies rule it out.
But if you look at recent behavioural studies on rodents by one of the developers of the MRI machine. You will find behavioural effects upon rodents from Zero magnetic and electrical fields. In fact what we can take from his studies is that failing to control for electrical and magnetic fields within all behavioural studies puts ALL behavioural studies at risk.
It’s not that Borjigin’s studies are unimportant. It’s just that we need to understand that they use very old, and out of date assumptions that are still mired in ways we understood nature long ago in the past.
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There is no hard evidence of DMT being present in the human brain to the point of causing a trip in certain conditions, even the rat study mentions this.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45812-w
“It is unknown whether the concentrations of DMT reported in our study at cardiac arrest can elicit the effects of an exogenous psychedelic dose of DMT”
In fact, outside the attempt of explaining NDE’s, the endogenous DMT theory is not exactly well regarded.
https://www.beckleyfoundation.org/2017/07/05/do-our-brains-produce-dmt-and-if-so-why/
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Those someone vas a refutation for the obe olaf blanke study ?
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Blanke could have used visual targets in his study, which were positioned only to be hidden from the patient, to test whether these Obe experiences contained any accurate anomalous information. He didn’t. Blanke’s assumption is that the patients experience is fictitious, but he never actually tested the validity of his own assumptions.
Borjigin did exactly the same thing on her first rodent study, she only tested her own assumptions, and placed the rodents in a simple faraday cage. Unfortunately faraday cages don’t block the magnetic component of the EM field. Borjigin’s made the disrupted firing of rats brains in cardiac arrest, spontaneously resemble the firing of a wakeful human brain undertaking a visual task.
NDE researchers do exactly the same thing, they hide secret targets on high, so that nobody else sees them. Thus failing to test for the anomalous transfer of information from third parties during experiments, when the experients brains are in a vulnerable energy starved state.
Studies from as early as 2010 show that the EM field formed by the firing of neurons in the brains networks, actually entrain the brains networks in a feedback loop. It’s completely obvious that if the brains networks become destabilised or lose power, there is an increased probability that they may become entrained by external *compatible* fields within which they are embedded. In Blanke’s case he destabilised the brains networks in patients, by applying an electrical current to the TPJ.
Unfortunately people (researchers) become bound and imprisoned by their own biases/assumptions. It particularly afflicts those who build neural networks quickly, which also erode slowly. These are people who tend to excel in academia, they can build network access to information quickly, and retain these networks. Even if you lead them to water, they won’t drink.
All researchers need to do is challenge their assumptions… and test for the anomalous transfer of information from third parties. They have all the tools to do this now… we’re still waiting.
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Hi Ben, I have two objections regarding the results of AWARE II and these studies:
1) If the study by Reagen and Parnia (2019)
(https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29419558/) found that above 20% rSO2 was present in brain activity and above 40% % delta waves were present and the AWARE II study observed that NDEs occurred in patients who had an rSO2 of 53%, it can be concluded that those who had NDEs had brain activity.
2) Patients who had an NDE in hypothermic circulatory arrest would be significant if and only if the NDE actually occurred during the phase of hypothermia and circulatory arrest. Given that, it may have occurred during the anesthesia phase before the person was placed in hypothermia.
This makes me strongly skeptical of the hypothesis of the survival of consciousness after physical death.
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Hi Alex,
To your first point – rSO2 is not an indicator of brain activity, merely a marker for the presence of oxygenated blood supply. EEG is the best measure of brain activity short of imaging techniques such as MRI. The rSO2 of patients who had NDEs was similar to those who didn’t and indeed the majority of patients who stayed dead despite CPR, so no, it can’t be concluded that patients who had NDEs had brain activity by looking at their rSO2.
On your second point, yes, this is true, but we have no evidence of when these occurred in the Beauregard study.
I suspect this “evidence” rather than making you skeptical, confirms a pre-existing disposition towards skepticism. That’s fair enough, in the absence of a scientifically verified OBE, the skeptics will always dismiss the accounts of thousands of reliable experiencers and HCPs attending to these patients that OBEs are real. However, there is zero evidence at all to refute these claims that OBEs and NDEs are real, or that they occurred when a patient was clinically dead, or were a result of the consciousness separating from the body. Zero.
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It still a great coincidence that the brain is able to simulate what the soul does. Even if these natural phenomenona don’t reach the richness of the NDE what is the purpose of the soul?
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Hi Constiproute,
Good to see you, and thanks for providing the link that I used for this post.
“It still a great coincidence that the brain is able to simulate what the soul does.”
The brain simulating what the soul does, is one way of looking at or another way is to look at these experiences that occur through epilepsy, or drug or electrically induced interventions as situations in which the mechanism by which the soul is connected to the brain in a way that maintains the illusion that they are one and the same, is disrupted. Not to the same degree as in death, but sufficient to create a distortion in the way they experience that senses that makes them feel this disconnect from their physical selves.
The potential mechanisms of NDEs and OBEs are something I was planning on discussing in my next post. All speculation of course, but based on observations like these. It is also interesting that people who have experimented with psychedelics are twice as likely to believe in the spiritual world after their “trip” than before. As I say in my book, any of these experiments, rather than refuting the dualist nature of NDEs, may actually provide supporting evidence.
To your second question, “what is the purpose of the soul?” I believe that the purpose of the soul is to exist as an independent conscious entity in this “manufactured” reality , to love and to find its way to its real home, which for me is to form relationship with the eternal creator who promises a place in his kingdom – heaven, the place that so many NDE experiencers describe.
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I think psychedelics are a fascinating new frontier in consciousness and would be a great idea for a post Ben. I remember reading about one study where something like 50% of self-identified atheists became spiritual/religious after a DMT trip. Getting that kind of conversion rate from proclaimed atheists is astonishing
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One for the future. My next one will be on the mechanics of NDEs…what causes the consciousness to dissociate from the brain.
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Would you help me by giving opinions about this article. It is recent and I would like to know your opinions about the points it points to and in one part it mentions that the characteristics of the nde are identical to the points it points to. Is this true?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9891231/
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How about you summarise in one paragraph what the article says first, then I’ll decide whether to read it because glancing at the abstract it seems to offer nothing but speculation that NDEs share similar characteristics to experiences that do not occur near to death. Nothing new there,and an argument that has been dismissed numerous times here.
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Did you see this? Seems they won’t be doing 16°C.
https://med.nyu.edu/research/parnia-lab/consciousness/conscious-awareness-during-deep-hypothermic-circulatory-arrest
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It sounds like a mere recycling of the already faulty hipoxia and DMT explanations by the abstract.
By aquick skim I saw it mentions the astronaut study too. kinda disappointing.
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But what about G-LOC tests? I don’t know much about them
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Hi Gunther,
G-LOC tests are g-force induced loss of consciousness. If you have ever seen James Bond Moonraker starring Roger Moore you will recognize such device used to induce the stress of extreme G-forces.
These tests are also known to be able to induce OBE like hallucinations. The article being pointed to basically demystifies any paranormal component of NDEs by pointing to these experiments and other experiments that reportedly can induce OBEs.
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“Reportedly” being the operative word.
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I did read it again. It basically mixes all explanations into one, then suggests doing this ends the mystery.
It exagerates the results of the studies relating to the temporal lobe stimulation, and conflates other situations as if NDE’s were the exact same.
Also it’s great how it doesn’t mention any objections to the theories suggested, like responses to Woerlee’s crticism of the Pam Reynolds case.
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*Attempts to demystify
In general it only points out the studies, never any comments on them.
In IANDS there was a commentary comparing induced OBE’s in epilepsy patients to the ones that happen during a NDE account, showing that the explanation is still faulty.
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Overall I think this article will be a major crutch for skeptics, in spite of it’s rather disappointing level.
I fear it can actually influence the interest on the phenomenon if it becomes popular.
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It’s difficult to compare two subjective experiences and tell if they are ‘equal’.
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https://iands.org/research/nde-research/important-research-articles/69-out-of-body-experiences-all-in-the-brain.html
What are your thoughts?
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It’s a good debunk. The key to the observations is and always has been this “, “I see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk.” She has having a distortion of her perception. Legs and arms growing longer and shorter. This is nothing like OBEs reported in NDEs. Anyway, this study has been discussed in great detail. materialist “scientists” love conflating facts to create to a false narrative, and this is exactly one such example.
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I’m going to have another go at trying to explain my speculation about the local veridical Out Of Body Experience (OBE):
1. Blanke et. al. (2002) Stimulating illusory own-body perceptions
https://doi.org/10.1038/419269a
Can you imagine trying to unify your own visual experience with a third parties visual experience with who is standing above you whilst you lie on your back on a bed? (From the third parties visual perspective: what happens to the size of the patient when you go from a bent head position to an unbent head position?)
Can you imagine trying to unify your own visual experience with multiple third parties visual experience who are standing above and around you, you whilst you lie on your back on a bed? (From the third parties visual perspective: (see 2. below)
Can you imagine trying to unify your own visual experience with a third parties visual experience who is standing above, and to your right hand side, whilst you whilst you lie on your back on a bed? (From the third parties visual perspective, which of the patients arms would appears smaller in size?)
Can you imagine trying to unify your – eyes shut – proprioceptive experience of where your legs should be in relation to your head, with a third parties visual experience who is standing above you, whilst you lie on your back on a bed. (From the third parties visual perspective: They can see the patients legs?)
2). Just a simplistic every day example of something similar in action, so you can more easily understand what I’m getting at. (Find below a link to vehicle parking camera image).
Multiple wide angle cameras can be mounted to the four sides of a vehicle. Their individual visual perspectives which look down upon the surrounding road and sidewalk surfaces show different information. When the information from all four cameras is unified, as though coming from a single perspective, a birds-eye-view perspective for the false camera location is created.
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Hi Max,
always appreciate your excellent contributions, but I am not sure I am getting th explanation about your speculations from these citations. Please elaborate.
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@Ben You’ll have to help me understand where my attempts to explain my speculations are failing? I can only see things from my perspective. If you could give me a clue where my explanations are not connecting, I’m happy to try and improve?
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I am just not seeing any explanation. I am seeing results from experiments, and an analogy with surround parking images, but not anything outlining precisely how they explain veridical OBEs…unless I am missing something.
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I’m only attempting to explain my speculations about the OBE, with regards to Blanke et. al. (2002) – mentioned in the IANDS link above.
I’m speculating that Blanke’s report of induced ‘hallucinatory’ experiences, associated with electrical disruption of the patients neural network, might also be the result of anomalous transmission of information from the researchers undertaking the experiment.
That’s certainly not excluded, as the researchers – presumably working on the right hand side of the patients head as mentioned in the paper – would perceive the patients left arm (which is further away from them) as shorter than the right arm which is nearer to them.
If the researchers perception of the patients arms, is anomalously transmitted to the patient, whilst the patient’s neural network is electrically disrupted. The shortened perception of the left arm might, become combined with the patients own perception, resulting in a hallucinatory perception within the patient that their left arm is shorter than their right.
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That is extremely interesting. Thanks for clarifying. This speaks to the potential bending of the brain-consciousness equilibrium due to chemical or electrical disruption of the brains normal functioning, and rather than having an OBE they monetarily experience perception from those around them…is that what you are saying?
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Perhaps something like that, it’s hard to be sure without lots of feedback. This is not an ideal medium for explaining complicated new ideas, that involve thinking about how your sense of self would be perceived, if the sensory information (experience) you were perceiving as your own, was not actually your own.
As Blanke’s patient is wakeful, when their neural network was destabilised. I’m speculating that anomalous local transmission of perceptual information from the researchers undertaking the experiment, can become combined with the patients own sensory perception, because the patients neural network is disrupted.
I spent a couple of days in London, to look through patient’s reports from Bethlem Hospital (Bedlam Mental Asylum). I certainly found cases that suggest a similar effect at work. For example: A mental patient who had quite normal body perceptions when isolated alone in a room. But when other people enter the same room, the patient perceives their own limbs as being located in different places around the room, and arm over there, a leg over here. It almost seemed as if this patient was anomalously combining sensory information from the people who had entered the room.
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That is really fascinating. It has possibly been mentioned on here before, but I never really took it in. If this occurs via a mechanism related to the kind you describe, it is intriguing, and speaks to another non-natural phenomenon, but I personally would not interpret this as an explanation for NDEs, rather a different type of occurrence.
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I suspect it is likely to be responsible for the veridical OBE component of the NDE. The later parts of the NDE I can’t speak about with as much confidence.
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@Max_B – thanks for sharing your thoughts and your own research. It’s highly appreciated.
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Hi i dont know if i uploated this comment but i think that i dont, just want to ask some refutations on The ketamine model of Nde and nmda receptors and the claim that magnesium or other antagonist of the receptor can cause the nde or it is only an exageration.
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No difference in essence to all the other chemical/electrical induced models.
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Hello, I’m new to NDE research. At what point was it discovered that there was gamma activity and electrical spikes on EEGs during resuscitation? Older comments seem to indicate that researchers believed that there was absolutely no brain activity when NDEs occurred— when did that change?
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Hi Alex, and welcome. There are two questions there, and a wee bit of conflation.
Firstly the AWARE II study is the first to show that EEG activity, some of which is consistent with consciousness, occurs during CPR while the patient is in CA. This was first presented in December 2019, and the paper in preprint discussed a couple of posts ago elaborates a little on this.
However, at this stage there is no data that has been presented that directly correlates this EEG activity with an NDE, so on the position of researchers believing that NDEs are associated with brain activity, nothing has been presented to change whatever position they held before…whether that be they believed that the brain was silent during NDEs or that they were a result of brain activity.
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I see… I read the following exchange in a 2013 Wired interview (https://www.wired.com/2013/04/consciousness-after-death/)
Sam Parnia: It may be that some people receive better-quality resuscitation, and that – though there’s no evidence to support it – they did have brain activity. Or it could indicate that human consciousness, the psyche, the soul, the self, continued to function.
Wired: Couldn’t the experiences just reflect some extremely subtle type of brain activity?
Parnia: When you die, there’s no blood flow going into your brain. If it goes below a certain level, you can’t have electrical activity. It takes a lot of imagination to think there’s somehow a hidden area of your brain that comes into action when everything else isn’t working.
Isn’t the discovery of EEG activity during resuscitation an indication that there *is* “a hidden area of the brain that comes into action when everything else isn’t working,” invalidating the past assessment that NDEs occur when there is no brain activity?
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Short answer – No.
After 20-30 seconds of no blood flow, there is no EEG and the patient is clinically dead. CPR creates blood flow, so it is possible if it reaches certain levels, then there may be some activity, and in rare situations according to Parnia’s study, activity consistent with levels associated with consciousness, but what he says still stands. No blood flow, no EEG. Moreover, no NDE has been directly correlated with EEG activity. However, even in the event that an NDE is directly correlated with a period of EEG activity, the meaning of that is still open to interpretation, as Parnia himself has pointed out.
A good scientist will never mix up causation and association, so even if there is EEG activity associated with an NDE it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is causing the NDE, although it would provide solid circumstantial evidence for that argument. However it is valid to say it could instead be a result of the consciousness interacting with the brain as it leaves.
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That makes sense. I’m glad to hear it.
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Additionally, do you know of any near-death experiences that did *not* occur during cardiac resuscitation, when there was no blood flow so EEG would have been impossible? Thanks.
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Alex, I think this is the key question. Is it in fact the resuscitation effort that induces the NDE when blood flow to the brain is resumed at a reduced level?
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There are countless NDEs that occurred outside of cardiac resuscitation in various books on the subject. I have met two people who had exactly this. Their NDEs started before resuscitation.
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Interesting, do you happen to know of any specific books/journals these cases are detailed in?
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https://awareofaware.co/welcome/resources-and-links/ for starters. IANDs too.
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Thank you!
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There are lots of other books too.
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I came across this recent critism of the article of Parnia et. al. which have been published in a scientific journal:
Click to access comment%20on%20parnia%20et%20al_final.pdf
They zoom in on a number of issues with the Parnia article putting doubt on the scientific scrutiny of the work by Parnia Lab:
“ Sixth, despite the extensive reference list, the authors fail to cite and discuss several important studies,
115 including those investigating what happens in the dying human brain using intracranial recordings in people
116 who were, in fact, dying,4,29 and work discussing how cortical spreading depolarizations and spreading
117 ischemia during the dying process might give rise to NDE,30 and how phylogenetics might offer an
118 explanation for the evolutionary origin of NDEs.31”
“ Although (near-)death research certainly merits a framework directive, the paper by Parnia et al.1 is subject
135 to a surprising lack of neuroscientific understanding. It reflects the fact that the field of NDE research (at
136 least in parts) is biased by a widely held belief that there is something fundamentally special, if not
137 supranatural, about NDEs, such as the notion that humans can have conscious experiences in the absence of
138 a functioning brain.”
Regarding the last paragraph it’s evident that we are a long way from the acceptance of any non-mundane explanation for NDEs in the wider scientific community.
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The last paragraph is very true. We have reached a stalemate in which the “scientific evidence” can be interpreted in any way you wish…however if you include the testimony of thousands of people who have experienced NDEs with OBEs,many of which were validated by attending HCPs, then the evidence overwhelming favours the non-mundane explanation.
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Has Parnia addressed the intracranial studies and theories about how cortical spreading depolarizations and spreading ischemia could cause NDEs anywhere?
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Yes. Read his books and papers.
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I’m looking forward to the documentary Rethinking Death with Dr. Parnia. Check it out on the Parnia lab website. I think it will be released next month.
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Yes, will be interesting to see if his thinking has changed at all.
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Did Parnia’s lab indicate whether the cases of EEG activity correlate with the one of the six who had the transcendent NDE? Or did it correlate with the CIPRIC cases? I wonder if/when we will get an answer to this. It seems to me that this is the key factor of interpreting the study
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Not yet, and the preprint of the paper didn’t. It is very unsatisfying, and somewhat scientifically incompetent if they do not provide detail on this. They know who had “REDs”, they know who had EEG activity consistent with consciousness. They are 100% able to tell us whether there is any association or not as they are in possession of the data. To not do so is unforgivable in my view, and would considerably lower my estimation of them as researchers.
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I feel exactly the same way Ben. They don’t seem to care about causing so much confusion and the completely needless guessing by so many (and anxiety for some). I am very disappointed in them in what I view as their gamesmanship and lack of professionalism to all of us out there. They could have easily given the one piece we are all interested in, but instead withhold it and gave us the convoluted rest. They should have just kept silent on the whole thing until their actual paper comes out.
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Yep, the truth is they have been doing this since 2019. They hinted at the NDEs then, and that there was EEG activity in the AHA posters, but have never correlated, or otherwise the two. This is science, and important science at that. It is not a game, and information on this subject has the potential to transform the way we see ourselves. I am also perplexed as to why they stopped accumulating data after the pandemic started. Maybe there were protocols that made it difficult to use the equipment in some places, but other than at times when they were slammed, which were relatively short lived, I do not see why they couldn’t continue recruitment so as to reach their target.
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Neurology is a science with explanatory, predictive and manipulative capacity.
We have a theory of the brain based on neurological research. That:
1. Explains cognitive processes, such as emotion, perception, consciousness, mental illness, and explains the organs involved in these acts. For example:
– Explains how vision is produced and which pathways analyze it. It explains how certain phenomena such as blind vision occur if the associative visual cortex does not work, but if other internal organs work, it explains that a vision of the movement of the object occurs faster than the identification of the object as there is a fast path that processes the movement and a slow one that evaluates the color and identifies the object.
– Explain how the activation of the hippocampus produces the memory and if the amygdala is activated the memory will be firmly associated with emotions.
– Explain each organ, what is its function and how an injury produces a certain deficit.
2. Explain the main phenomena on which the belief in souls was based, such as the sensation of being out of the body, the perception of mystical beings, the sensation of light at the end of the tunnel or the state of well-being that is reached in experiences close to life. death. For example:
– The vision of mystical beings is produced by excess or deficiency of stimulation (or also by drugs or diseases such as epilepsy).
– Explains the vision of light in ECM by the existence of over activation of the dying brain.
– Explains the tunnel effect due to lack of oxygen in the brain.
3. It has predictive capacity. For example:
– We can detect what movement a person will make before they do it.
– We can detect what word someone is thinking before they pronounce it.
4. Has manipulative capacity. For example:
– We can generate the sensation of being outside the body by stimulating the brain in the angular twist or with devices that lead us to confuse the location in space.
– We can generate the vision of mystical beings that we believe in according to our religion, for example, by entering an isolation cell or by stimulating the temporal lobe.
– We can generate the sensation of free will in actions totally induced by us.
– We can cause the sensation of a tunnel effect in a centrifuge.
– We can insert or delete memories in the hippocampus with electrical stimuli.
– We can read the number or word someone is thinking by scanning their brain.
Any refutation on what she say’s? Pls
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Neurology is a science with explanatory, predictive and manipulative capacity.
I KNOW I HAVE WORKED IN IT FOR A TOTAL OF 6 YEARS DURING MY CAREER AS A MEDICAL SCIENTIST WHeN I WAS WORKING IN SLEEP DISORDERS, APPETITE, EPILEPSY AND DEMENTIA
We have a theory of the brain based on neurological research.
THEORIES ARE IMPORTANT, BUT REMAIN ONLY THEORIES UNTIL SLAM-DUNK EVIDENCE FROM SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENTATION PROVES A THEORY AND REFUTES ALTERNATIVE HYPOTHESES.
That:
1. Explains cognitive processes, such as emotion, perception, consciousness,
NOPE, THERE IS NO THEORY WITH STRONG SUPPORTING EVIDENCE THAT EXPLAINS CONSCIOUSNESS.
mental illness, and explains the organs involved in these acts. For example:
– Explains how vision is produced and which pathways analyze it. It explains how certain phenomena such as blind vision occur if the associative visual cortex does not work, but if other internal organs work, it explains that a vision of the movement of the object occurs faster than the identification of the object as there is a fast path that processes the movement and a slow one that evaluates the color and identifies the object.
– Explain how the activation of the hippocampus produces the memory and if the amygdala is activated the memory will be firmly associated with emotions.
– Explain each organ, what is its function and how an injury produces a certain deficit.
FINE
2. Explain the main phenomena on which the belief in souls was based, such as the sensation of being out of the body, the perception of mystical beings, the sensation of light at the end of the tunnel or the state of well-being that is reached in experiences close to life. death. For example:
– The vision of mystical beings is produced by excess or deficiency of stimulation (or also by drugs or diseases such as epilepsy).
– Explains the vision of light in ECM by the existence of over activation of the dying brain.
– Explains the tunnel effect due to lack of oxygen in the brain.
THERE ARE OBSERVATIONS FROM RESEARCH THAT ASSOCIATE CERTAIN ASPECTS OF NDES OR OTHER RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE WITH ARTIFICIALLY INDUCED ANALOGUES. SOME SCIENTISTS SAY THIS EXPLAINS THESE EXPERIENCES, OTHERS DISPUTE IT. SOME SCIENTISTS MUDDLE ASSOCIATION WITH CAUSATION.
3. It has predictive capacity. For example:
– We can detect what movement a person will make before they do it.
– We can detect what word someone is thinking before they pronounce it.
INTERESTING BUT NOT RELEVANT
4. Has manipulative capacity. For example:
– We can generate the sensation of being outside the body by stimulating the brain in the angular twist or with devices that lead us to confuse the location in space.
– We can generate the vision of mystical beings that we believe in according to our religion, for example, by entering an isolation cell or by stimulating the temporal lobe.
– We can generate the sensation of free will in actions totally induced by us.
– We can cause the sensation of a tunnel effect in a centrifuge.
– We can insert or delete memories in the hippocampus with electrical stimuli.
PLEASE PROVIDE THE CITATION FOR THIS ONE. IT IS NOT PARTICULARLY IMPORTANT TO THE DISCUSSION, EXCEPT THAT YOU WOULD BE ARGUING THAT THIS PROVES THAT NDES ARE FALSE MEMORIES, WHICH IT DOESN’T NECESSARILY, BUT I WOULD BE INTERESTED IN IT.
– We can read the number or word someone is thinking by scanning their brain.
SO WHAT
Any refutation on what she say’s? Pls
PERHAPS FAMILIARISE YOURSELF WITH THE DISCUSSIONS IN PREVIOUS POSTS.
Ultimately there is a lot of scientific research on this subject that is thought provoking and hypothesis generating, but does not provide conclusive proof one way or the other. During all of these experiments most of the subjects had fully functioning brains and the stimuli were applied under controlled conditions and produced effects that had similarities to reports from NDEs, but never had the unifying well defined and clearly structured narrative arc that NDEers often report while their physical bodies were often clinically dead or dying, and their brains shutting down, or silent due to a lack of oxygenated blood flow. I believe, as someone who adheres to a dualist worldview, that some of these experiments possibly disrupt the “connection” of brain and consciousness and thereby mimic aspects of NDEs. That view is just as valid from the data we have as believing that NDEs are the product of neurological disturbances during the dying process…given current scientific data.
However all of this falls apart with some of the OBEs that have been reported and validated by attending HCPs, some of whom had their worldviews turned upside by what was reported. None of the experiments you describe has been able to produce such profound OBEs, but neither have the AWARE studies or any of the HCA studies been able to capture them scientifically, so we have a scientific stalemate. Neither side (materialist or dualist) has proven scientifically their worldview is correct, but as a scientist and rationalist, I would argue there is more evidence supporting dualism and atheism than there is materialism and theism
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Do you mean more evidence supporting dualism and theism?
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Yes! Thanks, changed.
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And just to add, your final comment “Any refutation on what she say’s? Pls” really got my hackles up, but I am feeling generous and have some time this Sunday morning, so humoured you.
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Sorry ben if my comment bother you it wasn’t my intention i find the argument on a youtube channel and i didn’t know if some arguments where relevant as you say or if they where true but again sorry if i do something that you didn’t like but thanks for the response:)
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No worries, just felt a little demanding.. I am also getting a little fed up of repeating these arguments. I think I need to create a static page on the blog that i can direct people to when they first come here and haven’t seen the answers before.
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“Explains the tunnel effect due to lack of oxygen in the brain”
“The main hypotheses for NDE interpretations on a scientific basis are: (a) periphery-to-fovea retinal ischemia as a cause of tunnel vision; …
Centripetal ischemia of the retina has been advocated as the organic cause of tunnel vision, including the observation of syncopal symptoms of pilots flying at G-force acceleration (Whinnery and Whinnery, 1990). A visual cortex dysinhibition associated with anoxia has also been postulated as an explanation for tunnel-like perception (Blackmore and Troscianko, 1988; Blackmore, 1996).”
“In a sudden severe acute brain damage event such as cardiac arrest, there is no time for an experience of tunnel vision from retinal dysfunction, given that the brain is notably much more sensitive to anoxia and ischemia than peripheral organs; its role in coma from acute brain lesions (such as trauma or hemorrhage) is also questionable, as the pathophysiology of brain damage does not imply retinal ischemia. Fainting due to arterial hypotension—a common event—does not seem to be associated with the tunnel visions described in NDEs.”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00209/full
Near-death experiences between science and prejudice
Enrico Facco, Christian Agrillo
Opi, you mention “she” at the end. Susan Blackmore?
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@Opi I wasn’t aware of that preprint from huthlab where they reconstruct language from fMRI recordings. Good find.
As regards your questions, the reason why the study of NDE OBE’s during cardiac arrest in a medical setting are useful, is that we have a good idea of the physiological state of the patient during cardiac arrest, and this state can be verified by medical staff.
The reason why these hospital NDE OBE’s are interesting, is that experients who do recall a localised OBE, often recall information which apparently comes from the time period *of* their cardiac arrest. That is puzzling, why should information be apparently recalled from a period when the experients brain is in an energy starved state. There is currently no satisfactory explanation for this.
But what is even more bizzare, is that some of these experients recall information from the time period of their cardiac arrest, which they should not have known about, according to our current scientific consensus.
These two issues, which are the main issues, are not addressed by the arguments you posted. They suggest that our current understanding of the brain is probably incomplete and/or incorrect.
Papers such as two examples below, hint at the presence other mechanisms within the brain:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235386344_Magnetoreception_in_laboratory_mice_Sensitivity_to_extremely_low-frequency_fields_exceeds_33_nT_at_30_Hz
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0124728&type=printable
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You are much more patient than me:) thank you.
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Where you took this from?
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Some of it is blatantly false and the others need citations.
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As Ben pointed out, materialists often confuse correlation with causation. Neurological research CANNOT explain consciousness. In fact, while they say “neuronal firing creates thoughts,” that is hardly an explanation for the origin of our thoughts. If you’re interested in non-materialist theories of consciousness, I would recommend reading the work of cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman (1st link is one of many things he’s written), and also the work of the physicist Frederico Faggin, who invented the first microprocessor (2nd link below). Their ideas are similar, and both are working on computational models of consciousness which take into account the growing recognition by physicists that space and time are not fundamental. Most materialists aren’t even aware of that.
Click to access ConsciousRealism2.pdf
http://www.fagginfoundation.org/articles/what-is-consciousness/
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I’m still on the stance that there is no brain activity at least as far as consciousness is concerned during cardiac arrest since blood flow need to go to the brain to induce an hallucination effect.
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Meaning during CA where an experience occurs are real since there is no blood flow.
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Does anyone know his arguments? Because i dont find his peaper
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news-archive/2014/new-paper-investigates-scientific-explanations-for-near-death-experiences
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It’s pretty irrelevant, just recycling same stuff.
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Whats your opinion on what Nelson saids and in this comment that he makes
Dr. Kevin Nelson: Did you ever hear about the story that their memories are inaccurate? No, you don’t hear those. You get a very selective…
https://skeptiko.com/kevin-nelson-skeptical-of-near-death-experience-accounts/
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There is no determined research measuring the accuracy of visual information recalled from the localised OBE component of the NDE.
Penny Sartori told me that one of the reasons she hid secret targets up high in her study, was to actually rule out a telepathic-like mechanism.
That’s the polarised type of thinking we see.
One position in this polarised debate believes we’re a separate individual, and that the veridical localised NDE OBE occurs only within our perfectly isolated brain, and only contains information from our own senses.
The other position of this polarised debate believes we’re a separate disembodied individual, and that the veridical localised NDE OBE occurs only within this disembodied entity, and only contains information from our own disembodied senses.
Both these positions are similar, they both believe that your experience arises from separateness.
But that seems unlikely to be true, there is far too much evidence that people really do come into possession of information that is not their own.
This is a very hard problem to crack, because our bodily senses only reduce our degrees of freedom to probabilistically predict our shared experience, but our senses are therefore *vital* to accurately predicting an experience which is shared (objective). To explore this, we blind our sensory information, from our experience, but in doing so we break the very mechanism we are using to explore the same mechanism.
In the hospitalised NDE OBE we find a tiny opening, a crack to explore when the brain is in a peculiar energy starved state, a sweet spot. When the firing from the brains neural networks are too weak to reliably present information from the experients own senses to their brain, but when the experients neural networks still have sufficient energy to become entrained by third parties neural network firing.
So are people anomalously recalling accurate information from the localised NDE OBE or not?
You know what, no one is even measuring for this…
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I think that there were some papers on anomalous information transfer during mediumship sessions by Dean Radin (a while ago, and he seemed to be leaning towards mediums probing sitter with psi), and Julie Beischel. I was sceptical of the latter’s Windbridge Institute credibility, because they kind of certified real mediums.
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@uhlaps
Me too. I’ve only looked in detail at one Beischel medium paper from 2015, which was fiendishly difficult to understand. In that paper it was unclear – in principle – whether the results were anomalous or not, but whatever was going on, it didn’t appear to be related to the medium at all. If it were anomalous (I’m skeptical), it seemed more related to the experimenter effect. That is an effect caused by one person upon another.
I’ve looked in detail at four Radin papers, and unfortunately found them to be worthless. He produces results which look interesting, but actually when you did into the details, the results don’t demonstrate and anomalous effects.
Then you look at a Sheldrake’s paper like ‘Dogs that know when their owners are coming home”… which seemed a solid piece of research to me.
There are other human phenomena where anomalous transfer of information deserves closer investigation, like the NDE/OBE. Unfortunately, no one is really attempting to measure this effect.
Two interesting areas of research look particularly relevant to the NDE/OBE… the field of Magnetobiology (which includes Magnetoreception), and ongoing efforts to generalise Quantum Mechanics and Relativity (Spacetime) which now seem to be making solid progress.
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Max, You refer to “neural networks” a lot in your arguments, but neural networks are a family of computermodels. They have nothing to do with brains except for the nomenclature (the term ‘neural’ to be precise).
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the neural networks I’m referring to are the neural network structures of the brain… neuron, axon, dendrites, dendritic spines, microtubule, tubulin etc. I’m not referring to an artificial neural network.
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Neural network = artificial neural network.
A brain has networks of neurons, cerebrospinal fluid, arteries, controlling everything from heart rate to mood.
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@Steen : “Neural network = artificial neural network”
Last time… from ‘The Encyclopedia of the Human Brain’ 😉
https://www.sciencedirect.com/sdfe/pdf/download/eid/3-s2.0-B0122272102002363/first-page-pdf
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uhlaps,
your comment is full of bias with a kind of bizarre passing reference to the Windbridge work. So in one paper (peer-reviewed, Journal of Near-Death Studies) they say … “Controlled and replicated research has demonstrated that certain skilled mental mediums are able to report accurate and specific information about the deceased loved ones (hereafter termed discarnates) of living people (termed sitters) using anomalous information reception (AIR); that is, without prior knowledge about the discarnates or sitters, in the absence of sensory feedback, and without using deceptive means (Beischel et al., 2015; Beischel & Schwartz, 2007; Rock et al., 2014).”
Max_B,
wow what a comment on Dr. Dean Radin. He comments on Dr. Julie Beischel’s and team’s work … “Julie Beischel and her team have joined a unique group of scientists over the past century who have studied mediums. Beischel’s team has taken on the challenge in a serious and rigorous way, and the results of their efforts are intriguing.”
I actually knew and spoke to two (of many) investigators of the Scole phenomena, Montague Keen and Prof. Arthur Ellison. Mediums involved there too. Totally real they said to me and quite unchallenged afterwards from the odd die-hard skeptic. We have to accept all this is part of the puzzle of afterlife studies whether we like it or not.
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My great aunt was a medium. Totally authentic. Personally, and from a Christian perspective, while I believe these experiences are “real”, I believe in giving them a very wide berth.
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Surprise – you found something on the Internet supporting your claim 🙂 With the emergence of advanced artificial neural networks in the recent decade nobody is referring to the brain as a “neural network” anymore as it has become clear that there’s nothing in common between these algorithms and the workings of the brain. Not even the human brain project referes to the brain as a neural network. I’m just pointing out that you are presenting your ideas using a misnormer that will only cause confusion.
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Fascinating about your great aunt. When you know you know! Kind of the reason I went off half-cocked above was because I was listening last night to Leslie Kean (the same who co-broke the UFO NY Times story that’s now led to huge US Gov strides) say she experienced a materialised hand in a sitting with Stuart Alexander. Here,
And she has a book out overviewing afterlife studies. Then I highly respect also the Windbridge group and Radin (whose done some stunning experiments showing how minds can effect a quantum laser set up.
I did wonder how you felt re your Christian side! But I too find Jesus remarkable and truly mysterious in many ways.
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View at Medium.com
I recently read this article that was shared on the blog and I have doubts about two points since there are some things I know about, such as culture and experience, I understand that there are several characteristics that remain in the experiences and it may also be about more than one cultural interpretation of the experience that the experience is based on the culture and on the part of rem sleep has its problems but which I have doubts are about point 5 and 3 since I don’t know if point three is completely true and from point 5 I would like help since I don’t know if what he says about the brain having to make the memory is true, it could not be possible that memory is in consciousness and it depends on how damaged the brain is if it is able to filter or transcribe that memory to the brain for recall
If someone could give me some points of view pls 🙂
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This article and it’s points already got discussed here. Look up.
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I’ll take a swing at this… I recently read the skeptic Michael Shermer’s “Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia” and this seems to be a very poorly worded summary of the chapter on NDEs
Here’s Why No Near Death Experience Can Ever Convince a Skeptic
It’s not the experience we doubt. It’s your brain.
– This is a terrible title. The author is starting with an unfalsifiable claim and unfalsifiable claims are scientifically meaningless
1) You can’t prove that your brain wasn’t active during the NDE
– You can’t prove a negative and in any case, science does not prove things, it falsifies things. This is the importance of AWARE and other case studies (Pam Reynolds, terminal lucidity, etc) when you have the ability to time stamp events when the best materialistic theories of consciousness (GWS, IIT) say that it should not be possible. That is the best we can do.
2) People’s NDEs produce what their culture expects them to see
– False, Greyson scale is common across all cultures
3) What people “see” during NDEs only happens after the period in which they are declared “dead”
– He seems to be arguing that AWARE disproved the OBEs which is not true, we do not have a picture hit yet, but we have some veridical reports like the 57 year old truck driver and that is why we need to fully study this without prejudice as Parnia says
4) There is a strong correlation between people who have NDEs and people who experience REM sleep intrusion
– Correlation does not mean causation, and this is in the same category as “NDEs are hallucinations” group. See reply here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6179792/
“REM intrusion hypothesis is contradicted by the common occurrence of NDEs under conditions that inhibit REM, such as general anesthesia, and by the finding of reduced REM in near-death experiencers.”
5) In order to even remember it, your brain has to register it is happening and store it through the hippocampus
– There are many people who have had their hippocampus removed that still form memories even if it may be impaired. The hippocampus memory theory also requires a fully functioning brain to work properly which is not is what is happening during these cases
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Nice rebuttal. I suspect most people will continue to believe what they want to believe, because changing our minds isn’t easy. Maybe that’s why I’m an agnostic on all these issues, which some may say is a cop-out, but at least it leaves me open minded (I hope). As a psychologist, I’m intrigued by non-materialist arguments of the brain, such as Donald Hoffman’s, which I’ve posted here previously. Here’s another fascinating article about some people with minimal brain tissue who have IQ’s that are normal or even exceptional, which very much calls materialist views of the brain into question. As you can see, the materialist author is having a REALLY hard time changing his mind! 🙂
https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/is-your-brain-really-necessary-revisited
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Thanks for the reply!
If I could push back on the agnostic comment, I find that you either live your life like there is an afterlife (or that God exists, one does not necessarily entail the other), or you don’t. What would you say to that?
Also, having a lot of family and friends who are physicians, there is a clear majority of them and other in the applied sciences (nurses, engineers) who believe in God and an afterlife with the exception of psychologists. Is that a fair characterization Why do you think that the reasons for that are (I am thinking psychology is still a bit poisoned from the likes of Freud and Skinner)?
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Hi Nic. You didn’t say what you meant by the following comment: “I find that you either live your life like there is an afterlife (or that God exists, one does not necessarily entail the other), or you don’t.” So I’ll have to assume what you meant, and you can correct me if I’m wrong. I assume that you mean that people who believe in God/afterlife behave more morally than those who do not. (That’s a very common belief, unfortunately). First, I’ll rely on my own personal experience, the way you did with your own family about belief in an afterlife, even though it’s not scientific, since the sample size is small and not random. In my experience, my atheist and agnostic friends behave just as morally as those who are religious. My father, an agnostic, was one of the most caring and compassionate persons I’ve ever met, and not just to me. Now let’s look at the science. Most studies on this have only looked at moral values, rather than actual behaviors, since it’s much easier to do. The first link below is to a study which found that both atheists and believers have similar moral values with one difference involving group cohesion, and it is not the only study demonstrating this. While I’m not a fan of the atheistic “Four Horsemen,” they make the valid point that some of the worst atrocities in history have been committed in the name of religion. As for differences in moral behavior, while it’s been studied less, the second link is to a clever study that examined behavior and found no differences in moral behavior between the believers vs non-believers. But if you have access to research that contradicts these findings, please do share. As for the difference in religious faith between psychologists and physicians, the research suggests there is no such difference. Per the first link, 65% of physicians believe in God, and according to the second link, 66% of psychologists believe in God. Of course, these are just 2 polls, and they didn’t report the margin of error, but I think it’s most likely a valid conclusion to say that there is no difference between the 2 professions in religious beliefs, and that both groups are less religious than the general population. This is not surprising, since polls generally show that religious beliefs decline as level of education increases. Nevertheless, a majority of both groups are believers. There is also a growing recognition in psychology that spirituality plays a fundamental role in mental health, and that there are many psychological benefits to belonging to a social group such as a church. Perhaps we are returning to our true roots, William James.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210224143306.htm
https://www.science.org/content/article/religious-or-not-we-all-misbehave
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27071796/
Click to access rel-a0032699.pdf
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“they make the valid point that some of the worst atrocities in history have been committed in the name of religion”
It’s not valid. In fact it is a big fat hairy lie. The worst atrocities in the past 100 years have been committed by atheist dictators. Prior to that wars were mostly territorial.
If you are an atheist morals are irrelevant, meaningless, and pointless. Religion, while it contains instructions, is primarily about accessing God. Most Western “morals” come from the christian religion, so it is pointless evaluating moral values among atheists who bought up in western culture as those “morals” are actually christian. Pagan societies that pre-existed christian religion and that did not have a God, were largely extremely violent.
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Thank you nic
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https://clinicaltrials.med.nyu.edu/clinicaltrial/1308/feasibility-study-examining-conscious/?qd=18121159
from this page,it’s “Deep Hypothermic Circulatory Arrest”.
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Yep. That’s the Parnia one we’ve been talking about. Started recruiting 18 months ago I think.
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There is a crazy idea:use the DHCA on the healty people.But it’s too dangerous and expensive lol
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I don’t think DHCA is going to be very fruitful after reviewing the key study at the heart of this post.
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Sorry if Im bothering you but i have si much questions and this video is principal because the ketamine argument its true that magnesium or zinc ions can produce a hallucination like ketamine ?
Sorry again if a make many questions
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Ben, I couldn’t find a “reply” button to your response to my comment, so I’ll have to start a new comment. Perhaps you don’t want me to respond, and I won’t be surprised if you don’t post this comment. I was sad and disappointed to see your response. You are clearly disdainful of me, my dad, and many others I hold dear with your statement: “If you are an atheist morals are irrelevant, meaningless, and pointless.” I don’t expect to convince you otherwise, and I’m trying not to get upset and defensive, but for others who might be more open-minded, should you choose to allow this comment, I will just say that studying moral development (e.g., Lawrence Kohlberg) has been a major focus of my career, and it would have been nonsensical to do so if I thought morals were “irrelevant, meaningless, and pointless.” While I am far from perfect, I have always tried to live by the Golden Rule, which is found in all religions and historians first attribute to Confucius in 600 B.C. It is illogical to think morals did not manifest in man until Christ. Like all human behavior, evolution shaped our moral values, and clearly they had/have survival value. Had humans not developed them, it’s unlikely we would have survived until Christ came along. (1st link) Or is evolution now off the table? As for your denial that religion was responsible for many human atrocities, I am astonished that you would deny indisputable historical fact. I expected you might argue that those atrocities were committed by people posing as religious who weren’t truly religious (because that statement is not falsifiable, as we can never know another’s true beliefs), but I never expected you to outright deny historical facts. As one example: “Beginning around the ninth century…another important evolution of Christian thinking occurred. Killing unbelievers was actually declared by popes Leo IV and John VIII to be spiritually beneficial for Christian soldiers: Their sins could be erased if they killed in defense of the Church. In the year 1095, Pope Urban II launched the First Crusade, urging European leaders to rescue the Christian holy lands from their non-Christian occupiers. He referred to the Muslims who then controlled Palestine as an ‘unclean nation’ that had polluted Christian holy places. Killing Muslims became itself a form of penance for Christians for remission of their sins. Moral rules governing the conduct of war were abandoned, and unlimited tactics were permitted. No one was immune from attack by Christian crusaders; whole cities were slaughtered. (Halsall)”(2nd link) Even some very religious Christians do not deny that atrocities were committed in the name of Jesus, while pointing out that such behavior does not actually represent his teachings (3rd link). How does this happen? I think the reason that the “nones” are growing in number faster than any religion is not so much a loss of spirituality, but rather the growing recognition, based on the work of Jonathan Haidt, that religion facilitates tribalism, which often gets mixed with politics, including in modern times. If you think that Christian Nationalists aren’t interested in violence, keep this in mind about Jan. 6th: they were seeking to kill Mike Pence, they planned and committed much violence against the police, and they had a big cross outside the capital. (4th link) I worry about the growing violence against anybody they perceive who is not in their “tribe.” No, Jesus did not preach violence; just the opposite. But for some reason, the historical record is filled with examples of violence committed in His name, no matter how much you deny it. I’m sorry to say I will not be participating here any more because I don’t want go where I’m disdained and where historical facts are denied. Good luck in finding proof of heaven.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-origins-of-human-morality/#:~:text=In Brief,fairness for other group members.
https://www.scu.edu/ethics/focus-areas/more-focus-areas/resources/killing-in-the-name-of-god/
https://reasonsforjesus.com/jesus-vs-crimes-committed-in-jesus-name/
https://www.ncronline.org/news/politics/how-christian-nationalism-paved-way-jan-6
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I appreciate your expertise in the area of morals and evolution, however, I stand by my assertion that they are pointless in the absence of God, but clarify that assertion from the point of view that morals are not “good” or “bad” in the absence of an external source of those defining those “morals”. Life really is utterly pointless if the soul and God are not real. It really is. You are just here to breed.If you are more successful at doing that than another species because you adopt “morals” it is no credit to you or anyone.
Of course, it is true that some atrocities are the result of religion or religious interpretation, but the majority are not Even the most basic of google searches shows that – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war. . However, you belie your true bias, and motives, by focusing solely on atrocities committed in the name of Christ.
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Just to add, on the point of you solely focusing on Christianity, I will not tolerate any bigotry towards any faith on here, and will not hesitate to block comments from those who show clear bias. I was not rude about your father, or atheists or agnostics, I just said that morals are pointless in the absence of (faith in) God.
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I wasn’t planning to reply any more, but since you misinterpreted some of what I said, I will stick with it through this thread in an effort to make my position clear. But first, let me respond to something you said to Alexander: “Sobshrink doubled down on this falsehood by creating the impression that my faith is the root cause of most of the religious atrocities/wars.” Huh? I never said nor implied that Christianity is the root cause of most religious atrocities. I agree that most violence is not motivated by religion, and that all religions have been guilty of atrocities. The only reason the articles I posted focused on Christianity was your statement that, “Most Western ‘morals’ come from the christian religion.” You were the one that focused on Christianity as the source of moral values, so I responded in kind. I’m well aware that I could have included links to atrocities by other religions, but perhaps I assumed you already knew all about them, but were less inclined to acknowledge atrocities committed by Christians. Sorry if that assumption was wrong. I’m not saying Christians are more violent than non-Christians, but I also think we should not sweep Christian Holy Wars under the rug, any more than Islamic violence. Moving on to your response to me, I didn’t say you were rude; the word I said was “disdainful.” It’s difficult to interpret emotion and intent through online communication, but I felt disdained by your remark, “If you are an atheist morals are irrelevant, meaningless, and pointless.” The logical inference from this is that atheists (and presumably agnostics) do not possess morals because why in the world would anybody bother with something that is “irrelevant, meaningless, and pointless?” The only indisputable facts I can say for sure regarding this are: 1) I’m an agnostic, and 2) As evidenced by my lifelong study of moral development, I find moral values extremely meaningful and important. I can’t imagine why you think that only the existence of a God would render them such. In fact, I can’t think of anything more meaningful and important than the degree to which we follow the Golden Rule, whether or not there is a God. As I said before, I believe that moral values began to evolve in man in the neighborhood of 400,000 years ago, when we started to learn to cooperate in groups in order to survive. As religions developed and then became more complex, they kept adding more moral “rules” to follow, some of which seem to contradict each other, such as the need to love sinners and treat them as we want to be treated, but let’s not let homosexuals into the church! Of course, not all Christians or Muslims or Jews believe this, and it’s interesting to me how many different conflicting values there are even within a single religion. That’s why I find more meaning in moral development research, which has found fundamental moral values present in all humans that transcend culture and religion (e.g., the work of Lawrence Kohlberg and Jonathan Haidt). Anyway, I’m glad that we can agree on the danger that Christian Nationalism poses. In other words, being a Christian does not guarantee moral behavior, any more than being an atheist guarantees immoral behavior, which is the point I was trying to make all along. As for whether moral values, or life itself, can have meaning in the absence of a God, I suppose that depends upon your definition of meaning. You can’t force somebody to believe in God; even THEY can’t force themselves to believe; I want to believe, but my mind keeps telling me, “I don’t know.” However, I assure you that does not prevent me from finding meaning in life. If you want to learn more on this topic, I highly recommend “The Denial of Death,” by Ernest Becker, and “The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life,” by Sheldon Solomon et al. They do not say whether there is a God or not. But the theory in the first book, and the hundreds of research studies to support the theory in the second book, make very clear that the search for meaning is fundamental to humans, that it is caused by our knowledge that we will die, and that we cannot avoid the influence of existential anxiety on our behavior even if it is strictly unconscious, which it usually is. We can only choose to understand it, and then choose how we cope with it. It also explains Holy wars of all denominations. I sincerely wish you the best. We humans are all just trying to understand and cope, and hopefully continue to evolve towards less violence. It’s not looking so good right now!
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Hi Sobshrink,
Thank you replying…I think it is better to continue dialogue when there is disagreement than walk away, although when I am certain there is genuine harmful prejudice expressed against any faith, or people of no faith, I will not hesitate to block people.
Thank you for clarifying the context in which you specifically used examples of violence committed in the name of the christian faith, and for also clarifying that there is a lot more violence committed outside of the context of religion than within. This is important, and a correction of a common misunderstanding that I come across, which is frustrating, hence my knee jerk reaction.
The “evolution” of moral values is an interesting topic, and not one which I am overly familiar with, beyond a basic understanding of the underlying premise that societies that developed “morals” were more likely to thrive than those that didn’t because of the benefits that “moral” behaviour provide to the whole group. I don’t want to get into it here, but I do think that the teachings of Christ go way beyond any such basics, and I am still of the understanding that modern western (note western) moral values have their roots in Judaeo Christian teachings. I also wonder if the conclusions that you and other academics have drawn are a classic case of muddling causation with association. As man developed, it is possible that some point he became more spiritually aware, and was able to perceive the divine, and the desires of the divine in terms of our behaviour. This then resulted in the benefits observed. Just a thought.
On the topic of you perceiving me as being disdainful, I think you misunderstand the meaning of what I am saying. In my view, if the soul is not eternal and God does not exist, then “morals” are somewhat arbitrary (perhaps a better word than pointless). In the absence of the reference to a supreme being as the source, and eternal consequences attached to breaking moral codes, then their relevance and importance to individuals is in effect meaningless and inconsequential beyond any immediate positive or negative impact. Meaning becomes purely reductive.
Anyway, please do continue to take part, and I will try to not respond so sharply in future
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Also to add, I possibly misread your first comment and thought you said most atrocities were committed in the name of religion, rather you said some of the worst. I agree that some have been committed in the name of religion, including mine, and as you correctly point out, completely against the teachings of the religion’s founder.
Anyway, it is most definitely true that most of the wars and the worst atrocities of the last century were directly due to atheist ideology based on socilaism, be it communism or national socialism.
I despise the ideology of Christian “nationalism” as much as you. That is the basis of Putin’s aggression.
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Orson I have to point out that, while you often call yourself “unbiased”, my personal view is that you often filter your reality and your scientific knowledge through the prism of your own christian beliefs. Your beliefs are not a “universal truth” though, but science is. I am very often not “in sync” with your personal preferences and interpretations regarding the religious part of scientific findings but I accept your opinion exactly as I would accept every other religion’s. Only in the end we will get to know the truth, regardless of bias, won’t we?
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Hi Alexander, thank you for your thoughtfully expressed comment.
I don’t think I have ever said I am unbiased, and in my books I explicitly state that I am biased because it is impossible not to be biased. However, I do try my very hardest to present evidence in a balanced manner (there is a subtle difference), which means trying to present the fundamental facts from research and anecdotes without bias. I believe I do that reasonably well. As for the interpretation of the implications that evidence might have, that is where my bias comes in, as it does for everyone..even if they think they are unbiased or have no skin in the game. Sitting on the fence is a position in itself.
I hope you don’t mind me correcting you on something else you said, but as a scientist myself I can say with confidence that science is not the universal truth. Science is the pursuit of understanding about the material world using the scientific method – create a hypothesis then test it through experimental observation. Science provides us with information and understanding about the material world. Sometimes information generated through science becomes indisputable fact, but sometimes the science on a subject is not fixed, as is most certainly the case with the science of NDEs and consciousness. The information generated by science can however provide clues to help us determine what the “truth” on a specific matter might be. As I have stated, and is indeed my biased opinion, I believe that the sum of evidence available to us through science and through human testimony, strongly supports the understanding that humans have a non physical entity within them – a soul, that may persist beyond death, and that there is a God-like being who created life. The evidence from NDEs points to the existence of an eternal soul and a God-like being, and the evidence from origin of life research points to the existence of a creative intelligence which is analogous to the God described by various religions.
Now, my response to sobshrink was due to his/her raising a popular but entirely false and offensive meme, namely that religion is the cause of (most) wars/atrocities. It is quite simply a fact determined by historians who have analysed this that religion is the root cause of less than 10% of wars through history, and that the worst atrocities from the last century were as a result of atheist ideology. To quote one source:
“Russia’s communist USSR gave rise to both Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Illich Lenin whom murdered 42,672,000 and 4,017,000, China’s communist Mao Tse-tung and militarist/fascist Chiang Kai-sheck whom murdered 37,828,000 and 10,214,000, communist Cambodia’s Pol Pot whom murdered 2,397,000, Germany’s fascist Adolf Hitler whom murdered 20,946,000, and Imperial Japan’s militarist/fascist Tojo Hideki whom murdered 3,990,000. From 1917 to 1987, in a span of under 70 years, roughly 121,332,000 human beings were murdered by these government regimes.”
These atrocities committed by regimes that were founded on non-religious and mostly atheist ideologies against their own citizens are unprecedented. These aren’t even wars.
Moreover, Sobshrink doubled down on this falsehood by creating the impression that my faith is the root cause of most of the religious atrocities/wars. Again historians who have analysed this subject observed that half the religious wars had Islam as their root cause, with the other religions, including all the major faiths, contributing to the rest.
I will not tolerate the propagation of ideas that falsely create hate and discrimination against any religion on this blog, especially my own. Having said this, I do not believe all religions are equal, otherwise I would not follow the one I do. To understand the foundations of a particular religion you must look to the founder(s)- what they were reported to have said, and how they supposedly lived…if you do your research, as I have, there are stark differences between the major faiths meaning that they are either all mostly wrong, or that one is mostly right…they cannot all be mostly right due to fundamental differences in their teachings and the examples of their founders.
Yes, I do believe, from the evidence I have looked at, that the faith I follow is the ultimate source of universal truth, but currently there is insufficient evidence to prove that belief absolutely. However, while you are free to say that you believe my faith is not the universal truth, you are showing your own bias by stating that position as though it is a fact. It is not a fact, it is your (biased) opinion.
Anyway, like I said, I appreciate your comment, and hope you don’t mind my responding to what I believe to be innocent misunderstandings or misrepresentation of what I have said.
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Hi i has looking no the internet and i found a person that says trat a theory can disprove afterlife i dont know if you know his user name is BA_Rehl and this is a part of his comment
Using an extension of Information Theory, you can create disproofs of an afterlife, an intelligent creator, Idealism, ghosts, psychic abilities, universal consciousness, Boltzmann brains, etc. There are specific problems with Global Workspace, IIT, and Dennett’s Multiple Drafts model. There are specific problems with some of the speculation from people like Searle and Chomsky, a lot of the speculation from others.
Hi also says arguments about the obe
This claim is actually backwards. When doctors have tried to test OOB experiences, the evidence vanishes. This claim seems to be based on the naive assumption that anything above 0% correct is evidence. This same naive assumption is used as evidence for things like telling the future or clairvoyance which also vanish when rigorously tested.
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This sounds simillar to Sean Carroll’s infamous “debunking” of a afterlife.
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I’ve been able to disprove souls since late 2016. The disproof is related to abstract information theory. There are similar disproofs for psychic phenomenon and Boltzmann brains.
“Some here have stated that you can’t prove a negative. I don’t have to. Abstract information theory covers anything that can reason and comprehend. It doesn’t matter whether it is an animal, a human, a machine, an alien, a spirit, or even a god. If it is claimed to reason and comprehend then there are limiting parameters. If a god falls outside those parameters then it cannot reason and comprehend. A creator god or a spirit would necessarily fall outside the parameters.
If you are still struggling with this then I’ll give you an analogy. Back in 1966, Jerry Lewis was in a movie called, Way…Way Out – Wikipedia where he played an astronaut stationed on the Moon with his newlywed wife. When the cosmonauts visit, they have something amazing, a powder that is mixed with water to make vodka. This was clearly a comedic take on the fact that astronaut meals were typically free dried and then re-hydrated with water as well as the fact that Russians drink vodka. This powder can in fact be disproved. There is no powdered substance that can be added to water at room temperature to make alcohol and there never will be. This is impossible.”
He also mention this but the things that he says are real? Or hes just saying things that dosent relate to the topic
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Is the same person guy of the other comment that i uploaded
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Hi Opi,
I don’t know, how about you tell us?
On that, please don’t just dump stuff you’ve copied from “somewhere” on the internet that is just obscure theory without stating why it provides solid evidence supporting your position. Coherent arguments with supporting evidence – yes, random stuff gleaned from google that feels a little bit like trolling…no. This is a warning, and in future I will delete posts that are pure clutter. Abstract information theory is more philosophy than science.
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ok ben thanks for answering and I apologize again if I did something that could bother you I just wanted to share that information since I had never heard of it but again sorry and I will take into account the warning you mentioned and I will be more selective next time
Thank you
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Cool, thank you.
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Ben, one more thing before I leave here that has stuck in my craw….you claim that I’m prejudiced against Christians, even though I have said nothing to imply that Christians are more violent or less moral than non-Christians, and I explained why the articles I posted focused on Christianity, because you brought it up first, as Christianity being the source of Western morals. But you also have made several statements that imply that atheism leads to violence and war. For example, you said, “Pagan societies that pre-existed christian religion and that did not have a God, were largely extremely violent” (please cite your source), and “the worst atrocities from the last century were as a result of atheist ideology.” In fact, there’s no such thing as “atheist ideology.” (1st link) Atheism is not a belief system or ideology, it is simply a lack of belief in God/gods, while agnosticism means simply “not knowing;” again without any ideology attached. There is no evidence that lack of belief (atheism) caused any of the atrocities you cite. Surely you know that correlation does not equal causation, and the correlation between belief and violence is probably the same strength, and equally meaningless in terms of causation, although theistic belief did seem to play a role in Holy wars, Christian and non-Christian alike. You gave Hitler as one of your examples of atheism causing his atrocities, but in fact, he was a Christian, and not an atheist (2nd link below). I think his actions, as is usually the case, were multi-causal, as most historians argue. But to the extent his beliefs were causal, it was his Christianity and not atheism that played a role as evidenced by his own words (below), and his action of banning atheist groups. You are promoting the unfounded prejudice that atheists and agnostics are more immoral than theists, especially Christians, as you made clear you think they are the superior religion. Perhaps your accusations about my being prejudiced are a projection of your own prejudices? All of your statements taken together imply that believers, especially Christians, behave more morally than atheists and agnostics. I don’t buy it one bit. But I also don’t buy the notion that Christians behave less morally than any other group, as you have accused me of. Just “big fat hairy” wrong on both counts.
https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/about-atheism/#:~:text=Atheism is one thing: A,incorrectly as a belief system.
https://inference-review.com/letter/hitlers-christianity
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Maybe you didn’t see my last reply to you…the structure of the blog is a bit messy unfortunately.
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Hi Ben….thanks for your thoughtful response. Here are a few of my reactions to things you said: “I think it is better to continue dialogue when there is disagreement than walk away.” I totally agree, although I will walk away if I feel I’m being disdained or disrespected in any way, just as you will block someone who you believe is a bigot, etc. I will accept your claim that you do not disdain me, while disagreeing with your assertion used to support this, which was, “In the absence of the reference to a supreme being as the source, and eternal consequences attached to breaking moral codes, then their relevance and importance to individuals is in effect meaningless and inconsequential beyond any immediate positive or negative impact.” I’m still not clear on whether you think believers BEHAVE more morally than atheists/agnostics, but these statements lead me to think that you do. Of course, you know I disagree if that’s your position. You assert that my (or any agnostic’s or athetist’s) moral behavior is meaningless and inconsequential because we don’t know if God is the source of our moral code, and we also don’t know if there are eternal negative consequences when we break the code. I couldn’t disagree more. If I do the right thing because I fear hell or desire heaven, my behavior is externally controlled, just like when parents use rewards and punishment to control their child’s behavior. The child will learn to please the adult to get the rewards, and/or be deceitful to avoid punishment. Their behavior is NOT based on their desire to be helpful and caring to others, only to help themselves. External consequences do not develop a sense of internal morality that can be used to do the right thing in the absence of rewards/punishments. It is why the prison system has a 5-year recidivism rate of 79%, as punishment does not lead to moral development any more than rewards do. (As you can see, I’m NOT a behaviorist!) On the other hand, when an atheist or agnostic does the right thing, even when nobody is looking and they know that nobody will ever find out, and they don’t do it out of a fear of hell or desire for heaven, now THAT is meaningful. That is a person whose morality is internally controlled by their own desire to do good for others (since moral values are mainly about how we treat others), not by external controls to earn a reward (heaven) and avoid punishment (hell.) I doubt that has convinced you of anything, other than that you and I define meaningful in VERY different ways.
Regarding moral values, you said, “I…wonder if the conclusions that you and other academics have drawn are a classic case of muddling causation with association.” Interesting, considering I suggested the same with you, when you cited some historical atheist figures who committed atrocities (although you were wrong about Hitler being an atheist). I inferred that you thought their atheism was causal rather than merely correlational, but you didn’t outright say it. I’m afraid you need to be more forthright and direct in what you’re saying, so that I don’t have to infer it. In any case, I’m not sure what you meant by association – what 2 variables are correlated in the moral development literature? If you’re saying moral values and moral behavior, I never said that, and in fact, Kohlberg found that, in his stage theory, there was no correlation between the most mature moral reasoning and moral behavior. This jives with the finding that there is no correlation between religiosity and moral behavior, per the study I posted awhile back. I don’t think anybody would argue with the fact that the U.S. is one of the most Christian of nations, while also being a very violent, high crime nation, much more so than more atheistic countries like much less violent Sweden and Norway. Even when people believe in God and the teachings of Christ, they behave immorally as often as the average non-believer, because so many things impact behavior beyond one’s beliefs and even one’s maturity level of moral reasoning (e.g., personality traits like impulsivity, poverty, environmental stressors that decrease frustration tolerance, etc.). Regarding the research on moral development and moral values, you said, “The ‘evolution’ of moral values is an interesting topic, and not one which I am overly familiar with, beyond a basic understanding of the underlying premise that societies that developed ‘morals’ were more likely to thrive than those that didn’t because of the benefits that ‘moral’ behavior provide to the whole group…I do think that the teachings of Christ go way beyond any such basics…” I can see you’re definitely not familiar with the literature, and I have no idea if you would like to know more, but I’ve included a link to Kohlberg’s theory of moral development and also a link to the more recent findings of Jonathan Haidt’s group on moral foundations. Neither one started with an apriori list of moral values, but asked people questions about moral stories and dilemmas, and analyzed them to derive increasingly abstract moral principles (Kohlberg) and moral intuitions (Haidt). It’s way too complicated to explain here, but I would definitely not call what they came up with “basic.” The articles are very simplified and not comprehensive, and I would be happy to send you more detailed info if you’d like, although I’m sure you could find it on your own if interested. I think I’ve spent WAY too much time on these comments lately, so I’ll stop for awhile, but I won’t leave forever! 🙂
https://www.britannica.com/science/Lawrence-Kohlbergs-stages-of-moral-development
https://moralfoundations.org/
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Firstly, as an FYI, I need to approve every post with a link or content, just in case you think you are ever blocked. You are not.
Secondly, thanks for replying. I appreciate your engagement. You obviously like writing, like I do.
“I’m still not clear on whether you think believers BEHAVE more morally than atheists/agnostics, but these statements lead me to think that you do.”
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Competition about this only belongs to those who are sanctimonious, whether they be believers or atheists. The truth is that from my understanding believers who claim to uphold the morals taught to them may be held to a much higher standard than those who are ignorant of these morals. I agree that atheists who behave well towards their fellow man out of genuine love are worthy of greater credit than believers who do so only out of fear of missing out on heaven. For me it is not a competition, and you seem to see what I am saying in that context. The one that I follow says that there are many who will call him Lord, but he will say I do not know you…these are the kinds of people you are talking about.
As for me, I know my personal behaviour often falls well short not only of the standards my faith asks of me, but of the world in general, so I do not hold up these morals as a stick to thrash atheists with…I have a bigger splinter in my eye, rather I am arguing about the source of morality from an objective point of view since I am not being worthy of wearing moral “badges”. I just believe that the morals we have were given us by “God” for our benefit, and that entry to eternity is not a “reward” for being good, but rather the destiny at the end of the path laid out for us that causes our souls to be preserved. Following his teachings and seeking him lead to that destiny, but if your heart is not in it, then it is empty.
As for Hitler, I did clarify by saying non-religious and atheist regimes. Hitler did not attend church after the age of 18. Even the most hostile anti-Christian historian would not for a second say that the Nazi regime was driven by or based on Christianity. All the others were overtly atheist. I do actually believe that their lack of believe in God ( and in reality Hitler’s too) meant there was nothing holding them back. They understood what I am talking about when I say that in the absence of God, morals are arbitrary. Murder is totally acceptable when you create your own morals, and without an external judge who is to say one person’s morals are better than another. Such human judgement is…arbitrary, irrelevant, meaningless. Your definition of good is no “better” than Hitler’s or Stalin’s, just different. Surely you see that?
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Ben, I actually don’t like to write, because writing well is enormously time consuming and difficult, so I admire your work. That’s why I wasn’t planning to write more for awhile, but I admit to having a hard time not responding when I see something that I disagree with! To be honest, I totally regret bringing up the issue of religion at all. I only did it in response to Nic’s request for me to comment on his perceived observation that people tend to live their life as if there is a God, or they don’t. He did not explain what that meant at all, so again, I had to infer. It’s so much harder to have these conversations in writing than verbally, when it’s so much quicker and easier to check for understanding. I inferred that he thinks those who don’t believe in God behave less morally than those who do, since that seems to be a common misconception among believers. That is why I brought up the example of religious atrocities, not to imply that religious folks are less moral than nonbelievers, but merely to point out that believers are every bit as capable of horrible immoral behavior as nonbelievers. Boy, I started a hornet’s next! I’m going to make my position clear one more time, and then I’m going to have to tell folks, “Don’t pose any more questions to me about morality until you become very familiar with the work of Lawrence Kohlberg and Jonathan Haidt, and also the philosophical argument in the link below.” As for whether Hitler was an atheist or not (we can never verify his true beliefs, only examine his words and actions which claim he was), you think there is a causal relationship between belief and behavior because atheists and agnostics have “nothing holding them back.” Yet most atheists/agnostics don’t become Hitlers, and conversely, some believers commit horrific crimes despite their allegedly having something “holding them back,” so I do not find your argument persuasive. In fact, atheists/agnostics do have something holding them back, which I’ll explain shortly.
As for your words, ” Murder is totally acceptable when you create your own morals, and without an external judge who is to say one person’s morals are better than another. Such human judgement is…arbitrary, irrelevant, meaningless. Your definition of good is no ‘better’ than Hitler’s or Stalin’s, just different. Surely you see that?” No I don’t, but then again, I’m familiar with Kohlberg and Haidt, so I know that morals are not arbitrary. You are making an age-old argument, and again, I do not expect to persuade you, and I’m not saying there is no God. Again, I don’t know. If we were created by a God, then I suppose you could argue he gave us morals, because he set evolution in motion, and evolution is what caused us to have morals. But we could also have morals if there is no God, because we are still the result of evolution. I don’t believe in the subjectivity of morality without God, which is the argument you (and many believers) make and have made over the millennia. The reasons are provided in the article below, much more eloquently than I could say. An excerpt explains why, in a nutshell, although I strongly encourage reading the entire article:
“When people express fears about morality being subjective, they are concerned about the view that what’s morally permissible is simply what each person feels is morally permissible. But morality is not an expression of personal taste. Our common needs and interests place constraints on the content of morality. ” This assertion is well supported by the research of Kohlberg, Haidt, and other social psychologists. OK, I won’t revisit this topic again except for those who are very familiar with the psychological literature on the development of morals. Isn’t this blog supposed to be about NDE’s anyway?! 🙂
https://secularhumanism.org/2014/07/cont-how-morality-has-the-objectivity-that-matterswithout-god/#:~:text=According to Craig, there can,what’s morally right and wrong.
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Isn’t this blog supposed to be about NDE’s anyway?! 🙂
Yes,let’s leave it at that.
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I remember a paper in Religion, Brain and Behaviour (2012) by Prof. Dominic Johnson of Oxford Uni., “What are atheists for? Hypotheses on the functions of non-belief in the evolution of religion” where the author says … “An explosion of recent research suggests that religious beliefs and behaviors are universal, arise from deep-seated cognitive mechanisms, and were favored by natural selection over human evolutionary history.” He concludes (if you look at the paper) that atheists are actually “accidents of nature” and not “for” anything at all.
I think that it’s also the prevalence of religious experiences such as NDEs (atheists have them too), people’s connections in paranormal events and many more occurrences/phenomena that give people the indication there’s something spiritual or even “God-like” about reality.
An atheist will have to deny all this, good luck with that.
I also remember a comment by Peter Higgs (Nobel physics for theorizing the Higgs particle) who said that many in his field (my studies too) were religious believers, though he wasn’t. Essentially, my view, something is missing in the description of reality.
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Nicely put Alan. I have encountered dozens of people with faith with Ph.Ds in my career in chemistry and medical science…including me of course.
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I’m honestly not having a go at sobshrink, just pointing out some seemingly valid academic work I’ve come across and thought about. I also don’t think atheists have thought sufficiently about where their morality comes from. I think partly cultural as in David Bentley-Hart’s points and also deeply inner, an inner guiding light if you will. Then again we must address an almost certain “evil” that I think actually exists as an *entity* and totally transform someone and groups.
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From sobshrink’s comments, it feels like unbelievers see religion as a way for people to claim they are better…a competition of who is most righteous. Certainly there are many like that in various religions, but for me the purpose of religion is to provide a method of accessing the divine and all that being wishes us to share in…now and beyond death.
The morals that are passed down through religious teachings are part of the “method” that facilitates this access. And yes, I believe that you are right Alan. I have a rudimentary knowledge of history, and from my understanding, many of the ancient pagan civilisations were utterly vile in their practices. The Romans are a good example of this, and while they had some advances technologically, and for a while during the republic, in terms of human rights (but only for Romans), at its heart the Roman civilisation pre adoption of Christ was a ruthless pagan murderous civilisation. Some of that historical paganism then leaked into the Catholic Church unfortunately.
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Orson, sure the Romans were awful. But spiritually, what have the Romans ever done for us? 😉
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Atheists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, in my view, appear to be as dogmatic as the most zealous religious person. I think it’s because they are dogmatic materialists, while I am open to the possibility of non-materialism, at least now that I’m familiar with the work of Donald Hoffman and Bernardo Kastrup. However, I’m still an “unknowing” agnostic, and it’s pretty hard to be dogmatic about “not knowing.” As for where morals come from, I think they come from the same place as our highly evolved eyes, ears, etc. Evolution. I think Jonathan Haidt makes a strong case for that with his and colleagues’ voluminous research. If you believe God set evolution in motion, then I suppose you could say they come from God via evolution. Despite what Ben seems to think, morals that come from evolution, whether God was involved or not, are not at all arbitrary. If they were, mankind wouldn’t have made it this far. The question is, will we make it much further? I’ve taken enough time on this so I won’t respond further, but I highly recommend you read “The Righteous Mind,” by Jonathan Haidt if you’d like to know more about where our morals come from, and “The Worm at the Core” by Sheldon Solomon if you want to know why man seeks meaning. Over and out! 🙂
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sobshrink, saying all this though and deferring to academic literature I just found a PLOS paper (2021) titled … Atheists and believers both have moral compasses, but with key differences. Clearly Lenin was the worst kind of outlier, re my comment above.
I’m honestly interested where our moral compass comes from. I’m sure you’re Western (like me) and I got listening once to Christian theologian Prof. David Bentley-Hart (a font of religious history and an expert on the problem of trying to incorporate consciousness within a physicalist framework) in an interview with Terry Sanderson of the National Secular Society. Around 3:30 minutes in this Part 3 he talks about the uniqueness of the Christian event and message. And the importance of the infinite dignity and worth (that Jesus meant in his teachings) that must to be given to humans via this message.
Although some may wish to say these values are just “there” (secularists might hope to find them within humanism), you cannot – there’s a cultural contingency of moral values.
Basically, over the thousands of years all kinds of “consistent” value systems (like those that justify human sacrifice) arose but it’s this pure Christian idea of total human worth that forms our values in the West. And you and I have been brought up with these values.
Interview here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvtARnZNOyI
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sobshrink, you said … “But you also have made several statements that imply that atheism leads to violence and war … In fact, there’s no such thing as “atheist ideology.” (1st link) Atheism is not a belief system or ideology, it is simply a lack of belief in God/gods, while agnosticism means simply “not knowing;” again without any ideology attached. There is no evidence that lack of belief (atheism) caused any of the atrocities you cite.”
If you read Lenin’s 1909 speech The Attitude of the Workers’ Party to Religion, he says …
“The philosophical basis of Marxism, as Marx and Engels repeatedly declared, is dialectical materialism, which has fully taken over the historical traditions of eighteenth-century materialism in France and of Feuerbach (first half of the nineteenth century) in Germany – a materialism which is absolutely atheistic and positively hostile to all religion.”
I think this is clear and is the idea of enforcing atheism. There’s a philosophy here to be incorporated into a new way of life for wayward religious believers.
Note also the criticisms by Engels of Duhring and Feuerbach in that they were not going far enough to completely get rid of religion, as far as Engels was concerned.
There’s also Pospielovsky’s (professor emeritus of history at the University of Western Ontario) “A History of Marxist-Leninist Atheism and Soviet Antireligious Policies” … he says,
“As far as atheism is concerned Lenin made it the immediate political task of the party. … Lenin believed atheistic propaganda to be an urgent necessity …”
It’s worth looking at the full quote on this which resulted in mass attacks on churches by “atheistic propagandists”.
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https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0383/12/5/1968
The Austrian wing of the original aware study continues by themselves had a negative obe which they argue vindicates the mind as a function of the brain.
However looking at the case from the bit I can see it quite weak argument and only scores 1 point on the greyson scale and is in the time frame of past CA.
They do add a philosophical point at the end regarding basically the uncertainty of reality, as something which more subjective and ever changing which interesting though.
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Thanks Z. Worthy of a post, despite the disappointing outcome.
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Well even the case itself seem to be very weak. It more akin to one of those whereby Parnia etc broke down, into the the differnt type of ndes. Doesn’t appear to be a proper RED as such if in post CA stage.
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And the authors are a bit too ready to jump to conclusions and inferences. Any way will cover off in more detail later.
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It is a RED, but clearly not an OBE. I will be using the word conflation a lot when I create my post this morning, as that is what the authors have done…added 2+2 and got 5678927.
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Hello, Ben. Yes, I understood correctly. They thought that when the patient mentioned flowers, those who directed the study thought that the image on the ceiling was flowers? Or did they know in advance that the image was of flowers and that is why they thought that a reference had been made to the image? Regardless, the fact that they got a point on the scale is enough to doubt this case and that in the same table they present there are cases where they claim to have seen each other in bed and the patient (k) never mentions that, he only mentions the fact of some flowers
I hope that people start to think that this is evidence against
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Hi Opi, you ask some good questions, at first glance this case might look like it is evidence against, but first impressions are not always right. I will discuss this case and the study at length later today in anew post…I am somewhat exhausted with this discussion on here which has veered a long way off-topic in recent days!
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The link to the Supplementary files gets a 404…
Supplementary Materials: The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/jcm12051968/s1, File S1: Key data of all 126 CA cases; File S2:
Questionnaire in German (printout for interviews); File S3: Questionnaire in English (to be stored as
file; contains macros); File S4: Detailed account of 20 cases with recollections after CA.
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Oups sorry I believe you were talking about the first link posted by Z. My post is useless and can be deleted.
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But you post so rarely now Constiproute, I almost want to leave it there as a momento!
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mdpi have now fixed the 404 response. The supplementary materials zip file is now available to download from the link above.
I note that from the S4 supplementary interview material – case K (the lady who saw the flowers) provides zero evidence that this lady had any out of body experience at the hospital.
With regards to the failure to identify the hidden secret visual target, I have absolutely no idea why the authors decided to place such focus on case K in their paper.
The mind boggles just thinking about what goes on in the heads of the ‘researchers’ who write such fallacies.
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Yep…you can’t make it up can you. Will be the focus of the post I am just about to write.
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Yes, I’m very bemused by it…
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It is questionable if it is even ethical to be even putting EEG’s on patients who have had cardiac arrest during resuscitation attempts. As stated in the paper:
“Technical improvements may allow in the near future the simultaneous recording of local functional activity in the brain during acute CPR efforts by the application of near-infrared spectroscopy and EEG probes, if they are easy to position and robust against artifacts. Actually, the application of such probes still requires too much attention and may divert from urgent life-saving measures.”
Maybe Parnia, et al should reconsider and abandon the use of the EEG if they continue in future with what they did in AWARE 2?
As I recall (and someone else posted on this blog before), the percentage survivability was lower than normal with AWARE 2. Though in their paper they (Parnia) stated that it was in line with the normally expected numbers. Hard to say which interpretation is the correct one.
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Hsan, you make a very important point, and not one that I had considered before. I guess it depends on whether the team doing the CPR are interrupted, or involved in the placing of the EEG equipment.
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Can’t see any problem with resuscitators using measuring equipment that allows them to optimise their resuscitation procedure to the patients response.
However I do have a more general issue with the resuscitation of persons who may not wish to be resuscitated.
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True, that is an important factor. If I recall correctly, they had separate personnel responsible (from those doing the resuscitation) for putting on 4 EEG probes on locations at the top and front of the patients head in between resuscitation attempts. This is why they only got them on a subset of patients (don’t recall the percent off hand).
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