Near Death and Out of Body Experiences

[Spindrift]

Because you didn't have a nde doesn't mean others haven't...

Given that no one has ever proven it, the default assumption is that they haven't.

If you declare something exists, it's up to you to prove it, not for someone else to disprove it.

 

[bluesjnr]

Seems to be following the usual route. Screeds of copy and paste text, unsupported claims, anecdotes and a bastardised Enstien quote.

To come, open your minds, that's the trouble with so called sceptics, just because it hasn't happened to you and more repeated assertions of "it IS true".

 

[Crossbow]

Because you didn't have a nde doesn't mean others haven't...

So by you logic ...

If someone says that they have a giant pink unicorn, then there are at least a few other people who also have giant pink unicorns.

 

[Resume]

--------And saying something happened is evidence and used as evidence in courts of law.....

What you are describing are claims of a phenomenon that could have multiple alternate explanations. If the claim is to be accepted, it needs corroboration; so far NDEs have not been sufficiently corroborated.

 

[Loss Leader]

Because you didn't have a nde doesn't mean others haven't...

True, but my anecdote should be at least as persuasive as one of theirs. Why does Sharon Stone's anecdote trump mine? She could be lying. She could be crazy. She could be honestly mistaken.

I could be any of those three as well. We're dead even as far as I can tell.

 

[Spindrift]

True, but my anecdote should be at least as persuasive as one of theirs. Why does Sharon Stone's anecdote trump mine? She could be lying. She could be crazy. She could be honestly mistaken.

I could be any of those three as well. We're dead even as far as I can tell.

Or near dead even.

 

[abaddon]

Because you didn't have a nde doesn't mean others haven't...

You do understand that the very same NDE experiences can be induced in anyone by the introduction of neuroactive chemicals, right?

 

[jaydeehess]

At or near death one may have a delusion or two. After death, there is nothing. This, surely, is the most parsimonious explanation. What evidence is there that there is anything else involved?

----------How do you know after death there is nothing? There are people who travel out of body on a regular basis....my uncle, a doctor , is one of them....I have been out of body myself..

I don't know if Gord in T.O. noticed but you misread his post. He said that the most parsimonious explanation is that after death there is nothing.
He was not, IMO, claiming that there definitely was nothing after death.
He asked you a question to which you have indirectly responded with a mashed quote from Einstein, and several anecdotal references.

 

[jaydeehess]

You do understand that the very same NDE experiences can be induced in anyone by the introduction of neuroactive chemicals, right?

Or apparently, oxygen starvation.

 

[John Jones]

I don't know if Gord in T.O. noticed but you misread his post. He said that the most parsimonious explanation is that after death there is nothing.
He was not, IMO, claiming that there definitely was nothing after death.
He asked you a question to which you have indirectly responded with a mashed quote from Einstein, and several anecdotal references.

That's all she's got.

 

[zengirl]

Brain chemicals don't tell you your future events that come true, spouse that you will marry, the future kids you will have

 

[Pixel42]

Brain chemicals don't tell you your future events that come true, spouse that you will marry, the future kids you will have

Neither does anything else, though some people with no knowledge or understanding of cognitive biases, the malleable nature of memory and basic probability sometimes manage to fool themselves into thinking otherwise.

 

[shuttlt]

Could you just flesh out the part where it turns out this predicting the future stuff doesn't allow you to make specific testable predictions in advance? All the mystical forms of predicting the future that I'm aware of, astrology for example, fall apart when the prediction is tied down to prevent the prediction being reinterpreted after the fact.

 

[Jodie]

We don't know as much about neurobiology or the brain as one would think. I know a few years back there was a debate on another forum I participated in about the definition of death. Research suggested that we may have to redefine when dead is really dead. I immediately changed my donor status on my driver's license after reading that research. Here is an article that discusses the different criteria.

http://http://surgery.about.com/od/proceduresaz/a/Brain-Death-What-Does-It-Mean.htm


That said, looking for the seat of consciousness in or outside of the brain continues. Depending on what theory you ascribe to, there is the holographic model which allows for consciousness to reside outside of the body and then there is this recent research done that examines where in the brain consciousness may reside.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1935251740/?tag=mh0b-20&hvadid=4162737155&ref=pd_sl_uo6a4ghcw_b

http://http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/185865-scientists-discover-the-on-off-switch-for-human-consciousness-deep-within-the-brain

That leads into the debate of whether consciousness equates to being the soul or essence of a human being. NDE has a lot of unknown variables that may never be defined. To say what people claim to perceive during an NDE is a matter of oxygen deprivation or dying neurons is misleading, it's just not that simple, and it hasn't been definitively solved despite what you might believe.

 

[jsfisher]

----yes, and true

Excellent!! How can we go about establishing that they are true? If you can devise a simple demonstration that would also rule out mundane explanations, $1,000,000 is yours.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I don't know if Gord in T.O. noticed but you misread his post. He said that the most parsimonious explanation is that after death there is nothing.
He was not, IMO, claiming that there definitely was nothing after death.
He asked you a question to which you have indirectly responded with a mashed quote from Einstein, and several anecdotal references.

I've given up on noticing such responses.

 

[xjx388]

I believe that people experience a phenomenon which they call a NDE or OBE. I believe, based on what science has taught me about the world around me, that what is happening can be explained by processes of the brain. Basically, these experiences are akin to dreams.

In order to change my mind, I would require proof. For example, we could do an experiment, with proper controls, where, say, I write a word on a poster board in my house, then you do your OBE thing from your house and bring your spirit form to my house to read what I wrote.

I've had acquaintances who claim to be able to do this and similar things. When I propose an experiment, I always get excuses. This leads me to believe that the phenomenon isn't real and the claimant is simply trying to make themselves seem cool and mysterious because some people really go for that kind of thing. I don't so they don't hang around me very much; I'm a drag.

You can't tell me a story to prove that you have a strange ability that flies in the face of science. You have to present evidence. And every time someone who claims to have abilities has tried to do so, they've failed. But I am willing to be convinced.

 

[dlorde]

I believe that people experience a phenomenon which they call a NDE or OBE. I believe, based on what science has taught me about the world around me, that what is happening can be explained by processes of the brain. Basically, these experiences are akin to dreams.

In order to change my mind, I would require proof. For example, we could do an experiment, with proper controls, where, say, I write a word on a poster board in my house, then you do your OBE thing from your house and bring your spirit form to my house to read what I wrote.

I agree. The only large-scale, well-controlled study into NDE/OBEs that I know of, the AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study, sponsored by the University of Southampton in the UK in 2008, involving 2060 patients undergoing cardiac resuscitation in 15 hospitals in the United Kingdom, United States and Austria, put signs & objects in places out of direct sight (high shelves, etc), and took detailed accounts of patient experiences.

They kept postponing publication of their results until this year, when they published in the journal Resuscitation. They had 9% reported NDEs reported, but none of the hidden indicators were seen. They had only one (1) verifiable instance of someone reporting visual awareness of what had happened during resuscitation, and concluded, "conscious awareness may occur beyond the first 20–30 s after cardiac arrest (when some residual brain electrical activity may occur)". Bear in mind, these patients were in cardiac units, so CPR would be going on during cardiac arrest, maintaining sufficient blood flow to the brain for survival.

In other words, a large scale study specifically designed to investigate NDE/OBEs, found nothing that could not be explained by conventional means. It doesn't prove paranormal NDEs can't happen - that can't be done; but given the lack of physical basis, and the contradiction of known physics; given that over 70 years of sophisticated neuroscience is entirely consistent with consciousness arising from the brain alone, and has found no indication of any unexpected external influence; given that similar experiences can be artificially induced, given that we know the human tendencies for confirmation bias, unreliability of memory, elaboration, confabulation, etc.; a reasonable person would surely conclude that there is currently no justification for invoking the paranormal.

ETA: I've always wondered what the (invisible) supposed wandering spirit uses for eyes, and if it can see perfectly well without physical eyes, why we have physical eyes at all... Just sayin'.

 

[John Jones]

Brain chemicals don't tell you your future events that come true, spouse that you will marry, the future kids you will have

Neither does precognition, astrology, OBE, NDE, reincarnation, LSD, DMT, nor any other woo-woo superstition you can name.

If they did, we would be examining any such empirical evidence now.

 

[Olowkow]

Dr. Sam Parnia has been touting his study into OBE and NDE for years.

2008
The AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study is to be launched by the Human Consciousness Project of the University of Southampton – an international collaboration of scientists and physicians who have joined forces to study the human brain, consciousness and clinical death.

Forthcoming study! Dr. Sam again.

2010
At 18 hospitals in the U.S. and U.K., researchers have suspended pictures, face up, from the ceilings in emergency-care areas. The reason: to test whether patients brought back to life after cardiac arrest can recall seeing the images during an out-of-body experience.

People who have these near-death experiences often describe leaving their bodies and watching themselves being resuscitated from above, but verifying such accounts is difficult. The images would be visible only to people who had done that.

Yay! Results next year!!

2010
"We've added these images as objective markers," says Sam Parnia, a critical-care physician and lead investigator of the study, which hopes to include 1,500 resuscitated patients. Dr. Parnia declined to say whether any have accurately described the images so far, but says he hopes to report preliminary results next year.

Patients shouldn’t be able to see the images—unless they really are floating ghost-like above it all, the Wall Street Journal explains. Researchers plan to release preliminary results next year.

Instead, we get movies like Hereafter which is a pretty good simulation of a near yawn experience.

What has the Southampton University's School of Medicine in England reported? Certainly these results would be front page news.

Dr. Sam Parnia is an Assistant professor of medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

In 2003, Parnia and Peter Fenwick appeared in the BBC documentary "The Day I Died". [3] In the documentary Parnia and Fenwick discussed their belief that research from near-death experiences (NDEs) indicates the mind is independent of the brain. According to Susan Blackmore the documentary mislead viewers with beliefs that are rejected by the majority of scientists. Blackmore criticized the documentary for biased and "dishonest reporting".

As part of the AWARE study Parnia and colleagues have investigated out of body claims by using hidden targets placed on shelves that could only be seen from above. Parnia has written "if no one sees the pictures, it shows these experiences are illusions or false memories".Parnia issued a statement indicating that the first phase of the project has been completed and the results are undergoing peer review for publication in a medical journal. No subjects saw the images mounted out of sight according to Parnia's early report of the results of the study at an American Heart Association meeting in November 2013. Οnly two out of the 152 patients reported any visual experiences, and one of them described events that could be verified.

Emphasis mine.

Finally published just this year.

October 06, 2014 the results of the study were published in the journal Resuscitation.

Much like an all knowing creator, it's very unlikely that there is such a thing as "out of body experience" or travel. If there is, it probably precludes any interaction with anything in the real world, and for all intents and purposes, is non-existent.