Can science explain Heaven in NDEs? They're working on it.

reply to post by ashanu90


Okay I’m confused.. What’s your deal? You’re so confusing....Do you believe there is life after death, or do you believe NDEs are just chemicals. You’re sending mix signals. Some of your posts are against it. And then for my post you say you find it hard to believe it is just chemicals in the brain. So what is it?? Second your question was towards the poster after me not me. I have not read the book but just the article from the source he posted. The guy is not no dumb guy, so before debunking his book why don’t you put your money were your mouth is and actually read the book before ridiculing it saying it is just a bunch of stupid ideas. Plus doesn’t everything start from an idea?

reply to post by ashanu90


I have read his book and yes I do agree with his theories.

I find it amusing you have not read his book or his research and yet you trash him because he holds a belief that is different from yours.

The bottom line is regardless of what the OP stated there is NO concrete evidence that consciousness originates in the brain and there is in fact growing scientific evidence every day that consciousness originates separate from the brain.


[edit on 29-3-2010 by etshrtslr]

I am a theoretical physics major.

Schopenhauer makes a good point in his work "The World as Will and Representation" when he tries to find the real, underlying significance of the world, by looking at what science has to offer.

Laws of nature are known through our casual observations, but their universal and principle form, their inner nature, which one can call natural forces, are not known. These laws of nature, which are manifestations of their underlying force, can be observed or experienced, however, the inner nature of the force itself can not and thus remains a mystery to us.

This is even demonstrated today in Physics with the confusion of such forces and the many opposing groups of physicists scrambling to solve the mystery- Are they invisible fields? Are they virtual particle exchanges? Are they disruptions in space-time geometry? Do they come from infinitesimal strings? Higher dimensions? No one really knows - all they can do is assume. This is also the case with energy, commonly yet erroneously defined as an ability it has, "the ability to do work". (Do we define a physicist as the ability to do physics? NO.) Because of its infinite inner nature lying outside of causality, time, and space, scientists can not properly define it and are only able to observe the effects of the energy manifested.

Consequently, even a perfect etiological explanation of nature in its entirety (i.e. such as a Grand Unified Theory of Everything) will be nothing more than a record of these manifestations of forces and cannot go beyond the phenomenon and its arrangement to get at its inner nature. Hence, Etiology can not give us the desired information that leads us beyond these representations.

We cannot get to the inner from the outer, or go within from without.

reply to post by Maddogkull


ok well i must say i am for the theory of chemichals
sorry about the troll thing there are a ton of people out there who will just answer a question with a question

reply to post by etshrtslr


i seriously doubt that there can be any conciousness outside of the brain why do you think so?

i wouldnt say i trashed him i would say i made him the subject of scrutiny
i will read the links to his site and make my own assesment

Originally posted by BellaMente
Laws of nature are known through our casual observations, but their universal and principle form, their inner nature, which one can call natural forces, are not known. These laws of nature, which are manifestations of their underlying force, can be observed or experienced, however, the inner nature of the force itself can not and thus remains a mystery to us.

then i say keep trying to figure it out, eventually you will suceed its basic chance but there needs to be effort in the process. so you say they dont know what it is NOW. but LATER i say they will

Originally posted by BellaMente
I am a theoretical physics major.


Laws of nature are known through our casual observations, but their universal and principle form, their inner nature, which one can call natural forces, are not known. These laws of nature, which are manifestations of their underlying force, can be observed or experienced, however, the inner nature of the force itself can not and thus remains a mystery to us.

This was one of the points in Dr. Lanza's book along with many others. There are many things science does not know and probably never will know.

Science does not even know what makes up 94% of the universe....yes they say dark energy and dark matter but they cant tell you what its is.

Originally posted by etshrtslr
.

This was one of the points in Dr. Lanza's book along with many others. There are many things science does not know and probably never will know.

Science does not even know what makes up 94% of the universe....yes they say dark energy and dark matter but they cant tell you what its is.
they will EVENTUALLY
you people have awful listening skills

Originally posted by ashanu90
reply to post by etshrtslr

 

i seriously doubt that there can be any conciousness outside of the brain why do you think so?

Your doubt it not scientific evidence...read the book and learn something new outside the comfortable paradigm you built for yourself.

I definitely will keep working on it for sure ; )

I will say that I am positive that if the inner nature will ever be known, it will be something radically different than what is assumed.

reply to post by ashanu90


Yeah they will eventually...Maybe who knows. And what if they find out that there results prove of some sort of "afterlife". Would you still believe them? Or would you call those scientists stupid because there results differ from your belief?

reply to post by Maddogkull


depends im not gonna believe on someones say so however im sure you wouldnt either

By the way speaking of dark matter/energy...

I have this idea that it has something to do with a REPULSIVE form of gravity.

The reason they came up with the idea of dark matter/energy is because the universe is accelerating and they have no idea why.

If you look at Coulumb's law for the electric force, it is eerily similar to Newton's law for the gravitational force:

F sub E = k q1q2/r^2

F sub G = k m1m2/r^2

The only difference is the electric force is attractive and repulsive ( with a + or - before the constant) and the gravitational force is only + (only attractive).

But why can't the gravitational force also be repulsive? They have not proven this to be wrong...

Interestingly, when I brought this up to one of my professors he told me that physicists here at Fermilab recently came up with a question that should have been asked decades ago: does antimatter fall up or down in the earth's gravitational field?! The canonical statement is that an antiparticle is just like its particle pair except for charge.

A big assumption, but I think it works!

Originally posted by BellaMente
By the way speaking of dark matter/energy...

I have this idea that it has something to do with a REPULSIVE form of gravity.

The reason they came up with the idea of dark matter/energy is because the universe is accelerating and they have no idea why.

If you look at Coulumb's law for the electric force, it is eerily similar to Newton's law for the gravitational force:

F sub E = k q1q2/r^2

F sub G = k m1m2/r^2

The only difference is the electric force is attractive and repulsive ( with a + or - before the constant) and the gravitational force is only + (only attractive).

But why can't the gravitational force also be repulsive? They have not proven this to be wrong...

Interestingly, when I brought this up to one of my professors he told me that physicists here at Fermilab recently came up with a question that should have been asked decades ago: does antimatter fall up or down in the earth's gravitational field?! The canonical statement is that an antiparticle is just like its particle pair except for charge.

A big assumption, but I think it works!

Very impressive, and it does make logical sense, but its way above my pay grade

I can't say that I really like scientific analysis on matters such as NDEs. Chemicals running through your brain may be able to alter perception, but how can chemicals make some NDE initiates see themselves from a third person perspective being operated on?

Maybe science will be able to explain it one day, but the fact there is nothing but guess work being done it's safe to say that even an idiot like me is on par with them concerning the matter.

What is Science ?

Did man invent Science and therefore the rules of Science ?

How do we know that our "Science" is anything worthwhile ?
How do we check ? Who will check it for us ?

Is Science conclusive ?

Do we blame Science or the Scientist when something goes wrong ?

I really hope that there is something after "death". If not, then the reality is we are just a bunch of nothings trapped on an unstable planet in the middle of nowhere (how comforting).

Originally posted by etshrtslr

Originally posted by OnceReturned
reply to post by nomorecruelty

 

It would mean that consciousness wasn't based on the brain. There's too much evidence that it is.

Really now?

Yes, really. Changes in your brain cause changes in your conscious experience, and changes in conscious experience can always be explained by changes in the brain. The mind and consciousness are inseparable from the brain. People with brain damage have mental dysfunction. You can predict brain damage if you observe mental dysfunction. You can take psychoactive drugs which alter your brain chemistry and your conscious experience will change. Every state of consciousness can be directly mapped to a neurobiological state. The relationship is one to one, as far as we know. We haven't completed the mapping process, but so far it's one to one. Functionally identical. It just looks different when you are the brain in question then when you observe it from the outside.

Do you suppose that this perfectly exact one to one mapping of brain state to consciousness state is a coincidence? If you damage your hippocampus, you won't be able to form memories. If you damage your optic nerve, your won't have visual experiences of sense perceptions. If you excite your pleasure centers, you will feel pleasure. How can any rational person refuse to accept that the brain causes conscious experience when these relationships can be - and have been - demonstrated experimentally? You can hold your breath right now until you pass out. You know why? Because your brain is starved of oxygen so it stops working, and since it causes consciousness, you cease to be conscious. You can test it right now and prove which one of us is right. Go ahead.

There are scientist out there that don't agree with your statement and in fact hold a totally different view from yours.

I think you would be hard pressed to provide actual scientific proof of your statement.

There are people who believe all sort of things. The existance of these people does not concern me. The paradigm of neuroscience is materialist. The paradigm of neuroscience is that the mind is the name for what the brain does. "Scientists" are in agreement with me. The mainstream opinion in the field is exactly the one that I have expressed. Saying that there are some people who disagree is not compelling.

There is no such thing as absolute proof. There is only the best interpretation of the evidence. The evidence very strongly suggests that the brain is responsible for conscious experience, as conscious experience can be mapped directly on to brain activity, and disorders of the mind can be explained by brain damage, and consciousness can be effected by effecting the brain. How do you interpret this? That consciousness is really in the soul and that the fact that we always find correspondences with brain states is just a coincidence? Do you think that's really a better interpretation of the evidence? Because it's not. It is not falsifiable or provable, which means it's not scientific. It doesn't make any predictions, which means it's a useless theory. The only prediction that you could possible get out of it is to say, "since consciousness isn't based on the brain you wouldn't expect brain activity to correspond to consciousness. . ." Well, what do you know. It turns out it does.

Here is one scientist that does not believe what you stated and there are many more that have researched and published who don't believe that consciousness originates in the brain.

Robert Lanza, M.D. is considered one of the leading scientists in the world. He is currently Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and Adjunct Professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He has hundreds of publications and inventions, and over 20 scientific books: among them, “Principles of Tissue Engineering,” which is recognized as the definitive reference in the field.

“Biomedical researcher Robert Lanza has been on the frontier of cloning and stem cell studies for more than a decade, so he’s well-acclimated to controversy,” writes Alan Boyle, MSNBC.com’s Science Editor. “But his book ‘Biocentrism’ is generating controversy on a different plane by arguing that our consciousness plays a central role in creating the cosmos. ‘By treating space and time as physical things, science picks a completely wrong starting point for understanding the world,’ Lanza declares.

You've described a medical doctor who has written a book about cosmology and physics. It's not a work which is taken seriously within those fields, and he is not an expert in those fields. He is exactly as qualified to do cosmology and physics as physicists and cosmologists are to do cloning and stem cell research.

There is a reason that you've had to appeal to a book written about a subject in which the author has no expertise, training, or qualifications. The work isn't taken seriously by the people who know most about the relevant field. A genetics expert isn't a good source for cosmology, neuroscience, or anything else except genetics. Proposing a radically different interpretation of reality is a formitable task. He says science is going about things incorrectly. Yet, look at how well science has done so far. How do you explain the success of science as a whole, and the specific recent successes of brain and behavior science, if the fundamental beliefs of their worldviews are in error?

If you have a good answer I'm open to it. I want the best explanation. Right now, it seems self-evident to me that the brain-consciousness relationship as understood by mainstream neuroscience is the best explanation for our observations and evidence.

Originally posted by Maddogkull
reply to post by ashanu90

 

Okay maybe I used the wrong words with an NDE to imply physical experience. I meant that with an NDE we have certain ways to measure brainwaves and look at the brain until death. After death it is another whole ball game witch science (up to today’s point) cannot figure out. Now there are certain things we can do to maybe explain an NDE, EEG, theory’s (doesn’t make it right though). That being said, I said before we cannot measure heaven. There is no way possible we can prove or disprove it because it does not have to do with anything in this universe, it exists outside the bubble (if heaven does exist). So to say you can prove heaven does not exist is just stupid.

I've never suggested explaining anything like a "real heaven." The article - and all of my subsequent posts - have been about explaining NDEs reports about heaven. I'm not concerned with anything that cannot be measured or proven or disproven. How would I ever even know about such a thing? No evidence could even exist in principal. It's not something even worth talking about, just like any other idea someone makes up. I could say no one can disprove my theory that unicorns exist in their own dimension. It's stupid to try to prove that it doesn't exist, but it's also stupid to even be talking about it in the first place because it is a useless and rediculous concept. Likewise with "real" heaven.

reply to post by BellaMente


The similarity between Coulomb's law and Newton's equation for gravity is that they are both examples of an inverse square relationship. We find that this sort of ratio of energy/effect to distance pops up all over the place in mathematical equations describing physical processes. It can be explained by the way that a wave propigates in three dimensions.

The inverse-square law generally applies when some force, energy, or other conserved quantity is radiated outward radially from a source. Since the surface area of a sphere (which is 4πr 2) is proportional to the square of the radius, as the emitted radiation gets farther from the source, it must spread out over an area that is proportional to the square of the distance from the source. Hence, the radiation passing through any unit area is inversely proportional to the square of the distance from the source.

Source

If you're interested in this phenomenon I strongly recommend you check out the link. It's just the wikipedia page, but it's a great simple explanation with a very helpful image, and it discusses some of the specific instances of the law.

As far as the difficulties with energy and force. . .
The difficulties really arise as a product of natural language. English isn't made for capturing the essense of physics concepts. Math is. It turns out physics seems to be written into the universe using the language of math in a deep and mysterious way. Mysterious in that it is odd how math seems so exactly right for describing physics, and most physical theories in their purest form are[i/] mathematical equations. Force and energy are well described mathemetically, but not in english. I don't think we should interpret this to mean that science doesn't have a grasp on these concepts. The do have a grasp because they can define then and describe them in a very exacting way mathematically. It's just that it's hard to put into words.

It's stange to think what the ontological status of physics equations actually is. They must exist, because they manifest themselves every time anything happens. However, we can be fairly certain than if we looked closely at physical objects, we wouldn't find little numerical equations written on them. It's pretty clear that these mathematical laws exist somewhere, in some form, but where? As what? How? Why is the language of mathematics able to capture the "real" physical laws so perfectly?