Merged Heaven is Real... Newsweek 10-15-12

[I Ratant]

A neuro-surgeon who has recovered from a severe meningitis attack has published a book on his experience while in a deep coma.."Proof of Heaven"..
Eben Alexander, M.D.
In the coma he determined "that we are loved and accepted unconditionally by a God even more grand and unfathomably glorious than the one I'd learned of as a child in Sunday school."
He viewed a woman.. "young..high cheekbones.. golden brown tresses...lovely face".. who spoke to him using no words...which he has translated in "earthly language".. "You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong."
A nifty description of heaven follows.
.
Early in the article he mentions..."According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely(my emphasis) no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent."
.
That the "current understanding"..etc is insufficient to explain his experience fails to make his experience inexplicable except by his "absolute" interpretation.
.
Discuss....

 

[ehcks]

His god is a woman. That'll go over well.

 

[Stomatopoda]

I've had complex and coherent dreams, that seemed to last for hours, in the 10-minute span between wakeup alarms. Zomg heaven!

 

[Roma]

I don't know if he's right or wrong and I never saw what he saw but I've been in more than a couple of comas and on life support and I can understand the feeling that he had.

 

[WhatRoughBeast]

"You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong."

Well. I'm sure that's a great relief to the NAMBLA folks.

 

[annnnoid]

That the "current understanding" ..etc is insufficient to explain his experience fails to make his experience inexplicable except by his "absolute" interpretation.

….ummmm…isn’t that what ‘inexplicable’ means. That we don’t have an explanation. There is, of course, an explanation…somewhere…and just as obviously, no one this side of where-ever knows what it is. Having read something of the doctor’s descriptions of his experiences…I should point out that your conclusion is not accurate. The doctor does not offer any interpretations about what happened or how…he only describes what happened. Based on his significant experience in the fields of neurosurgery and neuroscience he finds the current level of understanding completely inadequate to explain, in any terms, what he experienced. That is the only conclusion he comes to.

Alex Tsakiris over at Skeptico spent some time on this issue (and also interviewed the good doctor Eben on one of his shows) and came to the following conclusion:

This idea that there’s this body of research that’s converging toward triangulating towards a conventional explanation of near-death experience is exactly the opposite of what the research is really concluding. What the research is concluding over and over again is that the near-death experience defies a conventional explanation.

They concluded that the NDEs could not be explained in terms of physiological processes and that NDEs push our knowledge of consciousness and mind-brain relations to the edge of our understanding. I think that’s a very polite, scientifically appropriate way of saying, “We call into question the whole materialist explanation for NDEs.”

Nice to see that some skeptics actually take their job seriously.

 

[A'isha]

His god is a woman. That'll go over well.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

A neuro-surgeon who has recovered from a severe meningitis attack has published a book on his experience while in a deep coma.."Proof of Heaven"..
Eben Alexander, M.D.
In the coma he determined "that we are loved and accepted unconditionally by a God even more grand and unfathomably glorious than the one I'd learned of as a child in Sunday school."
He viewed a woman.. "young..high cheekbones.. golden brown tresses...lovely face".. who spoke to him using no words...which he has translated in "earthly language".. "You are loved and cherished, dearly, forever. You have nothing to fear. There is nothing you can do wrong."
A nifty description of heaven follows.
.
Early in the article he mentions..."According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely(my emphasis) no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent."
.
That the "current understanding"..etc is insufficient to explain his experience fails to make his experience inexplicable except by his "absolute" interpretation.
.
Discuss....

Discuss what? Dr X declares there's no explanation for Y except God.

Need I say it? I'm not convinced.

 

[steve s]

So somebody who was never dead is telling us he knows what happens after we die? Not impressed.

Steve S

 

[Oystein]

NDEs reside in, and are reported from, memory. They are committed to memory at some frame of time that ends with the time they are reported.

Usually there is a considerable amount of time that passes between the coma and the reporting of a NDE, during which the patient recovers and reflects.

So the first question is: When did that memory of a NDE form? Three answers are logically possible, or any combination of them:

1. Before the coma
2. During the coma
3. After the coma

A combination could for example be that some memory had existed, or accumulated, before the coma but was "buried", or unconscious, until then. During the coma, something happened with the brain that helped "free" the memory for recalling. After the coma, the memory got embellished, as memories often do when the person recalls it again and again.

So does the book look at these (and other) possibilities and rule them out with some degree of certainty?

 

[Joey McGee]

Not far from the book "heaven is for real" based on a pastor's son's nde. Bestseller, that was.

After a relative of mine died recently the spouse was given a few copies of that by well-meaning woos. So I suspect that this well-meaning tome was written out of a bland urge to comfort the grieving. Which makes it poisonous garbage that prolongs suffering. It confuses and stunts the process that was naturally shaped.

Focus on your living relatives and impart the goodness that the departed left behind. Works for me.

 

[dasmiller]

So somebody who was never dead is telling us he knows what happens after we die? Not impressed.

Well put.

 

[ConspiRaider]

I'm a starving writer of suspense and drama.

Perhaps I should have me one of these here NDE deals. I could use the cashola. I will now hold my breath until I turn blue - for the green.

 

[steve s]

I wonder if this was the same guy that was mentioned on an episode of Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. It was the same scenario, a guy in a coma had a dream.

ETA:The episode was about life after death. They took the above as evidence for an afterlife. I turned off the episode right after that segment.

Steve S

 

[Stomatopoda]

I'm a starving writer of suspense and drama.

Perhaps I should have me one of these here NDE deals. I could use the cashola. I will now hold my breath until I turn blue - for the green.

Easier to just smoke some DMT. Most trip reports and NDE reports are nearly identical.

Not that I would ever condone breaking the law, of course.

 

[I Ratant]

….ummmm…isn’t that what ‘inexplicable’ means. That we don’t have an explanation. There is, of course, an explanation…somewhere…and just as obviously, no one this side of where-ever knows what it is. Having read something of the doctor’s descriptions of his experiences…I should point out that your conclusion is not accurate. The doctor does not offer any interpretations about what happened or how…he only describes what happened. Based on his significant experience in the fields of neurosurgery and neuroscience he finds the current level of understanding completely inadequate to explain, in any terms, what he experienced. That is the only conclusion he comes to.

Alex Tsakiris over at Skeptico spent some time on this issue (and also interviewed the good doctor Eben on one of his shows) and came to the following conclusion:

This idea that there’s this body of research that’s converging toward triangulating towards a conventional explanation of near-death experience is exactly the opposite of what the research is really concluding. What the research is concluding over and over again is that the near-death experience defies a conventional explanation.

They concluded that the NDEs could not be explained in terms of physiological processes and that NDEs push our knowledge of consciousness and mind-brain relations to the edge of our understanding. I think that’s a very polite, scientifically appropriate way of saying, “We call into question the whole materialist explanation for NDEs.”

Nice to see that some skeptics actually take their job seriously.

.
Skeptic Ginger says it..."Dr X declares there's no explanation for Y except God."
And the heaven is just what he would like it to be.
I can imagine there's a lot of fundies in other religions that would find his heaven unpalatable... and, in their NDEs, they find the heaven they need, just as he did.
Imagine a Taliban heaven.
Or an Orthodox heaven.
Universes apart from the pink-cloud fluffy-bunny nice-broad of Dr. Alexander's heaven.
There has to be a materialist explanation for an NDE. There's nothing other than the material in the brain to work with.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm a starving writer of suspense and drama.

Perhaps I should have me one of these here NDE deals. I could use the cashola. I will now hold my breath until I turn blue - for the green.

It is tempting, isn't it?

 

[dasmiller]

It is tempting, isn't it?

Well, there've been a lot of NDE stories. If we want this one to break through, we need to think "over the top"

Hmmm . . . tellya what, find someone else who was in a "coma" (wink) at the same time, thousands of miles away, and then tell the media how you "met" them in your temporary heaven, and then later they can hear about you, and say how they thought that meeting you was just a dream, and how* they're shocked, (shocked I tell you!), to discover that you're real, and had the same memories . . . !

Can we work in a child with cancer, and maybe a long-lost pet? And a kindly grandmother?

(I'm going to be really embarrassed if there's already a book just like this)

*for a reasonable piece of the action

ETA: ummm . .. it may be that pinot grigio makes me more-than-normally cynical.

 

[Craig B]

His god is a woman. That'll go over well.

His God's receptionist is a woman, at any rate. No surprises there!

 

[SezMe]

The doctor does not offer any interpretations about what happened or how…he only describes what happened.

That's not true at all. Nothing happened - he was in a coma. What he is describing is his memory well after the fact. And we know that memory is fallible and malleable.

Based on his significant experience in the fields of neurosurgery and neuroscience he finds the current level of understanding completely inadequate to explain, in any terms, what he experienced. That is the only conclusion he comes to.

And his conclusion is utterly false.

...What the research is concluding over and over again is that the near-death experience defies a conventional explanation.

Nice to see that some skeptics actually take their job seriously.

Yes, it is nice to see that. Sadly, your quote of others completely fails in that regard.

annnnoid, read this to get your head on straight.