Originally posted by pause4thought
Wrong. 'NDE' can mean someone was clinically dead, but revived. It is then referred to as 'near'-death because the state was temporary in nature, whereas 'death' is normally understood as a permanent state.

Aye, you're just stating my position.

'Temporary death experience' would be an accurate description in some cases. It is just not a phrase that has caught on.

Doesn't really make sense, though, no?

If death is a permanent state, then it won't be temporary. Death is defined as the permanent suspension of biological activity. The problem for medicine is determining it without false positives.

The unwillingness of some people to open their minds to the possibility their preconceptions are wrong simply does not lend itself to getting to the bottom of a matter.

Evidence, dear.

I'm not a True Believer(TM), sorry.

Thousands of people have provided evidence of very real consciousness when brain activity has ceased to register on electronic devices, not to mention people blind from birth finding they could see, or sights and conversations being observed/heard subsequent to a person's near death/death.

There is a lot of evidence out there for those with an honest, open, enquiring mind.

The thousands of people reporting just shows that the experience is probably real (i.e., the patient perceives this stuff). I don't doubt that, and neither do you.

The sights/conversations doesn't really help. As people in anaethesia can report events during unconsciousness.

The ceased to register on electronic devices helps neither, as people in anaesthesia and a number of other conditions* can show no observable EEG activity. EEG can be a pretty poor indicator of brain death, given it only really assesses the activity of the top layer of neural tissue.

Lets just wait and see whether these near-dead patients are able to float their consciousness around the room and report the hidden stimuli. Although, one doctor has been doing this for years with nothing of interest to report.

*such as hypoxia

[edit on 9-11-2008 by melatonin]

Well for one, I can vouch for the feeling and ability to detach yourself from your physical and brain. I have astral traveled many times, and im not joking , im sure it may be hard for certain people to comprehend, but i feel that if you can astral travel and see you own body , and feel soooo different and detached it can be your brain. There must be something else going on. How can i explain being able to walk around the house , seeing my family in their rooms asleep, and so on...while in the astral state. i promise you no word of a lie your soul, spirit does exsit, the thing is there are many sceptics because they havent experienced it before, and probably wont for that reason they are sceptic. If you can reach these states through meditation and asral prjection...by christ there is something else when you die, you are a joke if you think otherwise. I hope all the dissmisers can have an experience that could change them..

peace

Originally posted by Solomons
Can you answer why many people are revived from death and have no NDE.

They have no soul?

heh.

Although Van Lommel (the dutch study) tried to make this a problem for the neurobiological explanation of NDEs, it is a bigger problem for the dualist explanation.

As you note, it is probably due to how hypoxia alters memory formation and consolidation in the hippocampus - perhaps it is more extensive in some than others. Awfully neurobiological though, so some might think it's something to do with the neural receiver than allows the free-floating consciousness to connect with the meat.

[edit on 9-11-2008 by melatonin]

I had an employer who had a near life experience once and it frightened him so much that he hid in a bottle of vodka from that point on.

Originally posted by grover
I had an employer who had a near life experience once and it frightened him so much that he hid in a bottle of vodka from that point on.

Heh, the funniest arguments for NDEs are that atheists who experience them suddenly become believers in something or other.

I once spoke to a beast-like demon, I really did. I also floated around my room, out the window, and over the town I lived in at that time...wasn't an NDE though, heh.

I don't believe this neither i'll ever do.I'll just wait to die and if there's something more,i'll improvise.
It's one of the few things that i just don't believe.

Btw,i do have an honest,open mind.
Please don't judge those who don't believe what you do.

Originally posted by Interestinggg

So you are quoting most cases of induced coma post infarct?
Or are you speaking specifically about this article of the topic of this post?
Most cases of induced coma including a lucid NDE are not even quoted in the above topics article.
This is a specific program.
Where is your figures or links to these most numbers you quote?
Many of the cases in this specific article, if you would take the time to read it and stop looking like a dyslexic brainwashed fool, do include the testing of brain activity during the event.

I am not quoting anything. When I quote something I usually use quotation marks. Unlike others...

I have no figures or numbers.
I said I doubt...
Contrary to
I know ...
or
I am sure...

So quote for me all the cases where the patients were being monitored for their brain activity, when the patients went through this event, in this article.

Again... When you are rushed to the hospital with a cardiac arrest or probably even if you're just lying in a room waiting to be relieved, return home, but you suddenly have a cardiac arrest. I doubt the doctors will want to waste time and study your brain activity, instead of getting your heart working again.

Dr Parnia interviewed 63 cardiac arrest patients, that was the basis of his study.

Originally posted by Smugallo
Have any of you actually looked at any of the other articles on the source link? I quote "Britain's biggest banks use astrology to play the markets", "Mysterious ghostly orbs perplex researchers", "Mobile Phones are Killing Our Ghosts" Hmmm. Credible source? I don't think so.

I am not sure about the entire list above, but I have also heard that many banks and private individuals use Astrology as a method of playing markets. A lot of people appear to do that, for better or worse. Yes -- that is above top secret.

#

More on topic -- seems to me you could easily prove life after death via statistical analysis of these experiences.

This appears to be beyond simple anecdotal evidence, and may be agreeable to proof via actuarial methods. There are too many similar studies.

And -- unlike Ufology, where people might collaborate to defraud people for fame and profit -- I don't think many people are thinking about hoaxing after something like this occurs to them.

I believe it is probably true. We will all know the facts, one day, for sure.

[edit on 9-11-2008 by Buck Division]

Originally posted by pause4thought
I recognize a fair-mindedness in this response. Thanks for being candid.

Cheers.

The problem is we are not dealing with amateurs who just look at a screen. EEG is just one of a host of measures taken to determine clinical death. And those looking for vital signs are professionals who have trained for years and practised the procedure times without number. Determining whether a patient has died is not taken lightly, either. Even if there were an occasional mistake it could not account for the myriad reports of conscious experiences.

Professionals or not, they know that EEG only measures the outer layer of cortex. It can't assess the subcortical regions of the brain very well at all. Therefore, using EEG to assess brain death is not going to be very useful.

Is not the honest answer that you recoil from the evidence for the existence of a part of the human psyche that survives physical death - call it what you may - that you reject a priori the possibility that a human being is anything more than a physical entity?

Nah, who wouldn't want to live in some way forever.

I just have high standards of evidence - anecdotes don't cut it.

I would say my position is fairly well along to a materialist position, but NDEs don't really register, as much of the evidence is little more than anecdotal for a dualist interpretation. The better evidence is readily explained in materialistic terms.

What leads me to a materialistic position is all the rest of the neuroscientific evidence. Perhaps read a Damasio book or two.

However, I am still open to new evidence. So lets see what Parnia produces. One caveat, though, I'm a little concerned about his new status a True Believer. This shows a misunderstanding about the nature of science:

It’s not possible to talk in terms of ‘life after death’. In scientific terms we can only say that there is now evidence that consciousness may carry on after clinical death. Our work will prove one way or the otherwhether a form of consciousness carries on after the body and brain has died.”

Eek!

It won't. It will just be one study that pushes the barometer one way or t'other. Replication is the norm. Indeed, even after 100 studies it won't be 'proven'.

We leave such claims to maths, logic, and religion.

The very reason such experiments are being conducted is that there have already been numerous reports of precisely such occurrences. The only difference is that they did not occur within the confines of a clinical study.

I just googled: ' NDE floating ceiling objects ' & got plenty of links. Rather than just dismissing evidence because it has not been gathered within the confines of a study, some would regard such testimonies as just another aspect of the valid evidence that has been accumulating for decades.

Anecdotes don't count. They might lead to a study like Parnia's, but they are not reliable evidence.

People report all kinds of stuff.

I suppose if you can only open your mind to something after it has been demonstrated in numerous trials you'll have to wait. I'm not ridiculing such an approach, just suggesting it limits a person's horizon and can blind them to the validity of a lot of evidence. N'est-ce pas?

As I noted, I am open to the evidence. It would need to be well-designed, well-interpreted, but I'd like to live forever.

I just won't believe it with little evidence because it makes me feel good.

The question is when Parnia's study reports, and it perhaps shows no evidence of free-floating consciousness, whether your Baysian-like 'belief' barometer would shift

Mine would either way.

[edit on 9-11-2008 by melatonin]